No cheap options to deal with crumbling police headquarters in Sudbury

Sudbury police consider building new HQ The police services board in Greater Sudbury got an update Wednesday from consultants looking into the state of its aging headquarters.

The Greater Sudbury Police Services Board got an update on Wednesday from consultants looking into the state of its aging downtown headquarters.

One is using land behind a city-operated recycling facility on Frobisher Street as the site for a new headquarters.

"I was happy to see that there is a plan in place to kind of replace the existing 190 Brady St. for our members,” said the president of the Sudbury Police Association, Matt Hall.

"There’s still a lot of legwork to do, obviously, by getting some support from council and the community."

The downtown police headquarters has dealt with a number of infrastructure issues in the past year, including poor drinking water, leaking, flooding, crumbling facia and electrical problems.

The consultants presented an extensive facilities review and presented the board with two options.

Option 1 is a $172 million hybrid model, where the current building would be renovated and used for administrative staff only and a new purpose-designed building constructed.

Option 2 is to build a consolidated headquarters for $175 million.

In both options, the new building would be located behind the city’s recycling facility on Frobisher Street.

"Certainly, (the consultants) gave us all the options and certainly identified all the other concerns that we have," said police board chair Al Sizer.

"We saw a portion -- a snippet of what we were provided – we were given an encyclopedia of facts and figures and equipment conditions."

One board member asked Chief Sara Cunningham her thoughts on having one consolidated site versus multiple sites.

Cunningham said it’s happening now, where members are all over the city in multiple sites -- and it’s not allowing them to connect.

She said officers already use a mobile model to work, using their cruisers as their office and patrolling a large geographical zone.

"We have computers in there, we have cellphones, so the location of where they dress and get ready and head out from should be, in my opinion, one location," Cunningham said.

"And that’s what the recommendation was today."

Board member Gerry Lougheed Jr. said replacing the downtown building has been talked about for at least a decade. It’s a frustration Hall shares. He wants to see action from the board.

"If we have that commitment on where the project is going to be started and there is an end goal, we’ll survive and deal with what we have to do," he said.

"But the longer we wait and talk about it, the longer the issues accumulate at 190 (Brady) where it just gets worse and worse."

The police board has $7 million in reserves for a new building. Sizer said the rest would come from debt financing. But he admits they may be too late to include the proposed capital project in the upcoming 2025 budget.