Work is underway on the Cedar Crescent Village Development in Port Elgin.
Council discussed the rate of progress at Monday night’s meeting.
Deputy Mayor Diane Huber wondered if the work was moving fast enough, and the Town’s CAO said it was not behind.
The development, which sits back from Port Elgin’s harbour at the corner of Harbour and Elgin Streets is expected to include a restaurant with a rooftop patio, a Dairy Queen, some game space and a market area.
It’s seen some delays over the past few years, in part due to intervention by the local conservation authority which required the proposed site to be moved slightly.
Council recently granted the developer a 10 month timeline extension for the work, with it being substantially complete by September 2026. Right now, it looks like there is some site work being done.
Deputy Mayor Diane Huber asked about milestones in the work, saying “A couple of months ago we received some revised timelines,” adding, “I know that they’ve started to do a little more diligent work there in the last couple of weeks but the timeline milestones mentioned in the document we received, some have been missed, so I’m just curious at some point, what happens if there’s a significant miss in a milestone moment in the timeline?”
Huber pointed out some dates and corresponding work in the schedule like site work (February, March), concrete (April), mechanical (April) and electrical (April) asking, “When do we get to a point where we will hear about a milestone being missed, What is that target?”
CAO Kara Van Myall said Monday night, her understanding of the detailed charts from the developer referred to the start of those periods, “It wasn’t a milestone to be missed, it was a start of that work. So for example, you mentioned electrical– there’s no building started yet, so electrical would not be completed by this point in time. So, it’s the start of the work that they’re doing underground and in order to access utilities, so again, that milestone schedule I provided was the start of the work and no milestones have been missed at this point.”
The schedules show early work like concrete and HVAC/ mechanical, and masonry have April start dates. Framing is listed to start in June.
The Town has signed a 50-year lease with the developer to build and operate the project on Town owned land.
