"Six Nations dedicates new bingo hall"

By Al Sault, SIX NATIONS

It's been open, but Six Nations elected council only just got around to dedicating its state of the art bingo hall on Friday, April 3rd. And though it is common practice for bingo players to arrive early, many were left standing out in the cold and rain that Mother Nature had provided for the day until fifteen minutes prior to the time of the grand opening.

They were finally let in when Six Nations Elected Chief Bill Montour arrived and the dedication went off without a hitch. Along with the chief, members of the teams that took part in the construction, planning and funding of the multi-million dollar facility also took part in the festivities.

There were also veggie trays, cake, coffee, bingo daubers, key chains and ball caps for patrons to partake in. Not all of them were from Six Nations either. Some had arrived from other communities

(Continued on page 2)

(Continued from front)

like Brantford and Hamilton to take part in the celebrations and unbelievable as it may seem, some arrived by taxi which in most cases is a forty dollar ride.

Whatever the cost, it could not dampen the mood of the day which was a happy one, especially considering the appearance of the new facility compared to the old hall which was considerably smaller and did not have the same features the new facility does.

There is a separate area for the kitchen, a sales area for bingo cards that is far more secure than the old hall and also features state of the art equipment to call the games themselves.

David Heintz, CEO with MMMC Inc. Architects in Brantford and project manager on the Six Nations Bingo Hall project said, "The original owner committee was very adamant that the building be a modest building that served the bingo patrons that didn't have a whole lot of traditional native symbolism."

"One of the councillors said I don't want a turtle, another one said I don't want something that looks like it is traditional. They said they wanted something that was modest and serviceable that serves us for the long term." said Heintz.

He said that from that context it became clear that they were looking for a building not unlike what was already existing, just bigger. Mr. Heintz spoke of a specific challenge they were given in designing the building itself which was to come up with a way of ventilating the amount of smoke that is generated on the smoking side of the hall.

To address this problem, two train car size air handling units, that are also state of the art, were installed at the rear of the hall. They not only filter the air, but re-claim the heat and recycle it. The smoky air that has been collected is not re-used, but exhausted. Only the heat is recycled and re-used.

"We have dramatically improved the atmosphere on the smoking side. Have we eliminated all the smoke? No, we haven't but we've made it a much safer place for staff to work and that was one of the concerns, that there were people working on the smoking side that aren't smokers themselves and wanted to improve the environment they were working in." Heintz said.

Construction of the new hall started a year ago and was expected to take just eight months to complete, but wound up taking a couple months more that was anticipated. It has allowed for a more complete and thorough job to be done on the new hall which is about three times larger that the old hall. As of April 3rd, that building was 13 years old.

According to Mr. Heintz, the actual budget for the project was $9.6 million which was approved by Six Nations elected council in the Fall or early Winter of 2007. It's possible the final cost could come in approximately $600,000.00 under the nine million dollar mark. The actual cost of the construction itself was originally expected to cost that much, but will only wind up costing around $8.l million.

"The team that was the owner group, the construction manager and the consultants were able to find cost effective solutions that ended up being less expensive than originally anticipated." said Heintz. He said they weren't quite finished reconciling the numbers, but they anticipate coming in under budget.

Would he take part in further projects at Six Nations if the opportunity presented itself again? He says "Most definitely. I very much enjoyed working with the owner group from Fred Doolittle and Derek Hill at public works, they're both very experienced people... understand the constructions business. I enjoyed working with Dale Bomberry, he was very involved early on in setting budgets and working with council and even the council members that were on the building committee."

He also called them very knowledgeable and said that some of them were even bingo players that understood what it was that they were wanting to build and there was a good deal of consensus so they weren't dealing with differing opinions on what the building should be.

"That made the design process much easier and as I said in the opening, Crystal & Sherry know exactly what they need. They were very clear and very adamant about what they needed and that made our design process easier because there was a clear communication about what they expected the end result to be," Mr. Heintz said.