New HQ announced; massive expansion underway?

Here is the official announcement of the project to build CSE's new headquarters. The announcement essentially confirms what we already knew, but it does add a few details, as well as raising a few questions.

• The new building will be constructed, as expected, through a public-private partnership.
  
  
• Construction is planned to begin early in 2011.
  
  
• The Mid-Term Accommodation Project, a $70-million 6000-square-metre building announced last year and scheduled for completion in 2011, is now considered Phase I of the headquarters project, while the new project is considered Phase II.
  
  
• The size of the Phase II building will be 72,000 square metres, for a total of 78,000 square metres at the new headquarters site. (Assuming the two buildings will be at the same site; the press release doesn't specify location aside from the National Capital Region. Maybe it's a s33kr1t.)

Now for some questions:

• CSE has typically provided about 25 square metres of facility space per employee, and this figure appears to hold for the Phase I building, which is supposed to hold up to 250 employees. It also holds for GCHQ, which is said to house 4000-4500 employees in its new 102,000-square-metre building. If, however, the same figure holds for CSE's Phase II building, that building will be able to accommodate roughly 2900 employees, for a site total of about 3100. That's more than 1450 more than CSE currently has, and about 1300 more than it is currently expected to have! It would appear that either a massive and so far unannounced expansion of CSE is in the works or the happy few then on staff will be luxuriating in their palatial new digs come 2015.
  
  
• According to Minister of Transport John Baird, who apparently has something to say on these matters because he is the MP of one of the National Capital Region ridings, the project "represents an estimated $800 million capital investment by the Government of Canada." The press release goes on to say that "Facilities management and life-cycle replacement costs, over a 30-year agreement, will be added to the project total." I had thought that the $880 million estimated in the 2009-10 Report on Plans and Priorities represented both the construction costs and the 30-year facility operations costs, but this would seem to suggest that the operations costs will come on top of the $800 million cited. That would make it an extremely expensive building, however. I'm more inclined to think that both the $70-million figure for the Phase I project and the $800- (or $880-) million figure for the Phase II project already include both construction and 30-year operating costs. I guess time (or maybe a future, more informative press release) will tell.

[Update 30 May 2009: Actually, the Report on Plans and Priorities shows that the entire $70 million for the Phase I building will be spent over the next couple of years, so no 30-year operating costs there. Since $70 million for a 6000-square-metre building works out to $11,667 per square metre, which applied to the 72,000 square metres of the Phase II building would be $840 million, it looks like no 30-year operating costs there either. Bottom line: it looks like what we have here are two extremely expensive buildings.]

[Update 5 November 2009: See the latest news and my wild speculations about this project here.]