The City of Toronto decided Tuesday to ask federal and provincial governments to help cover an $80 million increase in the cost of renovating Union Station.

The two levels of government are funding partners with the city in the project, which started out at $640 million in 2009, later increased to $715 million and is now expected to total $795 million when complete by the end of 2016.

The two governments contributed fixed grants to renovating the city-owned transportation hub. They haven’t been asked for more cash but could be approached, officials told councillors on the government management committee.

Councillor David Shiner, the committee’s chair, said the city shouldn’t be left holding the bag for overruns, particularly since $31 million in extra costs are for heritage restoration required by the federal government.

“Parks Canada has caused, on behalf of the federal government, substantial cost increases to save the heritage aspects of the building, without putting any funding into it,” Shiner said.

Councillor Doug Ford, Mayor Rob Ford’s brother, said he’s already sounded out the federal government and doesn’t believe they’re ready to pony up.

However, councillors voted to put the issue over to next month’s committee meeting on Nov. 18 while the other governments are asked for help.

If the answer is no, the city would withdraw $20 million from savings and borrow $60 million to be repaid through future rents from tenants at Union Station.

As is the case with many large projects, projections were made and work began before the design was fully completed, said Richard Coveduck, the city’s director of facilities design and construction.

Final design work is now in hand and the information has been used to refine the costs, Coveduck said.

“The estimates are always refined as more and more data — hard data, real data — becomes available,” he told the committee.

Costs rose through the sheer complexity of dealing with a 1927-vintage building with missing or incomplete records, which must function simultaneously as a transportation hub handling 65 million passengers a year, the committee was told,

Adding to the complexity is the fact the TTC is adding a second subway platform to its adjacent station, and a new pedestrian connection to the downtown PATH system is under way. Meanwhile, GO Transit is renovating its train shed with a new atrium roof.

“It’s the logistics of everybody trying to get men, equipment, concrete trucks, dump trucks … it’s a very congested area, and there’s rush hour twice a day,” Coveduck said.

“There’s people everywhere, flag men everywhere, security guards everywhere making sure the public’s not going to take a short cut through our excavation site, which could cause them bodily injury.”

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The additional cost of such factors isn’t easy to estimate, Coveduck added.

“There’s a great variety of things going on, there’s a multitude of activities and players that I guess just aren’t available as complexity factors in current estimating manuals that the industry and trades rely on. This project is truly unique.”

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