Parking lot planned for downtown jewel

The prime downtown chunk of and the town bought earlier this year will become a parking lot until a better long-term use emerges.

The town purchased the so-called Collins Department Store parcel in March for $162,000. It is fronted by a tall cedar hedge between the Edward Jones office and the Oliver Garden Chinese smorgasbord.

Council agreed that turning the land into a temporary parking lot will serve the dual purposes of attracting more people to the downtown core and getting parked cars off Main Street.

Council voted Tuesday to lower the cedar hedge and to have staff report back on the details of creating the free parking lot.

4-way stop for Fairview and Spartan

The intersection of Fairview and Spartan will likely feature a new four-way stop sometime this summer, replacing the current two-way stop signs for Spartan traffic.

Council members in committee agreed on the need for some sort of speed abatement measures in the area and concluded that a four-way stop would be inexpensive to install and easy to remove if it doesn’t work.

Councillor Jack Bennest said the signs should be installed sooner rather than later and certainly before school goes back in September.

Operations director Shawn Goodsell pointed out that more stop signs on an arterial road like Fairview are usually not recommended and that there will be extra costs for “traffic pattern change” signs and line painting.

Council instructed staff to bring back a cost estimate.

Bank corner crosswalk needed

For safety sake, council will write a letter to the provincial ministry of transport urging it to reconsider the crosswalk configuration at the Bank Street intersection with Highway 97.

When the highway was resurfaced last year, the only east-west crosswalk painted was on the north side of the corner.

Councillor Mo Doerr said Tuesday that many Oliver residents continue to cross on the south side of the intersection, from the CIBC to the Credit Union, which used to be a marked crosswalk. “People are walking out into the traffic and drivers have to slam on their brakes.”

Operations director Shawn Goodsell said ministry policy is to paint just one crosswalk per intersection. But he said he would “bring it forward in another conversation.” He added that a letter from council might add some weight to his argument.

Streets will be alive with cyclists

The streets of Oliver will be inundated with cyclists – charitable and competitive — on June 12 as the town hosts the Ride to Provide fundraising event and the Hayman Classic Stage Race youth cycling championship.

The Ride to Provide fundraiser start/finish area will be at Lions Park. The five-kilometre course confined to the hike-and-bike trail and a 30-kilometre route that will also venture onto streets in the Tucelnuit area around Black sage and Ryegrass Roads.

The Hayman Classic will be run over a 20.7-kilometre course mainly in the town, starting and finishing at the high school. The race will see some morning road closures on Hillside, Haven, Okanagan and Gala Streets.

Both organizations promise to have volunteers scattered about to alert drivers of the events and warn of conflicts.

 

by Roy Wood