SUNDRE – An effort is underway to consider an alternate detour during Highway 27-Main Avenue construction in light of a substantial disruption to businesses along the corridor caused by the route previously in place this past fall.
“We did hold an information session for the downtown businesses to have a discussion on the Highway 27 construction,” Linda Nelson, chief administrative officer, told council on March 11 during a regular meeting.
“Firstly, to talk about the balance of the town’s construction project and then to have a discussion on Transportation and Economic Corridors’ (TEC) construction, which hopefully will begin end of 2024 and be completed in 2025,” said Nelson.
While the provincial government’s roads and highways department has for years been planning a completely redesigned overlay project of the high-load corridor featuring permanent roundabouts, the municipality has at the same time been working to upgrade its underground infrastructure underneath the highway.
The town’s portion of the project started late last year and will resume this construction season after being paused while temporary four-way stops were installed when Highway 27 was re-opened.
Council heard from Nelson that leading up to the meeting with downtown businesses that stand to be impacted, administration had “hand delivered 74 notices.”
Those notices translated to 27 people attending the meeting while another 15 businesses requested information be provided by email, she said.
“And 32 businesses we’ve had no response from,” she said.
The discussion at that meeting primarily revolved around the history behind the 2023 construction project as well as the municipality’s projected construction schedule for 2024, she said.
“Our main focus was on supporting the local businesses during construction,” she said.
“We did take lessons learned from the short amount of time that we were replacing the underground in the highway."
The “traffic accommodation strategy” employed at the time involved closing off the main access to the businesses along the Highway 27 corridor and to instead have people come up from behind using side streets and alleys.
“And this did cause more than an inconvenience to the businesses. It was actually not well received at all; they lost a lot of business,” she said.
“So, we did want to make sure that TEC provided an alternate transportation strategy."
The alternate detour route that was proposed, she said, will go along First Street NW and First Avenue NW.
“TEC will be coming in and placing an additional lift on both of those roads to accommodate extra traffic for the detour in 2025,” she explained.
“When the project is complete, they will come in and mill off that extra lift and repave the roads. So, we’ll have two brand new roads in the community without any cost to the taxpayer.”
Following discussions with the business community, administration next wanted to meet with residents along the proposed detour route.
That meeting was scheduled for yesterday – Monday, March 18. Overall, administration mailed 185 letters to residents the municipality felt would be impacted by the detour, she said.
“We had to put a focus on our downtown businesses. We do recognize that there will be an inconvenience to the residents,” she said, adding administration is hoping the temporary traffic detour will nevertheless be supported by residents to help reduce the impact on downtown businesses.
A general open house is also planned later this spring, although a date had yet been scheduled at the time of council’s meeting.
“We will have an additional public information session in mid to late April for the community at large,” said Nelson.
Council unanimously carried a motion accept the verbal report as information.
