http://www.dailycourier.ca/article_444.phpWith a loud construction project pushing through their front yards, residents in the Alexis Park Drive area are fed up with the constant disruptions.For the past month a stretch of the road has been dug up and closed to through traffic. One 80-year-old resident said the beeps and booms from the construction will force her to move.“I’m sick and tired of it – I really am,” said the woman who asked that her name not be included in the story. “It’s got on my nerves so bad that at night sometimes it’s 4 o’clock in the morning before I sleep.”Of all the neighbours in the area the woman experiences some of the worst noise around. Excavators are tearing into her front yard and cutting the corner off her front yard to improve 39th Avenue. She said the city never warned her that she would lose roughly 20 per cent of her land.“I wish I had moved before I knew what they were going to do,” she said. “It has affected my health; I consider my nervous system my health.”Having lived in the neighbourhood for 37 years she said she’s seen a lot of changes. She said she raised her children in that house but fewer families live in the area now.“We were young then . . . it was a good friendly neighbourhood,” she said. “It’s not like that now; a lot of elderly people live around here now.”Even though they grew up in the house the woman said her children want her to move out of the area. However, few people would buy a house with a road plotted to run through her front yard.“They all want me to get right out of here,” she said. “No doubt I eventually will.”Many neighbours have settled with the developer and sold parts of their land to allow road work to continue. However, Randy Morris says he won’t sell off his front yard until he’s offered a fair settlement.“A lot of people sold out because they don’t have a lot of money or they’re on a fixed income,” he said. “I can wait for a better offer.”Because he won’t sell, Morris said he has lived for the last several months with an orange fence erected midway through his front yard.
But the fence is the least of his problems with the construction.When construction workers severed a water main, Morris said for three days his family had to get their water by running a hose to their neighbours outdoor tap. Also, in the hot summer heat, frequent passes by excavators and dump trucks kick up clouds of dust that find their way into Morris’ home. “We have so much dust in here,” he said. “You eat it, you walk in it, it’s in your bedclothes.”Morris said that if the city had sent notices to residents and warned them well in advance about the project that there would be less resistance from residents. But with no early warning, Morris said he can’t trust the city anymore.“Why didn’t they come to us before the project?” he said. “We would have been a lot more receptive then.”The intersection of Alexis Park and 39th Avenue will eventually become a four-way to service the nearby Turtle Mountain development. Road construction was scheduled to be completed by the end of August, but road workers said delays, including the burst water main, have forced the completion date into the fall.Wesbild Holdings, the developer of the project, was unavailable to comment on when road work was expected to be completed.
No comments:
Post a Comment