we can get started. So, uh, good morning everyone and welcome to the downtown reimagined projects construction information session. Thank you all for joining us this morning. Um, so today a member of the town of Grimby project team will walk us through the latest information including upcoming construction activities, anticipated traffic and parking impacts, and what businesses and residents can expect as work progresses. So before we get started, just a quick note on questions. Um we'll be opening the floor for questions following the presentation. So when we get to that portion of the session, you can either raise your hand using the Google Meet function or submit your question in the chat. We'll go through each question in the order that they come in. And then we also ask that questions remain focused on the construction activities and impacts being discussed today. um other updates um updates on other aspects of downtown reimagined will continue to be shared through our project channels. So with that, I'll turn it over to Martin Reed from the Town of Grimsy project team to get us started. >> Thanks, Cass. Yeah, so my name is Martin Reed. I'm the project lead on this project, and I'm just going to walk you through what we've done and what you can expect moving forward. So this map here shows you our sequence of construction. Uh this seems to be an everchanging document. Even as of about 20 minutes ago, I was speaking with the contractor and things were changing. But to date, we've installed the water man all the way down Elm Street. So sections one and two as well as down Main Street East, which is three, four, and five. They've been doing night work for the last couple of weeks. And as of this morning, they just wrapped up in section five and they've crossed over into section six. Been pretty challenging. There's been a lot of rock in the ground, utilities in the ground. We dug up an existing old trolley line, so a concrete base and all of the wooden supports for the tracks going all the way down Main Street. and also have to shift our alignment a few times due to some conflicts with existing utilities. We're moving to Rossmore. Um part of the change is that we are trying to get directional drilling going on Rossmore. >> So, as you can see in the next slide here, that's Rossmore Avenue, which branches off of Main Street East. Not too far. There we go. So 30 minutes ago had a conversation with the contractor. We are going to be proceeding with directional drilling on Rossmore, which means that they won't actually be digging up the road with an excavator. They'll have a machine come in similar to what we did when we had to go underneath the 40 mile creek at Elm Street where they dig a pit at one end and a pit at the other end and they drill the water mane in underground. So minimal excavation and one of the biggest benefits to approaching it this way is that it frees up one of our crews so that they can go and work concurrently in another section of the project area. This will also minimize the restoration impacts on Rossmore. It's pretty narrow road in there, so I'm sure the residents will be pleased that we're not ripping and tearing up the road and the curb and whatnot. So, I do anticipate that that's going to advance the schedule fairly significantly for us. So, that's going to be happening starting next week. Uh, for the next couple of days, the crew will be coming back on Thursday because they're transitioning from the night shift back into dayshifts and they're going to be doing some cleanup and some restoration in the areas where they've already installed the water man. So, the rest of the week they'll be kind of bouncing around on Elm Street restoring some of the cross trenches, probably prepping some of the sidewalk that they've removed in order to to actually pour those sections of sidewalk. >> And then on Monday, keep that slide for now. On Monday, we're hoping to start on Main Street West. Uh we had some issues with Bell and their locates. They had some unlocatable plant in the ground that wasn't identified during the design phase and unfortunately we've not had [snorts] much luck for the last few weeks getting somebody out there to verify for us. We have some asurances they'll be out there on Monday. Uh and we've been shaking some trees to try and get somebody out there this week so we can be prepared to start for certainty on Monday on Main Street West. We're going to be keeping one lane open while we do that construction. It's between the 40 mile creek and Patton Street. Goes a little bit beyond Patent Street where we're reconnected to the existing water man. And we'll have flag people on site to direct traffic. So it it is going to back up traffic down Main Street, likely impact Christian Mountain as well, but we're not planning on doing a full closure here. So, it will be daytime work and we are going to be accommodating traffic as efficiently as we can through there. Sorry about that. So, following Main Street West, we'll be moving to the intersection of Elm Street and Mountain Street. Similarly to what we did at the Elm and Main Street intersection, we're going to be doing this as a nighttime closure because of the traffic impacts as well as the impacts to businesses. Uh, this one's a little bit trickier than the Elm Street and Main Street intersection. And that this is a major truck route up and down the escarment. So, the night work here is important not only for trucks, but also for residential and business traffic coming through the area. Uh because it is nighttime work, we are going to again be stockpiling material at the Lion's Pool parking lot because none of the soil receiving sites are open during the nighttime. We're anticipating this is going to take four or five nights to complete and every morning we'll be reopening it to regular traffic operations. So, the closure will commence at 8:00 PM nightly and then we'll reopen road by 6:00 a.m. the following day. >> This is just an example of the detour plan. We've been posting these on our website to keep people informed of how they can navigate these closures. This one in particular is for cars that are trying to get up the escarment. So, because we'll have the intersection closed, there will be no through traffic at that intersection. So, anybody who needs to get up the mountain is going to have to detour to Park Road or alternatively, they can head westbound and go up Wolverton. Truck traffic's a little more complex because neither Wolverton nor park can accommodate heavy trucks. So, we're actually setting up detours. They're out there today on the highway setting up an advanced notification sign to notify truck drivers that they're going to have to either go up the Red Hill Valley Parkway in Stone Creek or go to Victoria Avenue in Binland in order to get up the mountain. >> We're looking at notifying the various uh navigational companies, Google Maps, Ways, seeing if they can put advanced notice on there. Although I do know that once it is closed, they have real time updates that will inform people that they're not going to be able to use Mountain Road as an access. This is relevant for the nighttime closure, but also for the next stage, which will be a full closure of Mountain Street between Elm and Main Street. So, in this section, we're not only replacing the water man, we're also doing sanitary sewer work, abandoning one sanitary main because there's currently two sanitary mains running down the street. So, we're abandoning one of the mains and then transferring the services over to the other main. So, the water man going in at the center line of the road means we weren't able to keep it open to truck traffic safely. and all of the crossings as well because we're having sanitary services as well as water services means that there's just too much open cutting happening within this road to safely keep it open. It will mean that we're going to have to close the entrance to the food basics parking lot that comes in off of Mountain Street there as well as the entrance to the Balsson Lane municipal parking lot. Now, although those two entrances will be closed, we do have to still maintain access for the residents who live on that street. Uh there's also a funeral home there. So, we're going to be navigating access with all of those individual properties and we'll be setting up a meeting in advance of this work just to assess their needs in terms of timing and frequency of access. I know there's also a church there that's currently under construction and I've been in contact with uh one of the members of the church with respect to that and we'll have to accommodate their construction vehicles as best we can. This work is going to be a longer duration. Um I know that the soil conditions here are pretty rough after having going gone down Elm and seeing the amount of rock in the ground and the massive fertilities going through there. So, we're anticipating this full closure of Mountain Road will take somewhere in the realm of four weeks. This is an example of the local detour for cars that have to navigate around. Fortunately, we'll have Elm Street and Main Street open, so it'll be fairly easy to navigate through there. We also have two access to that food basics parking lot. One off of Main Street and one off of Elm Street. And Falsam Lane also has an entrance off of Elm. So, we're hoping this won't be too much of a convenient for the businesses and the residents, but we really didn't have an option here in terms of the full closure based on the scope of work. And this similarly to the example I showed for the intersection at Elman Mountain. This is just showing the truck detour route. Once we finish that section between Maine and Elm Street, then we have to do the other major intersection which is the Christy Mountain and Main Street intersection. So there again, due to the location of our water man and the amount of work through here, we have to close the intersection in order to get it done quickly and safely. So, this will be another nighttime closure, and we anticipate this one's going to take five days, so an entire work week to complete, reopening it during daytime hours. So, this is this is probably the the busiest intersection in town. So, to try and do the work and manage cars just wasn't going to be practical, and it would have dragged the work out to two to three times as long. So given the success of the Elm Street works at night, we're also going to be doing this as a nighttime closure because it minimizes the impacts on [snorts] residents and the businesses. And I'm not sure if trucks drive more at night or during the day, but my hope is that it'll also minimize impacts on them as well, given that we'll have had Mountain Street closed for approximately four weeks before this. Another example of the detour for local traffic. Cars can get around via Elm Street. Um, locals also know they can go down Ontario Street. And there's there's a few different ways they can navigate through, but this is where we're recommending is that they go down to Bells and then use Clark Street to get around this closure. It's the truck detour again. And then our final section that we have to complete will be the remaining length of Christy Street up to the entrance to the municipal parking lot there. So Elizabeth Street dead ends here in a little grass area. So our water man is going to be reconnected between the curved line for the parking lot entrance and that dead end stub for Elizabeth Street. We'll be coming up the east side of the road and we're hoping to keep two lanes open through here to keep through traffic in both directions. But if we do that, we're going to have to restrict the left turn movements off Christy Street onto Maine just to keep things moving because if you have cars queuing up to turn left, it's going to really gum up the works there. So, anybody looking to go onto Main Street, they'll be able to just carry on to Elm and then turn left onto Elm Street. The last step in this whole process, and I'm hoping this will be completed in in more than just one section, is the commissioning process. So, the final testing of the water manes, we need to swab them pressurize them to make sure it's not leaking and then we chlorinate to disinfect them and then bacteria test them. So that whole process is to make sure that the water mane is clean and that it's free of leaks so that we can then reconnect it to the existing system. The reconnections themselves will involve digging up the ends of all the sections of pipe that we have currently installed. So at at this time any pipe that we've installed is not in service. It's just empty pipe sitting in the ground. And then once we've gone through the commissioning process, we dig up those ends and cut into the existing water mane to make our final connections. So the main line is connected and then following the connection of the mainline water man to the existing system. Then we do all the individual services. So at each property line, we'll have to excavate at the property line and then disconnect each home or business from their existing service and connect it to the newly installed service. So this will this will mean some more disruption to each property. Uh although we say we're done installing water main section, that is true in terms of the main line and the larger disruption of us coming down the street. So once we're ready to do final connections, it'll be a large number of individual excavations that we're doing to make sure we can connect it to the existing system. That's the end of my slideshow, but I'm going to go back here because we had some developments here just with respect to paving about 20 minutes ago. Uh we've been tenatively scheduled to start Monday. The contractor is now proposing the idea of doing around the clock paving. So that would mean they have two separate crews working around the clock 24 hours in order to get all of the areas that we've currently installed the water mane restored with asphalt up to the surface. So it's been pretty pretty rocky and pretty dusty. Uh there have been some concerns. a few insurance claims for damaged rims. Doing our best to keep the trenches in in good working order and drivable condition, but it is challenging when especially on Main Street. We had to take up half of the road in order to remove that old rail line. So, the intent is to get in here early next week or even possibly Sunday night in order to start doing the permanent pavement restoration. So that would clean up Elm Street and Main Street, the areas that we've completed thus far. There is still some internal discussions that need to happen with respect to this given that it just came up about 20 minutes ago. But it will be good to have these areas permanently restored and then at least for now all of those areas that we've open cut will be finished until we have to go back in and do all of the final water main connections. For any business owners that are on Mountain Street, uh, one thing I wanted to add is that we will be keeping the sidewalk open. So, the majority of the work is happening within the roadway in terms of the water man itself, but when we go to do all of the individual service connections, we will be cutting across the sidewalk. So that's going to make things a little bit tricky for access. There will always be access from either the north side or the south side, but that's going to change daily based on what services we're installing at that time. So that's going to be something where there's daily coordination as well as wayfinding signage that's put in place just to make sure people know how they can navigate to the businesses that they're trying to reach on there. There are less businesses on this section than there are on Main Street, but we we are aware that especially on the east side of the street here, you have a row of businesses as well as that uh funeral home which is going to have very specific needs for access. So, we will send out more communications when we get closer to the point of working there on Mountain Street, but for now, just know that uh there will be a lot of communication happening, and we'll make every effort to make sure that every business and every home on that section is accessible at all times. They just may have to change up how they're accessing that business depending on what we're what we're digging at that time. And that's all I have for the presentation. Just taking a quick look at my notes here to see if I missed anything. But Cass, if you want to open it up to questions, take any questions that people might have. >> Thanks, Martin. Um, thank you for the presentation and for walking us through those updates. We'll now open the floor for questions. You can either raise your hand, go off mute, or pop put your question in the chat, and then we'll work through the those questions in the order that they come in. I will add one thing just quickly in regards to the night work. Um if you you're probably aware or have heard about it, but we were stockpiling material from the network at the Lion's Pool. Um we did change up the way that we were doing that work because we had some complaints about the noise. So rather than consolidating material throughout the night, we ended up just dumping dumping out of the trucks onto the parking lot and then cleaning it up the next day. We're trying to minimize the amount of noise at night and one of the concerns that's been brought up is if we do have these paving operations running through the night, that is a pretty noisy operation. So within our discussions about how we're going to execute the paving, my hope is that we can do Elm Street during the day and focus more on the high traffic areas in the area where we did more of the pavement removal on Main Street at night. So, we do apologize for the inconvenience of the nighttime noise, but it has been very helpful to the businesses and to people's daily routines, but it is unfortunately disproportionately disruptive to those people who live in the area. So, we're trying to be mindful of that and mitigate it as much as possible while also expediting the project as as quickly as we can. >> That's good, Martin. Thank you. Um, are there any questions? >> So, Cass, we did see one pop up in the uh >> chat. >> Uh, just a question was when do we expect the construction end in 2026? >> So, we're targeting the beginning of December. Uh, we're trying to push this schedule so all the installation is done by the end of November. the restoration work, particularly sod and the final restoration of all the individual properties that will likely stretch either further into winter or obviously due to the availability of sod it may have to be deferred until early 2027. Uh, I will say that as long as we can get sod, putting it down, even right up until December, it actually takes better than sod that is planted in, >> you know, mid to late spring or even early summer. It ends up going dormant and then with all of the snow and the thaw that comes in over the winter, it it really does quite well in the spring. So ideally we want to try and get as much of this done as possible before December, but obviously we have quite a bit of work left to do. So we're just trying to advance the schedule wherever we can. And that's where this idea of doing the directional drilling on Rossmore came up and it's something that we're we're working to execute in order to expedite the construction process. Thanks, Martin. So, if there are no other questions, um we would want to thank everyone for joining us this morning. Um we know there's a lot of information to take in as construction progresses and we appreciate everyone taking the time to join us and stay informed. Um so, we'll be sharing a recording following today's session. Um, we also encourage everyone to stay uptodate on the project by visiting let's talkgrimsby.ca/dr--construction. Um, you can select follow project to receive updates directly in your inbox. Also, please follow our Facebook and Instagram channels at downtown reimagined for ongoing project updates and information. Um, if you have any questions following this session, you can also reach the downtown reimagined team at dt re-imagined atgsby.ca. That's dt re-imaginedgrimsby.ca. Um, so thank you again everyone for joining us this morning. Um, we'll give you some time back and hope you have a great rest of your day and week.