Birchwood Park Closed for Maintenance

You may have noticed that all of the entrances into Birchwood Park have been closed with fencing as of yesterday. Parks staff will be making several improvements throughout the park over the next couple of months, much of which was explained at a Public Information Centre earlier this month at Lorne Park Secondary School. The notice, mailed to every household in the community, contained a map/diagram of the proposed work:

• topsoil will be added to specific areas at the bottom of Kentucky Hill;
• the existing path going west from the bottom of the hill towards Clarkson Road will be rerouted to run closer to the fenceline boundary of the development property 
• the multiuse/basketball pad will be repaved
• a new paved walkway will be created going up the east side of Kentucky Hill, with a small paved observation pad at the top -- and a gravel path will lead down the other side towards the baseball diamonds to join up with the existing path
• some invasive species of plants will be removed
• some new trees will be planted
• existing tree areas to be preserved will be fenced
• some new edge planting will be done around preserved tree areas and along the creek

In general, the park will look great once the work has been completed. Areas were disturbed during the construction of the sewers along Lakeshore (which was routed through the park), resulting in the need for soil and pathway replacement. Unfortunately, there was some negative press surrounding this which blew it completely out of proportion. The park land is safe for use by humans and animals; it simply needed some attention, maintenance and beautification. We will be the beneficiaries.
           It is great to have a park like this in our own back yard. Please be patient and considerate. We will have our park back soon, and looking better than ever!

Bore Hole Drilling by Region Staff

You may have noticed some activity on the streets yesterday and today -- trucks and workers on Ithaca and Lefkas Court yesterday and on Kos Blvd. today. They are from the Region of Peel.  They are drilling bore holes, a precursor to the major work of replacing the watermains throughout the neighbourhood.

We may know next week when that work will begin, but we have no way of knowing when it will end. The work is absolutely necessary -- see the previous post about sinkholes -- and we are grateful that it is being done. It may be messy and cause some disruptions to traffic during construction, but that is to be expected. Please be patient and co-operative.

After the watermain work is completed, the City's Transportation and Works department will be coming in to repave all of the streets. Again, we do not have a timeline for this, but it will likely not happen until 2012, depending on how long the watermain work takes.

We will be keeping you up to date through this blog as things happen. Please feel free to comment or question here as well.