Sounds like some of our elected officials need to let go of their emotional attachment to this building and see it for what it truly has become, a project with costs that are completely out of control and one that will provide very little direct benefit to the actual taxpayer.

Proceeding with this project, given what it has become, could set an all new milestone for PG when it comes to bonehead planning and spending decisions.

Hey I'm a cop and I say don't do it. To have it costing twice as much is simply not plausible. ALthough a new building is needed because the old one is too small, outdated and the ventallation is poor, we don't need one with all the fancy dancy atriums, gardens etc. This is a police station. Spend the money on good equipment, and a modern cell area.
The larger parking stalls are needed because the police cruisers are full size.
The RCMP building in coquitlam is just fine for a community with 500,000 people in it. Its modern, has a good deal of underground parking. No gardens or fountains but a nice center atrium area that is also very functional as well. Make it with a smaller footprint and the extra outside areas can be either parking or landscaped or both.
The north district building can stay where it is and be kept in use by present company.

"Mayor Dan Rogers says he is not eager to start searching for savings when the tender process on the project has not yet been entered."

It is obvious he knows zilch about design and construction. The order of magnitude will stay the same..... around $40+ million, give or take 10% .... If they got to take more, they will start putting in cheaper flooring, cheaper wood, cut down the gardens, less decorative and fake structural wood and pretty soon the building will be like the library, sitting on stilts with an assh... for an entrance.

Design the thing properly from the start and get some architects who can use some better language to describe the functionality of the building.

"a roof line ... which the architect says “ is reminiscent of the ice jams”,

With any luck the roof will leak and make the roofline flood the building. We love ice jams ...... really, what kind of nonsense are these people spouting .... gives architects a really good image, doesn't it??????

"walkways that are designed with “the confluence of the two rivers” in mind,"

How long did they have that in mind? Was their mind ever on designing a building that would fit the needs of the people occupying the building without bankrupting the city?

"a multi coloured veneered wall that is “reminiscent of a DNA chart” used in the investigative process"

Wonder how quickly that will get painted over? They are designing a building for God's sake, not trying to plagiarize Mondrian .....

http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&q=mondrian&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=oBgJSu3JB5_ItAODlZnkCA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title

maybe they figure we live in the backwoods here where people are not educated in the arts ....

The whole building is fake this and that. That alone is probably adding $3 to $5 million.

The smart Councillors are starting to rise to the surface finally.

Just the fact that 4th avenue is called 4th Street on the site plan indicates that the cost estimates may be questionable also...I agree with Imorge...decrease the footprint, increase the height and sell off the extra land at Vancouver street for some townhousing or something similar with a Tim Hortons on the corner of 4th AVE and Victoria Street, franchise owned by the City...It now looks like a surburban office park building. Make it urban where the cost of the land drives the need to minimize footprint with maximized area. Even better, with a smaller footprint there may be a better location than fronting Victoria (our Bay/Wall street) ie some other City owned land downtown ie 2nd avenue parking lot adjacent to the burnt out building with a connection to 3rd avenue at Columbus lot and sell off Victoria Street Block to the highest and best use ie mixed use commercial, office and maybe residential behind.

Does anyone know where fourth street is?

The consultants are so sensitive to the local community that they have not even learned the names of the streets here. What else are they getting wrong if they can't even remember street names?

Oh, and Gus is right on also.

Quotes from the architect who is desinging the building: "Fourth street", "beetle damaged wood", and my favorite, "just remove the snow from the northern enterance as it falls".

Yep, that says it all right there.

Expect higher costs. Canadian policing is devolving into a money fire-pit, with 2 year cops gouging $60,000 per year. Staff Sgts extort almost $100,000. Further there is the escalating trend towards excess employment of pseudo experts, in worthless 9-5 nominal jobs. Even street cops work less at public safety and more at avoiding getting their hair mussed. Hairspray use is ubiquitous.

And we have to pay these barely educated goofs - 13 weeks provincial/17 weeks RCMP training - 45 year pensions for 25 years of donut dunking and service refusals.

Stats: each goof delivers 1 arrest every 2 weeks; 1 conviction per month; 1 incarcerated person per year; 1 Report to Crown Counsel every 2 weeks (1 being false); 1 served complaint for every 8 taken; TNC Obstructions of Justice, Breaches of Trust, Public Mischief and Perjury.

If you want a cop to deal with a Major Crime in Vancouver, you wait 12 minutes for a slug to show up and another 10 for our paid protective surrogate to lip-read CORNET, Firearms, PROS databases, before they waddle over to a victim. Then, in most cases the malfeasant sack threatens the victim with arrest if they don't accept their lame excuse for service refusal. ("Rate busting" limitations determine whether the slug will work or go back to his donuts.

Eventually, the media will end the silence, and report the money-for-nothing status of policing in Canada. Comparing their "work" with street cleaners, compels one to judge same as the equivalent of a street sweeper spreading dirt on the streets. If you don't want to work for a living become a cop. Psychos and wife beaters are given preference.

Lying is like breathing to a cop.

http://www.constitution.org/lrev/slobogin_testilying.htm

Firearms slug spends 200 hours on ONE case of licence denial. Judge defers to cop over psychiatrist.

http://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcsc/doc/2001/2001bcsc579/2001bcsc579.html

imorg/Chilako-puke:

what words do you use when you threaten those crime victims - 99% of the population - who you don't serve? Don't plan on getting pensions. We are going to drop the hammer on your sand-box play, posing as a job.

The YVR Atrocity reveals the jeopardizant work product delivered by our underworked and over-paid RCMP (AKA; the biggest criminal gang in North and South America)

See Cop-Rage in action. (Cops confiscated several video phones, but not all) A fat white cop viciously slugs a young black man, and then tosses him to the floor when he complains of Assault. While on his stomach, another cop pulls out his gun an shoots the prostrate man in the back. The cop - who is a hero to his fellow officers - has been charged with Murder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq0-F4op_UQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKy-WSZMklc

Cop white-washers are trying to peddle the Murder as a mistake. They claim the Murderer meant to use his Taser. In BC about 10% of the population could be duped into believing that crap.

http://www.amazon.ca/Dispersing-Fog-Inside-Secret-Ottawa/dp/1554700426/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242115715&sr=1-1

The design includes too many costly elements which are completely superfluous for a police station.

Somebody missed the mark. All it has to be is clean looking and functional. It is not a Performing Arts Centre or an Opera House.
It is a place where people work and not a pleasure lounge.

"...it has an atrium, a winter garden, a summer garden, a man made water way in the front, a roof line on the Emergency Operations centre which the architect says “ is reminiscent of the ice jams”, walkways that are designed with “the confluence of the two rivers” in mind, a multi coloured veneered wall that is “reminiscent of a DNA chart” used in the investigative process."

Cut all those frills out and the cost will decrease substantially into affordable territory.

This will bankrupt the city for the sake of art and the fact council can't make functional decisions.

IMO if a new building is built it should be on Queensway at the old A&W location with a smaller footprint and greater access to the troubled spots in the city.

The Victoria Street location should be used for a downtown urban park IMO with water works to act as a focus for downtown shift and revitalization to a location that can accomodate growth (ie elevation from the flood plain).

Building this eye sore of a financial anchor in the prime location for revitalization chokes out private enterprise with public dollars and thus kills downtown revitalization IMO.

100% correct you are Eagleone. If this goes through at the current location, downtown is DONE (if it isn't already). Are the folks on council really that thick that they can't see that?

Absolutely uneeded costs. This is a police station where criminals go. Does that require such extravagance. The officers I would hope would be happy with a good solid clean building and see some of that money go to fighting crime. I was once told that the existing building had the ability to add floors. Would adding a few floors and updating the ventilation system be a reasonable option. The building showing in the picture IMO would also look totally out of place considering the look that area currently has.

Excellent comments and suggestions above.
I especially appreciate diplomats' observations, the proposed development is too damn fancy. The concepts we have been shown are typical of what you get from architects who are given a project with few boundaries or cost considerations. That is normal, after all, that is what architects do, they are typically artistic and imaginative, and we rely on them to provide us with designs that are functional and that we can live with for the next fifty years or more. I will be the first to admit that I think the current conception would look nice, and I would also appreciate the architecture, simply fabulous. But, this is a publicly owned, publicly funded building, and as such, it should be more on the practical side.
metalman.

Yes, excellent comments and suggestions by most, except for truth. Go home truth. You have no more credibility on this site.

As citizens we get the opportunity to vote no to this waste of taxpayer money. Seems only the new councillors understand the general publics feelings on these extravagant spending programs. Having these dreamers in charge will cost us 10% tax increases for the 20 years.
It seems extemely hard to get it through the heads of the people running the city that pot holes and roads are the biggest concern of the average citizen.
When the opportunity comes to vote on the additional spending for the RCMP building remember to vote "NO".

"Yes, excellent comments and suggestions by most, except for truth. Go home truth. You have no more credibility on this site."
-----------------------------------------

You do remember what I suggested to you before about ignoring him, right ?

Did you notice that out of seven subsequent posts, you are the only one who felt compelled to respond to his comments ?

Six other posters (non-police) ignored his useless ramblings and rantings.

You therefore begin to give credibility to his claims of "contempt of cop" whereby he puts forward the theory that if you are belligerent or disrespectful to a cop, the cop will easily buy into a childlike argument about who's daddy is bigger and escalate the situation to violence in order to quell the offensive behavior and therefore "teach respect" to such people.

You're right, he has no credibility except when you continually and easily get roped into such arguments over anything he vomits onto the keyboard.

You need to learn the value of not hearing so well.
The statement, "I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention. What were you saying ?" Goes a long way towards quieting such people.

If I had a dollar for everytime someone came to me after the fact and said to me, "Hey, thanks for being the bigger man about it.", I would have Donald Trump reporting to me in triplicate.

You're a pig, you're an a-hole, and thanks for making sure nobody killed my wife and kids on their way home. Thanks for picking up the passed-out drunk from the middle of the crosswalk, that everybody else was driving around, and stepping over top of. I didn't sleep with a gun under my pillow last night, thanks to you being on the job, and guys like Truth took another breath today because you protected their sorry asses too.

You'll get your rewards in very small amounts, but if you watch for them, they'll be there.

Now get back to work, I'm done lecturing.

;-)

This project is a perfect example of scope-creep (look it up under Project Management).

Scope creep is to projects, what free booze is to community events. It is a cancer, it is a constant concern and it is the first thing you learn when studying project management.

The first thing people will look at in your career as a project manager, and judge you by...

Your success at keeping a project on time, on budget, and on scope. Period. You will fail horribly if you cannot deliver that, and you will wear it forever. You will always be known as a person that cannot control a project and will let it run away from you. That is very dangerous.

Don't blame people in the design phase, they are trying to show off their skills, demonstrate the best that they can do. They will use solid gold cabling if you will sign it off.

It is up to the person in command of the project to reign them in. Somebody has to be the hardass, somebody has to make the hard decisions and keep everything under control.

Without a solid project manager, you will get exactly what is illustrated above, maybe even more over the top than that by the time it is completed.

A building such as that will make the surrounding buildings look even more drab and dilapidated than they already are.

Look at the new Chances. Stands out like a stripper at a formal dance.

Maybe the local contractor that was turned down as project manager for this building could have saved a few million. At least some local content wouldn't call it 4th Street!