Construction for Weyburn's new hospital is underway, and Fifth Avenue north is temporarily closed to upgrade the infrastructure in the area. While this may mean some minor inconvenience for some, there is work available as our community reaches this long-term goal.

"It has been a long process. Certainly, this will be one of the largest infrastructure developments for wavering in some time and for the government as well," MLA for Weyburn Big-Muddy, Dustin Duncan said. "So these projects always take a lot of time and a lot of planning and working with the local community and our terrific Weyburn & District Hospital foundation to get us to the point where people can see now the construction is underway." 

The project will be about two years of work for all involved, after well over a decade of fundraising and so much hard work by the Weyburn & District Hospital Foundation.

"It's been really exciting to see over the summer, Wright Construction not only be chosen, given their track record of producing great projects all around the province including Weyburn, with the Legacy Park Elementary School and the Spark Centre, so seeing them being chosen and now getting to the point where they are on the ground doing some of the early works and putting a call out to hire some local folks that want to take part in the construction," he commented. 

The work is expected to take two years.

"So it'll be a couple of years of employment for trades people both from the area and those that might be in the area for the next couple of years, depending on where Wright Construction has to go in terms of getting qualified tradespeople to work on the project, but I know that they're engaging with the local community to see as much of that employment come right from Weyburn and area, and I think that's a great thing." 

Duncan said he hopes people see that temporary road closures are a small inconvenience for a longer-term project that is going to serve the community and the area for many decades to come.

"It is going to mean some small inconveniences during construction, such as the Fifth Avenue being shut down for a short amount of time. It's an area that had been identified by everybody involved, including the city, and the city has been a great partner and working towards getting us to this point. But with any large infrastructure projects in an area that needed to have those infrastructure upgrades in order to accommodate the amount of infrastructure that is needed for a hospital, it's meant a small inconvenience."

"I hope people can just be patient, and knowing that they're being inconvenienced because of the fact that a hospital is being built, and ultimately that's the goal that everybody doesn't mind."

Other infrastructure projects that have been undertaken in our area and around the province over the last number of years, he noted, such as the passing lanes on Highways 39 and 6, come with some inconveniences for a temporary amount of time while construction crews are on site.

"Ultimately it's for the greater good to see these projects move forward, so I hope people can see that you know a small temporary inconvenience is going to result in better infrastructure, whether that mean roads and highways and in our case the hospital, but it's ultimately going to benefit everybody." 

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