OBSERVER Photo by Jo Ward The Fredonia Opera House adds a new marquee and several other improvements apart of the Smart Growth project.

The Fredonia Opera House will see some much anticipated improvements starting this year. As part of the Smart Growth project in the village, the Opera House will see a new marquee where the original used to be, restoration of many of the operable windows within the building, replacement of the curtains and some rearrangement and replacement of some of the chairs; refurbishment of the restrooms is also in the plans.

“We are done with the design phase of it, we’ve had a successful bid project as well, we are now at the point where we should be able to assign a contractor,” Travis George stated at the Fredonia Village Board meeting Monday. “We’d like to get them started as soon as possible, they should be able to mobilize within the next two weeks.”

The village is looking to have a reconstruction meeting with the contractors to discuss how they want to get access into the building as Village Hall is not open to the public currently.

“We do need to identify who does the building maintenance because we do need to be able to know who’s going to be shutting off utilities and such,” George added.

Montante Construction was awarded the contract for general construction in the amount of $523,202, Ciancio Mechanical for mechanical construction in the amount of $33,839, BECC Electric for electrical contract work in the amount of $37,375 and D.V. Brown and Associates for HVAC contract work in the amount of $127,900. All were approved to work on this project unanimously by the village board.