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Cenotaph project lags as May long looms
By Chris Conway
With the May long weekend only days away, Invermere’s downtown cenotaph project is many days behind schedule.
On Tuesday (May 12) the project required complete closure of 7th Avenue from the cenotaph to the BMO, causing traffic to detour around the downtown business area.
At Tuesday evening’s council meeting Coun. Al Miller expressed the concerns of the downtown business operators.
“They’re certainly showing a lot of concern,” said Miller. “Their bottom lines have dropped.”
District of Invermere chief administrative officer Chris Prosser told council that the project is 10 days behind schedule. He reported that he had met with Max Helmer Construction on Monday morning to discuss the issues and had made it very clear that 7th Avenue must be open for the long weekend.
“We’re getting information that they may start pouring concrete for the sidewalks on Wednesday,” said Prosser. “The bricks for sure will not be down for the May long weekend, but that sidewalk on that side of 7th Avenue will be fully open, be it concrete sidewalk for portions of it and using green astro-turf to delineate a pathway for people to walk on.
“We are pushing them really, really hard to get moving; all the electrical is in right now, all the sleeving for the irrigation is in. Compaction is completing; they can start pouring some of the sidewalks this week if they so choose and we are pushing them hard to start pouring some of them.
“We are still targeting for all the hard surfacing to be done by May 31 at the latest and that’s been their commitment with the revised schedule provided last Friday,” he said.
Prosser advised council that Helmer is behind schedule due to some issues with soils and geotechnical concerns.
“That being said, it is unacceptable how they have progressed to date because they have had minimal staff on-site and all of a sudden we start putting pressure on them and next thing you know they have 10 people on-site getting those walls done.”
“They should be going full-tilt there should be no holding back right now,” Prosser told council. “The initial agreement was to be completed with the hard surfaces by the May long weekend.”
“And if not?” Asked Miller.
Prosser responded that the penalty requirements had been taken out of the contract as that was one of the main reasons why the pricing was so high initially due to the penalty requirements of $5,000 per day.
Miller told council that the business owners understand that with change and improvements can come hard times during that time. “But we really need to keep the foot on the gas to get this project done,” he said.
“There are only so many days in this valley that you actually make a profit and it can make or break a business. These are good long term businesses,” Miller stated. “It’s costing them.”
Coun. Paul Denchuk then asked Prosser about the schedule for landscaping.
“That will be sometime in early June,” replied Prosser. “The trees are going to be planted by the landscaper. Mac-Neil Landscaping has got the irrigation contract and they will be planting the turf and all the trees. It just makes sense and their price was really good to do that.”
Prosser advised that a 15 to 20-foot Russian Olive specimen tree is also coming. It is the same species of tree that was originally there and which had to be removed last year for safety reasons.
The municipality will then be planting the poppies, the grasses and all the annuals as part of the planting program with the rest of the annuals downtown. “It will be done in the early part of June,” said Prosser.
Prosser explained that most of the project is funded through the Resort Municipality Initiative with some additional funding from a Veteran’s Affairs grant. The original budget for the Helmer portion of the work was $315,000, which Prosser expects may be pushed higher due to an unexpected geotechnical report. Overall though the project budget is relatively on track and as long as it stays that way, none of it will be funded through general tax revenues.
Mayor Gerry Taft told council that this project was really difficult to schedule. The previous council worked hard to avoid construction occurring in July and August, which would have been much worse than construction in the fall and spring.
Taft said that he and others on council are frustrated that more work was not done last fall when weather was good and that a lot more progress could have been made.
“A lot of work has been done this spring,” said Taft. “If the hard surfaces are done by the end of May I think we can live with that but we don’t want to see that extend any further.
“This is part of an incremental downtown revitalisation,” he added. “This has dragged on for longer than we want and I do feel sympathy for those businesses that have had some restricted access, but I think at the end of the day the end result is going to be worth it.”
Above photo: Max Helmer Construction workers at the Invermere Cenotaph project on Tuesday, May 12. By Chris Conway