Rooms for short retreats
The second idea was to offer our members the opportunity to make short retreats, from a few days to a few months, in comfortable single rooms. We are receiving more and more requests that are currently difficult to answer because the number of single rooms is too small. Testimony of interest in this activity, during the thirty months when the retreat center was empty between two 3-year retreats, we used its rooms to meet a growing demand for short-term individual retreats.
New opportunity to build….
At the end of 2009, with the construction work on the three-year retirement centre and boiler room, we had exhausted the number of m2 of building space previously granted by the municipality. In 2016, the Town Hall of Izeron completed the instruction of its new Local Urban Plan (PLU), offering us the possibility of new constructions. However, the new regulations mean that we can only build new buildings within the existing perimeter of the Centre, without using new space.
Choose the location of the project….
Originally, the idea was to make the temple of Nyung Ne in the building of the boiler room.
A meeting with Lama Teunsang and all residents in December 2017 changes the destination of the project. It seems more logical to concentrate all that is technical and services in the boiler room building and build a new building for the practice of the Dharma, with the temple of Nyung Ne on the ground floor and rooms on the floors.
Where find a location for this new building within the Centre’s perimeter? For all of them, the ideal location was the location of the workshop, behind the C building. It is one of the most pleasant places in the Centre: slightly withdrawn, well oriented, it offers a splendid panoramic view of the entire valley… and is easily accessible by car. Built in 1993, this workshop had become too small. It occupied a large building area that could be used more efficiently for the new project.
Installation of the first floor of the boiler room building
This large building is divided into two parts: a 100m2 boiler room and a 150m2 firewood shed. Work began in the spring of 2018 and began by closing the first floor of the building and creating two zones:
– Above the hangar: several technical and equipment storage rooms,
– Above the boiler room: this area will later be converted into a library area. Indeed, the current library has become too small to accommodate all the books we have in stock. The building permit for this library has already been obtained. We will tell you more about it soon. (see above)
The technical part: why a workshop in Montchardon?
The Centre itself provides the maintenance and construction necessary for its functioning. This involves storing masonry, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, painting, mechanics, lumbering, green space maintenance, etc. equipment, tools and supplies.
This technical sector now has more than 250m2 of workshop and storage space, with a mezzanine for storage, a sanitary area, a garage for large equipment (tractor, etc.) and a shed for timber and other materials.
All the development work took place between April 2018 and spring 2019. As soon as the interior of the new finished workshop was fitted out, the entire old workshop was transferred and then destroyed in the process. During the summer, earth-moving machinery worked for several weeks to create the location of the future building. All the backfill removed was used to provide access to a new terrace behind the boiler room building.
Other development work
Spring 2018 was also used for earthworks and the construction of new stone walls, to support a new and large platform above the camping terraces behind the retreat centre, and to increase the Centre’s camping capacity. Lama Teunsang was in charge of this work, which also made it possible to create and extend paths to wood plots above the Centre in the area acquired 7 years ago above the Centre.