SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The city wants to give Old Airport Road a makeover to create a roadside that is more welcoming to travellers entering the city from Highway 3, and to bikers and pedestrians.

Peter Spearey, in the back, shows Terry Pamplin the preliminary designs for Old Airport Road streetscaping during an open house at city hall on March 4. Spearey, a landscape architect, put together the designs. - Tim Edwards/NNSL photo

"This is such a no-man's-land back here," said Terry Pamplin, speaking of the section of Old Airport Road by Bristol Pit.

"If you're not driving, you almost feel threatened," said Pamplin at city hall on March 4, while attending the city's streetscaping open house.

A wide, asphalt trail decorated with trees along the Bristol Pit side of the road was one of the preliminary designs that hung on the wall of city hall's lower boardroom. As well, a new, nicer looking fence along Bristol Pit was suggested in the designs.

The designs were put together by Peter Spearey, a landscape architect with the Edmonton-based landscaping firm Eidos.

"This is one of the first areas you see coming into the community. It's important that it looks attractive and welcoming," said Spearey, adding the makeover is geared toward more active transportation and aesthetics.

Spearey is meeting with various city departments about the designs. Landscaping plans will be finalized, and construction plans will be put to tender in late spring, according to Jeff Humble, the city's director of planning and lands.

Some $500,000 is available for the project in the city budget, and Humble said the city has applied for an additional $750,000 from the federal government. Humble expects to hear whether the city will receive the money by the end of April.

"If the funding doesn't come through, we'll end up having to scale back the work we'll do this year," said Humble.

"If the funding does come through, we think this will have a huge impact on revitalizing (the Old Airport Road area)." Humble also hopes to see the area rezoned to residential/commercial from industrial.

The two sections of road to be worked on extend from Borden Drive to the road entrance of the Yellowknife Co-op, and from the cemetery road to the end of Bristol Pit.

Depending on how much funding is secured, ditches along Wal-Mart and the Stanton Plaza will be filled in, and sidewalks built on top. The sidewalks may be dual use - one side for bicycles and the other for pedestrians, separated by a median of trees and bush. The sidewalks may be coloured with designs reminiscent of the northern lights, or water and landscape.

The designs include a staircase down to a fenced-in area that would serve as a lookout onto Frame Lake by the Petro-Canada parking lot.

"Every (development) here might be incremental" depending on the funding available, said Spearey.