Update from staff received at 12:30pm Sep 1:
The repair will begin September 2nd. The contractor will work progressively through the area without a need for a closure of the boardwalk.
I have responded with this information to many residents who have emailed me, and I have outlined the many steps I had already taken with staff to try to get a fix in place this season on multiple social media posts asking about the Boardwalk in DeWolf Park. I’ve recaptured in full with a post I made on a Facebook post today in the Talk Bedford group and I’m repeating it here so that I can email it out and make it accessible to those not on Facebook.
I worked extensively with staff on this throughout the summer, conducting site visits and discussing how to pay for urgent repairs since the volume of repair was not originally part of the capital budget. We talked about top-dressing with concrete, but it seemed unlikely to remain in place for any length of time. Other potential fixes were discussed but deemed unsatisfactory. The bricks are labour intensive to fix individually, but that is what we decided collectively would have to be done, even though the brick boardwalk is planned to be replaced in stages in future years with concrete. I offered to use some district capital to expedite whatever solution they could come up with for this season.
Therefore, about 3 weeks ago, the Parks team, after obtaining the needed quotes from multiple vendors, awarded a tender for a contractor to complete repairs of the broken bricks along the boardwalk. It was expected to start about 4 weeks after the award. Several construction timelines I have been provided this season have moved considerably, so I didn’t want to promise anything to residents until it was all but certain to go ahead and start imminently. I confirmed with Parks this morning that the work is due to start within about a week. They don’t yet know how long it will last, since it’s such a manually intensive job to complete. The work is not currently expected to significantly disrupt access to the boardwalk, but when the approach is communicated to me, I will share that with residents.
In the long term, as noted, the bricks are planned to be replaced with concrete. The main reason I was able to get a broader repair underway on this is that the planned concrete replacement is subject to budgetary approval. In the current environment, I was extremely uncomfortable leaving this repair to chance and so I asked the Parks team to prioritize a fix, which they did. Moving tens of thousands of dollars around in the municipal operations budget is not an easy thing to do. I appreciate staff for working with me on this and I deeply appreciate residents’ advocacy on this to give me the backup I needed to push for this repair.
What’s uncertain is whether we will face a similar situation next year.
The damage to the bricks is directly linked to the snow removal and salting of the core loop in the park in the winter months. It’s striking how pristine the bricks outside the winter maintenance service area are by comparison. Could the bricks further be damaged over the course of this winter? Yes, and it would be impossible to predict just how many – it’s not always obvious how brittle and on the verge of shattering they are with a visual inspection. Time will tell, and I’m sure we’ll all be taking a close look at the condition of the bricks in the spring of 2027.
More to come when the Parks team reveals some additional details.