Upgrades underway on Albert, MacLean streets
Neighbours unhappy with loss of trees, poor communication
Weekdays around 3 p.m., Albert Street in New Glasgow is congested.
Buses are leaving the nearby New Glasgow Academy, parents are trying to find parking and students are walking home.
With this current state of affairs, the street is often narrowed by parked cars. The time around the school drop-off in the morning isn’t much better.
A new project currently underway on the street seeks to address some of those concerns by widening the street and adding parking spaces and sidewalks around a green space in the neighbourhood.
New Glasgow Town Engineer Earl MacKenzie said these changes should help improve pedestrian and traffic safety as well as modernize the infrastructure to be more accessible.
The spaces will be eating away at the easement that borders the green space on the street, but MacKenzie said they’ve tried to minimize the impact as much as possible by angling the parking. He said a fence that was taken down during the construction phase will be reinstalled as well as the soccer goal post that was temporarily removed.
Alexandria Nunn, who along with her husband Mark operates the East River Meditation Centre on the corner of Forbes and Albert streets, said she was surprised that residents weren’t notified about what was happening or given a chance to provide input before the project went ahead. She said all she received was a note saying that the road was going to be closed, but said it didn’t state a reason.
“A number of neighbours and myself feel sad at seeing the trees taken down,” she said, referring to trees around the green space that were cut as part of the work. “Trees are precious. I can’t understand why public input wasn’t sought.”
MacKenzie said he was aware of the concerns.
“Staff here really value the use of trees. We don’t take cutting trees lightly.”
But he said in some cases such as this it’s necessary.