Red River College is putting the construction of its new $95.4 million Innovation Centre on hold.

Conor Lloyd, director of college and public relations at Red River College says, currently they have put six tenders on hold while they work to resolve a disagreement regarding a reasonable timeline for the completion of this project.

Red River College finalized and signed the agreement with the federal government for $40.6 in funding, less than eight months ago.

"The federal deadline for this project is November 30, 2018. We are in constant and ongoing discussions with the federal government right now, to get the deadline extended so that we can have a reasonable amount of time to complete construction on this new 100,000 sq ft facility in Winnipeg's Exchange District,' explained Lloyd.

The complexities of working with a heritage building have resulted in a longer time frame for construction and design work.

Work already completed includes demolition of 325 Elgin (Metro Motors) and remediation of the Innovation Centre site; consultations with more than 100 user groups and functional space program design; selection and engagement of architect and refining of Centre design; topical and site services survey, as well as various approvals with the City of Winnipeg with respect to heritage requirements, urban design and traffic flows.

"We are very hopeful we will find a resolution with the federal government," said Lloyd. "We are excited to move forward with this, because it will be a very strong anchor in Winnipeg's Innovation Alley, and it will provide a lot of entrepreneurship training in Winnipeg's Exchange District, but in addition to that it will provide a lot of different other programming and opportunities. So, we are very much behind it, and we are hopeful that we will get it resolved. We are just on hold until we can resolve this disagreement."