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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Yellowknife Inn has begun work on a wheelchair-accessible ramp for the mall entrance on Franklin Avenue.

An artist's rendering of what the Franklin Avenue entrance of Centre Square Mall will look like once renovations are complete this spring. - photo courtesy of Guy Architects/Yellowknife Inn

The entrance will feature two ramps leading up to both sides of the entrance way with benches on either side. The ramp will be complete by mid-December, according to mall management.

"I would like to say 'thank you' to the management company for finally getting around to doing it. Even though we have had problems, thank you very much for finally putting it in," said Cornelius Van Dyke, a wheelchair user who hasn't visited the upper level of the mall in years.

"It's good to see. I'm glad that they're finally doing it, but I'm wondering why it took them so long."

Van Dyke used to access the upper level mall through the Yellowknife Inn entrance on 49 Street, but said he stopped after interior glass doors were installed in 2009, which required patrons to be buzzed through to the mall by hotel staff. NWT fire marshal Stephen Moss ordered the upper level mall management to build a wheelchair-accessible ramp to Franklin Avenue in February 2010.

"It's too frustrating, to awkward, to inconveniencing, and too undignified for me to use it, so I refused to use the mall," said Van Dyke.

The mall signed an encroachment agreement with the city on Aug. 8, the last piece of paperwork needed before work could go ahead on the ramp. Derek Carmody, manager of the Yellowknife Inn and upper level mall, said part of the delay was in finding a design that fits with the city's beautification program.

"There was a lot of back and forth trying to get drawings and things like that done to find a design that everybody liked and was happy with," said Carmody.

"It's going to be done probably in three phases because the sidewalks that we're tearing up also, we're colouring them red, but that won't be done until the spring just because of the winter time and we want to make sure with the concrete, we don't want to rip up three things," he said.

For the time being the entrance will be fitted with temporary benches.

Carmody said the first stage is completing the ramp, followed by installing automatic doors, and finishing with the installation of matching red benches and sidewalk.

He said after the encroachment agreement was signed he was surprised to have only one bidder on the $70,000 project, Kasteel Construction.

"The funny thing everybody was on our tail for it and actually only one company (Kasteel Construction) bid on the contract," said Carmody.

Van Dyke said the changes are long overdue.

"This ramp should have been installed 10 years ago when the mall was basically being built and it has been ongoing pressure by a lot of people to get this ramp in there," said Van Dyke.

"(The management company) dragged their feet and put as many hurdles as possible in the way of actually getting it done, in my humble opinion."

Carmody said people don't understand the work done behind the scenes to get to this point.

"It's what I was faced with when I was trying to go through the process," said Carmody when asked about how long it's taken to instal the ramp.

"As with anything, there's politics, or whatever you want to call it," Carmody said.

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