WESTLOCK – Rain has stymied work on the $1.4-million upgrade to the roughly one-kilometre stretch of Highway 44 in front of the recently-renamed Westlock County North Sky Business Park, with the contractor now pegging the end of September for completion.
Following discussions with the contractor, county CAO Tony Kulbisky said Aug. 31 crews have been unable to work for nearly 50 days due to the rain — the project includes new turning lanes, lights, and a service road on the east side of the highway.
“There’s been 47 work days they couldn’t do anything, so yeah, that’s been a huge impact on the completion schedule,” said Kulbisky. “So, from the weather forecasts they’re looking at, they’re pretty optimistic they’ll be able to complete it before the end of September.”
Kulbisky said they, along with the park tenants, remain patient and understanding as on many occasions crews needed pumps to clear the site. Presently, the contractor is completing the sub-grade construction, with gravel and paving work to start shortly and Kulbisky said the main access will open as soon as the paving work is completed. Until then, the contractor is asking business and patrons to continue using the south entrance for park access, while the east service road will open on the same timeline.
“I understand the delay. I’ve driven through there after the rains and my God, all the ditches they were working on were full of water. There’s not much they can do when it’s like that,” Kulbisky added.
Once the work is done, Kulbisky said they’ll do an official unveiling of the new park name along with a few other surprises. In addition to the work there, the same crews are progressing on the intersection treatment plan just a little further south at Township Road 594, one of several improvements that include Township Roads 571 and 594 and the junction of Highway 37 and Highway 779, which are slated to be finished by July 2024. Specifically, the new passing lanes on Highway 44 are located at: kilometre 4.175 to 6.34 (southbound passing lane); kilometre 6.949 to nine (northbound passing lane); kilometre 17.16 to 19.560 (northbound passing lane) and kilometre 56.718 to 59.1 (southbound passing lane).
“This (industrial park) is one of the projects that held up a lot of stuff until the county got the agreement in place with the province (for the work). Once we did that, the bottle neck was unplugged to allow development and move forward,” said Kulbisky. “We’re starting to see good progress and starting to see interest in the lands within the business park, so these are all good and exciting things … and there’ll be more information later.”
The background
At their Nov. 22, 2022, governance and priorities meeting and then again at their Nov. 29, 2022, regular meeting, county councillors went behind closed doors to discuss “Westlock Industrial Park Middle Access Intersection” and then voted unanimously to direct Kulbisky to sign an agreement with Alberta Transportation to commit a little over $700,000 in municipal funding to allow the province to tender the $1.4 million project.
According to previous plans, which Kulbisky confirmed are being used, the northern and southern park exits on the west side of the highway are being closed, while the second entrance remains open, and new lights will be added. Exit and entrance lanes will also be added, while highway access to the cemetery, as well as many of the east-side exit points, will be shuttered while a service road will be added.
While the estimated project cost in 2021 was $925,000, with the county chipping in $444,000 or roughly 48 per cent via its general operating reserve, Kulbisky said they’ve agreed to spend up to $716,040, although he expected the final figure to come in around $600,000. Alberta Transportation and Economic Corridors has committed $688,526 to the project and Kulbisky said the county’s share is a little higher due to the installation of the lights and to pay for their portion of the engineering costs.
In the summer of 2018, the province spent $21.5 million to repave 38 kilometres of Highway 44 up to Township Road 594, while work in front of the industrial park and throughout the town was shelved — then-county-CAO Leo Ludwig said at the time that design and property-acquisition issues for the industrial park stretch were still being worked on.
Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken said in a June 2022 interview that when it became evident work on Highway 44 was ending before the industrial park back in 2018, “work started on trying to understand why.”
“To be quite honest the ‘why’ was hinging on the county industrial park and trying to negotiate an agreement with the county on how to properly handle the entrances and the turning lanes and all of that,” van Dijken confirmed at the time.
Past and future work
In October 2022, most of the dilapidated stretch of Highway 44 south from the Highway 18 intersection within the Town of Westlock past the industrial park to just before Township Road 594 received a fresh asphalt overlay as part of “maintenance” work that was intended to tide it over until a slew of major upgrades slated for 2026.
At the time van Dijken characterized the roughly three kilometres worth of work as “a maintenance job until the design work is done on the reconstruction phase” — throughout the spring and early summer 2022, Emcon Services, which is contracted by the province to maintain area highways, patched numerous potholes on Highway 44 and performed the “maintenance” overlay.
In June 2022, the province committed to a bevy of work to Highways 18 and 44 within the Town of Westlock, including “major upgrades” to the intersection of the two by 2026 as the 2022 Provincial Construction Program includes repaving/reconstruction for Highway 44 (two kilometres south of Highway 18 and five kilometres north of Highway 18) and Highway 18, east and west of Highway 44.
