Jennifer Smith - Kelowna Capital News Published: December 08, 2009 6:00 PM
Kelowna’s municipal staff need new digs—or at the very least, an upgrade. Within the next five years Kelowna’s city hall, city works yards, RCMP building, the YMCA, Enterprise Way firehall, Parkinson Recreation Centre, the Kelowna Community Theatre and Martin Education Centre will all be technically obsolete and overburdened, leaving an $81-million to $121-million bill in their wake. “We need to add to the capacity and there’s only two ways of doing that, really,” said Randy Cleveland, City of Kelowna infrastructure planing. “You can tear it down and start all over again or you can add to it.”
A portion of the problem lies in the energy use of the buildings. From the art gallery to the library, the mechanical systems of even the seemingly modern municipal buildings are costing Kelowna heavily in harmful emissions as cities like Kelowna are now committed to reducing their carbon footprint in line with provincial targets designed to stave off global warming. But there are also some simple spacial considerations to deal with as well as the municipality’s staff expands, according to Cleveland. Whether city council opts to retrofit buildings or begin building anew will involve some complex decision making, balancing the “best life cycle cost” of the buildings the city owns with the need for space and energy upgrades. It’s likely to involve shuffling departments and people until a compromise between tear downs and renovations is struck. “We look at what’s going to be the least costly to us in the long haul,” said Cleveland. “There’s going to be a different answer out of each of those scenarios.”
When it comes to city hall, for example, the building was considered state of the art when it was built in 1950, but mention has been made of building a new city hall for several years now. A major renovation is currently underway on the fourth floor, a measure considered a stopgap to buy some extra time, but the building will once again be bursting at the seems within a handful of years, Cleveland said. In his presentation, he noted Kelowna runs a very tight ship and is considered far more efficient than many municipalities around the world, using less staff than the average to provide the same service. Yet with the city’s population growing, along with demand for service, council is likely to need to figure out how to handle their waterfront home sooner rather than later. At one point the building was considered state of the art. Now it could be considered for a heritage designation, Cleveland said, pointing out there is lot of the original building left despite numerous add-ons and renovations.
At the other end of the spectrum, a virtually brand new transit yard, constructed in 1998-99, will likely be overflowing within 20 years thanks to plans to expand the bus fleet in line with those commitments to Kelowna’s carbon footprint. Balancing the needs of the bus service is equally difficult. “Their number one cost is deadheading, which is when the bus comes in with nobody in it. If you look at it, just that cost is tremendous, so they want to be as central as possible to all services,” he said. Looking at the cost of the coming projects, Cleveland told reporters outside council chambers the total figure is not as bad as it sounds. Although the costs could top the $120 million mark without even purchasing additional land, the bills are really only the size of a single year’s budget within the municipality. The new H2O pool is being paid for with a loan amortized over a 20-year period and it only required tax hikes for two years to finance. As that project was roughly one half to one third of what’s needed to make these changes, Cleveland suggested whatever combination of solutions are found, it will be manageable for city taxpayers.
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