Work well underway on $5.2 million Riverside Park upgrade

Construction is well underway at Riverside Park, where crews are working on a number of upgrades including flood protection for important city infrastructure.

Darren Crundwell, capital projects manager for the City of Kamloops, said the $5.2 million project will be completed in several stages.

“The first component, primarily we’re focusing on the flood protection work,” Crundwell said, adding the city has received some grant funding to help pay for this part of the project.

He said flood protection measures will help ensure critical sanitary infrastructure in the park isn’t compromised by a high freshet.

“We're constructing a new retaining wall along the beach, raising the elevation of Rivers Trail. With that, we'll be putting in a new three meter multi-use path with all new lighting, some other landscape features," he said.

Crundwell said completing the flood protection measures has been a high priority for the city’s civic operations department.

“We have a main sewer line running through the park and a lift station in the park. If that becomes overwhelmed with floodwaters, we’re obviously pumping stormwater and not sanitary. So it's a big issue for us. So that's why we're doing this,” he said.

“It’s been our number one priority from a civic operations perspective for a number of years. When we do get the more significant flood events, this is the first location that we deploy those flood protection measures.”

Other upgrades to the park will be also be installed while crews are at work.

“Because it made sense from a timing perspective, we are replacing the spray park. It's about 30 years old, it's at the end of its life. Anybody that's used it will see that. So we're replacing that with what we think will be a very cool waterpark,” Crundwell said.

“At the same time, we're demolishing the old washroom building, turning it into a year-round structure, more accessible, that'll be done in conjunction with the waterpark work."

Crundwell said crews stopped working for a couple of weeks as temperatures plunged this winter, but they are back on site and making good progress.

“They’re doing a great job," he said.

"The retaining wall, within a week or so here, it'll be complete along the beach section. So then we'll start with the path work, and building that up and getting all that ready. We want to have this work done by basically the end of April, and then we'll be starting the other phases of the project."

Crundwell said he wanted to thank the public for their patience while work is ongoing. He said the city will try to mitigate impact to park users as much as possible, even as isolated areas will need to be closed to allow crews to work.

“We're going to keep the park open, and we're trying not to impact any events either, other than the construction sites that are isolated," he said.

The Riverside Park project started in November and is expected to be complete this summer.