Cathy Jacobs, the owner of Angels Cafe in north Edworthy Park (owned by the City of Calgary) was told by city representatives on Friday her lease with the city was being terminated to make way for construction on the new Bearspaw South Feeder main.
The City of Calgary is not very popular with Calgarians at the moment, for numerous reasons, but most recently because of another rupture of the old Bearspaw South Feeder main, so cancelling the popular cafe’s lease went over about as well as the feeder main break.
A firestorm of criticism aimed at the city was lit, particularly when Jacobs said she had just renewed her lease with the city for an additional five years.
On Tuesday morning, at city council’s meeting, Mayor Jeromy Farkas asked two top bureaucrats about the lease termination, asking “how is the administration going to be as proactive as possible when it comes to consultation with potentially affected business owners as well as local residents?”
In terms of the termination, the devil is in the details, as the lease agreement has a 30-day termination clause, which can be activated by either party, but more importantly, north Edworthy Park is going to be ground zero for much of the work on the new pipe, said CAO David Duckworth.
“Anytime we do construction work throughout the city, it impacts Calgarians and impacts businesses,” said Duckworth. “You have my commitment to the executive leadership team to make sure that we're consulting with Calgarians and businesses as we embark on these projects.”
Duckworth added the city is at a critical point in its history, and work on the replacement pipe was started sooner than expected, due to the poor condition of the old pipe.
“We can no longer rely on it,” he said. “If we have another break or two, we're at a critical point in time where the city literally could be running out of water. We are doing everything that we can to fast track the construction of the redundant main and last Friday, the contractor started to mobilize to three sites.”
“One of them was the Edworthy Park site, where we are going to have a very large construction project underway. There will be two very large vertical shafts built, large cranes, large heavy equipment. It is going to be a large, noisy, loud, dusty construction site.”
Duckworth said as soon as the magnitude of activity at the site was realized, the city went to Angels Cafe within 24 hours to let Jacobs know it needed to terminate the lease.”
City Services General Manager, Michael Thompson told council there would be no access to the cafe, adding a construction site of its size would not be safe for the cafe’s customers or staff.
“So that's why we let them know as soon as we could about the termination,” said Thompson. “If you go out there right now, you will see large construction equipment showing up and more will be there every day as we start to drive forward with this project.”
Thompson said it’s not just the cafe that will be impacted by the construction.
“We are going to have a lot of impacts from accelerating this project as quickly as we are,” he said. “We will work with Calgarians and businesses as we learn about those impacts and share it immediately.”
Crews will be installing a pipe parallel to the existing pipe, using micro-tunnelling, a specialized, trench-less technique used to install large-diameter pipe underground, especially when there are major obstacles at ground level, which in this case include 16 Ave. NW , the Bow River, Sarcee Tr. and the CPKC rail line.
Farkas asked about the impacts of a different process.
“If the city had not exercised this very difficult decision and option and instead it opted for a cut-and- cover on 16th Avenue, through the business quarter and through residences in Montgomery, what would the impact have been by virtue of not going through the top?”
“We looked at that option and there were issues,” said Thompson. “The existing pipe is very close to where they put in a new pipe and so we would be very concerned about damaging that existing pipe. Also, we would close 16 Ave. completely down, impacting all businesses along the road and impacting mobility on it and through the community.”
Thompson said last week the work would normally take as much as four years, but the city is fast-tracking it to be completed in one year.