It’s mid-morning and Carmen Figliano is keeping himself busy cleaning and sorting range balls to the constant ‘thwack, thwack, thwack’ of duffers working on their game.
There’s a dozen or so fairway warriors on the deck at Georgian Greens Driving Range, located at the corner of County Road 27 and Essa Township’s 20th Sideroad, just south of Barrie’s city limits, teeing up driver after driver, sending moonshots into the atmosphere.
For $24, they can hit as many as they want — a great deal, considering the going rate at many other driving ranges in the area is about $18 for a large bucket that has between 100 and 110 balls.
Figliano had to get creative, because his business was taking a beating.
“Business is down about 25 per cent,” Figliano said this week, while taking a short break from cleaning and sorting. “Ever since they started construction on McKay (Road), it’s been down. I don’t know when they plan to open it up again, but I can’t wait.”
According to Scott LaMantia, Barrie's manager of marketing and communications, Figliano and others won’t have to wait much longer.
“The opening of McKay/Veterans is scheduled for Thursday, July 4,” LaMantia wrote in an email to BarrieToday.
That’s great news for Barrie residents and for the many people who live in Essa Township and Innisfil who have been finding alternate routes for the past two years as McKay Road has been closed for infrastructure work.
Adrian Galbraith lives in Belle Ewart and works at Trans Canada Wood Products on McKay Road, near County Road 27. He said his normal commute, using McKay Road, was about 10 minutes. With the road closed, his commute more than doubled.
“With McKay being closed, you either have to take congested Mapleview or congested Innisfil Beach Road,” he said. “It really is a major pain in the (butt).”
Len Hills lives in Stroud and he feels Galbraith’s pain.
For him, getting to and from the stores in Barrie’s south end has become a game of patience and persistence. He has to be persistent to get where he’s going and he’s got to have patience to deal with the delays.
“When shopping in Barrie, we are forced to use Huronia Road, in spite of its condition, to go to places like Canadian Tire,” Hills said. “We then have to deal with the traffic chaos on Mapleview.
“This closure has lasted way too long,” he added.
Not everybody in the area is upset.
Some people, such as John Clarke, haven’t been bothered by the closure. In fact, he said, it hasn’t affected him at all.
“I work in the GTA and go into Barrie maybe once a week,” he said during a chat outside of his home at the corner of 20 Sideroad and the 11th Line.
“It affects my wife more than me. She has to go into Barrie frequently, but it’s something you deal with. It’s not that big of a deal.”
When the infrastructure construction was originally announced, the City of Barrie hosted a public information centre on Feb. 2, 2022. At that time, the project was expected to be completed by November 2023.
However, a tragic crash on McKay Road, which claimed the lives of six young people on Aug. 27, 2022, pushed back the completion date.
In November 2023, the City of Barrie said the reopening was going to be delayed by eight months.
"The intersection was originally scheduled to reopen later this month. However, the road closure has been extended to July 2024," the city said in a release at the time.
The city has said delays from the "complex infrastructure and utility work" impacted the completion of essential aspects of the project, such as traffic signals, street lights, sidewalks, boulevards, and final paving, all of which need to be completed prior to safely reopening the intersection.
Once reopened, McKay Road will be five lanes and will include an urban streetscape with curb and gutter, raised medians, concrete sidewalks, raised bike lanes, and stormwater management improvements.
Additionally, the McKay Road and Veterans Drive intersection will be expanded and upgraded, including a centre median and turning lanes.
