New lampposts bring a vintage look to parts of downtown Whitecourt

 

Residents may have noticed the lamp posts on a couple of streets in downtown Whitecourt have been updated from the normal wooden poles. The fancier, vintage-style lampposts can be seen on 52 Avenue and 50 Avenue. “The Vitalization Committee was formed in 2011 and through their endeavours were tasked with setting out the vision for the downtown and the highway corridor. This stems from years of work from the committee from various public input sessions on what they feel our town should look like,” explained Jennine Loberg, Director of Planning & Development.

The lampposts are just part of the overall theme for the downtown with several other components put together. “It’s sort of a black, wrought iron, circular theme. We have the lampposts, the street furniture and, hopefully, we’re eventually going to have a new sidewalk that will match as one cohesive theme,” explained Development Officer Stephanie Schaffner.

Residents will notice that the benches already placed throughout downtown Whitecourt are of the same theme as the newly-placed lampposts. “We are going to continue building on it, so it will have that very distinctive look once completely implemented,” said Schaffner.

Some lampposts have two smaller posts flanking the sides of the poles which was not part of the original plan. “Working with Fortis, they have their standards and their posts are typically set back roughly a metre from the curb. With how narrow our sidewalks were that was going to put the lampposts right in the middle of the sidewalk which wouldn’t have worked,” said Loberg.

The team ended up working with Fortis to get a deviation from their standards so that the pole could be closer to the curb than what they would typically allow. “As part of that deviation, they required us to put in some bollards. We lucked out on that because the committee had actually chosen bollards for different parts of the downtown and we were able to use those same bollards that they chose,” continued Loberg.

There isn’t a timeline in place for the remainder of the project to be completed just yet as the downtown vitalization design was just adopted by council in June. However, the designing portion of the project has been completed for both the highway corridor and the downtown. “We know the phases we would like to complete the projects in but as of right now we don’t really have funding set aside for the vitalization.”

The lampposts were a lucky catch as Fortis had identified several poles that needed to be replaced which gave the committee the opportunity to have the poles replaced with the fancier design. “It was on Fortis’ project list to come in and replace a bunch of wooden poles downtown and we talked to them about putting up decorative poles rather than more wooden ones,” she said.

There was a cost for the poles which they were able to utilize through a reserve, but Loberg said the cost was minimized due to the need for poles anyway. “We were able to get quite a bit of cost savings doing it now and working with Fortis on a project they were doing anyway. Fortis said they gave us the full reimbursement of the cost they would have incurred replacing the wooden poles. We’re not going to address the whole downtown at this point, unfortunately, but as we see different opportunities we are definitely going to jump on it.”

Both Loberg and Schaffner will be entering budget season over the next couple of months and are looking to come up with a funding plan for the project. “Council has a big job and a lot of big projects and big priorities so where vitalization sits with everything else they have GOT is challenging. Once a plan is adopted then at least we have the ideas and we can take advantage of opportunities as they arise.”

The vitalization project has also included a grant which is a partnership between the town and local businesses to upgrade building frontages. “As of October 2017, we have awarded over $110,000 worth of grant funding and with that investment from the town we’ve seen close to $850,000 worth of façade improvements in the downtown and highway corridor. We are slowly starting to see the vitalization committee’s vision implemented and its going to be exciting to see it grow,” said Loberg.