A city council committee carried a motion Tuesday morning to speed up Preston Street’s lengthy makeover and help Little Italy’s main street get back to business a year earlier than planned.
Somerset Ward councillor Diane Holmes requested $1.9 million from the city’s water and sewer reserve funds, to help finish the dusty and dirty construction project in two years.
The Preston Street Rehabilitation Project began in 2008 to fix the 110-year-old sewers and water mains that have been flooding Preston Street basements for years.
The construction was scheduled to continue every summer until 2010.
With the city’s go ahead, the last chunk of rehabilitation between Albert and Spruce streets will now be completed by the end of 2009.
Businesses along Preston have suffered enormously since the construction began in the spring of 2008, Holmes said. Several businesses went bankrupt and others have reported a 30 to 40 per cent drop in revenues, she explained.
“This constant construction and the dust from some of this construction has been making life pretty unbearable,” Holmes said. “So for both the business community and the residential community, it was very important to make sure this got done in two years rather than three.”
Lori Mellor, executive director of the Preston Street Business Improvement Association, said she is “pretty delighted” with the decision.
“It’s already been a tough year. Facing yet another year of construction was terrifying my membership,” she said.
Tourists can expect Preston Street to still be a mess this summer, but by 2010 businesses can expect to find only decorative landscaping on the agenda.
City Council will consider the committee's decision on January 28.