Prince George Citizen May 31, 2019 by Prince George Citizen

Friday, May 31, 2019 | Your community newspaper since 1916

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

Architect Mark Hentze, centre, and Dominic Ries, project manager, address the media at the site for the new swimming pool in downtown Prince George on Thursday afternoon.

Architect, construction manager chosen for new pool Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca Two firms with extensive experience in designing and building the facilities are teaming up to build the new leisure pool downtown. Representatives of CEI Architecture Associates Inc. and Chandos Construction were in Prince George this week to get a look at the site and get a sense of what stakeholders are expecting out of the facility, which will replace the aging Four Seasons Leisure Pool. Details on the design are still being fleshed out, but Mark Hentze, CEI’s vice president recreation, culture and community said the plan is to build a pool that stands apart and noted a visit to the Wood Innovation and Design Centre was part of their itinerary. “I think the most important way that this project will be successful is that it’s not just a swimming pool that can be plunked anywhere,” Hentze said. “This’ll be a swimming pool that people can say ‘that’s the one that’s in Prince George. What that means just yet we don’t know but we do know that wood will be factored into it.” Bringing Chandos on early in the process has some advantages, local media were told during a midday event Thursday at the corner of Quebec Street and Seventh Avenue, where the new pool will be built. “Collaboration with the design team so

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This map shows the location of the new pool downtown, which is expected to start construction in 2020. early on is what every construction manager wants,” said Dominic Ries, Chandos’ technical solutions director. “We want to have that ability to have that discussion of what makes the best sense in getting in the ground and constructibility.” That the site is on the flood plain will be

taken into account. It will likely mean the pool will be at least partially above ground – flood water can “pop” a pool bottom if it rises high enough – while also taking accessibility into consideration. “If you look across the street to the Four Seasons pool, this pool is not universally

accessible because of all the stairs,” Hentze said. Recent projects for CEI, which in turn is owned by HDI, a multinational firm, include the Delbert Recreation Centre in North Vancouver and a waterpark in Aldergrove that’s also Canada’s first year-round outdoor pool. Reis said he specializes in building pools and arenas. “I travel around the country building those,” he said. In all, $42 million has been budgeted for the project with $35 million to be borrowed. The city has also applied to secure as much as $10 million in funding from the federal and provincial governments for the project. If the application is successful, it will reduce the amount to be borrowed for the work. Design work will occupy most of the year with construction to start sometime in 2020. The Days Inn will be torn down in the process and a new hotel built in an adjacent spot. Sixth Avenue between Dominion and Quebec Streets was closed last week to make way for that project. Keeping the work within budget is “our job,” Hentze said and noted some projects in the Lower Mainland have been put on hold because the costs “ballooned out of control.” Ries said one of Chandos’ roles is to provide the “checks and balances.” “We are in charge of the budget, we are in charge of the schedule,” he said.

Former city manager proposes changes to city’s snow clearing strategy Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff A retired manager has generated several suggestions for improving the city’s snow control service. Frank Blues, who managed snow removal and budgeting for the majority of his 30 years with the city, was asked in March to carry out a review following heavy criticism of the city’s performance when heavy snowfall struck the city this past December and January. A 33-page report is the result and in it, Blues provides a wide range of proposals on which routes and areas should get priority, monitoring performance and setting a budget for the service. They include providing more clarity on what are considered arterial roads. In the snow removal bylaw, the

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terms main arterial roads is used and is comprised of a “confusing” list of arterial, collector and local roads. Instead, he calls for classifying arterial roads solely on function and traffic volume. Blues also calls for reintroducing collector roads and assign them to the list of priority two routes. Blues also suggests relegating hills not on arterial roads to priority two from priority one to avoid the need for plows and graders to travel over uncleared collector roads. With the change, he said a collector road could be cleared first followed by the hill for “maximum benefit to the greatest number of road and sidewalk users.” “An example of this revision would apply to Aberdeen Road which currently has three priority one hills intersecting Aberdeen

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BLUES – Inverness, Walker, Skyline and McAndrew off Skyline,” he says in the report. Either way, he notes both priority one and two roads are to be cleared within 48 hours of an event that has accumulated 7.5

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cm of snow over 24 hours. Reintroducing collector roads will require a tradeoff. “Something has to give, somewhere. We don’t have the resources to do it all at once,” Blues said during a presentation to council on Monday night. On that note, he suggests reducing residential roads in the vicinity of the hospital from priority one to priority three while leaving parking restrictions in place to allow clearing at night. People would still be able to reach the hospital, he stressed, because adjacent arterial and collector roads would remain at their priorities. Blues also proposes a system for risk-based budgeting for the service that would take into account the service levels the city has gone through over the previous 30 years, ranking them from lowest to highest and then basing

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See page 2 for more details and short-term forecasts

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the budget on the 18th busiest so that “you’ve got 60 per cent of the typical calendar year covered.” Other suggestions include: • Relegating civic facilities that get only minor amounts of traffic priority three where clearing would be completed within 72 hours of work being finished on priority ones and twos and after snowfall has reached 12 cm within 24 hours. • Reintroducing a “heavy snowfall declaration” that would advance the start time for nighttime snow clearing on priority ones to 11 p.m. from 1 a.m. Blues left it up to council to decide at what amount of snow a declaration would be issued but suggests the completion time be extended by 24 hours for each additional 10 cm of snow over the triggering point. — see CITY STAFF, page 3

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