New headquarters for the Service de police de la Ville de Gatineau: the Robert Guertin Centre a possibility for general management
Sonia Roy
The management of the Service de police de la Ville de Gatineau (SPVG) and the administration of the City of Gatineau have listed the locations where the future headquarters of the police organization could be built, in the form of a presentation that was viewed by the municipal committee of the City of Gatineau on November 1. During this presentation, the municipal authorities, who had been mandated to examine the potential sites by the plenary council in July 2022, presented the results of the land analysis, the constraints of each surface, as well as the financial framework of this construction project.
The SPVG identified four municipal and 52 private sites with surface areas that meet the needs for a future building. The constraints observed, which considerably reduced the location options for the future HQ, include the presence of wetlands or waterways, the presence of a green corridor and site contamination. In addition, particular attention was paid to the area in which each site is located: sites located in a flood zone (20-year recurrence) or in an area at risk of landslides were excluded from the final options. Following the application of these constraints, the SPVG's general management was able to select one municipal site (Robert Guertin Centre) and four private sites (located on Gréber Boulevard, Labrosse Boulevard, Avenue des Entreprises and Chemin Industriel) that could potentially house the new headquarters.
The SPVG management used a similar principle to evaluate the effectiveness of each site location. Criteria such as road accessibility, police effectiveness and site visibility were scored for each of the remaining locations. The Robert Guertin Centre site, the only one already in the possession of the City of Gatineau, was the final choice presented to the municipal committee. This site, located in the heart of Hull Island, near Highway 5, Highway 50, Boulevard des Allumettières and public transit, is the most logical option in terms of location, according to the SPVG's general management. In addition, the site is quite large, with just 49.5% of it required to accommodate the headquarters. The rest of the site could, according to the presentation, be used for other functions. The total cost of the new SPVG HQ project represents a $170,000,000 investment.
There were mixed reactions from council at the November 1 presentation. Steve Moran, city councillor for the Hull-Wright district, expressed surprise at the somewhat rushed choice of land for the new SPVG HQ: "People have been waiting a long time for public consultation on what to do with [the site] Guertin. What we need downtown, what people talk to me about when they talk about Guertin, is social, affordable, community and cooperative housing. We need economic development downtown [...], a swimming pool, a library, community infrastructure and [...] local businesses [a grocery store]. We're [trying], with great difficulty, to find something for the people downtown that will serve them. [There are] no programs in Culture et Loisirs that take place downtown. We have to travel for everything. We lost our arena, we lost our soccer field, we're in the process of losing a lot of things, and now, all of a sudden, we're in the process of moving the world to have a police headquarters. [...] That worries me, it doesn't meet the needs of the people who live here.” Other members of the Action Gatineau party agreed and several asked questions related to the eventual public consultation: why would the City of Gatineau hold a public consultation when the choice of location for the HQ (and therefore the choice of infrastructures for 50% of the Guertin site) seems to have already been made? The police efficiency criteria grid, which used a rather simple colour system (green for "good", yellow for "average", red for "difficult"), also posed a problem for several councillors around the table.
It should be noted that another meeting, held behind closed doors on the morning of the presentation on the site of the new HQ, also seemed to muddy the waters during the discussions. Council president and Versant district councillor Daniel Champagne tried to explain that the centralization of police services was what the council was voting on. However, many of his colleagues were of the opinion that the question of the choice of site and its potential impact on the local population was paramount. In the end, after several heated discussions around the council table and a period behind closed doors requested by the president, the elected officials endorsed the recommendation that "authorizes the administration to work on the conceptual plans for a future centralized police operations centre.” The second recommendation, which consists of "mandating the administration to come back to the municipal council on November 22, 2022 regarding the financial set-up, the options for the land and the stages of realization”, was also adopted, this one without a vote.
Photo caption: Plan of the future HQ on the Guertin site
Photo credit: Courtesy of the City of Gatineau and the SPVG