Hamilton police will open a new station in Waterdown, likely in 2022

Hamilton police have bumped up a plan to build a new substation in Waterdown, which will now be combined with a new fire station.

The Hamilton Police Services (HPS) board voted on Thursday to move ahead with the new station, which will be known as division four. The station was originally planned for 2025, but will start next year now to allow HPS to team up with the Hamilton Fire Department.

The police portion of the joint project is $8 million, a report says, and will be funded by future development charges, which are fees developers pay to fund new growth. The estimated completion date is 2021-2022.

"I'm just ecstatic," said Coun. Judi Partridge of Ward 15. "Just delighted."

"With all the development that's coming, we're going to have 40,000 people really concentrated in the Waterdown area within the next five years."

Police have said since 2014 that a new division is necessary to patrol fast-growing areas like Binbrook, Elfrida and Waterdown. Right now, those areas are served by HPS division three, which also covers Hamilton Mountain, rural Flamborough, Dundas, Ancaster, and Glanbrook from its station on Rymal Road East.

That wide area, the report says, "makes the requests and demands for calls for service a tremendous challenge to meet acceptable response time."

The city started including a stand-alone police station in its development charges background studies in 2014, anticipating a cost of $25 million. The new Waterdown fire station is in the 2020 capital budget, with $5.7 million for construction and land acquisition, along with $3.724 million for fire equipment, for a total of $9.42 million, the HPS report says.

The city expects to confirm the land purchase in mid summer. Partridge says the city is looking at land on the new east-west bypass that curves off Parkside Drive and extends to Highway 6. 

Partridge said the city needs to aim for combined capital projects like this one in light of a massive forecasted budget deficit caused by COVID-19.

"We need to make some really prudent decisions on what kind of infrastructure we need, what kind of capital expenditures, and how can we leverage, just as we're doing with this station."

The project got little debate during the police services board meeting Thursday. Anna Filice, CAO of HPS, said the service started talking to the fire department a few months ago.

"It won't be a full police station," she said. "It'll be about 9,000 square feet, but we will be able to deploy resources from there, and during business hours, people can stop in."