Posted from the Portage Daily Graphic Friday August 1st

Lowering the estimated costs associated with building the PCU Centre in Portage to an affordable level was not free for the City and Rural Municipality of Portage la Prairie.

The city will pay Stantec Architectural Ltd. an extra $215,135 plus tax for the work the company did redesigning the complex, after the initial costs came in over budget.

At a special council meeting held at city hall on Thursday, councillors voted in favour of the payment.

“When we had to reconfigure some of the components of the multiplex, they had to go back to the drawing board and do a lot of redesign,” explained Mayor Ken Brennan. “So this is the bill for our request for a redesign.”

When the original plans came in at a cost of nearly $42 million, Stantec scaled back the plans by removing the competitive pool and phasing in the second arena originally included in the plans for the project.

Brennan explained the additional costs of the redesign have already been included in the current estimate of $35.7 million needed to build the revised PCU Centre project.

The city’s approval of the payment is conditional on whether the additional design fee is approved by the RM of Portage, which has agreed to reimburse the city for one-third of the design costs for the project.

The RM will vote on the additional fee at its next council meeting scheduled for Aug. 5.