The former Orillia OPP building will likely be gone in the summer.
Budget committee approved the demolition of the building at 66 Peter St. S. during a meeting this week.
Coun. Tim Lauer asked about the cost of “mothballing” the facility — keeping it shuttered but maintaining the minimum services required.
“This building doesn’t strike me as being all that close to falling down,” he said. “Any time I’ve been in there, it seems to be completely built of concrete. It’s a fairly substantial building.”
The city plans to build a transit terminal on the site, but that project won’t be complete for a few years. Coun. Jay Fallis inquired about renting it out for a year or two as a way to generate revenue.
Gayle Jackson, the city’s clerk and CAO, said it would cost the municipality to make the building “marketable as a rental space.”
Andrew Schell, general manager of environment and infrastructure services, noted roof repairs would be needed. Overall, he said, it would cost about $70,000 annually just to keep the building locked and monitored.
Budget committee ultimately voted to have it demolished at a cost of $300,000. Before the vote, however, Lauer said he was “a bit snake-bitten” about the site. A previous term of council he served on purchased an abutting property on Colborne Street and tore down the building on the site with the plan of building a new detachment there.
“Then, a new council came in and they decided to go in a different direction. This isn’t that different,” he said, noting a new council will be elected before the transit terminal is built and could have different ideas for the site.
If the city budget is approved during a special council meeting Dec. 7, it is expected the Peter Street building will be demolished in the late spring or early summer of 2021.
Keep an eye on OrilliaMatters for more coverage from this week’s capital budget discussions.