Nearly 400 city staff in the east wing of Vancouver City Hall will be moved out by 2014 because seismic assessments have determined the wing is at high risk of collapse during an earthquake.

After the city hall employees have been moved out next year, the city will put out a request for proposal to demolish the 43-year-old, four-story concrete structure, says Bill Aujla, the city’s general manager of real estate and facilities management.

“We did have structural engineers look at the buildings, and based on their feedback of those building on the city hall campus, the east wing was deemed by them to be at the highest risk of collapse during an earthquake,” Aujla said Tuesday.

There is no “emergency,” he noted.

“It’s something you want to look at and certainly plan in advance. Obviously, we live in an earthquake zone and we want to be proactive at this, but there is not enough money to do every building at once, so you take a stepped, incremental approach. And that’s what we are pursuing.”

The demolition will need financing approval, as well as the green light from city council.

Aujla would not provide an estimate of the cost of the demolition, saying he didn’t want to pre-empt the price of the bids next year.

Some departments in the city will be moved around to make room for staff in the east wing, which includes the planning and permitting departments.

Employees in the city-owned building (which houses Vancity) at Cambie and 10th are being moved into newly renovated floors in the City Hall main tower. Once they have been moved, east wing staff will be moved into the Vancity building, said Aujla.

The city did assess whether the east wing could be upgraded to meet modern seismic standards, but the cost was too great and would lead to greater inefficiency because more walls would have to be installed.

It was decided an investment in upgrading the building was not worth it, said Aujla, who would not provide the estimated price of the upgrade.

He noted that the east wing was originally built as a temporary structure and is past its “service life.”

The relocations will involve a new building lease downtown for the information and technology department, but the city is working hard to keep increased costs down by moving staff into existing leased space, Aujla added.

The relocations will also help consolidate services in central locations, he said.

The decision to relocate staff and demolish the east wing campus was made in 2012 at the corporate level, although it was not made public, said Aujla. “Internally all the appropriate approvals were obtained,” he said.

Planning on how to address the seismic issues of the city’s buildings, including the city hall campus, have been underway for the better part of a decade, noted Aujla.

In 2011, after major earthquakes hit Japan and New Zealand, Vancouver city council ordered a series of reports to be done as quickly as possible on how to capitalize on the lessons coming out of the two countries.

At the time, Mayor Gregor Robinson called Vancouver “the most vulnerable city in Canada.”

City councillor George Affleck said he’s not sure why the decision to move staff out of the east wing was not made public earlier.

While it may be expensive, the demolition and staff relocation may also provide an opportunity to make city services more efficient, said Affleck.

Vancouver’s risk of a major earthquake is well known.

A new study released last month says the Pacific coast has experienced 22 major earthquakes over the last 11,000 years, and is due for another.

An earlier report from March 2013 concluded a monster earthquake and tsunami would wreak havoc on B.C.’s west coast, but the effects would be far worse in Washington and Oregon states.

The report by the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission, a group of more than 150 volunteer experts, said coastal towns would be inundated and 10,000 lives could be lost. Schools, buildings and bridges would collapse and the economic damage alone could hit $32 billion.

ghoekstra@vancouversun.com