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| The rising cost of renovations for the MacCarthy building spurred a few questions from Council on Monday evening |
The ongoing work towards moving the City of Prince Rupert's Operations Department from Wantage Road to a new facility in the old MacCarthy GM building on Portage at Saskatoon made for some short conversation at Monday's City Council Session.
That in response to report from Director of Operations Richard Pucci, a document that noted of a significant increase to the cost estimates so far for the renovation work.
We outlined the details to the report on Monday, the key element that of a revised forecast now approaching five million dollars from the earlier estimates of 2 to 3 million.
Early projections put the completion of this work at approximately $5M exclusive of property purchase.
The Staff appreciates that this is significantly higher than originally estimated at between $2M & $3M exclusive of property purchase; however, the original estimates were complete pre-Covid.
Further, this is just an estimate and the Staff will be given a Class B cost estimate to bring to the Council prior to advancing or approving construction. -- From Director Pucci's Report of Monday evening
Councillor Nick Adey opened the discussion with an observation towards the latest overview of the plans.
"The other one that strikes the eye based on community interest and a fair bit of community debate is the MacCarthy building and I think the point to note there is, you know, perhaps not unusual but it's unfortunate to see the cost escalation that's taken place.
And it does in the report suggest that at some point it will be brought back to Council before advancing.
I guess my question, or concern around that is you know ... I support, I think its essence it's a good idea it's a good initiative. But I wonder what, how comprehensive that question when it comes to us, brought to us before advancing. You know what are we actually going to be deciding about, given how far down the road this proposal already is"
In response, the Director of Operations charted the process ahead towards the plans
"So what we'll be bringing back is a Class B estimate of the required renovations, so noting that there is likely a significant increase, we would like to bring that back to Council to ensure that they're behind moving forward with the renovation for the public works building. We anticipate that being by the end of the year"
Councillor Cunningham followed up with a question on both the renovations and the purchase opportunity for the building.
"With the escalating costs of us moving in there and everything else and the renovations that have to be done to the building. Are there going to be any indications this isn't going to impact the purchase price at the end of the day.
And if so, have we actually negotiated a purchase price before all this escalation came into being.
You know like uh, here we are putting a lot of money in a building we're going to lease with the option to buy and I'm wondering, with this money we're putting into the leased building, what effect its going to have on the future of us purchasing it. Have we come to a set purchase price before all this"
Mr. Pucci did confirm for council that a purchase price has been negotiated, though no details towards that price were revealed.
"Yes, we have come to a price, the price is basically at the day we took ownership, or took lease, so we have it written into the agreement that any escalations or any renovations, or upgrades we put in will not be taken into account with the purchase price.
We need to trigger the purchase, and at that point we have to put five percent down and then the remainder is at the end of the lease and we can purchase it outright.
In my last report I also noted that the owner of the building had given us a twenty five percent break in the lease rate, understating that we are going through this exercise so they've agreed to reduce their lease rate with us because we're not actually in the building"
Mr. Pucci also confirmed Councillor Cunningham's observation that:
"So out of that, it's a set price that we're going to be paying that has already been set up"
Councillor Forster also observed of her concerns related to the items noted previously towards the MacCarthy building.
You can review the full discussion from the City's Video archive starting at the 22 minute mark.
More items of interest from the Monday Council session can be reviewed through our Council Timeline feature.
Background on the MacCarthy move can be explored from our Civic Operations Archive page.
Cross posted from the North Coast Review.
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