It looks like the new fire hall in La Glace won’t open in the spring as it was expected to. County of Grande Prairie Community Services Director Dan Lemieux says the project has fallen behind schedule because more work was needed than originally thought.
“The engineer recommended that we raise the entire site by a couple of feet just to ensure that we have appropriate drainage so that took longer so that’s delayed the project. Because of that, we were dealing with some cold weather and decided to delay construction so we didn’t have to enclose the facility and heat the facility.”
Ground broke on the land behind UFA Petroleum in La Glace back in July 2018. That was after a review showed that the current 24-year-old fire hall was too small to fit some of the department’s new equipment. Lemieux says work is expected to start up again in May.
“A lot of the groundwork has been completed, a lot of the foundation work has been done. All of the structural metal components have been received [and] they’re on site. Once we restart construction it’ll be very quick to get the building up because we believe all the groundwork has been done.”
The project was originally budgeted at $1.57 million based on the new Sexsmith Fire Hall, but costs have increased since then. Lemieux says he’s not exactly sure what the full cost is sitting at right now but says the project will be over budget. Construction should be complete by the end of 2019.