The building pace around the City of Estevan has been picking up and will continue to do so through the spring and into summer.
Crews have been racing across the city, cutting grass and painting lines, while the City’s project schedule will soon be even more visible.
The final phase of the Highway 47 rehabilitation project will come in the form of the $1.2 million renewal of Souris Avenue and Sixth Street. The project has already been tendered but City Manager Amber Smale said the timing of that work is scheduled to be completed in conjunction with the truck bypass, which the province is expecting to be complete by the end of the construction season, sometime in September or October.
“That project is going to be delayed until we see when the truck bypass is being paved. We don’t want to start doing our truck route until the bypass is done. It probably won’t start until later in the construction season, so we can have them opening at the same time,” said Smale.
Co-ordinating the timing of the projects, Smale said the province is expecting to begin paving the bypass shortly, however it will take most of the summer to complete the 19 km stretch of highway that will take through traffic around the northern outskirts of the city. The project will probably not be complete until mid-September.
That means the City is looking to have the construction on Sixth Street complete around that time, as well.
Smale said the work is similar in scope to the construction on 13th Avenue last year.
“It will probably be less of a traffic burden. There will be traffic disruption of course, but I don’t think it will be to the extent that the other (work) was,” said the city manager.
She said the total construction time will be about a month, so with an estimated desired completion date in conjunction with the bypass’ mid-September timeline, residents can expect construction on Sixth Street to begin anywhere from mid-July to mid-August.
Construction at the airport has been ongoing this spring with a focus on drainage before crews strip the runways in preparation for new pavement.
“They’ve been doing a lot of work out there already. The first part of the project is all drainage. That’s what they’re focusing on right now,” said Smale, who noted that first phase of the project will probably be complete around the end of May.
“We won’t shut it down completely, but we’ll have to shut down a runway in order to facilitate the work, so that’s all being scheduled with the airport to make sure we’re doing it at non-busy times.”
The groundwater control study at the landfill, which will see groundwater testing work, has gone out to tender, and fencing work to the tune of $300,000 will be tendered soon.
A tender for the transportation master plan closed last week and will await council approval.
“It’s very comprehensive,” said Smale. “That will take into consideration how the truck route impacts us, how the twinning project impacts us. It will also identify proper traffic controls, pedestrian safety and where we need to give greater consideration.”
The master plan will look at the road structures, in general, throughout the city.
“It will cover the future roads that are going to be required, and it will identify some local improvements that should probably be done in preparation for that,” added Smale.
That will include ranking streets based on needed roadwork, such as looking at the underground utilities, and the state of that beneath-the-surface infrastructure to determine what streets get done first.
The $170,000 median project on Highway 47 will see work to all the medians north of King Street. The northernmost two medians will not be included in the work. Smale said those two medians are likely to be removed in concert with any future road improvements in the northern part of the city.
“We’re going to be doing the perimeter around all those medians with paving stones, and then we’re building some flowerbeds in between the trees,” said Smale.
Some drainage work was completed in Cactus Park last year, and the City is set to pave the pathways where the work was done. Other walkway paving will be focused on Kensington and Torgeson Parks.
In Torgeson, trees will be replanted and shrubbery will be added. Smale said the City will also be adding some general amenities to the parks.
Other projects in the leisure services department will see the City preparing for two major sporting events next year. The multi-purpose flooring will be replaced, at a cost of about $55,000, and the ice-plant compressor in the Civic Auditorium will be replaced for about $30,000 as a necessary upgrade for the Western Canada Cup next spring.
With Estevan hosting the Sask. Summer Games next year as well, the City’s soccer fields will receive some attention. Low lying areas have led to water problems in the past, and Smale said that must be fixed prior to next year’s Games.
There are about 50 locations around the City where roads have been cut to deal with watermain breaks or other work. The City plans on paving all those roads this summer, with priority focused on busy areas of King Street and Fourth Street. Smale noted eight areas having issues are from previous years, but the rest are from work that occurred in 2014 or earlier this year.
