By Jeff Gard/Northumberland 89.7
Municipality of Trent Hills councillors approved a revised budget for the new Campbellford Recreation and Wellness Centre at Tuesday’s council meeting, increasing the total cost to $20,875,060.
A staff report from Community Recreation Officer Peter Burnett, who also spoke during the meeting, requested council’s approval for $372,160 to be added to the construction budget.
Announced in April 2021, the 64,000 square foot, fully accessible facility will feature an ice pad, lane pool, therapy pool and fitness centre and will be located on Seymour Quarry Road, just south of Campbellford off Hwy. 30. The project is led by TaskForce Engineering.
Burnett said Tuesday the project is approaching the construction phase and the budget increase is needed despite the design committee having already found nearly $700,000 in cost savings.
“The reasoning for that was over the 15 months from the time it was awarded to basically where we are today, the construction market is quite volatile and there’s been some increases in the original quoted prices of items for the project. The committee went through an exhaustive process of trying to find some areas that we could help offset those increases,” Burnett said. “The two largest areas are the aquatics component and the refrigeration component, which seeing as we’re building an arena and an aquatics centre are important. There’s many factors that contributed to that - stainless steel increases, even right down to clamps for the refrigeration plant, the unit price for each of those has gone up. That then equates into an increase and the quotes are requalified.”
Burnett said the cost savings were realized without compromising the building and its operation, but still the additional funding is required.
“That’s what we wanted to bring to council today and just inform them of the work that the committee’s done and the efforts to keep the project on budget. We just weren’t able to make up the difference of that overage of 372 (thousand) at this point,” he said.
Burnett said meetings were held with operating partner YMCA Northumberland about requests that were made during the design process and whether the organization wanted to cover the cost of some of their wishlist items or have them removed from the project.
Although it’s a challenging time for construction, Burnett said the budget increase request for the CRWC was less than 2 per cent of the total cost while similar ICI (Industrial, Commercial and Institutional) projects have increased by more than 10 per cent during the same time period.
There were no questions from council, but Deputy Mayor Michael Metcalf offered his support for the budget increase.
“I do believe we need to get locked in. I’ve gone through some construction in the last couple years and the longer we wait, like Peter said, the more volatile it becomes and you don’t know where you’re going to be,” Metcalf said. “It’s not in the near future going to get any cheaper, I don’t believe, by any substantial amount so getting locked in and moving ahead with this project I think is the best thing to do right now.”
The budget increase request was approved, which also raises the current unfunded portion of the project to $3,220,743.
Answering questions from Northumberland 89.7, Burnett said he doesn’t anticipate the unfunded amount to impact the project’s completion date which is estimated to be in the fall of 2024. The municipality is continuing to look for additional funding to support the project.
“Trent Hills is exceptionally fortunate to have received external funding from both the provincial and federal levels of government to support this project and will keep the lines of communication open with our official representatives in hopes of receiving additional support,” Burnett said.
Staff are also preparing to initiate a naming rights program for the facility that will aid in the funding gap for the project, Burnett noted.
