Building blocks for a new downtown: sprucing up Kenora's core is the cornerstone for a new economy'.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: NEWS

Digging up the Main Street of Kenora last summer for the Big Spruce downtown revitalization was like swallowing a spoonful of bad-tasting medicine for many.

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"Challenging" and "draining" were the words Heather Kasprick, the City of Kenora's deputy clerk, diplomatically chose to describe 2008.

As a community liaison for the largest construction project in the town's history, she fielded a steady torrent of complaints from store owners about their "lost summer."

"I remember saying to a friend of mine, I don't want to have another summer like that."

"I can think of several downtown merchants that I walk into their store now and they'll say, 'I'm still trying to recover from last summer,'" said Kasprick.

Thankfully, there are no vacant shop and 'going out of business signs. ' A handful of shop owners are taking advantage of a storefront facade improvement project to return their century-old buildings to its Victorian charm.

First proposed as a community plan in 2004, the two-phase $25-million construction job meant replacing aging century-old underground sewer and water workings, installing new curbs, intersections and sidewalks, with angled parking and landscaping.

The plan was to cut car exhaust emissions and improve the flow of summer time traffic routed through Kenora's compact downtown.

When the Big Spruce urban strategy was first proposed as a quality of life and economic development initiative to help lure new small business to Kenora, it involved a huge sales pitch to convince residents of its advantages.

"There were a lot of people that were very skeptical, but the businesses were behind us," said Roy Houston, manager of civil municipal services for KGS Group, the Winnipeg engineering consulting firm.

"They knew in the end it was going to be something very good for the whole community."

Replacing 100-year-old sewer and water infrastructure buried beneath the street proved to be a major headache that extended the first phase of construction into this summer. It means replacing broken or disintegrating clay tiles and removing wooden shoring that was still in place.

Contractors, engineers and city staff had no clue what to expect once excavation started.

"We found a lot of old kitchen sinks," said David Cramer, operations manager for Wilco Contractors Superior, "I guess people dumped the garbage out the front door back in the day."

A challenge was busting through old concrete chutes in front of many buildings that...