Kenora's downtown revitalization plan is shifting to the waterfront.
With government money in hand, construction activity for the city's $25 million Big Spruce project is focusing for the next two years on improving the harbourfront with better pedestrian access, a concert and festival venue and new docks.
Once a thriving forestry town, the hard-luck community of 15,000 has turned to boosting its already-strong tourism and cottage economy by marketing its biggest natural asset, scenic Lake of the Woods.
The downtown and waterfront revitalization is a huge part of that strategy to return the business core to its Victorian charm and make the waterfront more appealing to locals and visitors.
This summer, Wilco Contractors Superior are finishing the first phase of Main Street's 'big dig' work, which started last year. It involves replacing all the underground water and sewer workings. Wrapping up that project has spilled over into this year.
Contractors arestill finishing paving, and streetscaping with the final cosmetic touches of new cobblestones, shrubbery, granite benches and planters.
A traffic roundabout was also installed at the western entrance to the downtown where Highway 17 (Lakeshore Drive) curves around the shore of Safety Bay and funnels traffic onto Main Street.
This year on the waterfront, the two-year, $5.4 million project funded with federal, provincial and municipal dollars, will feature a new pedestrian access to the community's waterfront on scenic Lake of the Woods.
“It's been a long haul with senior levels of government for Northern Ontario to convince them that downtown revitalization is an economic development project," said city planner Jeff Port. "They do it in southern Ontario all the time.”
A short stub of First Street leading to the waterfront is being permanently closed to traffic and replaced by a pedestrian walkway, to be known as Lake of the Woods Plaza.
Tenders went out in August to secure a contractor to install new storm water pipes between Main and Bernier to start the underground work this fall and follow up with landscaping next spring.
Once that's done, the next priority is finalizing the detailed designs for an open air special events venue. The city hopes to have a contractor in place for that project by next spring.
Waterfront parking will be cut in half and the area will be opened up to more green space.
KGS Group of Winnipeg, designers of last year's Main Street makeover and the roundabout, were preparing the detailed waterfront plans.
There have been some design changes after residents and some politicians got fired up over plans calling for the removal of an elevated pedestrian walkway down to the waterfront and the Thistle Pavilion.
The pavilion is the hub of numerous festivals and is a shrine to the 1907 Stanley Cup-winning Kenora Thistles hockey team.
The plans were re-jigged to move the pavilion to another spot to make way for a new tourism information centre, but the walkway will be gone, said KGS' Roy Houston, manager of Civil Municipal Services.
Improvements to an intersection at Bernier, Water and Second streets are also immanent.
“We have to develop the final design but there is talk of developing a new boardwalk and mooring space for boats,” said Houston.
Future plans include adding 30 boat slips along Lakeview Drive at Safety Bay to accommodate larger boats. It was part of the city's application in May for government stimulus funding.
“The $4 million, combined from Ottawa and Queen's Park, isn't going to get everything done on the waterfront that we want, so we're switching from phases to stages,” said Port. “We'll need another round or two on the waterfront to get this all done. There's probably more to come after this.”
The city intends to tap into every kind of public grant program available.
There are also plans for a tourism information centre at Norman Park, west of the downtown. Known as the Lake of the Woods Discovery Centre, it would serve as a travel and interpretive centre for the city's proposed Tunnel Island heritage project.
Port said during the last waterfront renovations in the 1980s, not much thought put into practical planning. The harbourfront was never designed for festivals and events but designed as a passive area near the pavilion surrounding by a parking lot.
“It was never very functional,” said Port.
The aim is not make events bigger but run more of them, he said.
“We sat down with all the events organizers and asked, how do you want the harbourfront to work? And we'll do the design last.”
Festival organizers wanted a plug-and play events centre with stage setup, electrical system, potable water connections, toilets and dedicated space for a farmers' market.
As activity heats up, the city is expecting fewer public complaints this time than when Main Street was completely dug up and traffic was re-routed onto side streets.
“It will never be as bad as it was last summer,” said Port. “The plaza is going to be a breeze compared to that."
“We said we were going to get the worst done first and that's enough of that.”
“The vast majority of businesses on Main Street said there wasn't anything we could have done to mitigate the negative aspects of it.”
The city, designers and contractors went to great lengths to public communicate their plans, step-by-step, even appointing merchants as block captain representatives during weekly construction meetings.
Houston, who maintains a cottage near Kenora, heard many positive comments about the downtown project during the recent Harbourfest held over the August long weekend.
“A lot of the people who were against the roundabout were saying it's working pretty well,” he said, chuckling. “There's more people that are accepting it and the downtown's is really looking good and merchants are happy.”
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