Quote:
Originally Posted by mr.x
New $15-million VPD station announced
By Kim Bolan, Vancouver Sun
January 18, 2010 2:03 PM
VANCOUVER - Federal minister Stockwell Day announced the construction of a new $15 million Vancouver Police Department station on Monday.
The VPD will take over the Vanoc building at 3585 Gravely Street for its new headquarters.
Police chief Jim Chu said the police building at 312 Main Street will close, but the one at 2120 Cambie Street, which the department has outgrown, will remain as the main dispatch centre for uniformed officers throughout the city.
Chu said he still thinks the city should eventually have a new building constructed more centrally and specifically as a police station.
"We would like one centrally-located building," Chu said.
He said the 72 beat officers in the downtown eastside that call 312 Main Street home will remain in the neighbourhood.
More than 700 other officers and support staff will move to the new headquarters at 3585 Gravely.
http://www.vancouversun.com/station+...329/story.html
VANOC's headquarters was formerly built and owned by a cell phone company (I believe it was Nokia), but they moved out and the City of Vancouver bought the building. After the 2010 bid was won, VANOC was in need of an office building...couldn't find the space it needed in Downtown, it looked elsewhere and approached the City to use its vacant building. The City always had something in mind for the Gravely campus.
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I thought that was the old Glenayre Technologies building that was abandoned when most of Glenayre was sold off to a US owner (motorola maybe?) in the early nineties. The remains of Glenayre died when the pagers market was wiped out by cheap celphones with SMS.
I believe that the building was taken over by the City in lieu of taxes, and the City loaned the building to VANOC (or leased it dirt cheap) while the city figured out what to do with it after the Olympics. Now that VANOC is winding up, it makes sense to have the Vancouver Police use it until they can build their preferred HQ. An issue with the buildings is that they were specifically built for Glenyare's manufacturing needs at the time, so there may have been some extra costs to retrofit them for VANOC needs and now other retrofits for Vancouver Police requirements.
Don't be surprised if the current RCMP Div E site in Oakridge is suggested for Vancouver Police to rebuild into their new HQ (or build something completely new on the site) after the RCMP move to their new Div E campus in Surrey in a few years.