All clear: Sidewalks and streets all open around former Plains Hotel site

Longtime Regina residents might do a double-take when they’re walking and driving downtown near Albert Street and Victoria Avenue.

Everything is back to normal at the former Capital Pointe hole.

The dirt is again at ground level, the sidewalks at the site are open, the orange pylons have been cleared away and the reduced speed limits are gone.

The City of Regina and contractors doing the work there have been more or less on schedule with completing the project.

On Sept. 19, the city said the hole would be “filled by the end of this week,” and the contractor would be finished with the sidewalks, streets and curbs in the area “by mid-October, weather permitting.”

The site at the corner of Albert Street and Victoria Avenue — where the Plains Hotel used to sit — was to be the site of a 27-storey hotel and condominium building. The project was to have featured a five-level underground parkade.

The grounds sat empty between 2011 and 2015, when excavators finally began to dig a hole for the foundation.

Now the blue construction fencing around the site is gone, and crews left a newly built, wide, concrete sidewalk around the area. It extends from McIntyre Street along Victoria Avenue to Albert Street, where it then turns about a half-block north.