Bay Beach construction ramps up in Fort Erie
Construction is shifting into high gear at Fort Erie’s Bay Beach.
The new Bay Beach development — with final price tag of about $3 million — will feature a complete redesign of the downtown area surrounding Bay Beach lands, including expanded (and more expensive) parking options, residential developments, a playground, a pavilion, new sidewalks, a new park, and new washrooms and lockers.
The beach will also be fenced off, and an as-yet-undetermined system will be introduced where non-Fort Erie residents will be charged a fee to use the beach.
Construction is expected to run through the remainder of the busy summer beach season, but come next season, Mayor Wayne Redekop said, Bay Beach will be a hot new attraction for the town.
“This will be the place to be next summer,” said Redekop, who did acknowledge the project got off to a bit of a rocky start.
“There have been some issues, but we’re dealing with them.”
Since the project began earlier this summer, a large section of the beach, including main entrance and washroom facility, has been inaccessible to the public. The single entrance created a bottleneck near Ashwood Avenue. The lack of washroom and change room facilities also created a situation where people were relieving themselves on the beach, instead of going to portapotties which were set up outside the beach area. The town has added more porta-potties since those incidents were first reported, and has also erected clearer signage directing people to those temporary washrooms.
Bathroom incidents aside, the town’s regional councillor, Sandy Annunziata, said he is proud to see Niagara Region step in to help with funding.
“This beach is an unpolished jewel, and from the initial study years ago, right through to construction today, the Niagara Region has been there to make sure this project is fully funded,” he said.
Redevelopment of Bay Beach has long been an issue of contention in Fort Erie, where a yearslong battle over a waterfront condo ended amid a blaze of lawsuits and accusations of political meddling from the last term of council. That condo project would have seen a 12-storey tower built at the beach, but also would have resulted in the town receiving about $3 million worth of community benefits, including new washrooms, which the condo developer was willing to build in exchange for the land.
That project was aborted late in the planning phase, and instead the town needed to cough up its own $3 million to redevelop the beach.
When it went to tender in May, the cost of the construction itself rose to $2.66 million and was awarded to a Stevensville company, while another $328,000 was handed to a Toronto planning firm to oversee the work.
The town is only on the hook for just more than half the cost of the total project, as the Region is kicking in $850,000 toward construction.
The town has also been required by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources to alter a portion of a terrace deck in order to provide extra sunlight and airflow to Fowler’s toads. The toad issue added another $30,000 to the final price tag.