Contract awarded for repair of Port Dalhousie piers
$26.3-million project to be completed by spring 2021
A $26.3-million contract to repair the Port Dalhousie Piers has been awarded to an Oakville company.
The Ministry of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard announced Monday that Bronte Construction will restore the piers. It said the company is mobilizing at the site this week and will start construction in early 2019.
The project is expected to be completed by March 2021.
Once the piers are fixed they’ll be handed over to their new owner, the City of St. Catharines, for future upkeep and maintenance.
The federal government closed off sections of the popular east and west piers with fencing in 2015 for safety reasons. Engineer-
ing investigations found the substructure, which dates back to the 1870s, was severely deteriorating and there were no viable short-term solutions to fix it.
The concrete piers were built on a timber crib base and sections of wood had rotted away, leaving nothing to support part of the concrete walkway.
Ministry officials told the media in 2016 that the piers were in worse shape than originally thought and that the biggest concern was not part of the deck falling down, but that the whole piers could tip into the lake.
Public consultations were held to look at various long-term options. Residents and the city preferred the most expensive option for fixing the piers, which would allow pedestrians to walk on them and boats to moor like they did before the closure. That option was estimated to cost $28 million to $33 million.
The federal government said it was willing to pay for that option if the city took ownership of the piers afterwards. The government has no use for them anymore.
In July this year, city council voted to take the piers over once the federal government fixed them in order to speed up the rehabilitation process.
St. Catharines MP Chris Bittle announced in September that the government would be opening the tendering process for the project.
The work includes enclosing the timber support structure with steel sheet piling and rock and replacing the concrete decks with new ones.