The Wallaceburg walking bridge construction project is underway, on track, and eyeing a late-June completion.
On Thursday, the Sydenham Current attended a meeting with the project contractor McLean Taylor Construction at the Wallaceburg Municipal Centre. Also in attendance were officials with Chatham-Kent’s infrastructure and engineering department and representatives from Dillon Consulting, the Wallaceburg and District Chamber of Commerce and Wallaceburg Coun. Jeff Wesley.
During the meeting, Wesley posed the question whether any of the volunteers, who had offered to help with the project to off-set cost, or community donations could be utilized during the process.
Nelson Cavacas, manager of infrastructure and development engineering, said much of the material being delivered to the site will require large heavy equipment to move it.
“The opportunities will be limited while the project is underway,” he said.
Cavacas added there will be opportunities for volunteer help or community donations after the project is completed: for beautification, benches, planters, etc.
Brian Chambers, the building site supervisor for McLean Taylor, said the painting of the additional portion of the bridge will be done in a controlled environment before being delivered to the Wallaceburg site.
Chambers said having volunteers paint the structure after installation, would create environmental concerns and would add more expense to the project, as opposed to saving any money.
Chambers added his crew is striving towards completing the project by the target date.
“June 26 is what we are targeting for,” Chambers said.
“Unless there is something that comes up that we cannot see right now… we’re going to push for that target date.”
Chambers also said during Thursday’s meeting that while their company is based out of St. Mary’s, they do have many local connections.
He said many of their workers live in Wallaceburg, Chatham-Kent, Walpole Island and he himself lives in Bothwell. Chambers added they have done multiple projects in Chatham-Kent in the past, including work in Dover, Eberts and Erie Beach.
Following the meeting, Wesley told the Sydenham Current he’s happy to see the project underway.
“I don’t need to go through the history of the Stonehouse Walkway because there is a lot of citizens that played a very important role is getting it approved,” he said. “We had the donations and offers of support from the community, which all helped getting the approval.”
Wesley said this project has been a long time coming.
“I’m glad it is here, I think it’s a great addition to the downtown. Once the project is done, we’ll see how we can put the volunteers, donations and labour along with the ingenuity of the BIA to work and make it even better.”
Wesley said the project is off to a great start.
“They got an early start, they are looking at a completion date at the end of June. They’ll probably be putting the new span in early to mid-June.”
Wesley added: “It’s interesting to find out that the site superintendent is from Bothwell and they have local employees from Wallaceburg, Dresden, Walpole Island, and they also contract a lot of their work here, whether it be trucking and aggregates from the local community. So, that is a bonus I didn’t know we were going to get.”
Here are some photos of the construction:
