Work on a master plan for one of Sarnia’s premier parks could start in a few months, a city official says.
Work on a master plan for one of Sarnia’s premier parks could start in a few months, a city official says.
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Bidding on the Canatara Park project contract opened recently and continues until Jan. 26, Steve Henschel said.
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“We are targeting the award of the contract in March,” though that depends on satisfactory proposals, successful negotiations and council approval, he said.
Like a recent road map for Germain Park spending priorities and upgrades, the Canatara Park plan would look at all aspects of the popular, 70-hectare (173-acre) space bordering Point Edward, Henschel said.
The park, which includes a Blue Flag beach, Lake Chipican, a bandshell, BMX park, oak savanna, play equipment and walking trails, the Children’s Animal Farm and other structures maintained in partnership with the local Seaway Kiwanis Club, is built atop a former municipal dump that also accepted industrial waste until about 80 years ago.
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“There’s a lot of conflicting uses we have to balance,” Henschel said. “And we just want to make sure. . . the park meets the needs of users both now and in the future.”
At a recent city council meeting, Coun. Anne Marie Gillis suggested the plan also look at improvements to an animal farm that’s “looking rather tired.”
At that same meeting, the city authorized exclusive use of storage space at a park pavilion by the Kiwanis club, which in recent years has built a new carriage house and log cabin for the community just outside the farm grounds.
Sarnia also has been adding monitoring wells and upgrading containment walls to keep floating oil — a slurry of diesel, weathered fluids, heavy oils and other hydrocarbons left from the land’s time as a dump — from moving closer to bodies of water and private property.
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Meanwhile, parking lots, roads and other park infrastructure need work, Henschel said, noting the city planned to block off the two westernmost parts of the main beachfront lot, where water tends to pool and vehicles have got stuck in snow in past years.
Other lots will remain open and maintained, he said.
“The physical infrastructure, some of it is aging at the park, so that’s been identified as something that really needs to be examined,” he said.
As with other park plans for Germain and Clearwater, there are plans for “extensive community engagement” later in 2024, he said.
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