City crews will dig up the intersection of Hall and Front Streets in August to install new storm sewers, sanitary sewers and water line. While crews are working on the intersection, Front Street traffic will be single-lane in both directions.
They expect to be finished there by the end of September, so traffic will again flow freely off Front Street to Hall Street and on to Lakeside Drive.
Then city crews will move to the 200 block Hall Street (just south of Front St), to be done there by the end of November.
Replacing aging underground infrastructure was always the main reason for the Hall Street project, but Nelson’s previous city council also approved the design and funding for various above-ground changes to be done at the same time.
“This is a very exciting time for the city,” then-mayor John Dooley told the Star in 2013.
“Our plan is to, over time, revitalize the entire five-block corridor, from IODE Park to the Prestige wharf,” he said. “We’ll add pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares, greenspace, a public plaza and make the wharf a more easily accessible public amenity. Plus, the Hall and Front Street intersection will be remodeled into a thoughtfully designed, high-profile gateway to the waterfront.”
Nelson’s public works boss Colin Innes says a park around the gazebo beside the Prestige Lakeside Resort will be finished by the end of November.
“And the foreshore steps will be done by the beginning of October, with decorative rail and benches and mosaic tile work,” he said (see photo below).
And just west of the foreshore steps, on the lakeshore, a new storm sewer outfall, two 900 millimeter pipes are being installed that Innes says increases the storm water capacity by 4.7 times. The point is to alleviate periodic flooding at the Hall and Front intersection.
Innes says the size of the pipes was calculated to take on a flood like the one in 2012 “when we had that water pile-up in the intersection, and so we were looking at the flows that went into the intersection, and the sizing of (the new pipe) was based on that.”
The capacity of the pipe also allows for the likelihood that flooding will become more common and more severe due to climate change.
The total budget for Phase Two of the project (from the Community Complex to the waterfront), is $6,827,000. Two-thirds of that, according to city manager Kevin Cormack, comes from an infrastructure grant from the federal government’s gas tax fund. The other third is being paid for by the city out of its utility reserves that had been set aside for the upgrades of the sewer and water systems over several years.
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The most challenging part of the project for Innes was putting the pipes under the rail tracks without interrupting the CP train schedule.
”We had to get all our storm pipes through and then re-establish all of the support under the crossing and had to work with CP to do that,” said Innes. “Because of the size of pipe and getting it through there in that short window of time, we had to really keep on track. You can easily lose time, getting angles and alignment right.
“The first day we did it, it got your heart pumping a bit. You’re thinking, there’s a train coming in three hours. How is this going to work?”
Innes says the underground infrastructure at the Hall and Front intersection is complicated too, with electrical and communications utilities as well as water, sanitary sewer and storm sewer all going both north-south and east-west.
“There is a lot of infrastructure under the ground here, crossing each other, and to thread the needle is the hard part,” he said.
bill.metcalfe@nelsonstar.com
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