Drivers around Estevan may notice some of the plans for the coming Saskatchewan 2016 Summer Games coming to fruition, especially in the Souris Avenue and King Street area. Progress on the beautification of the Energy City has gotten off to an early start, due to the co-operative, warm spring weather.
“I didn’t expect being able to get started until the middle of April. Luckily, we’re going on it right now,” said parks manager Rod March. “I think it’s going to look very nice for the Summer Games.”
March said the work being done near the intersection of Souris Avenue and King Street was prioritized so that the flower gardens will be in place for when the flowers arrive.
“The flower tenure is out, and we have flowers coming in mid-April,” said March.
March noted the only part of the structure for the flower gardens left to do includes paver placement and other surface work on the structures.
“When that’s done, they’ll switch over to the main medians that are in the middle of Souris Avenue itself, and they’ll be starting on the south median, finishing the brickwork, and heading north,” said March. “We’ve got about seven medians to complete and they’re all mostly complete now.”
He added the next order of business, once the work on the flower gardens is done, entails earthworks.
“That’s the stuff in the middle of the medians. The earthwork, we’re anticipating, is probably about a week or two, to get everything prepped for turf,” said March. “We can’t get turf until the end of May or early June, and the reason for that, of course, is because it’s weather-dependent.”
March anticipates the turfing will take about a week, and then from that point “It’ll all be nice, and ready to go.”
March said the work on the boulevards is just the start of an overall beautification plan for the city — one he intends to carry out into the coming spring and summer. Part of that plan includes planting trees in certain areas, where they are needed.
“We need to be pretty selective of the species of trees we choose, because of the pollution from vehicles, road salt and that kind of thing. I’m just going to carefully select the tree species we’ll be putting in there,” said March. “This is my mandate, to do this. We’re going to carry this theme (of beautification) through into other areas, to spruce them up and make them look nicer.”
