It was a packed house last night for a public meeting about the Lou Stonehouse walking bridge in Wallaceburg.
Wallaceburg Coun. Jeff Wesley said the response was great and the crowd seemed impressed with outlook for the downtown Wallaceburg project.
“Excellent turnout… standing room only,” Wesley said. “Everyone felt pretty good about the project and what was going to be done. I’m very pleased with how it all went and we should have a repaired and much more pleasing bridge to look at by the end of June 2015.”
Chatham-Kent staff outlined a $680,000 plan to fix the bridge. The construction will close the bridge to from April to June of 2015, pending council approval.
He said the plan is to still take advantage of these offers from the community.
“To the extent we can,” Wesley said. “We will have to see what the tenders come back in at and the scale of the work included and what the BIA wants. As an example, do we want the new section teal or do we want to repaint the entire bridge a new colour. The BIA will have input on that. We will use 100 per cent of the volunteers and donations possible as it moves forward.”
Wesley said he remembers a large volunteer effort in the early 90’s when the walking bridge was originally painted.
“I lead the effort to paint the bridge last time around and we had 125 volunteers come out,” he said. “Even the MPP of the day, Randy Hope and I was Mayor. Duchene’s was a major donor that time as well.”
The project was originally set to concluded this past summer, but a variety of factors led to the delay.
The plan is set to be presented to council in January.
