Residents of Sask. town concerned with new downtown layout, 'they've ruined it'

A group of Coronach residents is raising concerns about recent changes the town has made to the layout of some of its downtown streets.

Longtime resident Valerie Rousseau loved the way the streets of her hometown has looked for nearly 100 years.

“Centre Street is the heart of our community,” she told CTV News. “There was nothing wrong with the way the street was before and it makes absolutely no sense what they’ve done to our town,” she said.

“They’ve ruined it.”

In 2020, the Town of Coronach received a federal government grant to pay for the replacement of aging water and sewer pipes below five town streets.

Knowing major construction was going to take place, the Coronach council decided to use the opportunity to revitalize the downtown core in the process.

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“We wanted to make the space look a little less sterile,” said councillor and Deputy Mayor Leanne Kuski.

“There was a lot of concrete, cement and then buildings.”

During the pandemic, the town held information nights, giving residents a look at multiple concept plans.

Kuski says councilors went with the option residents liked the most.

“We wanted to add some places for flowers and add green space,” she said.

Some of the changes included added sidewalk space on Centre Street, 1st Avenue and 1st Street West, while also creating “teardrop-style” pedestrian pads at those intersections as well.

The result was the slight narrowing of the road removing the ability to angle park in some areas.

The group of residents feel there was a lack of oversight and the changes have created more traffic and pedestrian safety concerns — specifically in front of some businesses including the post office and a local church.

“We need room to park,” said Ernest Grainger. “Not parallel park. [People] want to angle park, they want to go to services and do these things.”

“We don’t want to be like Regina,” he added.

Town residents went as far as staging a protest last Wednesday as contractors arrived to start pouring concrete following the replacement of the infrastructure in May 2023.

“There’s still time to change it,” Rousseau said. “We all realize there’s a major cost involved but we’ve had townspeople say they’ll do it for free.”

“It’s a tough choice, money wise,” Grainger said. “Whatever you take to the people paying your wages and electing you. I think they missed a major step.”

The town originally budgeted $5.7 million for the entire downtown renewal project.

But Kuski says cost pressures created by inflation after the grant was approved forced council to scale back its vision by about 40 per cent.

Despite decreasing how much work would be done, the final cost rose to over $7 million before shovels broke ground last year.

Town officials did admit some mistakes were made in planning.

“[Concerns] were addressed,” Kuski said. “We took out the green space [in front of the post office] and put in parallel parking.”

The current state of the streets mid-construction does create some inconvenience and traffic issues, Kuski said, but she hopes the confusion clears when the work is done.

“Paving all the way down [1st Avenue] to the post office actually gives more space for cars to pass,” she said.

The streets remained bones of concrete sidewalk and gravel roads on Thursday.

Town councilors hoped as the new downtown took shape, residents would better understand the plans and they would come to love it again.

But Grainger feels that would be difficult.

“It’s just a disaster,” he said.

Construction will be completed later this year.