BANFF – Banff's elected officials are sticking with their original plan to remove the pedestrian area along the 100 and 200 blocks of Banff Avenue in mid-September.
Council voted Friday (Aug. 14) to officially end the temporary road closure on Sept. 14, three days later that what was approved in May.
The motion was unanimous, even though several local businesses sent letters to, or appeared in front of council earlier this week to advocate for extending the closure until the end of October.
Mayor Karen Sorensen said the municipality needs to get back to its regular business, not just responding to COVID-19.
"I think before we look at any extensions, or we talk about the potential for the future, we need to go through the appropriate process for public feedback," Sorensen said.
"I feel very strongly that we need more public feedback moving forward and I think the other part of this is, I really think it is important that the municipality starts getting back to doing the work that we need to do.
"We have been talking about COVID-19 in every sense of the word for months now and all of our decisions on COVID have been on a rollercoaster of doing the best we can in the moment. But in the normal world, we have real work that needs to be done in the fall and real staffing issues."
Director of planning and development Darren Enns briefed council on a number of projects underway that would be affected by extending the road closure into October.
Those included scheduled line painting in September for Banff Avenue, a patch of road that needs to be repaired in front of the Rose and Crown and a road closure on Lynx Street for two weeks to construct a pedestrian crossing. He said landscaping work that should be done before the end of September when seasonal staff contracts end includes the removal of the planters and preparing the permanent landscaping along Banff Avenue for the winter.
"We repaved Banff Avenue at the beginning of of summer and we did not have time, quite frankly, to put down the line markings," Enns said, adding signage and crosswalks also need to be put back in place. "We need to get it prepped for vehicle traffic."
Enns did request that council change the end of the road closure from Sept. 11 to Sept. 14. Businesses and the municipality will then have until Sept.18 to decommission any infrastructure and prepare the road for reopening.
"Our recommendation to council is to not wind things down on a Friday, but the following Monday, so businesses currently on Banff Avenue have that additional weekend of time," Enns said.
Town manager Kelly Gibson said the crosswalk being installed on Lynx will connect the Banff Park Lodge and the Homesteads. He said originally a three week closure was requested for the project, but that has been shortened to two weeks.
"Obviously there are construction issues that can arise, but their goal would be to have the closure across only one weekend," Gibson said.
Councillor Brian Standish said he could not support more road closures and detours on top of Bear Street already being closed for construction.
"Even though I had my doubts back in May, I have thoroughly enjoyed the pedestrianization of Banff Avenue," Standish said. "It certainly met the goal of providing more space for social distancing and space for restaurants."
Craig Paton with St. James' Gate Olde Irish Pub on Wolf Street and the Elk and Oarsmen appeared before council Friday to ask elected officials to stick with plans to end the pedestrian zone in September.
"I thought it would be good for you to hear from a business that has not been able to create extra space on the 100 and 200 block of Banff Avenue," Paton said.
He said there have been winners and losers in Banff's business community this summer and there are numerous concerns about whether or not space on Banff Avenue was allocated fairly or not.
"At the expense of others, certain businesses have been given enormous opportunities and as can be expected those given the biggest advantages are asking to extend the closure," Paton said. "I am here to ask you to level the playing field again."
Banff council also voted to approve a bylaw that would expand the outdoor area where masks are considered mandatory in Banff to include Bear Street.
The discussion acknowledged that the way the bylaw is written, it makes masks mandatory in the pedestrian zone area and once that road closure expires it will no longer be in effect on Banff Avenue.
"Our bylaw was built around a closed pedestrian zone," Gibson said. "If we wanted to change it to apply to the sidewalk only ... it would take some reworking and we would have to run it through a legal review."
