UPDATE: Watermain break floods Downtown Association building

A watermain break downtown this afternoon made for a pretty wet scene on Queen Street.

The break occurred between Spring and March streets, where crews recently started a planned reconstruction of the road.

Although plenty of water poured onto Queen Street, PUC crews managed to shut it off shortly after 3 p.m.

Today's mishap did flood the basement of the Downtown Association at 496 Queen St. East, forcing the organization to cancel a meeting of its board of directors scheduled for tonight.

"Thankfully it was localized to the south end of the foundation where we store some of our street-closure signage and other materials " Nicholas Luck, Downtown Association executive director, told SooToday.

The board meeting will be rescheduled for next week.

Yesterday, work crews were installing a new fire hydrant on the north side of the Downtown Association building, with a planned water outage.

The construction plan for this week, issued on Monday, also called for commencing excavation and installation of underground soil cells between March and Spring streets, as well as new catch basins.

Both those jobs were dependent on delivery of materials.

"The work on Queen Street between Elgin Street and Brock Street will commence from March Street and continue towards Brock Street along the north side before diverting to south side and working back towards March Street," Downtown Association members were advised in a written update this week.

"The work between March and Elgin is tentatively scheduled to commence early August with the six-week closure of Queen tentatively scheduled mid-August.

"The work is scheduled to be substantially completed late this fall with some work extending into 2025 depending upon on the final project limits."

"During the construction process, Queen Street will be reduced to a single lane of traffic and one parking lane while the contractor works on half of Queen Street at a time.

"Once the hard surfaces (such as concrete and unit pavers) are removed, temporary walkways will be established to allow access to the businesses. If there’s a need to close a walkway, the contractor will coordinate with the businesses to determine best timing and then provide alternative access whenever feasible.

"Queen Street from Elgin to March will be fully closed for a period of six weeks commencing mid-August. Additionally, there may be occasional short-term closures of Queen Street its side streets. Advance notification will be provided for any closures.

"Scheduled short-term outages of the water supply may occur during completion of upgrades to the water distribution system. Advance notice will be given before any work-related outages."

Here's what the contractor got done last week:

• completed removals of unit pavers, concrete curb and asphalt along north side of Queen
• comstructed temporary walkway for access to the businesses and erected fencing around construction area and along temporary walkway
• completed exploratory work to confirm location of existing utilities
• decommissioned and removed existing street lights on north side

– with files from David Helwig