Riverfront hits halfway mark
Investment group gives $100,000 to River Landing
Lori Coolican, The StarPhoenix
Published: Wednesday, July 25, 2007
A campaign to raise funds for the development of the riverfront portion of River Landing reached its halfway mark Tuesday, with a donation from a local investment firm.
P.I.C. Investment Group, formerly known as Prairie Industrial Chemicals, contributed $100,000 toward the urban plaza currently under construction between the Traffic Bridge and the Senator Sid Buckwold Bridge, bringing the Meewasin Valley Authority's Cameco Riverfront Campaign total to more than $1 million.
Meewasin Valley Authority CEO Susan Lamb said the gift is one of the largest single donations to the campaign to date.
"Let me tell you, the competition for this money is very intense, and we recognize that this (project) is unique and people have responded appropriately to it," said campaign chair Don Somers.
Established in Saskatoon in 1976, P.I.C. Investment Group now owns several companies including ClearTech Industries, Caron Transportation Systems Partnership and Adventure Destinations, a chain of northern fishing and hunting lodges.
"Helping to change a site which was not people-friendly into a destination location for residents and visitors to the city was attractive, and Meewasin's development principles of education, conservation and the environment made the decision easy for us," said company president Greg Yuel.
The MVA's plans for the site, expected to cost about $2.1 million, include a two-storey pavilion with a riverside deck, food and beverage service, bike rentals and washroom; a large fire pit; a water play feature worked into a scale model of the Saskatchewan River Basin; an amphitheatre; and a floating dock for canoe and kayak rentals, a tour boat and a ferry to Rotary Park.
Lamb said cost estimates for the dock have turned out to be much higher than anticipated, possibly delaying that portion of the project until next spring after its specifications can be fine-tuned to bring down expenses without compromising on quality.
Lamb said she met last week in Vancouver with a Seattle-based designer sub-contracted to work on the water play feature.
"It is going to be spectacular. . . . They're the specialty people who design these special water play areas and he says he's seen nothing like this in North America. They work all over the world and he says they're not doing anything like this in North America."
The children's play area, which involves a lot of complicated work with coloured concrete, will likely take until November to reach completion.
The amphitheatre should be finished sometime in August, and groups are already lining up to use it, Lamb said.
The pavilion should be completed and turned over to the city in September, though it's unlikely any leasing tenants will move in until next year, she added.
Concept drawings of the site also envision a future backwater fish habitat and river garden near the Buckwold Bridge, a backwater stream extending north of the shoreline from the river garden and terminating with a fountain, a series of water fountains set into the river between the two bridges and
a three-storey commercial "feature building" just west of the Traffic Bridge.
Those components of the project are at least two years away, because the River Landing site is already busy with contractors and it scarcely has room for more heavy equipment to come and go, Lamb said. The Cameco Riverfront Campaign is not expected to raise funds for the later stages of the riverfront development.
"We're not sure if we're going to do a fundraising campaign for that, because we don't know the exact costs yet. We're waiting for it to be designed and then we'll estimate what the cost might be and figure out where the money's coming from," she said.
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© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2007
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Yet another article outlining plans for what I believe will be a world-class riverfront promenade (or call it what you will). I wonder if the three-storey commercial "feature building" isn't a typo and they really meant thirty-storey?? ...Just a thought. Perhaps the fact that they're calling it a "feature building" means it WON'T be ugly.
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