Plans by Alberta Tourism and the Town of Canmore to extend the increasingly popular Legacy Trail to the Canmore Nordic Centre have been stalled over the past year by bureaucratic red tape.
The problem, explained manager of municipal infrastructure Michael Fark, is that a single chunk of land needed to completed the extension belongs to Municipal Affairs with the Province of Alberta and, because there is no easy process for that department to allow its use, the entire project has stalled.
“It has added a layer of complexity in terms of getting appropriate permissions to be able to construct that trail,” he said. “If we succeed in resolving the outstanding access issue, we will be able to compete the project this year.
“If we are not successful, we will cancel the project and bring it back at a later time.”
The overall project was approved in 2013, before the flood, at $2.5 million and was focused on extension of the Legacy Trail from the east park gates to the Travel Alberta visitor information centre. That work was completed, said manager of engineering Andy Esarte, along with improvements to the trail that connects the Legacy Trail from the VIC on Bow Valley Trail to Railway Avenue and then onward to the Spurline Trail, which connects to the Engine Bridge.
However, there were funds left over from an Alberta Tourism grant for the trail project, totalling $843,000. Esarte said those funds were then dedicated to this extension and design began in 2014 to figure out how the trail would connect.
The challenging part of the connection to the Nordic Centre, said Esarte, has always been the section of trail that gains significant elevation adjacent to the Transalta power plant and the wooden stairway beside it.
That is where it becomes difficult to hike or bike upwards towards the Nordic Centre and work has been done to design switchbacks to facilitate that flow of pedestrians and cyclists.
The land the trail will traverse is both municipal and provincial and part of it belongs to TransAlta. Esarte said the company has given its permission and because the trail is being constructed on behalf of Alberta Tourism, the Alberta Parks land it crosses does not need an agreement in place. However, while planning the trail, it was discovered a portion of just five metres of the trail crosses land belonging to Municipal Affairs. That has proven to be the sticking point on which it is possible the project may end before it begins.
“Municipal Affairs does not have the ability to provide a disposition on their land,” Esarte explained. “The holdup (for the project) has been exploring options of how to grant us permission to build over a five-metre piece of land.
“It has been caught in that set of discussions with the province around how exactly do we get permission properly for the Town to build there.”
In fact, he said, because it will be part of the Legacy Trail and Alberta Tourism funds are being used, the 4.4 kilometre trail extension actually belongs to the province and not the municipality.
“It is a provincial initiative,” Esarte said. “It is something where we partnered with them in terms of providing the resources to get it done.”
