Burnaby City council has approved a Norland Avenue land assembly site (4038, 4066, 4086 and 4244 Norland Avenue) for the new $162.5 million RCMP detachment.
Council greenlit $6.5 million at a July 10 public meeting to pay for "pre-design investigations" and "pre-construction work" at the site.
Some preliminary work looked to have been done already on the site, which currently holds city-owned, single-family housing lots and a city works yard.
Burnaby RCMP has outgrown its headquarters at 6355 Deer Lake Ave., according to a 2020 space needs study.
The assessment found the facility was already 28,903 square feet too small for the detachment’s needs in 2020 and would be 43,849 square feet short of space after 20 years.
The study also found other deficiencies with the old building, which was built in 1967 and served as a courthouse before being re-purposed as the Burnaby RCMP headquarters.
The city had originally considered building the new RCMP facility at 6161 Deer Lake Ave., right next to the current headquarters, and hired an architect in 2021 to produce a conceptual design.
In 2022, city council approved "further study" of that idea, according to the July report.
The current location wasn’t approved until one more study in March 2023 of four different siting options, according to the report.
Change of plans
City officials finally concluded the Norland Avenue site was more suited to a Burnaby RCMP headquarters than its current location so close to Deer Lake Park, according to James Lota, the city’s general manager of lands and facilities.
Nearly all of the planning around the multimillion project has happened behind closed doors.
Why the secrecy?
Lota said it has to do with land valuation for the city.
"There's potential negotiations that could be affected by where we put it," he said.
And it’s not clear whether there will be any public consultation around the project since no rezoning is required, according to Lota.
As for the open houses, he wasn't sure about those either.
"I don't think the RCMP quite like publicizing all this stuff just for security reasons," he said.
