Residents who live on or access their homes from Falstaff Avenue will have an opportunity to learn how the aging street will be rebuilt next year.
An open house is scheduled at Richard S. Fowler Catholic Junior High School for next Tuesday.
An engineering firm hired by the city is planning for the road to be rebuilt one side at a time, allowing one-way traffic on one side while the other gets an overhaul.
“We are looking at staging it to provide access for residents and obviously we need to provide access for emergency services,” said Dean Reidt of Associated Engineering Alberta.
About three-and-a-half blocks long, Falstaff is the sole access point for residents living on Fenwick Crescent and Fermont Street.
Reidt expects the work to take two months. He’s hoping to schedule the project for July and August, when school is out and many people are away on holidays.
Besides providing vehicle access, the other main challenge will be completing the work without killing the elm trees that line the street.
“They’re very close to the roadway,” Reidt said. “The risk to the trees is disruption to the root system so our job is to work with the city arborists and develop our design to minimize disruption to those roots.”
The street was built in 1975. Data the city has collected show its substructure is failing.
“If the substructure starts failing then the surface starts buckling,” said infrastructure manager Mark Hussey.
“You get a lot of cracking. You see a lot of water pooling and … a lot of times you’ll see the curbs sagging.”
Roads typically have a 25-year life span before requiring extensive repair, he said. The city has identified other roads as needing serious repair but Falstaff is the top priority location and is the only one slated for such work next year, Hussey said.
The city can repair some roads with simple resurfacing but Falstaff’s issues are more serious, Hussey said. His department has budgeted $1.38 million for the project but the actual cost will depend on tenders received in the early spring.
Services located under the road, like water and sewer, aren’t in need of repair but if any problems become apparent when the services are exposed, the city will fix them, Hussey said.
Staff from the city and the engineering firm will be on hand at the open house scheduled for Nov. 16 at 7 p.m. in Fowler’s lunchroom.
