A century old northwest park will remain closed throughout the summer as city crews continue to repair, reconstruct and reseed following the flooding of 2013.
Bowness Park, a northwest fixture since its construction prior to the First World War, suffered an estimated $3.2 million in damage after the Bow River breached its banks on the western shores of the park in June of last year.
When the flood waters receded, the majority of the park, which was in the midst of redevelopment, was buried under a layer of silt. The flood residue was a metre and a half deep in some sections of the park.
“With some of the infrastructure that was already completed, we had to actually find the picnic tables and everything before we could finish cleaning up the silt,” explains Doug Marter, City of Calgary Parks manager of planning and developing.
“Silt is very hard to remove when you’re down to the last five or six inches. You ultimately end up doing some damage on the turf just removing the silt. So turf that wasn’t damaged by the flood, getting the silt off certainly created some damage. We had to reseed a lot of areas.”
Marter says the crews had completed nearly half of the park’s redevelopment when the flood waters hit but an estimated eight feet of water destroyed all progress returning the project to square one.
“We had to clean the park up, assess all the damage, begin to repair the damage that occurred on the new areas, and also repair damage that occurred on areas that hadn’t been touched by construction yet.”
An extremely frigid winter and a cold, wet spring, reduced worker access to Bowness Park, and crews were unable to resume repairs to the park until early June. The framing of the park’s buildings was delayed by an estimated eight weeks.
While signs of progress are visible throughout the park, there is still a significant amount of work to be done including the restoration of power (the washrooms are in a low lying area and require a lift station to pump sewage out of the park). Recently seeded grass and turf will also require time to establish so it can accommodate the wear and tear of foot traffic.
Marter says he hopes visitors will be able to return to Bowness Park later this year.
“We’re looking towards the end of the year," says Marter. "Certainly we’d want to have it open for skating if we can but that is very contingent on weather. We’re hoping that we’re moving into a dryer cycle now but, as you know, Calgary can be unpredictable as far as the weather.”
“When we open it to the public we want to make sure that they can really enjoy the experience and not be trying to dodge dump trucks and equipment and everything else."
With files from CTV's Kevin Green
