The Campbellton Neighbourhood Association (CNA) has changed some of its beautification plans.
The CNA’s Brian Shaw told council at its financial planning deliberations in early December that although the initial plan was to create a parking lot at the new entrance feature – which is a Beaver floatplane currently under reconstruction to be placed on a pedestal – there are too many logistical complications to make that feasible.
“The engineering of the property is just about complete,” Shaw says. “There aren’t a whole lot of places on that island of land that we can put an airplane, but we managed to chisel one out,” showing council a map of the area in question. “You can see all the red; those are areas that must be safeguarded for pipelines and other infrastructure on the property. Because of that, we recognize there’s a very low probability that we’ll be able to do a parking lot on the property.”
But because there was already $100,000 set aside by the city for the parking lot, the CNA hoped the city would divert those funds into other Campbellton-based projects, including some trail maintenance, wayfinding signage, river access and two more parkettes like the one installed last year at the end of Spruce Street: one at the end of 19th Avenue and another on 20th Avenue.
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Council ended up approving that request during its budget deliberations, with a few caveats.
Coun. Charlie Cornfield wanted the priority for the work to be on signage at Baikie Island and work on the Raven Trail, “and I get a little concerned when we start dealing with giving money for total plans.”
But the motions put forward were that the approval of the funding be contingent on the organization coming back to council with work plans that would be approved by council before the funds would be released, so they would still get a say in the order of the work being done.
“I think these are very worthy projects and will have very positive effects on the Campbellton neighbourhood,” Coun. Ron Kerr said. “The staff report we get will make recommendations on which particular (projects) we should move forward with, and what this does is put the funding out there for the group to possibly get matching funding from others – they were successful in achieving that with the parkette on Spruce Street, for example. This gives an ambitious budget to actually really make some changes around that waterfront, which has been neglected for, well, the whole time I’ve been in Campbell River, which is a long time.”
Coun. Claire Moglove also voted in favour of the funding, she said, pointing out that setting aside potential funding “doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to go ahead, because the project plan we’re asking for may identify potential issues with the design, the potential for staff time to actually do this, or other issues associated with it.
“At least in budgeting for it, we move forward with the concept.”
In the end, it was decided that the city separate the funding request and approve a wayfinding signage budget of $31,400 and $75,600 for the parkettes and trail maintenance, for a total of $107,000 contingent on full project plans being created and approved by council in 2020.
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