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City looking at spending $200 million on new centralized operations facility

If approved, a new 'city operations campus' would house transit, fleet maintenance and building maintenance operations
Screenshot 2019-10-22 at 11.11.24 AM
Potential site plan for a proposed new $200 million centralized city operations facility.

The city is tentatively inching forward on a new $200 million centralized facility for its transit, fleet and maintenance operations.

At a poorly-attended special meeting of city council Monday night, council voted in favour of moving forward with the planning and design aspects of a $197.4 million "city operations campus" that would be located on city-owned land on Dunlop Drive beside the Solid Waste Management facility.

It would house everything from city busses to snow plows and many of the operations used to maintain city facilities.

City staff says the new facility is needed for many reasons, including space, overcrowding, safety and efficiency issues at a number of aging and inadequate city operations facilities, many of which were built in the 1960s.

The councillors who were at the meeting voted 6-3 in favour of a motion to direct staff to move forward with initial planning and design, but included the caveat that the final decision on the facility be determined following the presentation of a detailed business case and staging plan to council.

(For: Phil Allt, Dan Gibson, Rodrigo Goller, James Gordon, Cam Guthrie, June Hofland; Against: Bob Bell, Leanne Piper, Mike Salisbury)

Mayor Cam Guthrie and others expressed concern that the vote on a potential $200 million item was happening with only nine of 13 councillors present (two were absent, two had to leave early).

The meeting was scheduled for the same night as the federal election, meaning no Rogers TV coverage, only one member of the public in the gallery and two of the three regular members of the media that provide council coverage also engaged in election coverage elsewhere.

A vote to defer the item until Wednesday's budget meeting was defeated by a 5-5 vote.

(Voting for deferral: Allt, Billings, Gibson, Goller, Guthrie; Voting not to defer: Bell, Gordon, Hofland, Piper, Salisbury.

A city staff report recommends the 70 acre city-owned property on Dunlop Drive after considering other possible locations.

The city's current bus depot on Watson Road would be converted into the home of the city's parks and forestry operations.

“The City’s existing operations facilities are not adequate to meet Guelph’s current or future needs,” says the report.

The $197.4 million cost of the new centralized facility would be financed via Grants ($34.7 million), development charges ($58.2 million) and tax reserve funds ($99 million).

“Several operational departments within the City are constrained by inadequate space to accommodate existing staff and vehicles, including City busses and equipment. This problem will be compounded as the City continues to grow. In addition to space constraints, many of the operational buildings were built in the 1960’s and are at the end of their useful life. Building condition assessments conducted in 2018 have identified maintenance issues that will require significant capital and operating investments to keep them operational.”

Other sites looked at included the Hanlon Creek Business Park, the current Municipal Street operations facilities and the as-yet to be developed Guelph Innovation District.

Some of the current challenges listed in the report include overcrowding, inadequate maintenance bays and inability to add additional bays to service the existing fleet of vehicles, inability to store expensive equipment and vehicles indoors due to lack of space, inefficient and insufficient indoor parking for fleet vehicles.

There are just over $11 million related to the plan included in the 2020 Capital Budget and Forecast that will be officially presented to council on Wednesday night.


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Tony Saxon

About the Author: Tony Saxon

Tony Saxon has had a rich and varied 30 year career as a journalist, an award winning correspondent, columnist, reporter, feature writer and photographer.
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