Condo project progressing

Construction of the King Street condo project has picked up of late.

Workers have been seen scrambling all over the future site of The Boardwalk building in recent weeks.

Yet Victor Boutin of Everlast Group, the company behind the 12-storey, 113-condominium project, remains tight lipped about progress. Repeated calls to Everlast only resulted in a brief voicemail reply to The Voice on a Saturday afternoon that there is nothing new to report.

Meanwhile, construction has been underway since the spring of 2013. Since that time, part of one lane of King Street West has been blocked off, forcing eastbound traffic to drive on the concrete parking surface rather than on the roadway. It’s impacted parking on both sides of the street for more than a year.

Chatham Coun. Michael Bondy said he’s heard from ratepayers about the matter.

“I’ve had complaints from downtown merchants about the endless diversion of King Street and I did question administration and engineering. I still don’t know why they can’t keep the road open. Even the sidewalks are kept open in Toronto. They put up plywood,” he said. “Here, it’s taking up parking, it’s confusing and it’s hurting the road.”

The pace of the building process hasn’t helped.

“It’s going slow,” Bondy said of construction. “I’ve seen condos go up all around Toronto pretty fast relative to this one. But is there a specific time for them to complete this? No.”

Bondy said while it was slow for a while, he believes it was due to how far into the ground construction workers had to go to pour the footings for the large building so close to the river.

Now that the footings are complete, the project seems to be moving along at a much improved pace.

Mark Ceppi, an engineering technologist with the municipality, said the concrete barriers will likely remain in place until the project is nearly complete.

“It’s going to be towards the end of the main construction of the building. I don’t see them coming off the road until most of the concrete is poured,” he said.

When that is seems to be almost anyone’s guess.

“I know they’ve given us a rough timeline to complete the project. The encroachment permit they have is likely to give them access to the road until the project is completed,” he said.