Two city projects loom large in 2016

If 2015 was for talking at City Hall and community conversations, 2016 should be for taking action.

Bids have already opened for two projects that will play a major role in the city centre.

One is for the construction of a new park on Fifth Avenue behind the Wood Innovation and Design Centre. Initial designs were presented in mid-April and further consultation was done late in the summer.

A commitment to the new park was part of the contract for the Wood Innovation and Design Centre with the province, said planning department head Ian Wells, and the province has kicked in $750,000 for the more than $1-million project.

The park has been widely criticized as unnecessary, potentially unsafe and taking away from prime development or parking space.

Original concept designs put together by the same Vancouver-based firm that designed the Canada Games Plaza renovation allows for main access from Fourth and Fifth Avenues and greenway access from George and Dominion Streets. It will include lighting, furniture and vegetation.

The tender for the park's construction closes in early February.

City Hall is also looking for proposals for its long-gestating licence-plate recognition system, meant to boost on-street parking enforcement.

A budget of $450,000 was set aside to purchase and implement a system in 2014.

The bid - which closes on Jan. 21 - is looking for a system that "will improve current customer service by creating greater vehicle turnover" on city streets. In the first eight months of 2015, bylaw enforcement officers handed out an average of 762 parking tickets per month, more than half of which were for overstaying the posted time limit.

Bike lanes will come back to the forefront in 2016, with an expected staff report prompted by Coun. Jillian Merrick's request to study banning cars from parking in cycling routes.

Earlier this summer, the city also received a provincial grant of $250,000 to upgrade existing lane markings and signage.

City manager Kathleen Soltis said staff would start by looking at the active transportation plan and see what's already identified, then identify which parts of the city's 36-kilometre cycling network would be the quickest to fix. From there, they could narrow down the more problematic areas of the city, she said.

Building on momentum from this past year, expect city council to continue to move forward on targeting problem property owners. In the summer of 2015, council signed off on four remedial action orders, which compel property owners to clean up or the city steps in to do it and sends them the bill.

These included two downtown properties, one private residence and multiple orders within Lombardy Mobile Home Park.