The District of Houston is getting a $500,000 provincial grant to help finance an improved Jamie Baxter Park trail to better connect neighbourhoods with the downtown.
The $500,000 will flesh out a project budgeted at $1.517 million with $1.017 million coming from the District’s accumulated surplus to complete the financing.
The trail improvement is part of a longer-range plan to completely rehabilitate Jamie Baxter Park and had been included as a 2024 project within the District’s first draft of a five-year financial plan being considered by council.
But it was provisionally taken off the capital project list as a project for this year last month after not hearing if the application for the provincial grant was successful.
District officials at the time believed that even if the grant had been received earlier, a contractor could not be be found in time for construction this year.
But with the grant now in hand, planning will take place this year with construction to follow in 2025.
The five-year financial plan continues to be reviewed by council and the required bylaw deadline to put it in place is still some weeks away.
Concept plans for a rejuvenated trail plan were released by the District last fall in what former chief administrative officer Michael Dewar called a “transformative” project.
A multi-use pathway would add to the “pedestrian friendliness of the community, especially looking at connecting the upper portion of the community with the downtown in many of the services and, additionally, it’s one that will potentially lessen some of the less desirable activities that we find happening around Jamie Baxter Park every now and then,” he said at the time.
The pathway itself is part of a multi-million plan to transform and modernize Jamie Baxter Park over three phases.
In its entirety, three phases would cost an estimated $7.5 million and the trail specifically is now included in the District’s strategic development plan.
The estimated rail cost does include a contingency of 20 per cent and would need to be refined once concept drawings prepared by District consultants Urban Systems are turned into detailed plans for construction.
The $500,000 was part of $24 million handed out for 80 projects aimed at better walking and/or cycling projects around the province.
Smithers is receiving $500,000 for a 1.9km long, 3 metre-wide paved multi-use path linking one existing path with the Cycle 16 multi-use path on the west side of the Bulkley River Bridge.
Burns Lake is also getting a grant for its own multi-use pathway.