A contract has been awarded for a pedestrian bridge crossing between Scout Island and RC Cotton in Williams Lake.
Council awarded the contract Tuesday to DBA Quality Excavating for a total tender amount of $623,595.00.
Mayor Walt Cobb said he thinks it is great, although it did come in over budget.
“But we have ways of dealing with that and other opportunities that we might be able to generate some revenue through grants and what not so that there is no extra cost to the taxpayers but certainly it’s been a long time coming,” he said.
“It’s been going on four years on acquiring the property at the RC Cotton site and then getting the access over to Scout Island and all the other issues, so I think it is good news.”
The provincial share of the trail development budget is $440,126.00 with the City’s share at $183,469.00 plus contingency, engineering and environmental fees incurred in 2019.
“We’ll find ways of getting the money,” Cobb added.
“If necessary we can just curtail other spending elsewhere within the budget and find it in operations somewhere along the line. It’s unfortunate the bids came in but we got to have a safe bridge and we got to make sure it’s going to last as well, so the maintenance on it will not be that much. I think it’s good, it’s time.”
The proponent has scheduled start of construction for July 15 with completion in November 2019.
Although not part of the original design, Council agreed that making the bridge wheelchair accessible was critical following a delegation by the chair of the Accessibility Advisory Committee, George Atamanenko.
“It was never to be wheelchair accessible, that wasn’t our direction,” said Dan Colgate with TRU Consulting.
“The approaches are at 12 percent grade right now so to be wheelchair accessible you want to be closer at 8 percent which we can achieve that. If that’s an important piece to that it can be easily added at a cost.”
A contract for building a waterfront trail at the RC Cotton Site was awarded to MH King Excavating Ltd earlier this month.
“Although dates have not been 100% confirmed yet, we are looking to start construction shortly after Stampede to ensure that Stampede weekend is not interrupted, with our projected completion date being the end of July,” Corporate Engagement Officer, Guillermo Angel told MyCaribooNow.