Council moves ahead with emergency shelter plan

The new design for the Brock Mission emergency shelter for men is still overbudget by about $1.75 million, but councillors are going ahead with the plan anyway since federal funding for the project is expected.

Coun. Keith Riel said it’s about time the city presses forward with its plan to build a new shelter. The old ramshackle building has been torn down.

“This is absolutely needed – we’ve been dragging our feet for more than a year,” Riel said.

On Monday, city councillors heard about the new $9.3 million redesign from local firm Lett Architects. That’s $1,753,000 higher than the city’s budget of $7,547,000.

But city staff ask for additional money from city council because the city has applied for $5.3 million in loans and grants from the National Housing Strategy.

A new city staff report states that the city has applied and has met the preliminary eligibility requirements; the report says a final decision is expected by

March.

It may have taken extra time to have the building redesigned, said Coun. Lesley Parnell, but she said it was all worthwhile.

“The silver lining is we were given a chance to apply for that federal funding,” she said.

If the city gets that $5.3 million, they can combine it with $1,250,000 that the Brock has already fundraised, plus other grants and money set aside by the city, for a total of $9.3 million.

The staff report states that construction can start in spring for completion in late summer 2020.

The building is still expected have 30 emergency beds plus 15 rental rooms.

Meanwhile, councillors also voted on Monday to transfer ownership of the property to Brock Mission.

The city was going to own the property and the building (which the Brock Mission was going to lease).

But the staff report points out that the Brock – a Christian charity – is eligible for more federal funding, as the owner, than the city.

If the city doesn’t get the federal funding, the staff report states, the city would have to get conventional financing.

Meanwhile the Brock Mission is now operating on a temporary basis in St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church, a block up Murray St.

Although the church – which was facing pricey structural repairs – sold to a developer in August, the staff report states that the church will be available for use during construction of the new Brock, at least “for the foreseeable future.”

The Brock Mission’s ramshackle building on Murray St. was torn down a year ago to make room for a new one, designed in 2014 by LGA Architectural Partners of Toronto.

But in early summer, city staff presented a new report to councillors stating that the cost to build the LGA design in 2018 had increased by $3.2 million to $10.7 million.

That was too much for council, which voted to return the design to city staff to pare back costs before construction would be allowed to start.

The idea was to bring the cost back to its original budget of $7 million and re-tender.

Lett Architects, as the city’s design firm of record, was asked to redesign the building after LGA Architectural Partners told the city they could not pare back the cost of their design to fit the city’s budget, states the staff report.

Lett was paid $672,350 to design a new building, states the staff report; this cost, as well as the cost of demolishing the old

Brock, are both included in the budget of $9.3 million.