Aside from installing some shade structures and a top coat of asphalt next spring, Wiarton’s Big Dig project is complete.
The $11 million reconstruction of a two-block portion of Berford Street, from roughly George Street to Division Street began in the summer of 2020.
The work included replacing underground pipes that had tended to freeze in the winter causing plumbing issues for properties along the street. It also included burying overhead wires, adding new sidewalks, mid block crossing sections, crosswalk sounds for the visually impaired, bumpouts and motorcycle parking.
Mayor Janice Jackson says, “We’ve done a lot of things for accessibility and people that are perhaps visually impaired. We have terra cotta colouring on each side of the sidewalks and that allows people to really clearly see the sidewalk.” She notes there are tactile plates at the corners so people can feel with their feet when they’re arriving at a corner. Jackson says there are audible alarms at lights for the visually impaired as well.
“We also have new bumpouts on the street, which is going to provide protection for people that are crossing and allow them to get out further into the street, but be protected while they’re looking to cross,” says Jackson, who says there are also mid-block designated crossing areas.
According to Jackson, there is now motorcycle parking, which is new for the town. She says the double curb along the street has been eliminated and the roads and sidewalks have been re-contoured to give a gentler slope, “We’ve done a lot of work actually to make the downtown very attractive and very accessible,” says Jackson noting there are new trees, planter boxes and gardens.
She says there are new benches along Berford Street that are unique to Wiarton, explaining, “They’re completely different. We had community consultation two or three years ago where the community came forward and they chose all of the streetscape furniture and features and this was a bench that they specifically picked and it’s quite unique because the base of it is a large slab of local quarry stone,” says Jackson, adding, “You’ve never seen it anywhere else.”
When the Big Dig was first conceptualized, it was a four- block project that ended up being scaled down because construction costs had skyrocketed. What had been planned as an $8.5 million project was getting bids from contractors at about $17 million, and the town decided to reduce the portion of street being reconstructed. Originally, it was planned to go from Division Street to Elm Street. Money for the Big Dig came from a mixture of grants, Connecting Links funding, reserves and Gas Tax funding.
Jackson notes it took four years for the Town to secure the funding for the work that’s just been completed, adding,”Ideally the end goal would be to have all four blocks reconstructed,” but she notes, “The rest of that job won’t happen any time soon, that’s for sure but I certainly hope that it is on the radar of future councils.”
In the meantime, Jackson says “We’ve also put in conduit for wifi and internet and all of those things for future use. We’ve done a lot of work to kind of, look into the future and make sure that we have the infrastructure underneath so that when anything is added to the downtown core we don’t have to rip up the road again.”
A street party to celebrate the completion is set for the spring.
Jackson says, “The only thing that’s left for us to do is we have to do a top layer of asphalt. So the base layer is on now and we’ve put the lines on the road just so that we could open up Berford Street, but we’re going to let that layer of asphalt settle over the course of the winter and then in the spring we’re going to add the final top coat. So just before we open the street back up after the second layer goes down, we’re going to have a street party and celebrate the new downtown of Wiarton.”