Frontenac County Admin building retrofit planning proceeding apace

Jeff Green | Oct 03, 2019

Members of The Frontenac County Administrative Building Design Task Force were joined by staff and board members from the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority (CRCA) on September 18.

The committee was looking at a work plan for a retrofit and addition to the county administrative offices to improve the space for county purposes and make them suitable for use by the CRCA as well.

The plan calls for the development of a Memorandum of Understanding  between the county and the CRCA over funding construction and ongoing costs of the new office space, as well an analysis of how construction of the $2million plus project can be financed. This is expected to happen this fall, and a decision about whether to continue will need to be made at the end of 2019 or early in 2020.

If both parties decide to proceed at that time, a request for proposal for detailed design can proceed, which will until late March, 2020, at which time a final decision will need to be made. If all goes according to plan, construction would take place next summer for a move in date at the end of 2020.

For the project to proceed, Frontenac County Paramedic Service will need to vacate their current offices to make way for the Conservation Authority.

The precarious future for Frontenac Paramedic Services (FPS) in the face of a government plan to amalgamate paramedic service delivery in the province does not have an impact on the project, according to Frontenac County Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender.

“We will either be moving the FPS headquarters to a new location, or the administrative model for land ambulance service delivery will change so that FPS does not exist in its current form. Either way the space will be available,” said Pender.

For the county, not going ahead with the project and foregoing the revenue from hosting the CRCA would therefore result in having a significant amount of unused space to maintain without funding to cover those costs.

Members of the Task Force accepted the work plan as presented.