St. Albert council approved to fund an expansion project for Liggett Place through its Borrowing Bylaw, increasing the cost for the project from $10.7 to $12.8 million.
The expansion to Liggett Place, St. Albert Transit's facility in the Campbell Business Park, originally got rolling earlier this year, when the borrowing bylaw for the project passed first reading in January 2025. At that point, the total was $13.5 million. The borrowing bylaw included a 25 per cent contingency.
According to a report in the agenda for the May 6 council meeting, the project is to design and construct "12-lane parking extension, an additional maintenance bay and storage to Liggett Place - Transit portion, required to accommodate present and future service levels, growth transit buses and additional support equipment, full time employee’s (FTEs) and infrastructure."
According to the report, Liggett Place has been at capacity since 2015, and a steady upward trend in transit service hours has increased the annual kilometres driven, which has in turn increased the maintenance requirements.
"In 2023, the transit fleet hit an all-time high of 2.74 million kilometres driven. Storage and space to maintain and repair units is constrained in the existing facility," the report reads.
The St. Albert transit fleet currently consists of 67 buses, 60 conventional and seven handibuses. This size currently exceeds the capacity of the transit garage.
The motion was originally on consent, but was pulled off by Coun. Mike Killick, who had questions regarding the budget increase of nearly 75 per cent of the budget contingency.
"We engaged with a contractor in order to work through the means and methods that they would be undertaking to perform the work and that was helping us refine and optimize the design," director of public operations Tim Saunders told Killick.
Saunders also said the extra resources and new staff required for the project were to "accommodate the peak period movements of the buses in and out of the facility to ensure our service levels are maintained throughout."
During the expansion, six of the 12 parking lanes will be worked on "half and half" so that "operation of the building will be maintained throughout," Saunders said.
The motion to increase the budget for the Liggett Place expansion from $10.7 million to $12.8 million passed unanimously. The project timeline estimates that design will be complete and construction for the expansion will begin in 2025, with the project completion date currently set for 2026.
