A construction project along Peninsula Road has stifled the start of summer for Ucluelet’s local businesses.
The District’s Safety and Revitalization Project is designed to create protected bike lanes and accessible crosswalks through the town’s main corridor while also narrowing roadways to slow traffic and beautify the town’s entrance with landscaped greenspace, according to the district’s website.
Public engagement on the project began in 2019 and construction was expected to kick off last fall, but was delayed into the spring and then further delayed into the summer.
Pushing into the community’s busy summer tourist season has brought financial frustrations to a variety of businesses that have seen a significant decrease in customers as the work has reduced access to shops and restaurants and created long traffic delays through single-lane-alternating construction zones.
During their June 25 regular meeting, the town’s municipal council received letters from two business owners expressing concerns over the project and laying out the negative impacts their businesses have been hit with.
Courtney Johnson of Image West Gallery and Gifts wrote that her Peninsula Road business has been blocked from shoppers and also noted debris from the work has been a problem.
“The ongoing construction has been devastating for our business (as it has been for other businesses on Peninsula road.),” Johnson wrote.
“There have been large holes dug outside our front door on numerous occasions, and most recently the constant dust from the ground up asphalt would destroy our merchandise and has caused breathing difficulties for our staff.”
She added that while district notices have suggested “businesses will remain open” during the construction, that hasn’t been the case as restaurants and stores, like hers, have been forced to close throughout the process.
“Who is responsible for this? What can be done about it? What compensation exists for our losses?,” she asked. “The project and its timeline are not what we were told and I’m worried for what that means for the future of our store. No one seems to care or is able to tell me who is responsible for that.”
She wrote that the lack of communication from the district has made her business feel “disregarded and ignored.”
“I would ask anyone that brushes off our concerns to think about the lowest possible yearly wage they would be comfortable living with, and then take that number and cut it in half. That is how much some of us are being affected right now. Please hear us and let us know what can be done here,” she wrote.
Amie Shimizu of Howler’s Family Restaurant also wrote a letter sharing the devastating impacts the construction has had on her business.
“This has been a horrible experience and I’m mostly so disappointed that this project was allowed to move forward through our summer when we were promised a fall start,” Shimizu wrote.
She laid out a timeline of various frustrations the project has caused and shared Johnson’s concern about the dust being created.
“During the weekends, the town of Ukee gets to deal with incredibly dusty pot hole filled roads, is there not enough budget in the grant to leave one guy from Hazelwood or the District to continue maintaining the dust and potholes during the weekends?,” she asked.
She reiterated that the initially promised fall timeline would have created vastly fewer concerns.
“There would have been far less traffic on the road slowing everyone down. The amount of stress this has caused financially and mentally is unbelievable in an already hard to deal with season during an obvious recession due to the impossible levels of inflation,” she wrote.
Mayor Marilyn McEwen acknowledged the letters and asked district CAO Duane Lawrence if the project’s contractors were aware of the businesses’ concerns.
Lawrence responded that district staff and contractors have been in conversation “with many of the business owners” and added that Ucluelet’s director of engineering and operations James MacIntosh has kept in touch with businesses as well.
“They definitely are engaging on issues as they are identified and having conversations with the various interested parties and affected property owners,” Lawrence said.
Council did not comment further, though McEwen noted Shimizu was in the audience and advised she would have a chance to speak during the public comment period at the end of the meeting.
Shimizu did so and laid out several examples of her experiences during the construction going on in front of her restaurant, stressing her concerns over the timing of the project.
“I’m open minded and I’m welcoming to change, but where I saw a little bit of a major disconnect was that we were told at multiple meetings and promised that this project would be starting in the fall,” she said. “In my opinion, for the years I’ve been running a business, you’ve got June, July, August and a bit of September to really give’r your all.”
She noted last year’s summer season was heavily impacted by the highway closures near Cameron Bluffs and that the slow start this year caused by the construction has been financially nerve wracking.
“I had a big team ready to go. I’ve now had to let some of them hold back and they’ve had to find other jobs because it’s been quite a bit slower for all of June. Dead slow, to the point where we had to close our lunches,” she said. “We had to make the difficult decision to close our lunches and wait this all out.”
CAO Lawrence responded that several factors went into the construction taking place over the summer.
“I don’t have a complete answer. I have a partial answer to that,” Lawrence said. “There’s no one factor that plays into it.”
He said a primary reason for the timing was that, during the planning and design processes, it was identified that the storm system underneath Peninsula Road had “failed” leading to additional design and engineering work being needed.
He added the Ministry of Transportation has jurisdiction over the roadway and is also contributing funds towards the project, so additional engagement was needed.
“There’s never any one decision point or one aspect of it, but it’s kind of the culmination of a whole pile of factors that built up to delay the project a little bit,” he said.
Shimizu then asked why the project wasn’t delayed a few months more to land in the promised off-season time frame.
Lawrence responded that the bike path and pedestrian improvement part of the project had received a $750,000 grant, which needed to be allocated by March 31 or it would have been rescinded.
“If we didn’t start, we’d lose out on basically the entire project,” he said. “It’s just a whole sequence of events unfortunately and then those requirements for grant funding…We would have loved to delay it for another six months and start in the fall and not disrupt anything. That would have been absolutely fantastic.”
He noted the work is nearing completion and the road is expected to be fully paved in early July.
Shimizu then spoke to frustrations over the changes the construction is making to her restaurant’s parking layout, suggesting she has lost about 10 parking spots directly in front of her business and drivers will now be expected to parallel park, rather than pull into the former parking lot.
“I am all about change for the better and I know it takes time to adjust. But, some of these changes are simply making our lives harder to run our businesses literally forever,” she wrote in her letter.
She added losing the spots in front of her business has decreased accessibility.
“Something I’m very sad to see during this process is so many elder people not coming to our restaurant,” she said, adding that during the initial meetings, she had been told her restaurant would keep accessible spots. “I was promised multiple times that that would be put into the works and made sure that we can still have accessible parking. It’s not too much to ask.”
Shimizu also listed various negative experiences the construction had caused, adding she has seen pedestrians and drivers struggle to navigate through the construction zone.
“Thank you for listening. No hard feelings. I’m just frustrated. I’m a little bit concerned and I’m a little bit worried for our season. It’s very expensive to run a business these days with inflation,” she said, adding tax increases are also hurting. “This summer has been not a good start yet and we don’t have that much time left. I just hope that my voice is heard.”
After Shimizu spoke, the town’s former mayor Mayco Noel took the podium and expressed anger over how her concerns had been addressed.
“She’ll never complain, she’s a warrior,” he said of Shimizu.
He took issue with Lawrence’s response that the $750,000 grant would have been lost if the project did not get underway, suggesting that local businesses have likely lost that much in revenue during the construction.
He added he hoped council was part of the discussion around whether to forge ahead with the project and not lose the grant, rather than relying solely on district staff to make the decision.
“This is tragic. Town is slow and you guys are talking about stuff that’s got nothing to do with life in Ucluelet and I just find it frustrating to see her (Shimizu) here, away from her tables, and trying to figure out how to be open tomorrow,” he said.
“We’re getting hung up on silly things…I hope you can get some breakthrough on some of your planning issues and getting things sorted out so we can get doing business. The only job in town right now is construction. It’s not tourism.”
McEwen thanked Noel for his input, but neither council nor staff addressed his remarks.
Speaking to the Westerly News after the meeting, Noel acknowledged he had been angered by the district’s response to Shimizu’s concerns and suggested the town’s council and staff are not giving the issues being raised by business owners the gravity they deserve.
“The CAO had the audacity to say that they were going to lose that $750,000 because the grant was not going to be eligible for them, but those businesses there are probably collectively going to lose between $500,000 to $1 million in revenue,” he said, adding that he believes the town’s current council might be relying too heavily on their staff.
“I think they’re more just waiting for staff to make decisions…Our mayor and council that we all elected need to be clear on what they want to get done and if staff is not getting that done, they need to be looking at some different solutions. Shrugging their shoulders like they did to Amie and just saying, ‘Oh, well. We weren’t going to get that $750,000,’ that’s what triggered me out of my chair.”
Noel, who opted not to run for re-election in 2022, said he had supported the project when it was first proposed during his time as mayor, but what he had supported then is not what he’s seeing now.
“This was my idea, this was my initiative and what was initially proposed to the community, whether it was the layout, which I think is completely opposite, or whether it’s the no wider sidewalks (decision), which is totally disappointing,” he said.
“Unfortunately, I’m not at the table anymore so I don’t have a say. I’m just truly disappointed to see that nobody is taking responsibility for the terrible, terrible, finished product that I was very excited to see…Every little detail has been, as far as I’m concerned, executed incorrectly.”
He added he’s concerned by the disconnect he believes exists between the town’s council and the current economic climate.
“I don’t think they have a clue how dead tourism is in the region,” he said. “I’m just horrified that not one of them have addressed the simple concern that our economy is on the brink here.”
