City to spend $150,000 to determine how to make Mooney's Bay Park Hill safe for tobogganing

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The city will be spending $150,000 for a professional assessment to provide recommendations on how to modify the Mooney’s Bay Park hill to make it safe for tobogganing.

Mooney’s Bay Park hill was closed as a sledding site in 2017 due to injuries and collisions. In December 2021, an 11-year-old girl died after her sled hit a metal pole. Hazards for sledders on the site include trees, the Rideau River, the Terry Fox Athletic Facility, a parking lot and other park users, such as cross country skiers on a nearby trail.

In 2021, the city said there were at least two serious injuries and multiple minor ones at the hill before the city closed the hill in 2017. At the time, the city had 58 sanctioned hills. But nearby residents said closing the hill didn’t prevent people from tobogganing on it. 

The Mooney’s Bay Park hill is owned by the NCC and is on a long-term lease to the city. Any changes to the site will need to be approved by the NCC and a federal land use agreement will be required, said Dan Chenier, the city’s general manager of recreation, cultural and facility services.

About $19,000 is spent every year to secure the hill, including outfitting the site with fencing, hay bales and padding. It’s not known how much it would cost to modify the the hill to address safety issues and create a space for tobogganing. That’s what the professional assessment will determine, said Chenier.

“We do not have an estimate because we do not have a design,” he said. “We expect it will be expensive, likely in the millions.” 

The cost of the assessment will be split between the city cash-in-lieu-of-parkland fund and the Ward 16 cash-in-lieu fund, with each fund paying $75,000. Developers are required to pay into cash-in-lieu-of-parkland funds as a condition of development approval.

The motion to approve the assessment, which was put forward by River Ward Coun. Riley Brockington and amended on Wednesday, passed in a close vote of 13-12.

Some councillors contended that a professional assessment would provide necessary information to the public.

“We have an obligation to the public, given that this is a destination park,” said Brockington. “We do our best to educate people and have a duty of care to keep those as safe as we can.”

Approving the assessment does not compel the city to follow the recommendations if the price is too high, said Brockington. There is “no appetite” to pursue a $10-million-dollar modification of the hill. Approving the professional assessment doesn’t mean that the city is green-lighting a major construction project, he said.

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, who voted against the motion, was not optimistic the results of an assessment will result in any further action for the city.

“We’re not going to find a solution that will provide a safe place for people to toboggan and sled that doesn’t cost a lot of money that we could invest elsewhere,” he said.

“I expect that the study is going to show us that there isn’t an affordable solution. We have limited resources and we want to spend them the best way possible, and then that will be the end of it. It could have been the end of it today.”