SUMMERTIME BLUES
Kristen Aseltine covers her infant son’s ears to drown out noise by construction crews building a new condo on Sandison Street. She says the noisy, dirty work being done in front of her home is very unpleasant for a young family in the middle of summer.
Derrick Gibson and Kristen Aseltine’s property on a very short dead-end street off Howard Avenue was once a “great spot,” their country place in the city. “But we always knew it wouldn’t last,” Aseltine said this week, trying to make herself heard over the racket of heavy construction machinery rebuilding Sandison Street outside her front door. When she goes outside with her four-monthold son, Bob Gibson in a baby carrier, she affixes noise-cancelling headphones over his tiny ears. Caution tape and yellow construction fencing surround their dusty property, and driving down Sandison and parking in their driveway is forbidden.
“No fun, no fun at all,” said Aseltine, who added her two-year-old toddler David Gibson is often wakened from his naps by the construction noise.
“The No. 1 thing I want to do is let my kid go outside and run off his energy, and clearly we’re not able to do that,” she said. Street reconstruction is normally thought of as a necessary inconvenience, but from the Gibson/Aseltine perspective, this street improvement isn’t for them. They live in one of two houses on the street. It’s being rebuilt by developer Abe Taqtaq as part of his project to build 47 townhomes at the end of Sandison. Gibson and Aseltine opposed the project when it went to city council for approval last year. They’ve accepted that they lost and the subdivision is happening, Aseltine said. “But the neighbours are getting the worst of it today,” said Aseltine, currently home with her infant and toddler while on maternity leave from her insurance industry job.
Her biggest issue, she said, is the lack of information. Construction, which started late last year, stopped for several months and then restarted a month ago. She claims there’s been little in the way of updates. A brief letter that arrived last week informed them that the road reconstruction and sewer installation starting in a few days would mean there would be no access to Sandison and residents would have to find parking on Howard. But there’s no parking allowed in that area of Howard, said Aseltine, who is questioning how to tote groceries to her house and how emergency vehicles could get through.
The letter said work would begin July 6 and be completed by July 11, but Taqtaq said on Tuesday the work will take another nine days. He met with Aseltine on Wednesday along with his contractors, who promised them access to their driveway in the evenings. Taqtaq said his contractors have done everything they possibly can to lessen residents’ inconvenience. “I’d love to not inconvenience anybody. I would love to mitigate it even further, but we’ve done everything in our power,” said Taqtaq, whose family operates the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel Duty Free Shop. He was Mayor Drew Dilkens’ campaign manager last election. “Unfortunately, it’s short-term pain for long-term gain,” he said. “When we’re all done, it’ll be a brand new road (the old was basically a paved lane) with proper drainage, proper sewage, proper storm management, with a sidewalk and good lighting and it’s going to benefit everyone — and I’m paying for it all.” Sandison Street is located just north of Cabana Road. It goes east from Howard, dead-ends at the Roseland elementary school property, then continues east of the school for three more blocks. Taqtaq hopes to have a model home open by late fall and people moving in to the townhouses in early winter. Construction of the townhouses should start in a week or two. He said the project will be a great addition to South Windsor. While Taqtaq and his hired consultants talk about short-term pain for long-term gain, Aseltine points out it’s the existing residents who suffer the pain, and don’t see much gain in a new road that will soon be busy with cars going to and from the new townhouses.
She believes what’s happening on Sandison will happen much more frequently as infilling — building homes in existing neighbourhoods instead of in vacant fields on the outskirts — becomes more prominent in Windsor.
“It’s our headache today, but it’s probably going to keep happening to other people,” she said.