- cross-posted to:
- britishcolumbia
- cross-posted to:
- britishcolumbia
A massive, 1,700-person work camp paid for by B.C. taxpayers could be headed to the local landfill by the end of the year, a new report warns.
Opened in 2016, and costing $470 million for construction and eight years of operation, the camp includes a movie theatre, gymnasium, fitness centre, cafeteria and 21 three-story dorms, each with about 80 rooms consisting of a bed and bathroom. Google reviews from people who’ve stayed there note a coffee shop and games room, outdoor fire pit and beer on tap at the bar.
The report said that in total, the camp buildings make up 665,443 square feet along with “concrete slabs, asphalt and steel piles” associated with demolition work scheduled for later this year.
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I guess “Temporary Housing for Workers is Temporary” doesn’t make a sufficiently clickbait-y headline.
You’ve got a bunch of buildings, too large to be easily moved, in an awkward location where they’re not very useful. You can’t sell them because nobody wants them. So your options are to bulldoze them or let them decay in place. Period.
The article can’t even seem to decide whether the disposal of these buildings is objectionable for environmental reasons or because it’s a “waste of taxpayer money”. (My guess is that the latter isn’t true and that building them to minimum standards with the intention of writing them off was the cheapest thing to do at the time.) Should the environmental issues be more thoroughly considered for future, similar construction? Yes, but that doesn’t help with the buildings that are already there.
It’s not like portable work camps are a new concept, why would they build something they couldn’t take apart and ship to another site? Alberta has temporary work camps bigger than this that get moved all the time.
$35k/year per person for 8 years of comfortable living for 1700 people isn’t really a waste of funds. But if we need materials for home construction, we should try to divert as much as we can from the dump.
$470 million does seem like a lot for 1700 units of housing though, especially when it’s all prefab trailer type modular stuff.
Even if every person got three units for their own use that’s like $90,000 per modular piece. I don’t know maybe that’s normal, I’m not too well versed in the cost of these things.
Also it does seem like a waste, there’s lots of work projects that occur up north I’m sure some other company would buy and transport some of the components for their own work camps if it were sold at a discount.
I’ll buy it for a dollar and turn it into a spa relaxation and hiking hotspot.
