Lit up but fenced off: Yellowknife's city hall stairs closed for months — what's the deal?

Walt Humphries put it best: "What the heck is going on with the steps at city hall?"

Humphries, a Yellowknife prospector, artist and writer, posed this question in his Sept. 25 column for the Yellowknifer. At that point, the stairs to city hall had already been closed for extended periods, on and off, for months.

"The front steps are certainly a mystery," wrote Humphries. "Yes, we have steps, but no you can't use them."

Attempting to solve that mystery took more than half a dozen emails to the city, calls to a construction company, an architecture firm and an outgoing city councillor, and texts to the mayor. 

All that, to figure out what the heck is going on with some stairs — albeit, stairs that cost more than $500,000 to repair. 

What the tender says

According to the city's bids and tenders website, a tender was issued for "City Hall Stairs Replacement" on Feb. 16, 2019. No one bid on the contract and it was cancelled that April.

On March 25, 2020, the city opened up bids again on a city hall stairs replacement contract.

In the bid details, the city states that "over the last number of years," the concrete steps to city hall have been an "ongoing issue." Specifically, it states, the concrete has been degrading and attempts to repair it haven't worked. 

Two companies made bids, and on May 1, 2020, Kasteel Construction and Coatings Inc. was awarded the contract, valued at $503,245.92.

During city budget deliberations a year and a half later, on Dec. 6, 2021, Yellowknife Community Services director Grant White said, regarding the stairs, that there were issues with the metal, the draining, and some other things, but they couldn't be addressed until "the weather smartens up."

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic was causing major disruptions to civic activities and city hall was closed to the public for stretches at a time.

So too, were its stairs. 

Fast-forward to last spring. At a city council meeting on April 11, Coun. Niels Konge asked city administration whether, "after 20 months, we know when the stairs, front stairs to city hall, will be ready for the public to use, now that we are open again."

In response, Johanna Elliot, the acting community services director, said the city had "some things to work out with the contractor, but the stairs are usable and should be open as soon as we've worked out those deficiencies." 

Six months later, a fence blocks access to the city hall stairs. 

What the city says

CBC first asked the city about the stairs on Sept. 27.

In an email on Oct. 4, city spokesperson Richard McIntosh said Kasteel Construction did the work on the stairs. 

He said the stairs have been closed "at various times over the past two years for a number of reasons, including COVID and repair and warranty work."

CBC asked for the city to elaborate. What were the specific deficiencies with the stairs, and when, exactly, have the stairs been closed since the start of the pandemic?

"You are asking for a list going back two years," McIntosh wrote on Oct. 13. 

The stairs were closed for "maintenance work in 2020 (tender issued in 2019) and also during COVID they were closed as access to City Hall was restricted to [the] lower level in order to go through screening," he continued. 

"They are currently closed for warranty work resulting from the original maintenance tender (2020)."

McIntosh said there's no charge for the warranty work, and the city expects that work to be finished this month.  

CBC's requests for an interview with the city's facilities manager was declined. 

Coun. Niels Konge, who owns a construction business, said he didn't know all the reasons for the various closures over the last two-plus years.

"[City] administration has to answer those questions," he said.

He suspects the warranty work has to do with rust on the railings.

"Everybody who walked by could see that the railings already had rust on them after, like, one winter," he said. 

"But again, that is not something that I've been told by administration. That is just my speculation."

Mayor Rebecca Alty was at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland when CBC reached out to her about the stairs. She said she wouldn't be able to get more information before the publication deadline. 

What Kasteel says

Kasteel President Trevor Kasteel said the warranty work does, indeed, relate to repairs to the steel railings — repairs his company started at the end of August.

He said there were "various complications" with the railings, including a subcontractor that went out of business mid-project, and the aforementioned rust. 

He said the rust, as rust does, didn't appear right away. When it did, they had to remove the railings and send them south to get properly blasted and coated before reinstalling them. 

Kasteel said he wasn't aware of any structural problems with the stairs. 

When asked about possible drainage issues, Kasteel said his company is going through "the full deficiency report," but right now, they're focused on the railings.

There were some other minor deficiencies, he said, but that's par for the course with a construction project. 

"Like any job with any contractor, there's deficiencies, and those deficiencies are being tackled in a thoughtful and honourable way," said Kasteel.  

He said after the railings are reinstalled, the stairs should open to the public again.

"This is just a regular construction process with regular deficiencies on a regular project," he said.

Northern architecture firm Guy Architects drew up the specs for the stairs included in the city's 2019 and 2020 requests for proposals. 

The firm said it was "not at liberty to speak about" the stairs.