Contact Centre - Fitness Centre
Remains Closed
The future of the Collingwood Fitness Centre remains up in the air. The centre remains closed and the former Connaught School remains empty, awaiting an announcement from council regarding its future. The town closed the building late in the Fall of 2010 due to health and safety concerns.
Collingwood Mayor Sandra Cooper was quoted in The Connection on Thursday, January 13th, as saying that investing in improvements at the centre would be putting good money after bad, adding that she feels the building isn't suited for what the fitness centre needs to offer.
Old Connaught School Previously Designated
As A Heritage Building
The former Connaught School, now known as the Collingwood Fitness Centre or Contact Centre, has been disignated as a heritage building. The Town of Collingwood owns the former east-end school and council passed a by-law in 2010 to give the building a heritage designation.
A heritage designation means that a building can be renovated inside, but the original state of the building is protected on the outside. The Standards for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada are intended to promote responsible conservation practices that help protect Canada’s irreplaceable historic places. They provide a philosophical consistency for project work; and while neither technical nor case-specific, they provide the framework for making essential decisions about which features of a historic place should be maintained, and which can be altered.