The lease has been signed, the site work is complete, the tender has gone out and the funding has been approved.
Now the next phase of the project will see town council award the final construction contract for the town’s soon-to-be-built $12-million emergency services and town hall building. That’s expected to happen early next month.
“Getting the lease signed was a huge hurdle,” said Mayor Pat Estabrooks during last week’s council meeting. “The next one will be to receive the tenders and hopefully have it come in under the asking price.”
The town issued the construction tender on June 29 and that will close on July 29. If all goes well, the contract could be awarded sometime in August.
It will likely be September, however, before any construction work actually gets under way on the site.
The mayor jokingly suggested that the town should host a “huge party” when construction finally gets off the ground on the long-awaited facility.
Earlier this month, the town of Sackville and the RCMP entered into a 25-year lease agreement that will provide space for the RCMP’s rural, municipal and highway patrol sections in the new building on Main Street, which will be located across from Moneris Solutions. The agreement has been six years in the making, going back to the previous town council.
Sackville’s CAO Eric Mourant said the town has also met all the required conditions for borrowing the funds for the building. In addition, he said, “our efforts towards receiving the $1 million grant (from the Green Municipal Fund) looks promising.”
Andrew Amos, the senior engineering consultant on the project, told town council in June that the Green Municipal Fund for which the town has applied underwent some upgrades earlier this spring, increasing the amount of funding available for municipal projects.
This means Sackville’s project is now in line for $1 million in grants, rather than the $400,000 the town anticipated receiving. This is thanks to the efforts that have been put in to make the building extremely energy-efficient.
