St-Henri pool won’t reopen this summer
The kind of delays that plague city projects mean that the Sir George Étienne Cartier pool reconstruction won’t be complete till summer’s end – if then. That corner of St-Henri is a bit of a mess right now, with work also being done on the canal side adjacent to the park.
Joey 08:34 on 2019-04-17 Permalink
Why can’t the city manage these park projects properly? I heard that the tennis courts at Jeanne-Mance Park – which have been closed for reconstruction for two summers and appear to be done – won’t be open until 2020.
walkerp 08:42 on 2019-04-17 Permalink
Corruption. This is why excusing SNC-Lavalin is so unacceptable.
Kate 08:53 on 2019-04-17 Permalink
Joey, you’ll notice in the article that the city insisted on also including a meeting room in the pool project. It’s probably not just here, but I’ve always noticed a tendency to make renovation projects better and more “worthy” than the thing they’re replacing. While that neighbourhood swelters this summer for lack of a pool, the city will be putting together something more like a community centre – in a park.
mare 15:33 on 2019-04-17 Permalink
A few reasons I can see besides outright corruption.
Contractors bid on more projects they can handle, get too many of them awarded but then they can’t find enough skilled workers to carry out the work. I’ve seen so many projects that lay idle, without anybody working, for many days every week, and sometimes for weeks on end, with heavy machinery present but not moving an inch from day to day. Construction companies can make more money by having multiple job sites because there are apparently no stiff fines for not completing a project in time. So they can take their sweet time, then be ‘surprised’ by winter (and probably charge more because of hardship). Whatever they do, the city isn’t going to take the project from them and give it to another firm. The city doesn’t have a lot of skilled inspectors who enforce rules either, since they have been downsized years ago and now hiring them is hard because they are rare and can make much more money in the private sector.
Anecdotal evidence: all projects (mostly sports installations, but also a dog run) in the park that’s close to my house and that I visit daily while walking my dogs, have laid idle for extended amounts of time, and have taken absurd amounts of time to complete. In the last phase they were often rushed with suddenly lots of crews working at the same time and doing shoddy work. Such shoddy work, that it needed to be done again next year, and still wasn’t done right. At every point in time during the last 10 years an area of the park has been a closed off and muddy construction site.
Kate 22:05 on 2019-04-22 Permalink
Good analysis, mare. Thanks.