Frontenac County set to begin $4.5 million upgrade to admin offices

Jeff Green | Jun 15, 2022

Cataraqui Region Conservation to move in, pay 1/3 of construction costs.

It has been a case of wait, wait, then wait some more, and then hurry hard.

Almost 10 years ago, Frontenac County identified the need to upgrade its administration offices, which are centred in a former private home in Glenburnie.

This week, Frontenac County will be considering a task force recommendation to enter into a $4.49 million contract with Emmons and Mitchell Construction Limited of Kingston to renovate and build an addition to Fairmount Home, to accommodate not only the county's administrative needs and those of the Frontenac Paramedic Services, which is operates, but also the needs of the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority (CRCA).

Once the county gives the formal green light at their monthly meeting, the project is set to get underway almost immediately, perhaps even before Canada Day.\n

The project will be completed in stages, with the CRCA expected to be able to move into their new space by the beginning of 2023, while the Frontenac County admin offices may take up to another year to complete.

A number of Frontenac County departments, including Frontenac Paramedics, the Planning and Economic Development departments, will be based at the current CRCA admin office at the Little Cat Conservation Area, which is located on Perth Road near Hwy. 401, until the project is completed.

The project includes the construction of a new combined entrance and reception area for the CRCA and Frontenac County offices, and a Council Chamber/Board Room where Frontenac County Council and CRCA Board meetings will be held.

Approval for the project is a virtual certainty, as all members of Frontenac County Council were present at a task force meeting last week (June 8) to consider the results, and staff recommendations, following the opening of tender documents on June 1. No objections were raised.

The estimated construction cost for the project was $4.2 million, but of the 4 bids that were submitted, the lowest was from Emmons and Mitchell, at $4.49 million, 6% over the estimate.

Given the current construction climate, council members and the architects who have been working on the project, Coulbourn and Kembel, were pleased that the bids were not much higher.

“The 4 bids came in within a relatively narrow range, with the highest being $4.99 million, which is a positive sign,” said Todd Coulbourne at the committee meeting.

In order to submit a bid, contractors were required to attend a site meeting, where the complicated project specifications were outlined for them.

One of the task force members asked how the costs had been kept within range of the estimate, since the project design phase was substantially complete in late 2019 (before the COVID pandemic and resulting disruptions to the construction trades).

Frontenac County CAO Kelly Pender credited Coubourne and Kembel.

He said that they made a number of “cost saving changes to the plans that did not compromise the usability of the building once it is completed.”

Before discussing and approving the bid, the administrative design task force, which has been meeting on and off since 2016, listened as Pender outlined the 9 year long process that has brought the project to the construction phase.

The need was identified in the final report of a service delivery review that was received by Frontenac County Council in 2013.

“The physical work environment for the staff assigned to the old house is not a professional office environment. Work stations are scattered throughout the various rooms of a residential house which results in a noisy and inefficient work environment,” said the review.

The review also recommended that Frontenac County look at relocating their offices to a location in Frontenac County.

The Glenburnie location of the offices, which is also the site of the county owned long term care facility, Fairmount Home, was located in Frontenac County until 1998. At that time, Pittsburgh Township (where Glenburnie is located) became part of the expanded City of Kingston, along with Kingston Township, during a massive municipal amalgamation process that also brought the 4 Frontenac townships (North, Central, and South Frontenac and Frontenac Islands) into existence.

The consultant saw the need for new office space as an opportunity to move the county offices to a site within the current Frontenac County boundaries.

It took three years to set up the task force. The first thing the task force did was to look at the way the office functioned, and they confirmed that the office was poorly designed, with significant wasted space, and had inadequate washroom facilities and major accessibility issues.

In 2017, 8 options for moving forward were presented to Frontenac County Council by the task force. By 2018, the CRCA had approached Frontenac County with a proposal to explore co-located office space, as their offices had come to the end of their usable life. Around the same time, South Frontenac Township was looking at consolidating their admin offices in a single location.

3 options were then looked at for a three-way project, locating the building at the Frontenac County site in Glenburnie, at the Little Cat Conservation, or at a site in Sydenham.

In 2019, South Frontenac Council opted out of the project and the Glenburnie site was confirmed for the project. A design was commissioned and accepted and the project was targeted for completion by the fall of 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic made that projected timeline unrealistic, but work on a final design started up again in late 2020. It took until early 2022 for everything to be in place, and allow for the project to finally go to tender.

The CRCA will pay 32% of construction costs, Frontenac County will pay 68%, and a long term tenancy agreement will be entered into by the CRCA once the project is completed.

Frontenac County Council meets on the morning of June 15, and final approval of the construction contract is on the agenda, and the CRCA board meets in the evening of June 15.

(This article was completed on June 14, for publication on June 15.)