By James Bowler

Red River Roping and Riding Club board decides to demolish building

Mar 6, 2013 | 6:03 AM

Board members and nearly 30 club members from the Red River Roping and Riding Club met Tuesday night at the exhibition grounds in Prince Albert to discuss the fate of the building damaged after its roof collapsed.

The board members decided in a previous meeting that the building would have to be demolished as no building engineer would sign off on repairing the 40-year-old facility.

“We knew what shape that building was in, it was 40 years old, and we had already started to save some money to replace it, “said Jean Beaulac, president of the club. “So now when this happened, and with the engineer telling us there’s no way anyone would sign off on a fix on that building, we made the decision then that we had to rebuild.”

This news came after an engineer inspected the building this week and reported that the trusses that had failed and allowed the roof to collapse had not been compromised by rot, which would have been the result of poor upkeep.

The club will be eligible to receive an insurance payout. Beaulac said he hopes they will receive the amount that building was worth before the roof collapsed.

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“We were insured for around a million and I believe that’s what we should get,” said Beaulac. “I guess that will all depend on what they come up with, with their estimates.”

For now, they will have to wait while their insurance broker processes the report from the engineer, which could take a few weeks or longer.

The club had signed on for a cash policy with their insurance so they will be able to use some of the funds towards paying for demolition fees, if need be, and new construction.

However, the board members were able to estimate they will still have to raise nearly $600,000 – on top of the insurance money they would receive – in order to build an arena that at least allows for riding space.

The club has managed to get the OK from Buckland Fire Department to burn the scrap wood from the demolition on their land to save on the money it would cost to tow the scrap wood to the dump. However, shingles and other non-burnable scraps will have to be dumped properly.

They will also attempt to salvage materials from the demolition to be reused in the rebuild.

Moving forward, the board decided it would be best to put together committees now to plan ahead for the rebuild.

Three committees were brought together, with seven people on each including one board member.

“We put a finance committee together to give us direction to look at ways to raise the money we need, we put a design committee together to look at the type of building we want, whether we want exactly what we had or something newer or better,” said Beaulac. “And a construction committee, to first of all look at demolishing the building we have, and to be prepared to look at rebuilding.”

One member was concerned about what might happen if they decide to cut their losses and not rebuild, but Beaulac said that something fairly terrible would have to occur for that to be a decision made by the board.

For now, the greatest concern is money, and Beaulac said they are already looking at options with grants and funding to help with the rebuild.

“We looked at if there are any grants out there available, next we will look towards the corporate community, they’ve been very supportive of us in the past and we’ve already gotten some word that they will support again,” said Beaulac. “Then of course it will just be the general public and our membership we’ll look to, to help out.”

A large portion of the roof collapsed somewhere between Feb. 9 and 10, after a large accumulation of snow had built up on the structure.

jbowler@panow.com

On Twitter: @journalistjim