A new headquarters for Flin Flon RCMP is inching closer to reality. A contract has been awarded to build a new base for local police.
According to publicly available documents from Public Services and Procurement Canada, the contract to build a new RCMP station in Flin Flon has been awarded to Architecture49 Inc., which was awarded the deal in August.
According to the company’s website, Architecture49 has nine offices in different cities across Canada and has worked on projects throughout the country, including in the north. The company’s list of projects includes the Thompson campus of University College of the North, the future terminal building at Thompson Airport and the interior of the Flin Flon General Hospital emergency department. The company’s Winnipeg office is named in the Public Services and Procurement Canada tender award document as the supplier for the project.
A tender for a new Flin Flon RCMP detachment office was first sent out in February, along with tenders for new RCMP offices in Morris and Shoal Lake.
The location for the new detachment office listed in tender documents is uptown in a vacant lot between Hudbay’s main Flin Flon compound and the Primary Health Care Centre and Flin Flon Community Hall. The specific site mentioned in the tendering process for Flin Flon is located at 54 degrees, 46 minutes and seven seconds north latitude and 101 degrees, 52 minutes and 46 seconds west longitude - the exact coordinates for the lot.
“The lot is a previously developed but currently unoccupied property located in the downtown area of the community. The site was a part of a larger area that was used for housing by the prior owner,” reads a separate publicly available solicitation amendment for the site.
“The site itself exhibits soil constituent properties typical of the region. There are common procedures for construction in the community that need to be followed and will be noted in the specifications and design documents.”
According to posted documents, planning for a Flin Flon new detachment will commence upon the rewarding of a contract and construction will take place on site, not involving a prefabricated building being transported to Flin Flon. The new station, according to the project brief, is currently slated to be 676 gross square metres in size. An environmental report for the site will be given to the successful tender bidder.
No start date for construction or total cost has been announced.
According to prior statements from Flin Flon RCMP, the cellblock at the detachment office has not been fully functional since 2012 - the cells at the detachment do not meet the RCMP’s own safety requirements for housing prisoners. Instead, prisoners have been transported across the provincial border to the Creighton RCMP detachment in recent years, with expenses billed back to the Flin Flon detachment.
