New police station project moving forward

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This article was published 15/01/2021 (1699 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s possible a new police station will be built on the Old Exhibition Grounds in the North End as early as 2023.

The City of Winnipeg plans to tender a construction contract later this year and the building phase is expected to take 12 to 14 months, according to a City spokesperson. The new North District Police Station would replace station #13 located further northeast at 260 Hartford Ave. The total cost of the project is $25 million. $23 million was approved through the 2018 capital budget, and an additional $2 million is pending approval.

In 2003, city council approved the implementation of the Winnipeg Police Service’s four-district model. The new north station is the final piece of the district puzzle.

“The existing station does not meet the current needs of policing and the building itself is not adequately located to handle growth in the north end of the city,” the city’s website states.

“It was designed for 30 to 40 male officers with bare minimum holding cells, video capability, security, and female locker area. There is barely any separation between detainees processing area and officer’s work area.”

The initial proposal to construct a new station on the Old Exhibition Grounds was met with opposition from community groups in 2018, because the design ate up much of the surrounding green space which is used for sports and recreation by local teams and groups.

On Nov. 18, 2020, the executive policy committee recommended to city council a revised design which is meant to decrease the amount of space the station will occupy.

However, William Whyte Neighbourhood Association, one of the groups previously consulted about the project, is still skeptical.

“We felt that, because Old Ex is such a facility with baseball diamonds and football fields and stuff like that, that we would lose all that,” Darrell Warren, the association’s president, told The Times. “We’re still opposed to it.

“This is one of the biggest sites we have (in the area),” he said. “I just think the sports will suffer.”

In 2018, the city recorded the responses of 187 individuals/groups on their use of the space. Fifty per cent said they visit the North Centennial Recreation and Leisure Facility (now Sergeant Tommy Prince Place), which is located next to the grounds; 44 per cent reported using the site for baseball, while another 35 per cent selected football; 27 per cent said they use the land for other purposes.

The North Winnipeg Nomads Football Club plays on the land. In the same report, the club was supportive of the project and willing to move as long as its facilities would be rebuilt somewhere else and funded by the city.

Other groups such as Softball Manitoba said the construction of a station would be detrimental to its teams and other groups who rely on the on-site diamonds.

In the past, area Coun. Ross Eadie (Mynarski) has advocated against the construction of a police station on the Old Exhibition Grounds.

“Any loss of athletic field/green space is not good for the community,” he said, adding that he favoured other sites such as the former Molson Brewery lot on Redwood Avenue.

The new police station will cover the same territory (65.28 square-kilometres) as the existing service. In 2019, the northern service responded to 45,406 calls.

The City has not yet decided what will happen to the Hartford Avenue property once station #13 is decommissioned.

Constructing the new cop shop at the Old Exhibition Grounds will save the WPS more than $5 million, so the public service is recommending that funding be used to redevelop the Old Exhibition building.