Demolition work has commenced this week on the former Kubby House Child Care building as part of an exciting project to transform the space into a dedicated facility for Cobar Outside of School Hours Care (COOSH).
The project for Cobar Shire Council has been made possible with $1,317,405 funding from the NSW Government under the Western NSW Workforce Activation Program.
(This funding is being delivered across three separate Council projects, including the Kubby remodel.)
The Cobar Weekly spoke with the project’s builder Tom Clifford, COOSH coordinator Stacey Trudgett and Council’s procurement officer Carrie Ann Martin on site on Monday morning.
Tom, who specializes in new homes and renovations and has plenty of experience in demolition work, said it looks like it should be a straight forward job.
His team disconnected the services to the old Kubby building last week and this week have commenced demolition work.
“We’re currently pulling out walls. There’s a big firewall running through the middle.
“We’ve got to pull that out, and there’s hebel [steel reinforced] walls, there’s a couple of brick walls in there,” Tom explained.
He said the old bathrooms were also coming out to make way for a new accessible bathroom and a kitchen.
Carrie Ann said the project involves a full internal remodel of the building, with updated bathrooms and kitchen facilities, the creation of multifunctional play spaces, and improvements to the entry area with a new concrete path, awning, and fencing.
“These upgrades will support the continued growth of outside of school hours care in Cobar and help increase the capacity for care in our community,” Carrie Ann said.
Stacey said they were excited to see work now beginning at the old Kubby building which will allow the service to have their own dedicated space.
She said COOSH currently operates from a shared facility at the Generocity Church Hall.
“We’re very limited in just space itself and what activities we can do,” Stacey said.
“Here we’ll have the opportunity to do more and have things like a designated quiet space.
“We’ll have a kitchen, more amenities, a larger outdoor area and storage space, which we currently don’t have,” she said.
Construction is expected to be completed by the end of September.
