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The city of Montreal appears to have deep pockets when it comes to buying and renovating buildings and transferring municipal employees among them.

In one of the city’s latest real-estate moves, Montreal taxpayers will end up spending at least $10 million to turn a vacant building at 6150 Royalmount Ave. in Côte-des-Neiges — Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough into new digs for the Montreal Fire Department.

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A chunk of the bill is $5.4 million to renovate the building, which has been vacant since the city bought it from a municipal contractor in 2011.

A contract for the renovation work, which includes removal of asbestos and mould that the city says were discovered after it purchased the building, was awarded by the Coderre administration last week because the city has decided to relocate there 80 municipal employees who work for the fire department’s prevention division from another city-owned building at 200 Bellechasse St. in Rosemont — La Petite-Patrie that the city says is old and “obsolete.”