Public Works Yard Updates (Nanaimo Operations Centre)

Following the November 29 announcement of the results of the AAP for “Public Works Yard Updates Borrowing Bylaw 2024 No. 7386” this project will not be immediately proceeding. City Staff are working on alternative options for this project which will be presented to Council in 2025.

Visit our Get Involved page to learn more about this project

The City of Nanaimo is planning major updates to the Public Works Yard. Nanaimo’s Public Works department maintains and operates the City’s water system, sewer and drainage systems, roads and transportation network and provides garbage collection, snow removal and many more important services to our community. The people that are providing these services to you are working out of buildings which are no longer functional and were never intended to still be in use. They need your support to have reliable and safe workspaces so they can keep delivering these services.

At a Special Council meeting held on July 29, 2024, City Council directed staff to proceed with an Alternative Approval Process (AAP) to request authorization to borrow funds to complete the most urgently needed updates.  The City is planning to replace the two most significant buildings at the Public Works Yard, the Fleet Maintenance and Crew & Administration buildings. Over 185 people will be working out of these buildings on day one. Those people are responsible for bringing you clean water, keeping our fire trucks on the road, and ensuring those roads are safe.

The Fleet Maintenance building is where mechanics maintain the City’s fleet of vehicles. Ranging from garbage trucks to electric pickups, Zambonis to dump trucks, and fire trucks to sedans, this fleet of vehicles is part of what helps to keep Nanaimo moving. The Crew and Administration building house crew workspaces, changerooms, offices, and an emergency operations centre.

These buildings will be simple construction, nothing fancy, but 'post-disaster' rated. That means they will be there and ready to keep servicing our community when we need it most.

To learn more about this project visit our Get Involved Nanaimo site. You can also review more technical information and Council reports below. Some of these reports and technical plans are based on older configurations of the plans to update the Yard, but they provide a history of this project and how it has developed over the last five years.

The City is looking to borrow up to $90 million for the Public Works Yard Updates Project but will only borrow enough to cover costs each year as the project moves forward. Property taxes will be adjusted each year for borrowing costs. Once the borrowing is complete, and if the full amount is borrowed, the cost for the typical Nanaimo home would be $139/year or $18 per $100,000 of assessed value. (Based on a typical home valued at $783,808. Tax impact based on 2024 figures and a 20-year amortization of 4.58%.)

Mission Statement

To address the long-standing and increasingly unsustainable health, safety, environmental and operational shortcomings of the site in a fiscally responsible manner.

Highlights

Our current Public Works and Parks yards are well past their usable lifespan, and no longer suitable to serve our growing community. The original Public Works buildings were constructed in the 1960's and then evolved as the City population grew from less than 45,000 in 1980. The City of Nanaimo is now 100,000 people strong and growing.

City operations are currently provided at the Public Works Yard on Labieux Road, the Parks Operations Yard on Prideaux Street and the Nanaimo Lakes Road Parks satellite yard.

The original Public Works buildings were constructed in the 1960’s and then evolved as the City population grew from less than 45,000 in 1980 to over 100,000 in 2021. Much of the additional space was added using modular temporary facilities, not intended for permanent use. The original buildings and additions have exceeded their useful life and are costing a considerable amount to sustain them.

Public Works Yard 1960's:

Approximate Community Population 30,000
Approximate City Population 14,135

Public Works Yard 2024:

Approximate Community Population 107,000

The Public Works facilities have exceeded staff capacity and considerable efforts have been made to accommodate increasing needs by converting unsuitable spaces or adding additional trailer units to create working room. The overall result is a facility that struggles or fails to meet existing operational needs, environmental regulations, as well as building code or accessibility and gender equity considerations.

With the population of Nanaimo expected to be in the range of 126,000-141,000 in 25 years, there will be a substantial increase in the demand for services that cannot feasibly be met with the existing facility.

Contact Information

By email: EngineeringInfo@nanaimo.ca
By mail: City of Nanaimo, Engineering Department, 455 Wallace Street, Nanaimo BC, V9R 5J6
By phone: 250-754-4251, Ext 4230