City of Winnipeg plans to spend another $360K on troubled police HQ
Roof over boiler room needs replacement, while water is pooling over police data hub
The City of Winnipeg plans to spend up to $360,000 to repair the roof at the Winnipeg Police Service's headquarters, in what amounts to the latest repairs to a facility that only opened nine years ago.
The city is in the process of a selecting a bidder to replace the roof over the police HQ's boiler room and solve water build-up problem up over the server room — the secure space for storing and processing police data — so that the water ends up in the drains instead of pooling above police computers.
According to a tender issued by the city, the work to be done consists of removing and replacing the roof and metal over the boiler room and building up the roof over the server room.
No one with the city was available Tuesday to discuss the latest problems with the Graham Avenue structure, a former Canada Post warehouse and office tower complex that was converted into a police headquarters at an initial cost of $214 million, not including subsequent repair work and interest payments on the debt used to finance the purchase-and-construction project.
Previous problems that have emerged at the police HQ include crumbling concrete, burst pipes and anchors coming out of concrete, the physical manifestation of the most problematic capital project started during the administration of former Winnipeg mayor Sam Katz.
The police headquarters construction project was also the subject of two scathing internal audits, a five-year RCMP fraud and forgery investigation that concluded without charges, and a city civil lawsuit that ended with a judge determining that former chief administrative officer Phil Sheegl had received a $327,000 bribe from Caspian Construction, the primary contractor on the project.
The judge in that case ordered Sheegl to pay the city $1.1 million.
The city and Caspian settled a second lawsuit out of court, with the company required to pay the city $23.5 million by March 2026. If Caspian misses that deadline, the required payment rises to $28 million.