Community Safety Building
About this project
The City of Burnaby and the RCMP are working together to build a new three-storey, 129,000-square-foot detachment at the corner of Ledger Avenue and Norland Avenue, to replace the existing detachment at Deer Lake Avenue built in 1967. To respond to evolving community policing needs driven by population growth and technology changes, the existing building has undergone numerous renovations. However, the current building is unable to accommodate departmental requirements, which has impacted operational efficiency such as response time to call-outs. Building a new Community Safety building is necessary to continue to make Burnaby a safe place for residents, businesses and visitors now and into the future.
What’s happening now
City Council has awarded a design and construction contract to the Safe Community Partners Integrated Project Delivery team. The IPD approach gets City staff, designers and the construction team all around the same table from the start of the project and incentivizes costs savings.
We broke ground on the new Community Safety building on June 25, 2024, marking a significant milestone in the construction of the new facility.
Questions and answers
The new Community Safety building will need to be larger than the existing facility in Deer Lake, as outlined in the 2020 RCMP Needs Assessment report. The site at Norland Avenue and Ledger Avenue is large enough to accommodate the new building, including space for outdoor parking. The site also offers multiple access points for emergency vehicles leaving the detachment and is close to major arterial routes, including Highway 1.
No. The new Community Safety building will be funded by the Community Benefit Reserve fund. Money in this reserve comes through new development. The Community Benefit Bonus Policy enables the City to obtain community benefits in exchange for additional residential density on multiple family residential and mixed-use sites within Burnaby’s town centres.
The RCMP is contracted by the City to provide police services in our community. As a result of this agreement, the City is also responsible for building and maintaining police facilities for the RCMP.
Construction is anticipated to begin in late 2024 and will take 3-4 years to complete.