Anyone who has visited the courtyard behind Tom Davies Square lately may have noticed it’s looking a bit rough.
The area, which is close to the recently-shuttered warming centre for the city’s vulnerable population, has sustained some damage. The courtyard is also in need of landscaping.
Kevin Fowke, manager of corporate services for the City of Greater Sudbury, said not only are repairs in the works, but so is a great deal of weeding.
The $9.31 million redesign of Tom Davies Square had the goal of creating “an attractive and multi-functional public space, with an environmentally-friendly design,” according to the city. “This will present opportunities to support more programming and make active use of adjacent indoor spaces.”
The area was created, said Fowke, in response to the need to fix the parking garage that sits underneath.
“It wasn't just to build a nice looking courtyard,” Fowke told Sudbury.com. “Most of the work, you can't even see because it’s for the membrane on the parking garage that's underneath Tom Davis Square.”
Fowke said when the repairs were needed, the city replaced the existing stonework that had been in place since Tom Davies was built.
Part of the Downtown Sudbury Master Plan, the courtyard includes an imprint of Ramsey Lake built into the paving stones, an elevated stage and performing area, along with seating, benches, a boardwalk area and a lot of new greenspaces.
In 2019, pre-pandemic, the area was used for events such as a Christmas market.
It is these areas that have fallen to disrepair, both due to the landscape scheduling, and according to Fowke, the location of the warming centre located at 199 Larch, which closed its doors on May 31.
“Some of that damage occurred throughout the pandemic as the city stood up with a number of social services, not the least of which was a warming and cooling shelter,” said Fowke. “We created that service here in meeting room facilities at Tom Davies Square and so there's been some damage to the building, both inside and out.”
He said the city is planning to be finished with repairs by October, as the pre-made boardwalk sections will need to be special ordered, and most contractors are also facing challenges of late, with staffing and supply shortages affecting cost and timelines.
“We'll work to correct that,” said Fowke. “I wish it didn't happen, but it was as a result of (the need for) some of those services that we had to stand up.”
In addition to rusted and somewhat sharp edges to metal attached to the top of garden beds that line gardens near the building, there is damage in areas of the courtyard that have a modular boardwalk, one that sits above the natural ground with individual pre-made sections that sit upon black support bases. Those sections have been lifted in the areas in between the two hills, and along the back of the stage portion, and some of the bases have been moved.
Fowke said that damage has been there for some time. “That's been taped off, I believe, since wintertime,” he said. “If not, I don't think we plowed it during the wintertime. So you may not have seen it, then. But those barricades have been in place for quite some time.”
The same with the stage area, made of the same boardwalk sections. “The stage area has had damage almost since we erected it,” Fowke said, noting this would not be the first Summer that repairs to the stage area were needed.
As for the gardens of the courtyard, Fowke said not only are they designed differently than “your average annual garden,” like those that line the streets of Sudbury, but focused around naturalized and perennial plants.
It does, however, need a good weeding, said Fowke.
There's a motif within the paving stones of Ramsey Lake, and then the hills around it were meant to be the mountains and have a naturalized feature to them,” he said. “But no, they're not meant to have weeds sticking out of them.”
He said the city maintenance team weeds the area annually, and completes an inspection of the area daily.
“But the rest of the plants that are in there are meant to portray a sort of a more natural look and fall in line with the motif of the courtyard than say your average annual flower bed,” he said.
