Why was city hell-bent on police-HQ location?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/03/2015 (3894 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After four years of bad news about Winnipeg’s new police headquarters, residents of this city can be forgiven for suffering from scandal fatigue.

In 2011, the HQ budget ballooned to $194 million from $135 million. In 2013, it went up to $210 million. In 2014, the project was criticized in a pair of audits and delayed by electrical damage sustained during a summer rainstorm.

To add insult to ignominy, the RCMP launched an investigation into the HQ at the end of last year, creating a near-unprecedented situation in which a federal police agency is investigating a municipal police facility.

Given the scale of the embarrassment, some Winnipeggers may wish to see this story simply go away. But documents obtained by this newspaper through a 13-month freedom-of-information battle have raised a new and extremely troubling question about the impetus for the project in the first place.

In February 2014, the Free Press asked the city to cough up any comparisons of buying the Canada Post building and renovating it into a new police HQ versus fixing the cladding on the Public Safety Building.

The city refused, citing the HQ audit underway by consulting firm KPMG as well as a section of provincial freedom-of-information legislation known as the “advice to government” exemption.

The Free Press complained to Manitoba’s ombudsman. The ombudsman determined the city said no without even looking for documents — and failed to explain why it evoked an exemption.

Thanks to the prodding of the ombudsman, the city finally complied with the Free Press request more than a year after it was made.

It’s now apparent why officials might have wanted them to remain under wraps: They clearly show officials knew the HQ couldn’t be done as cheaply as the figure provided to city council.

In February 2009, consulting firm Hanscomb estimated the project cost at nearly $180 million, including the purchase price for the building, the core construction work and soft costs such as buying furniture and paying engineering fees.

In November 2009, council was given a figure that didn’t include any of the soft costs.

Former mayor Sam Katz claims consulting firm AECOM was to blame, but a 2011 report to council and the KPMG audit state those costs were left out of the 2009 report to council.

To put it bluntly, someone at the city led elected officials to believe the police headquarters would cost $45 million less than the actual estimate. The question remains: why?

The implication is somebody or several somebodies really, really wanted this project to happen.

The real estate audit completed by consulting firm EY already demonstrated the city didn’t even bother to appraise the Canada Post building before it was purchased for $29.25 million.

The Hanscomb study obtained by the Free Press shows the city could have spent only a little bit more money to expand the Public Safety Building, but that option was never explored in full.

And the idea of moving into the Canada Post building, as outlined in a draft report from 2008, didn’t even come from the city. It came from Shelter Canadian Properties, which wanted to buy the structure.

Given everything now known, it still isn’t clear why the city was so hell-bent on the Canada Post option — and why pains were taken to make it appear more palatable to councillors.

“We will end up with a state-of-the-art police centre that will, I’m sure, be the pride of the rest of the cities in Canada,” former St. Norbert councillor Justin Swandel told his colleagues before the project was unanimously approved in 2009.

Presumably, no one on that council knew the cost had been lowballed or that other options were not fully explored. It will take additional reporting — or the RCMP — to tell us why.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca