Land purchase, lack of funding delay Vogue Optical roundabout

The City of Charlottetown just opened a new roundabout up the road, but there's still no firm date set when construction might begin on an intersection which the city has for years said is a priority: the so-called "Vogue Optical Corner," at the intersection of Brackley Point Road, St. Peters Road, Belvedere Ave. and Falconwood Drive.

It's a busy, five-way intersection that some motorists find confusing, and others avoid.

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For years the city has talked about converting the intersection into a roundabout. In 2015, the city gave the project the green light and said construction could begin that fall if federal funding was made available.

"It can be a bit of a nightmare," said City Coun. and chair of the public works committee Terry Bernard.

"Certainly when you've got five legs coming into it trying to get the lighting, the timing patterns down pat so everyone can move at a comfortable pace ... that's not always achievable to everybody's satisfaction."

No deal for land

At one point the city said it hoped to start construction in the fall of 2015, but nothing happened. One of the problems the city still hasn't been able to negotiate a purchase agreement with one of the business owners at the intersection whose property the city needs.

A spokesperson for Wilson Fuels, which operates the Esso station on Brackley Point Road, confirmed for CBC News it hasn't come to an agreement with the city, but said "we're still working with the city to get something done."

"It's a safety and convenience thing for customers," explained Mark Greatorex of Wilson Fuels. "It's not an easy thing when you start changing access you've got to make sure that everyone's going to be safe, and it's going to be convenient for customers."

'We continue to negotiate'

Bernard said the city has three of the four parcels of land it needs to move ahead.

"The last one in fairness is the largest piece of property that we need," he said.

"Obviously, running a business, they have some questions that they'd like to have answered. We have an engineering consultant that's dealing with that, going over some of their concerns, and see if we can't iron those concerns out."

Bernard said the city is waiting for a response from Wilson Fuels on a offer made in the last few days "at fair market value."

He said expropriation would be a last resort.

"When this project gets approved, we hope to have all the land purchased. So we continue to negotiate. And we want to finish this in the negotiation phase, we don't want to have to go to expropriation."

$4M price tag

The city is hoping the province and federal government will cost-share the project, estimated to cost a total of $4 million. But Bernard said a previous funding application from the city was turned down.

The city is preparing to apply once again. If this second application is successful, Bernard said construction could begin in the spring of 2017.

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