The Town’s new operations centre is officially under construction after a groundbreaking ceremony was held on May 27.
A number of the Town’s departments, including transportation, open spaces and resource recovery will move into the three new buildings being constructed, with a planned occupancy date of spring 2016.
The $17-million project will include a new 26,000 square foot administrative building, a 24,000 square foot fleet storage building, and an 8,400 square foot eco-centre to replace the current recycling centre, all located next to the current facilities on North Railway Street.
Mayor Bill Robertson said the new centre is well overdue, as the Town has simply outgrown its current operations building.
“With a growing community, we need to have an operations centre that meets the needs of the community… and we've kind of made due. We're actually forced to modify our operations in order to fit the shop (right now),” he said. “Say in terms of parks we're forced to contract out a number of our parks operations because we don't have the space to store say the mowers, we just don’t have space.”
Transportation manager Jamie Greenshields said the most important part of the new building will be having everyone under one roof to improve efficiency between the various departments.
“That's going to house all the public works and operations staff, put us all under one roof,” he said. “It will be huge, just from an efficiency point of view I think it's just that we'll all be under one roof and we'll be all with the cross functional teams it will really help everybody out with their daily jobs.”
Greenshields said they’ve been crowded into the current buildings and the mechanics shop is currently doubling as the storage area, making repairs difficult particularly in the winter. He said the new fleet storage building will help empty that out and they’re all looking forward to the extra space.
“I'm relatively new the operations group but I can fairly confident I can speak for my colleagues in saying this has been a long time coming, and is something that everyone’s quite excited about,” he said.
The buildings will be pursuing a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification, similar to the Southridge Emergency Centre which achieved Gold certification earlier this year.
Okotoks sustainability co-ordinator Dawn Smith explained a number of environmentally features are being included on the buildings.
“Much like the Southridge Emergency Services one of the main things is for energy efficiency on the building envelope,” she said. “Using the sites exposure so south facing windows to make sure that you're passively heating and keeping it warm in the winter and using advanced airflow and opening windows which is quite rare in modern buildings to have windows that actually open so there's fresh air.”
While there is an additional cost to LEED, she said over time, the efficiency of the building will save money long term.
“There is obviously an increased cost to LEED. We're doing triple-paned glass like we did at Southbridge which is a huge expense but an enormous energy-saver over time,” she said. “LEED just aligns with our entire community philosophy of being leaders in environment and stewardship.”
A number of pathways along the river near the operations centre are closed during construction, some permanently, but Smith ensured that new pathways will be constructed in the area, and the new buildings will have an area available for the publics convenience to stop at for washrooms.
“This pathway that cuts through here is closed and is being removed because the BMX track is now on top of it,” she said. “There will be a pathway that connects you to the bridge like it does now but that wont be established probably until spring of 2016… by the end of completion, people will have the same amount of path they had in the beginning.”
