It’s called the Public Safety Building. It was abandoned after the city decided to buy an old Canada Post warehouse and renovate it into a new police HQ at a cost of $214 million.
That decision took place because council was not told it would cost roughly the same money to renovate the PSB and expand it over the site of the now-derelict Civic Centre Parkade.
The city officials who suppressed that information were never censured for their actions.
So the city now has a new police HQ, which suffers from deficiencies and remains a financial burden due to the debt incurred to build the project.
A project that remains under an RCMP investigation that is now four years old and running.
The city is also stuck with a mostly vacant former Canada Post tower and the costs associated with maintaining it.
The city must also cover the cost of decommissioning the PSB, which won’t be renovated because the city is handcuffed when it comes to its own office-rental needs. It can’t even fill the new tower it didn’t need to buy.
So an architecturally unique building is coming down because the city made a series of bad decisions. You can’t call them mistakes. They were deliberate.
But hey, it’s all in the past, right? Nope. Not as long we’re all still paying for it.
This is why they tried to re-brand the PSB as the “Market Lands.” Such a place does not exist.
They’re knocking down the Public Safety Building. They’re paving over the bad decisions.
Ho ho ho. Now I’m looking for the joke with a microscope, as Saint Iggy used to say.
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