CITY CENTRE - Surrey's new city hall is scheduled to open on Monday, but the building isn't quite finished, even after two years of construction.
"In the grand scheme of things, we're probably six to eight weeks behind where we originally scheduled us to be," said Coun. Bruce Hayne, explaining that a number of unforeseen obstacles caused the lengthy delays in the construction of the building."There was a Telus trunk line that needed to be moved during the excavation portion of the project, and that caused a couple of weeks (delay) here and there."He added that the designers had run into some issues with the hall's cladding, referring to a layer of material on the walls that prevents moisture and wind from seeping into the building."The architects had chosen this new exterior cladding that was blending in with the exterior glass. That proved, at least on the northwest side of the building, more difficult to install than everybody thought it was going to be."Despite the slowed development, Hayne said the city opted to extend the time to build the hall instead of rush the crew to finish the construction on time."What we didn't want to do is put a huge full court press on everything and have all sorts of ridiculous overtime and things like that, when there was no urgent pressure to get out of the existing city hall," said Hayne."We weren't faced with that hard deadline the way some companies are when they've sold their building and they're building a new one and they've got closing dates and everything has to be hit."As part of the new city hall's $97-million budget, council accounted for unexpected expenses and delays with a $10-million contingency fund, to be used as a buffer only if necessary."Some of those expenses would be at the expense of the contractor because there would be penalties for delays," added Hayne."All of that's going to have to be worked out with the contractor and with SurreyCity Development Corporation and so on, because they were managing the project build."While the building isn't fully completed, Hayne said the city is still on track to hold its public opening on Feb. 17, and that all city departments will be moved over by then."That demonstrates that it's basically fully built."A few staff members will remain at the old city hall to facilitate smaller services such as dog licensing before making the move.Hayne noted that Surrey city council will hold its next few public hearings at the old hall because the audio and TV systems in the new council chambers won't be ready until mid-March. He said the first meeting at the new hall will be held on March 31.As for the future of the old hall, Hayne said the provincial government has leased part of the building."My understanding is it's going to be for expanding the provincial court beside the building there, in terms of Crown council and judges' chambers," he said.jzinn@thenownewspaper.com