‘Take a second look:’ City details disruption to 11th Avenue project

A matter of inflation seems to have thrown a wrench into the plans for the 11th Avenue Revitalization Project.

The city said earlier this week that the tender for the project came in too high, so it’s having to re-evaluate the project. Initially, the whole project was expected to cost $8 million over four years.

Chris Warren, the director of roadways and transportation with the City of Regina, explained that the city is taking a step back and taking another look at the project. He said the city wants to keep all the components in the project, but do it cheaper.

“We just want to take a second look and make sure that we’re meeting the intentions of the original scope, and just see if there’s any way we can be flexible in terms of scheduling or materials, to see if there’s any way we can reduce the costs of the work that we plan,” said Warren.

The city comes to an approved budget through its “best guess” around the components and work and estimates from the past, according to Warren.

He wouldn’t say exactly how much over the approved budget the tenders came in at, but Warren said it was “significantly” over.

“This is definitely a factor that we’ve been dealing with in pretty much all of our construction projects,” said Warren, explaining that the cost for some projects has gone up as much as 30 per cent because of inflation.

Sometimes the city can work through and be flexible with things, but it couldn’t do that in this case. Warren said it wanted to be transparent with public dollars.

“We took a step back and we want to look at the scope and just make sure that we go through the right budgetary approval processes and procurement processes to ensure this project is successful,” he explained.

Underground work like replacing SaskTel and SaskPower lines under the road was finished this year. And next year the Crowns will move further down the road while the city is still planning to go into the same blocks to do its work around replacing the pavement, bringing in wider sidewalks, lighting and traffic signals, and adding things like new bus shelters and planters to beautify the area.

The plan is still to have the whole of 11th Avenue done from Broad Street to Albert Street by the end of the 2026 construction season.