A portion of the Wellington Crescent parkway will be dug up and moved south in anticipation of the pavement eventually slipping into the river.

Come winter, crews are scheduled to begin an estimated $9.6-million project to rebuild the roadway between Fulham Avenue and Grenfell Boulevard. The project will also include a kilometre-long riverbank stabilization effort to slow failures along the southern bank of the Assiniboine River.

“We’ve had one failure and, thankfully, it was not a large, widespread failure,” said Cam Ward, a project manager in the city’s public works department. “If we didn’t do anything, eventually you would see relatively large riverbank failures progressing away from the riverbank and impacting City of Winnipeg assets.”

Ward said city officials have been monitoring the portion of riverbank just before the entrance to Assiniboine Park since 2015. The year following, the paved pathway looping through trees along the river started to crack and in 2017 the riverbank failed, forcing a closure of the area.

The city has released plans to rehabilitate the area and a preliminary design for the relocation of Wellington Crescent.

The project will include placing riprap stone to reinforce the bank, shear keys to slow sliding, moving pathways and the removal and replanting of trees.

Relocating Wellington Crescent south instead of shoring up the riverbank was a more economical decision and fit within the council-approved project budget, Ward said.

The project cost would have increased to $15.5 million to build the retaining wall necessary to safely accommodate the 8,700 cars that use the existing road on a daily basis.

Before relocating the street, which would reduce setbacks for homes on the crescent, area councillor Kevin Klein said the city ought to give more consideration to a proposal to close or limit the road to vehicles and turn it into an active transportation corridor.