After year, traffic back to usual on Ouellette
Streetscape improvements completed under budget at $6.7M
After more than a year of construction, a major downtown Windsor traffic artery is once again fully open.
From building face to building face, Ouellette Avenue — between Wyandotte and Elliott Streets — now has new bus bays, sidewalks, street lights, benches and more, with a new road down the middle. “I’m glad it’s complete,” said city engineer Mark Winterton, who admired the finished stretch when he drove along it Friday morning. “We appreciate the co-operation of the local businesses during the project.”
The city-contracted streetscape improvements on Ouellette Avenue finished just under budget at $6.7 million, including consultant fees and other internal costs, Winterton said.
The cost projected by J& J Lepera Infrastructures, the company awarded the work by Windsor city council, was $6.8 million. Construction began in August 2017, when workers replaced all underground utilities there. That portion of the project wrapped up in late November last year, with a three-month pause for winter traffic.
Surface work then started in late February, and lasted until Friday, ending almost two months behind schedule.
One hiccup occurred when a section of freshly laid concrete had to be torn up in July after a city inspection deemed it substandard. “We test the quality of concrete on every project we do,” said Winterton, adding the strength of concrete used fell short of industry standard required for such infrastructure.
“We caught it as it was being done, but by the time you know the product’s substandard, it’s already poured.”
J & J Lepera Infrastructures removed and replaced it at no cost to the city, Winterton said.
The substandard material was said to be the fault of the concrete’s supplier, Lafarge.
A construction project in the same stretch done by the New Canadian’s Centre of Excellence on its Ouellette property also contributed to the streetscape improvement’s delayed completion.
“We had to work co-operatively,” Winterton said.
Because Ministry of Labour regulations prohibit two contractors from working in the same space simultaneously, the city ’s contractor had to erect additional hoarding to physically separate the workspaces.
During construction, only one of the street’s four lanes was open to traffic. While workers completed improvements on the west side, southbound traffic slowly flowed. When the east side was worked on, northbound traffic inched along. “We worked very extensively with the Downtown Windsor Business Improvement Association to ensure the project met their needs and worked around their festivals and events,” Winterton said, though he acknowledged the strain the project put on businesses along the street.
Christian Komsa, a managing partner of country bar and restaurant The Bull and Barrel, said he’s glad the construction in front of his business is over. “We’re very excited,” Komsa said. “It’s been a long year, and it definitely hurt business. It was very hard to access the premises.” Komsa said the business dismantled and took down its patio, which was on city property, for the duration of the construction. Now that the work is over, Bull and Barrel will have a new patio built in the next two weeks, complete with a heated section with an opening roof for year-round use, as well as a new cabana with fire pits. Although he would like to see customers return quickly now that his business is accessible again, Komsa said he expects to wait a few months before things return to normal.