Some small changes will have a big impact at the Mower County Historical Society.

The Mower County Historical Society received several updates over the last few months, including work to the Collections Building to change it into storage space, putting in new bathrooms in the Pioneer Building, raising the Kehret Chapel to higher ground, and updating the heating ventilation and air conditioning units.

The most visible change to the historical society was taking out the Williams’ Native American Collection, which was deaccessioned and returned to the family in around 2013. That makes room for the Collections Building to be updated this winter through adding insulation and updating the electricity in the structure. The structure, which will be used solely for storage, will also receive LED lighting which is better for objects.

“We desperately, desperately need storage, and I know it’s been kind of upsetting for some people to lose a display building, but looking at the overall facility and what is best for our collection — which is why we’re here — for our collection this is really the best thing that we can do,” curator Jaimie Timm said.

Timm noted the former collection had been on display for nearly 40 years, which is not ideal as objects need breaks from being on display.

The need for storage became more obvious as several buildings are currently closed to the public because they are filled with objects not on display, including the church, the fire museum, the Communications Building and part of the Pioneer Building. Once items are moved, there will be more chance to get the buildings filled with displays.

“In most museums, they have maybe 5 percent of their collection on display at once,” Timm said. “We probably have closer to 80 percent of our collection on display. So this gives us a chance to provide a better storage environment, a safer storage environment. We can take better care of our collection, there’s less chance of mishandling where something could get broken, or who knows what. So we’re really excited.”

The insulation and electrical work should be done within the next six to eight weeks, but Timm won’t be able to start filling the Collections Building with objects until they secure funding for and receive shelving.

The new bathrooms are finished in the Pioneer Building, which had bathrooms in the early 1990s that were taken out before Timm started. Now that the building is used for programming space, rentals, parties and more, people had to walk to another building to use the bathroom. The project proved to be more difficult that originally thought, as nobody knew where the water line was.

“It was a major renovation project for us,” Timm said. “We had to drill through the road over there because nobody knew where the water line was, because they’d completely disconnected it when they took the bathrooms out. The [workers] had to jackhammer through the floor in here and go down through the building. It was a mess.”

The HVAC system was redone around October 2015, and the county has agreed to pay for an update to the security system at the Historical Society. The security system upgrade will likely be done in the spring, as workers have to dig underground for a wired system which will last longer. Historical Society staff still have to find funding for the shelving units, which will cost about $70,000. They applied for a Minnesota Legacy Fund grant but did not receive it, so will look for funding elsewhere. The Kehret Chapel, which was put on a higher foundation as there were issues with flooding, was funded by a donation from Delmer Staples who passed away Dec. 3, 2014 and left $10,000 to the Historical Society for repairs and restoration of the chapel.

A few of the projects were funded by the Mower County Board. The board approved $17,875 to install the Pioneer Building bathrooms and $6,625 to renovate the Collections Building. The board also increased its annual appropriations by $10,000 to $44,765 for 2016.

“They have really stepped up this year and they are helping us a lot more,” Timm said. “They are covering the renovations here.”

Timm said once she and the others at the Historical Society started communicating with the board more — what projects they needed to do and why — the board was more understanding about helping them with funding.

Timm is excited about all the changes that have taken place over the last few months.

“It’s kind of exciting for us, because for so many years we couldn’t do anything out here,” Timm said. “Now all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Wow, we can actually do things.’”

“It’s just exciting,” she added.