Vancouver Police Department looking to build new headquarters building

Interior of the VPD building at 3585 Graveley Street (left) and the exterior of the VPD headquarters at 2120 Cambie Street (right). (MCW Group/Amir Ali/Daily Hive)

The City of Vancouver is looking to restart its planning for establishing a new purpose-built headquarters complex for the Vancouver Police Department (VPD).

The draft four-year capital plan between 2023 and 2026 sets aside $1 million for planning and scoping of the new police headquarters, the VPD told Daily Hive Urbanized in an email. This includes allocating $100,000 in 2023 for the municipal government’s Real Estate and Facilities Management department to start this work.

The capital plan document provides very few details, apart from describing this as a “consolidated post-disaster police headquarters facility.”

At this very preliminary stage of planning, the VPD did not further elaborate on the need for a new facility, but there are some obvious challenges with the facilities it currently uses.

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Although 2120 Cambie Street at the south end of the Cambie Street Bridge is designated as the official headquarters, the majority of their operations are based at the easternmost edge of East Vancouver at 3585 Graveley Street — located within an industrial area, next to the municipal border with Burnaby. This highly non-central location presents some operational issues.

The Graveley Street complex is not the designated official headquarters, but it does serve some headquarters-related purposes, such as administrative and investigative operations.

Some parts of the five-acre Graveley Street complex date back to 1984, but a six-storey, 153,000 sq ft office building was added in 2000 — originally intended for Motorola’s expansion in Vancouver, which was cancelled.

3585 Graveley Street Vancouver Police Department VPD

Location of Vancouver Police Department’s East facility at 3585 Graveley Street. (Google Maps)

Vancouver Police Department’s East facility at 3585 Graveley Street. (Google Maps)

Exterior of the former Vancouver Police Department headquarters at 312 Main Street, Vancouver, in the Downtown Eastside. (Google Maps)

In 2002, the City acquired the Graveley Street complex as a new asset for its portfolio in the Property Endowment Fund, with the property intended to be a long-term investment for the municipal government and the five-year headquarters of VANOC, the organizing committee for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

In 2011, the VPD left its longtime headquarters of 312 Main Street in the Downtown Eastside. The 1954-built, six-storey building with 80,000 sq ft of space faced severe operational issues, including major overcrowding, vulnerability issues to earthquake, fire, and power failure, and issues with vehicle fleet parking and securing. There were also high annual costs for keeping this strained building operational.

However, to this day, it has retained some minor operations within 312 Main Street’s adjacent annex of the 1976-built, four-storey building of 238 East Cordova Street, which is next to the Vancouver Police Museum and the Vancouver Criminal Court.

At the time of the exodus from 312 Main Street, the City intended the VPD’s new use of the Graveley Street complex to be a stop-gap solution, a “transitional facility,” while plans are made to determine a new purpose-built headquarters over the long term. In 2009, it was determined the VPD is in need of two new custom-designed facilities — a headquarters building and a separate patrol facility — at an estimated cost of $370 million.

Vancouver Police Department’s East facility at 3585 Graveley Street. (MCW Group)

“The move to the Graveley Site would address many of the deficiencies identified in the facilities assessment. While the building is not post-disaster, it is built to a higher seismic standard than Main Street and is essentially in a ‘move-in’ condition,” stated City staff in 2010. Prior to the decision to use the complex for VPD operations, it had been assumed that the office building would be leased to generate market rental revenue to the City after VANOC’s tenancy.

The VPD’s official headquarters at 2120 Cambie Street is also not built to post-disaster standards. About 77,000 sq ft of space at this building is used by the VPD.

While the Cambie Street facility is in a geographically central location, it is not owned by the municipal government. Since 1994, when the 11-storey office building was completed, the VPD has been leasing its space within this building, which is owned by ICBC. The VPD’s lease for this space has been repeatedly renewed over the decades, far longer than the original anticipated use of the building.

About 53,000 sq ft of the Cambie Street tower’s lower floors are used by ICBC for a public claim centre, which the VPD has deemed as a security concern in a 2010 report on its facilities.

Furthermore, the Cambie Street facility lacks sufficient space, backup emergency electricity, and on-site parking. Currently, its parking requirements are largely met by using the vacant City-owned site a block to the north, immediately east of Cambie Street Bridge. Over the long term, the City has plans to develop this site as an expansion of the Southeast False Creek neighbourhood, and a major public park.

2120 Cambie Street Vancouver Police Department VPD

Vancouver Police Department’s official headquarters at 2120 Cambie Street. (Google Maps)

vancouver police vpd parking cambie bridge

Looking east from the Cambie Street Bridge towards the Olympic Village, overlooking the Vancouver Police Department parking lot. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Any planning for a new purpose-built secure VPD headquarters, large enough to consolidate the operations found at both the Graveley and Cambie sites, would need to determine a suitable location as the first step.

The 2010 report also suggested the potential options of redeveloping 312 Main Street, but it has since been partially repurposed — at a cost of more than $30 million — into a co-working office and social enterprise space. Other ideas at the time would place the new complex within provincially-owned lands near Main Street and Terminal Avenue on the western False Creek Flats or repurposing the BC RCMP’s “Heather Lands” headquarters, which has since been sold and approved for a major high-density residential development.

In 2009, the VPD opened two new purpose-built training facilities within the False Creek Flats — a training hub for the dog squad at 755 Evans Avenue, and a new tactile training hub with an indoor firing range on a five-acre site at 2010 Glen Drive, near Home Depot. The Glen Drive facility was further expanded in 2011 with property and forensic storage space.

The VPD and the municipal government first established a need to build a new purpose-built headquarters more than three decades ago, but consecutive City Councils have repeatedly kicked the can down the road given the high cost and the nature of such a project being a political hot potato.

Vancouver Police Department’s East facility at 3585 Graveley Street. (MCW Group)

The City’s 2023-2026 capital budget has also set aside $37 million for Vancouver Fire Rescue Services, largely for the project to renovate and expand Fire Hall No.8 at the northwest corner of the intersection of Smithe and Hamilton streets in downtown Vancouver. There are also longer-term plans to relocate the West End’s Fire Hall No. 6, currently located at the southwest corner of the intersection of Nicola and Nelson streets, to a new facility on a different nearby site.

Prior to the pandemic, the municipal government had set aside meaningful funding to begin the planning of building a new Vancouver City Hall. It would consolidate the various City Hall offices in the area, along with providing new City Council chambers and public service counters, on the City-owned block on Broadway immediately north of the existing City Hall. The block, which is the location of the Broadway-City Hall Station entrance, was razed in 2021 as a staging area for the construction of the SkyTrain Millennium Line Broadway Extension.

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