As our city grows and evolves, council must continually invest in our infrastructure to ensure we have the facilities required to service the needs of our new and existing residents.
Last year, as part of a record capital budget, council earmarked $122.7 million to build a handful of major facilities to meet our most pressing community needs.
This included a multi-purpose Minoru Complex, two new fire halls and a new City Centre Community Centre.
All of these projects were top priorities for council and will be completed by 2017 or sooner.
The new $79 million Minoru Complex will house an older adults centre, aquatic centre and sports and recreational space formerly housed in the Minoru Pavilion.
The current Minoru Aquatic Centre is over half a century old and needs to be replaced with more modern facilities. The current Minoru Place Older Adults Centre is no longer large enough to deliver the level of services needed by our rapidly expanding older adult population.
Our major facilities plan also funded construction of two new fire halls, which will begin this year: a new combined fire hall-ambulance station on Cambie in north Richmond and the new central Brighouse Fire Hall at Gilbert and Granville Avenue. When these new facilities open, Richmond will have built five new halls, completed a major upgrade of another fire hall and acquired and retrofitted the Richmond Community Safety Building, the new base of operations for the Richmond RCMP, within the span of just over a decade.
All this ensures all of our public safety buildings will remain operable post-disaster and have the space and modern equipment and systems necessary to meet community needs.
We also topped up funding for the new City Centre Community Centre, which will open later this year at Minoru and Firbridge, providing much needed service for the fastest growing area in our city.
The new 30,000 square-foot centre will include a community living room; multipurpose program spaces; fitness area and change rooms; aerobic and dance studio; meeting rooms; games room and lounge; kitchen; arts studio and music rooms.
This record investment in major facilities was made possible through sound financial planning by council. Most of the investment comes from our reserves, which we have diligently built up over the years.
Having retired all our previous debt, the city was also able to take advantage of extremely low borrowing costs to finance part of the construction costs.
We’ll use casino revenues over the next decade to pay off that debt so that the borrowing cost doesn’t impact property taxes. We’ve followed up last year’s record investment with another $92.5 million in spending in our 2015 capital plan.
About a third of this year’s investment will go into the ground. Clean drinking water, flood protection and responsible sewage disposal are services we often take for granted, but they are critical to keeping Richmond a clean, healthy and safe community with dependable civic services that can be relied upon.
About $12 million of this year’s plan will go towards expansion and improvement of our parks system.
This year, we will complete a comprehensive makeover of Lang Park in the rapidly growing City Centre.
Other exciting projects include first phase development of the park plan for the Garden City Lands, continued development of the new Gardens Agricultural Park on the old Fantasy Gardens site and the first phase of the new Tait Waterfront Park in north Richmond.
Work will also begin on a new community waterfront pier on the Fraser River middle arm at the north foot of Hollybridge Way.
You can learn more about all of the city’s 2015 plans at our annual capital projects open house on April 16 at city hall, 3 to 7 p.m.
Residents can meet with staff, look at display boards and learn more about this year’s projects planned in their neighbourhood and across the city. Visit www.richmond.ca for more details.
