Grande Prairie now features a pair of zipper crosswalks

Aug 22, 2018 | 3:52 PM

Two new zipper crosswalks were unveiled today downtown.

City representative Monty Haughian says the crosswalks are a way to add something to Grande Prairie to separate it from other cities.

“The Downtown Association approached us and said, ‘can we do something a little different?’ As it is a spectacular streetscape.”

The Downtown Association presented at least 10 different ideas for crosswalk designs.

“Some of them were very intricate. There’s ones that are three dimensional, that look like the blocks are floating in the air, and there’s colors, but we are a northern city and everything we do has be maintained in the winter and everything else. We went with the simplest we could and still give it a unique look.”

He says they went with the zipper crosswalk because it was fairly simple to do and easy to maintain.

“We haven’t decided yet if we’ll be doing the same thing on 100th Avenue when that’s complete this year.”

The regular price of a crosswalk is approximately $7,000 while the price of one of the new thermal plastic zipper crosswalks is roughly $12,000.

Haughian said they were willing to spend the extra cash in order to add something unique to downtown while remaining under budget.

by Brady Ratzlaff