Further to the above:
Moncton council projects progressing
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Times & Transcript
By: Brent Mazerolle
http://22864.vws.magma.ca/index.php?&article_id=12242
Moncton city council approved next steps for a number of municipal projects at their regular public meeting last night.
Council unanimously accepted a project schedule for a proposed downtown centre that shifts around the order of steps a bit but does not alter the overall plan to issue the request for proposals by March 2014 and to select a successful proponent by the end of 2014 or beginning of 2015.
The city has hired the firm Deloitte as a professional consultant on the project, and acting largely on the consultants' advice, city staff are now getting a lot more details and legal issues worked out ahead of issuing the RFP rather than after the fact.
'One of the challenges in life is not knowing what you don't know,' city manager Jacques Dubé said wryly, explaining how since the City of Moncton has never overseen such a project before, it's not surprising that the expert consultants have pointed out better ways to manage the process.
A plan to reinstitute Downing Street, which currently turns into the parking lot of the Atlantic Blue Cross Centre, as a street connecting Main Street and Assomption Bouelvard also took a next step last night. Genivar has been hired as the landscape architect to link city hall and the riverfront with a through street that is also attractive to pedestrians and those using other modes of transportation. The contract, worth roughly $168,000, is part of a legacy project the city is doing with federal help in honour of Moncton's 125th anniversary in 2015.
Meanwhile, CEI Architecture secured the roughly $130,000 contract to perform a two-fold feasibility study that looks at a proposed north end community centre as well as the future of the Moncton Coliseum Complex. It has been suggested the Coliseum could provide some community amenities that would otherwise go to a north end centre, should the downtown centre be built.
Lastly, council approved the mandated public art for Resurgo Place, scheduled to open in 2014.
The large-scale granite sculpture, submitted by artist André Lapointe, is titled Le Mascaret (The Tidal Bore) and emphasizes the tidal bore as one of Moncton's greatest natural treasures. The sculpture is scheduled to be installed on the grounds of Resurgo Place in August 2014.
The granite chosen for the art piece will be of brown hues to reflect the Petitcodiac River and also complements the construction materials used at Resurgo Place.
Lapointe has been a professor of fine arts at Université de Moncton since 1988. His submission was selected by the Public Art Advisory Committee after a Request for Qualifications was issued this past August. The $60,000 public art piece was budgeted in the Resurgo Place construction and was calculated in accordance with the City of Moncton's Percent for Public Art Policy, which ensures that funds are made available for public art to support the flourishing of the arts in our community and to provide for interesting and aesthetically pleasing municipal public spaces.
Resurgo Place is the new home of the Moncton Museum, the Transportation Discovery Centre and the Visitor Information Centre. The facility will feature new exhibition galleries, an education centre, gift shop, café, and an interior public plaza designed to preserve the 1916 sandstone façade of the former Moncton City Hall.
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