The City of Parksville said it wanted to hear from businesses likely to be impacted by major road work scheduled to begin this spring on Corfield Street.
It got an earful in an informational meeting hosted Thursday evening at city hall.
“I just want to understand the decision for a May-June (construction) start,” said Sandy Herle, owner of Close to You women’s apparel and chair of the Parksville Qualicum Beach Tourism board. “From a business standpoint, it’s horrific. There’s no good time, but that’s gotta be the worst.
“I’m baffled over the timing.”
Corfield will undergo extensive improvements between Stanford Ave. and Highway 19A, including replacing of water and sanitation lines, repaving, and the addition of new sidewalks and bike lanes, said Vaughn Figueira, the city’s director of engineering.
There will also be a paved greenway running behind Corfield Plaza, which is anchored by Thrifty Foods and includes roughly a dozen other tenants.
Figueira said scheduling factors included avoiding the rainy season while crews would be digging trenches to replace sanitation and water lines, and the availability of paving material from the city’s asphalt contractor, which closes down in October.
Business owners, some having already filed written comments with the city, reminded Figueira that the four-month construction schedule falls precisely on their biggest sales periods of the year, and warned of economic disaster if the two Corfield entrances to the plaza were closed for an extended period of time.
“We have 35 per cent lift (in sales), if not more, from July to beginning of September,” said Bill Rutledge, manager of Thrifty Foods. “That’s huge for us.”
Business owners from Corfield Plaza, at right, met with City of Parksville staff last week to express concerns over planned road work coming to Corfield Street this spring and summer. — Image credit: J.R. Rardon/PQB NEWS
“That’s why we’re here,” Figueira responded. “We want to try to understand your concerns before we go to tender.
“You can build into the tender document some restrictions for the contractor, understanding it’s kind of a fact of life that the more restrictions you put in there, the more expensive it gets.”
The first point of agreement between Figueira and a dozen attendees made up of business owners, representatives of the Parksville Downtown Business Association and Parksville councillors, was that at least one of the two mall entrances from Corfield must remain open throughout construction.
“Certainly, we can say, ‘Hey, contractor, one of the rules is you cannot close both of these at the same time,” Figueira said. “Of course.”
He said he would also include the group’s request to begin the work, which is expected to start around mid-May, on the Jensen Avenue-to-Highway 19A section first, before moving west toward Stanford. Following the digging and replacement of underground pipes, he said, there would be a break in construction through the Canada Day long weekend, when Corfield is clotted with vehicle and pedestrian traffic headed to Community Park for the city’s party and fireworks show.
“There will be four months of work, but that doesn’t mean four months of continuous impact (on businesses),” said Figueira.
“There will certainly be periodic interruptions, be what we’re going to do is minimize them. Our whole goal is to minimize disruption.”
Figueira said he would use input from Thursday’s meeting and earlier, written and oral testimony, to finalize the city’s tender, which would then go out in mid-March. After a 3-4 week tender period, city staff would review bids and bring recommendations to council at its April 19 meeting.
Work should then be able to commence within a month from awarding of the contract, he said.
“Once this is done, the businesses here will have a nice sidewalk, a greenway, bike lanes down both sides (of Corfield) to the park,” Figueira said. “It’s gonna be a good thing.”
“Oh, it’ll be good once it’s done,” Harle replied to general laughter.
