Ottawa to spend $150,000 to study making Mooney's Bay safe for sledding
CTV
The City of Ottawa will spend $150,000 to study options to make Mooney's Bay a sledding destination, but staff warn the cost to make the popular hill safe will be high.
The City of Ottawa will spend $150,000 to study options to make Mooney's Bay a sledding destination, but staff warn the cost to make the popular hill safe will be high.
Councillors on the community services committee voted to fund an external engineering and landscaping feasibility analysis to determine what could be done to make the hill safe.
Staff initially recommended spending up to $250,000 to complete the design study of the tobogganing hill, but councillors voted to spend a lesser amount on the study.
The Mooney's Bay hill has been closed to sledding since the winter of 2017. In 2021, a young girl died in hospital after her sled slammed into a pole at the bottom of the hill.
Each winter, the city installs temporary fencing on the hill to prevent sledding at Mooney's Bay
Councillors were told the hill at Mooney's Bay is man-made, and was initially built in the early 1970s as a junior ski hill.
"Our conclusion is that this is a very steep hill and that some of the optional and program-related measures that we've contemplated in the past are not effective at keeping people safe at that site," Dan Chenier, general manager of Parks and Recreation, told councillors.
