Planning stages

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/03/2016 (3713 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The past several years have been a time of major planning at the City of Brandon, with master plans developed for everything from the cemetery and drainage to greenspace and the riverbank corridor.

Through consultants, extensive research and public outreach was conducted. Proposed plans were revamped and now it appears the plans are starting to come to fruition.

“I think when you speak about any one of them, they are very necessary and very legitimate,” Mayor Rick Chrest said.

GREENSPACE MASTER PLAN

The greenspace master plan, approved by council in February 2015, will see several components tackled this year. One notable project will be transforming a parking lot on the east side of the A.R. McDiarmid Civic Complex into a usable greenspace.

New signage is in the works for all city parks, and a five-year strategy begins this year.

“They all have a different style of sign and we’re trying to get some consistency there,” city manager Scott Hildebrand said.

The city hall plaza will undergo some maintenance and upgrades this year as well. In partnership with Brandon School Division, St. Augustine School playground will be replaced, and the sports field at Valleyview School will have the turf replaced.

Another component of the greenspace master plan is to reconstruct pathways throughout the city. This year, the pathway on Braecrest Drive, between First and 18th streets, will be resurfaced.

The greenspace master plan links together with the long-term plans for Assiniboine River corridor as well as the plans for the outdoor sports complex.

OUTDOOR SPORTS COMPLEX

The final draft of the outdoor sports complex feasibility study is complete, and will be presented to council on April 18. Three potential sites were presented at an open house last November: the corner of First Street and Veterans Way, property north of Assiniboine Community College on the North Hill, and an area at the southeast corner of the city along 17th Street East. Consultants with HTFC Planning & Design were hired for the project.

The choice that most people seemed to prefer was the ACC location.

Mayor Chrest said he’s looking forward to this project moving ahead, as soccer players in the city are desperate for a new facility.

“There’s hundreds or probably thousands that play the sport, primarily kids in our community,” he said. “We had a fairly good facility for that, but then it was ravaged by the floods, so we’re kind of out of business at Optimist Park.”

ASSINIBOINE RIVER CORRIDOR

The master plan for the Assiniboine River corridor is also expected to come to council in April. The 20-year, $25-million proposed plan was presented to the public last November. It incorporates a large naturalization aspect, a revamped Riverbank Discovery Centre with an extensive garden area and a festival park for events.

Over the last few months, work has continued on tweaking details of the plan by HTFC Planning & Design. Major floods in 2011 and 2014 had a devastating impact on the city’s river corridor.

“It’s really exciting to actually present … the official plan and for this area to have a vision and a focus again,” said Lois MacDonald, manager of Brandon Riverbank Inc. “All of us know that since 2011, it has really been difficult and we’ve had a lot of barriers that we’ve come up against. So it’s nice to have some solutions to some of those barriers. It’s nice to be able to have a clear path in our mind.”

DRAINAGE

A master plan for the city’s drainage system is 50 per cent complete, according to Hildebrand.

“The initial and largest component — the data collection — is just about finished, and it’ll take two to three months to analyze and model the system,” Hildebrand said, adding a final report should be ready by July at the latest.

“We should be ready to go to start making decisions then mid-year.”

There are some trouble spots in the city when it comes to drainage; Richmond Avenue near Shoppers Mall is one example of an area that continually floods during heavy rainfall.

“There’s a few other problem areas that we know are concerns, but we wanted to understand the bigger drainage issue so that we weren’t just simply moving that problem to another area,” Hildebrand said.

CEMETERY

City council adopted the cemetery master plan in July 2015. However, it is in limbo until the drainage plan is complete. The city hired LEES + Associates Landscape Architects and Planners to prepare the plan, which includes a major expansion onto adjacent lands at 1200 Aberdeen Ave. and 900 Balmoral Ave.

“I know they’re working on the drainage in that area in conjunction with the drainage master plan,” Hildebrand said. “That’s an important part because that whole south end … drains all the way to the east and through that whole area, so once that drainage plan is done, we’ll be able to move a lot quicker with the cemetery master plan.”

The expansion is necessary to keep up with population growth in the city. The plan also calls for a refurbished Veterans Precinct, a Muslim section and a green burial area. It is expected the plan will be completed in two phases at an estimated cost of $5.6 million.

WATER TREATMENT PLANT

In late 2015, a master plan was completed to overhaul and refurbish the water treatment facility. An application was submitted to the New Building Canada Fund last year, in hopes of tri-level funding for the major project.

“We do want to get started on this one right away,” Hildebrand said. “It’s a complete overhaul, it’s a huge project in the range of $60 million to upgrade that facility.”

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