Medicine Hat, AB – The Monarch Theatre downtown needs more repair.
The mortar and many of the bricks on the rear wall that was built over 100 years ago is starting to fall apart.
Contractors have already begun patchwork to test the colour of the mortar.
Robin Anton the manager of operations with the City Centre Development Agency, says once the work will take about a month and will not disrupt normal theatre hours.
The project will cost about $50,000.
Anton says half of which has been raised by the Friends of the Monarch committee.
While the rest will come from a grant through the provincial Historic Resource Committee and a defined loan payment through the city.
“It might come a little bit more than that because, with buildings of this age, there’s always things hiding in there that people don’t know about, which may cause the cost to escalate.” Said Anton. “We’ve kind of built that into the quote.”
Anton says their main focus is making sure these repairs are done right.
“With a building this age, there’s always something that needs to be repaired. Part of its designation as a municipal historic resource is that we are responsible for maintaining the defining features of that building which the brickwork is part of them. So that’s the number one thing we want to do right now is get that back to it’s standard.” he explained.
Anton says that the next major project for the Monarch will be replacing the roof, which he says they expect to have done within the next 5 years.
