Hanceville’s Civic Center is about to get a whole lot cooler.

Anyone who’s ever sweated through a July event at the facility, which started life in the 1950s as a National Guard Armory, will tell you in a hurry: the place isn’t air conditioned.

But in another month or so, that’ll be a thing of the past. At its regular meeting Thursday, the Hanceville City Council unanimously approved the installation of a new air conditioning unit at the city’s multi-use, gymnasium-sized building on Commercial Street. Hanceville-based Hagemore Heating & Air won the $30,200 bid.

Hopefully, said Mayor Kenneth Nail, bringing climate control to the civic center will open the way for it to see heavier use during summer — a time of year that, over the course of the building’s long life, hasn’t been easy on guests.

“What’s happened in the past is that, because there’s been no A/C, in the summertime we’ve always been kind of dead in the water,” said Nail. “We couldn’t really have any events and activities, unless people wanted to walk around in 90-degree temperatures indoors.

“This will fix that. We’ve been updating the whole facility, and we think that having air conditioning will make it a lot more appealing for people to have events there, and it will just be more accommodating for everybody.”

There’s a pageant scheduled for June 3 at the civic center. Nail said installation work for the air unit should be completed before then. “You can’t have a beauty contest if there’s makeup running down your face, so we’re definitely going to have everything finished before then,” he joked.