Staff Moves to City’s New 18th Avenue Administration Building
Monday, February 4, 2013 @ 11:24 AM
It is move-in day for city staff at the new administration building on 18th Avenue 250 News photo
Prince George, B.C. – The move is on. Staff at the old City of Prince George public works yard on 4th Avenue is busy moving to the brand new office building in the yard on 18th Avenue, a move that completes the consolidation of the City’s Transportation and Utilities divisions.
The new 10-thousand-square-foot administration building will house approximately 100 office and field workers. The original target date for completion of the building was the end of October 2012 with the move to get underway at the beginning of November. However that timeline was thrown out of whack by three months by a shortage of available trades workers. The City’s Construction Supervisor, Leland Hanson says “the building is completed but there are some seasonal deficiencies, painting outside needs to be done. That’s outstanding but we’re moving in and using the place as it was intended.”
Hanson says while completion of the building suffered a setback, the project did come in on budget. “It was right on the mark at one million-990-thousand (dollars). It didn’t go over.”
He says administrators moved two weeks ago, with the remainder of the 4th Avenue employees following in stages. “Utility admin (inside staff) is coming up now, today actually, and then Utility Ops (outside workers) next week.”
All of the equipment at the 4th Avenue yard, including about 15 trucks, will be moved up to 18th Avenue and will park on the north side of the administration building where a number of block heaters are located.
Hanson outlines what the future holds for the 4th Avenue yard. “We’re just closing it, shutting the water and heat off, power where it makes sense. We’ll leave some power because we want to run alarm systems and stuff like that and maybe some minimal lighting, but we’re just mothballing it, closing it down.” While there has been discussion in the past about using some of the 4th Avenue property for parkway, or perhaps putting some of it on the market, the future of that site remains up in the air.
Hanson says staff “really seem to be enjoying it (the new building). I’ve done a few of these and usually you get some (staff) that really like it and some that don’t but all in all people are really liking the new building and their location.”
Until now the City’s Utilities staff has worked out of 4th Avenue while Transportation had its engineering group at 4th and streets at 18th. Plans for consolidation came after the city received approval, using the alternate approval process, to borrow up to $3 million for the building project.
Comments
A curiousity question:
maybe for Gus to research (or perhaps one of the other readers already know)
What have been the specific number of City hall staff (inside and outside) along with associated building space at say five year intervals since 1980?
The population of the City has been fairly static or maybe even reduced since 1980; yet all I read about is new space and additional hires. Maybe I am getting the wrong impression.
If you wondered why your taxes keep going up, you can now see for your self. $3 Million borrowed over 20 years for these new digs??
Did they need to move. Probably not.
When the City purchased the Yellowhead Road and Bridge buildings for $5 Million and few years ago, they stated at the time that eventually the 4th Avenue property would be sold to offset the cost of the Yellowhead property.
So now the time comes when all the moves are completed and Hanson says there are no plans for the property, and it will be mothballed.
What the hell happened to the plans to sell this property to offset the costs of the Yellowhead purchase.
This is the type of BS the City pulls off, and after a few years they think that people have forgotten about the original line of BS.
Surely someone at City Hall, either the Mayor, Councillors, or Administration remembers the original plan, and maybe could explain why it was changed.
If you wondered why your taxes keep going up, you can now see for your self. $3 Million borrowed over 20 years for these new digs??
Did they need to move. Probably not.
When the City purchased the Yellowhead Road and Bridge buildings for $5 Million and few years ago, they stated at the time that eventually the 4th Avenue property would be sold to offset the cost of the Yellowhead property.
So now the time comes when all the moves are completed and Hanson says there are no plans for the property, and it will be mothballed.
What the hell happened to the plans to sell this property to offset the costs of the Yellowhead purchase.
This is the type of BS the City pulls off, and after a few years they think that people have forgotten about the original line of BS.
Surely someone at City Hall, either the Mayor, Councillors, or Administration remembers the original plan, and maybe could explain why it was changed.
I’m guessing they bought all new furniture by the looks of the SpeeDee truck in the picture. At least they bought locally but yeesh, use the old stuff.
Turning the heat off, now that sounds okay up front but does nothing for the building.
The PG hotel, heat off, basement allowed to flood then surprise surprise the excuse needed to tear down. Maybe it had to go maybe not, seems to be a pattern here.
I wonder if they will be liquidating the old furniture or just throwing it in the garbage bin like the PGRH just did.
PGRH long term care department bought all new furniture, then crushed the old stuff in their garbage compactor out back.
From an insider that did some of the work there.
I used to toil for an office furniture supply store and can tell you first-hand about the waste whenever a government facility “upgrades”. Welcome to the crusher poor outdated (by three years)desks and chairs. Heck, they’d call us in to move their furniture from office to office. Your tax dollars, hard at work. A good gig if you happen to own a supply store or your pal is an office manager paid by the Government.
Bornandbred and Loki – we have seen the waste that occurs and we turn the cheek because we have to. It’s a sweet job if you happen to luck into it and nobody on the inside will ever make the clarion call because this is the way that this town has always been run. Never ask questions and don’t make waves. Free government money for the poor is a sad, sad joke. I wish that I’d been here 50 years ago when everything was being settled re: black balls and white. I’d be a millionaire by now! It’s a dirty business happening in our town and I wish that our citizenry would wake the hell up.
Bornandbred – all of that furniture will be from our good friends in the People’s Republic. You know, the ones that love democracy and have such high employment standards.
So we borrowed another three million dollars. That kind of money would have reduced the tax burden, in the way of a 25.5% increase in the cost of utilities to the taxpayers of Prince George. Will this City ever get their priorities in order? More civic government incompetence.
Some simple mathematics.
Borrow $3,000,000.00 for new building.
New building comes on budget.
ie; $1,990,000.00
Question?? Where did the other $1,010,000.00 go???
On another note. Prince George is located in the Northern Interior, where we have extremly cold weather, with freezing winds from the North. In addition very few daylight hours from Nov. to March.
So I have an idea. Lets put the block heaters on the North side of the building so that we can get the coldest weather possible, and therefore increase the use of electricity, and of course the idling of vehicles in the **no idling zone**
Sorry Palopu. any questions will be lost in the chaos. We bend and the other guy’s son gets to play short-stop. Why do you think that the guy that wanted to disappear was allowed to? Burning your sins is not the same as burning your morals.
Sorry Palopu. any questions will be lost in the chaos. We bend and the other guy’s son gets to play short-stop. Why do you think that the guy that wanted to disappear was allowed to? Why would an established feller just go to smoke? I know. Burning your sins is not the same as burning your morals.
Palopu, have you looked at this building from the transfer station next door ? It looks like the building was built in the lowest spot in the city’s yard. I’ve even been told a story about some kind of pumping system was installed after construction because of the water coming at it. Also, take a look at all the ice on the roof of the north side of the building. Looks like they have traffic cones out so nobody gets to close to the building.
Hey mf. Those traffic cones put out as a warning of ice? Kinda like along the same lines as putting up a sign at the start of the street denoting bumps and frost heaves ahead rather than fixng them?
Like up north. Bumps next 30 km.
Yeah, just like (full disclosure – I have city employees living on my steet) and our road is wonderfully cleared. It’s nuts! We used to have bikers up the street and no criminals. Hopefully some Councillor or other will move into the neighbourhood.
usedta ya right and what road is that. Those bikers where not criminals! The criminals you refer to do their thing so that they can buy the sh** the bikers sell.
Instead of making deep cuts to the over bloated, over paid and under worked civil service we go further in debt to give them fancy new digs were they can twiddle their thumbs in style. Cool. I wish I had a money tree.
Great designs Batman!
A metal roof that self dumps directly onto a parking area, with the added feature of north side doors that are automatically blocked by said dumpings.
There should be some kind of award for this demonstration of genius.
metalman.
With citybudget
.foresight = null
.forethought = null
.preparation = null
.contingency planning = null
.efficiency = null
.effectiveness = null
.accountability = null
.due care = null
.due diligence = null
end with
To seamutt – I should clarify that the bikers scared off the low-end criminals. I don’t condone what they do but it was nice to be able to forget something on your lawn and still have it in the morning. I don’t miss the roaring Harleys and week-long parties that they hosted but keeping the little miscreants in line seemed well worth the bother.
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