With current rural stations full, WRPS eyes new building

Waterloo Regional Police headquarters are pictured on Wednesday, June 15, 2016.

Some of Waterloo Region’s police stations are bursting at the seams and in need of expansions or relocations, according to a report prepared for the region’s police board.

The report, which examines the suitability of current Waterloo Regional Police facilities to handle the organization’s needs over the next 20 years, says current spaces in Elmira, New Hamburg and Kitchener could be vacated over the next decade, while the headquarters building in Cambridge will need an expansion.

According to the report, the police service’s top priority for facilities is to move its Central Division operation from its current home at 134 Frederick Street to the former courthouse at 200 Frederick Street, which the region purchased for police use last fall.

Moving to 200 Frederick Street will more than double the amount of space available to police in Kitchener. Design work is expected to begin this year, with police operations moving into the building by 2020. Eventually, plans call for Central Division and its cell block to be joined by a large dispatch centre and space to relocate the WRPS traffic branch from Cambridge.

Also cited in the report as a key need for WRPS is a new facility to handle rural policing in Wellesley, Wilmot and Woolwich townships.

Currently, the organization operates out of a leased building in Elmira and a secondary site in New Hamburg.

The report notes that the Elmira office is filled to capacity and can’t be expanded, and calls the New Hamburg site “deficient in several aspects.”

Still, it says the need for a new rural detachment is “urgent but not immediate” and doesn’t recommend having one in place until 2022 or 2023. One site being eyed for a possible new detachment is a region-owned plot of land on Kressler Road in Heidelberg.

A smaller police office could be set up much sooner at the Wellesley Arena. Police board members will vote Wednesday on whether to pay $7,700 to renovate 72 square feet of space in the arena and $1 to lease it as an office for five years.

Other facilities upgrades recommended in the report include an addition to the police headquarters on Maple Grove Road – likely within the next decade – and, looking further ahead, adding 4,000 square feet to the South Division office on Hespeler Road.

A more immediate concern is finding a new place to practice firing long-guns. WRPS currently performs this training at a private gravel pit, and expects that situation to be untenable within five years. The report recommends expanding the current indoor firing range to include space for long-gun practice, as well as classrooms and an auditorium.

Renovating 200 Frederick Street to meet policing needs is expected to cost about $34 million, with the new rural detachment cost budgeted at $4.5 million and the price tag for the training facility expansion expected to be around the $12-million mark.