City of Chilliwack moves ahead with $5.5 million project to revitalize downtown, replace aging utilities

CHILLIWACK – The City of Chilliwack plans to move forward with a $5.5 million project to revitalize a section of Main Street in downtown Chilliwack and replace aging utility infrastructure.

According to item 7.2 on Tuesday’s Chilliwack City Council agenda, councillors will be asked to approve a motion that enables staff to forward tender documents to B&B Heavy Civil Construction Ltd., Ballina Contracting Ltd., and Regehr Contracting Ltd. as part of the Main Street Rebuild Project. Eight companies submitted qualified bids for the project, and the city has identified these three firms as having the top three submissions based on evaluation criteria from a six-member committee.

The city says Main Street has been planned for extensive capital works improvements to replace aging utility infrastructure and to revitalize the street to conform to the new downtown standard as per other capital projects in the downtown core.

According to a staff report prepared by Doug Mossey, manager of transportation and drainage for the city, the sanitary, storm and water infrastructure along the corridor are at end of their service life and need replacement. Public works improvements planned for the area consist of pipe trenching and new manhole installations for the sanitary and storm mains, as well as new ductile iron piping for the water mains with tie-ins to existing infrastructure at Wellington Avenue and Cheam Avenue.

Boulevards will feature an alternating mix of stamped concrete and planted landscape boulevards, as seen along Mill Street and Yale Road. The city says this will facilitate increased drainage improvements and enhanced pedestrian experience.

Traffic signals at the intersections of Main/Princess, Main/Spadina and Main/Wellington will be entirely overhauled and replaced to bring them into compliance with current electrical and traffic standards and to allow capacity for future upgrades.

The city says the Main Street surface works will be constructed in two phases. Phase 1 will construct roughly one half of the surface works from Patten Avenue to Kipp Avenue. Phase 2 will complete the project all the way to Wellington Avenue. The full extent of the underground utility works will be completed in Phase 1.