Former post office to become health, safety dept.
Renovations to the former downtown Canada Post branch is a further leg in the race for city administrators to cut down on the amount of space it leases around the city.
On Monday, council approved a contract award worth $519,200 to Amron Construction to renovate the city-owned building into office space for reconfigured health and safety department.
However, combined with a number of other departmental moves and to major building renovations, city building managers expect to shave $230,000 per year off operating costs starting in 2019. Administrators say the switch around is complex but will result in major savings.
“It’s a series of dominos and this is where the groups that didn’t fit anywhere else are being put,” said Joe Cartwright, the city’s general manager of corporate asset management.
“There will be substantial savings. The (post office) building’s been in our inventory for a number of years, we’re paying utilities there already, and the minor renovations won’t be a major expense.”
Actual savings will be $318,000, based on utilities, lease rates and janitorial costs. After debt repayments are factored in the net gain is $230,000, said Cartwright.
The former post office, at 533 First St. (opposite city hall), was vacated by the Crown corporation in 2013. It has since been used sparingly, most recently as the headquarters for the 2016 Alberta Winter Games.
Health and safety managers will move there, out of the current location at Fire Station No. 1, when it is closed later this year.
That station on Maple Avenue is scheduled to be closed and sold after construction on the replacement station is completed. Fire administration is already operating in the two-year-old Fire Station No. 2 on Trans-Canada Way
Also destined for the postoffice space is the recently created utility business support office, which is currently located at the Kipling Street gas distribution building.
That facility is being refitted to house the natural gas and petroleum exploration unit head office, which currently leases a floor on the privatelyowned Chinook Plaza building on Fourth Street.
That lease will end, and accounts for the majority of the savings. Gas distribution workers will be moved into the electric distribution headquarters in Brier Park. Those two departments were reorganized to work in tandem during last year’s corporate reorganization.
Cartwright also said work on new office building at the city’s municipal works yard was completed in late April, and operations are now up and running.
Amron was one of six firms to bid on the renovations at 533 First St. The tender on the Brier Park building is expected to be let out this month.
The Kipling street work was budgeted to cost $5.5 million in the spring of 2017, at which time officials said the net result is a reduction of 13,000 square feet of operating space.
The city’s recently released 2017 annual report states the city’s work force grew by eight full-time positions in 2017 to 1,089. That is up from 1,061 in 2013.