City cancels part of this year’s Queen Street road work

The 700 and 800 blocks of Queen Street East, from Pim to East Street, have been quietly removed from this year's planned city road work.

Bid documents released Wednesday by City of Sault Ste. Marie purchasing staff show only 870 metres between East Street and Bruce being rebuilt during this year's first phase of the controversial multi-year $18-million Queen Street rebuild.

The deadline for tenders is April 24.

On the first day bid documents were available, two local contractors obtained copies: Avery Construction Ltd. and Steel Speed Civil Inc.

The work is described as "supplying all materials, labour and equipment necessary to compete upgrades of approximately 870 metres of Queen Street including removals, grading, granular base, asphalt, concrete curb and sidewalk, unit pavers, streetscape amenities, street lighting, traffic signals and various upgrades to the storm sewers, sanitary sewers and watermains along with related appurtenances."

On Aug. 28 of last year, when city council gave approval in principle to the $18-million reconstruction of Queen Street, the hotly negotiated final deal required the work be divided into pieces.

The section of Queen between Pim and Bruce would be done this year.

The budget for that job would be no more than $6 million.

City staff were directed to look high and low for grant money to reduce the municipal share of that $6 million.

And if bids came in higher than that, and applications for alternative funding were unsuccessful, council directed that boundaries of the 2024 work be reduced to fit the $6-million estimate.

The remaining segments of Queen Street would be started no sooner than every two years after this year's work.

And any part of the Pim to Bruce section that can't be rebuilt this year would have to undertaken in the future, councillors decided.

All that was decided last summer.

With insufficient funding for a full Pim-to-Bruce rebuild, city officials have decided only East Street to Bruce will be started in 2024.

"The detailed design is for East to Bruce, because of that limited budget that we were given," says Maggie McAuley, the city's municipal services and design engineer.

"We realized that adding [Pim to East] would be beyond $6 million," McAuley told the Downtown Association's annual general meeting last week.

"The road surface, the boulevards, the walkways: they're all past their useful life and are due for replacement. Same thing goes for the streetlights. They also needed to be fully replaced," she said

"Over the years, most of the trees have been removed from Queen Street due to disease and they will need to be replaced. And the last time major streetscaping happened on Queen Street was over 40 years ago. The current design doesn't meet accessibility standards.

"Through this project, we hope to achieve enhanced accessibility to incorporate some active transportation features and to activate the downtown. We're hoping to modernize and enhance the downtown aesthetics.

"The design will hopefully provide merchants greater opportunities to activate their boulevard spaces. In general, we'll be replacing the aged and deteriorating surfaces like the road, the paving stones," McAuley said.

The final contract is expected to go to city council for approval on May 13.