Red River College is putting a major expansion on hold for its Exchange District Campus.
The college says six tenders for the $95 million innovation centre are being put on the shelf for now. It says the stoppage is a result of a funding dispute with Ottawa.
The college says a completion deadline of Nov. 30 in order to secure $40 million in federal money is unreasonable.
“We only got our approval to go ahead about nine months ago, end of June and that meant that the deadline that we've been given for that scale of a building isn't physically possible to meet,” said RRC President Paul Vogt.
The school is hopeful the matter can be resolved and is asking for the end of 2019 as the new completion date.
Ottawa isn’t saying whether it’s willing to give the college more time. It says the original deadline was already pushed from April to November.
The province agreed to back a college loan of $54 million for the project.
"This is a troubling development on an important innovation project. I'm actively calling government ministers and MPs to understand what has changed here,"said Manitoba Education Minister Ian Wishart.
RRC says it first applied for the federal funding in May 2016. It says Ottawa and the province began negotiations and a deal was not done until June 2017, leaving a short timeline to finish the centre. The college says the federal government was hoping the province would put matching funds on the table.
“I think it did take some time for two of them to get on the same page,” said Vogt.
RRC says shovels have already hit the ground for the project with demolition of an old building and remediation of the site on Elgin Avenue.
The centre is estimated to bring 1,200 staff, faculty and students downtown.
