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Originally Posted by chowhou
For what it's worth, the primary argument for moving city hall is literally "it is broke and we can't fix it".
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This is overly reductive and a simplistic reading of it.
The original assessment was that the current building is probably at about the end of it's shelf life in terms of serviceability and most importantly modern standards.
Their engineers advised that in order to bring it up to date on modern seismic and sustainability standards, refurbishing it most likely would have bought the city no more than another 20 or 30 years before they found themselves right back at square one in having to refurbish and retrofit it again then, and probably at a greater cost.
In other words, diminishing returns.
It's an old building - it was built in the 1950's and buildings are not built to last forever - and all you'd be doing at this point is throwing money at it to give it continued usability while not getting your money's worth back.
And that's not even accounting for the fact that their needs have grown in terms of requiring more space to consolidate their services, staff and functions, and extending the old building wouldn't cut it.
They're going to spend money either way.
Either on building a new building where the current one is (after demolishing it), or whether it was to relocate to a new location to do so.
It might actually cost the city more to do it this way than if they had relocated since Hurley is insisting that it won't be a tower anymore and they'll probably look into doing it in a more "campus-style" sprawled out layout.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WarrenC12
Sorry I misread the original decision. What was the cost difference?
The police and other things are co-located at Deer Lake. It's already a hub for city services.
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I believe the RCMP are scheduled to move from their current building too into a newly constructed facility (?)
This was more a case of the city wanting the city hall to be in a more centralised location (not "geographically" centralised as is the argument for the current location, but rather centralised in terms of transit and accessibility for most (read : non-driving) Burnabians.)
"Geographically centralised" does not = most accessible.
Vancouver's City Hall that kept getting brought up as a counter-argument is not in fact centrally situated (if that implies at the heart of Downtown Vancouver), but it is located right next to a major transit hub (soon to be even bigger with the Broadway Extension line currently being constructed) with the idea that anyone in Vancouver can get to it without needing a car to do so.
I think that's a solid argument to use for where to locate your city hall and services since their function after all is to serve the people (and ostensibly be accessible to them).
A little bit of the irony of the "Don't move it" contingent who seemingly won the day with their opposition to moving it, is that one of their arguments against relocating it was that it would make the already bad traffic and parking situation in Metrotown area even worse - a specious argument if you ask me given the fact that you hear it over and over again even with normal residential developments proposed for what's supposed to be a residential area anyway.
And yet they are okay with having it in a location that (for most) means getting there you likely will have to drive there anyway rather than take transit.
And going back to the Vancouver City hall comparison, I don't think the area it's located in (Cambie-W. Broadway) has high(er) traffic congestion or bad parking situation because it's in the area, but rather more because the area itself is one of the busiest in terms of being a transit and traffic node, and also because it's a financial and office hub area.
I think the Burnaby City council folks just got spooked by all the backlash from the characteristically very vocal and loud "Anti-" folks (you could even call them NIMBY's) and bullied into backtracking on their original plan.
A pity and a lost opportunity IMHO.
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