Sunset Beach in St. Catharines set to reopen Saturday after renovations

A popular beach in St. Catharines will be having a soft reopening on Saturday after being closed for the last eight months for renovations.

It is just a soft opening so you’re still going to see work being done all day Friday.

Everything was completed on time and on budget, despite some of the challenging weather.

“Starting Saturday morning, people can come, walk the beach, the parking lot will be re-lined, people can come down and enjoy what looks to be a fantastic weekend,” says St Catharines Mayor Mat Siscoe.

“Really, that’s what residents have been clamouring for … I just want to be able to walk my dog down there, I just want to be able to sit out and watch the sunset. It’s called Sunset Beach for a reason.”

Residents will now get to see the $6.9 million makeover at Sunset Beach that’s been many years in the making.

This $6.9 million renovation project was all guided by a community vision study done back in 2019.

But it was a $4.4 million grant from the province that really pushed the project forward and helped cover over 70 per cent of the costs.

The whole park had to be closed for safety reasons back in September which came as a slight disappointment for some residents but Senior Project Manager Ralph Scholz says the community will be quite pleased with the renovations and some of the new features.

“We have a lot of sand that flows off the beach and what we’ve done is created dune guards. Those are areas between the beach walk and the beach, we’ve got all these dune guards. Eventually they will grow to dune grasses and it’ll be a naturalized way of stopping the sand from blowing up into the parking lot,” says Scholz.

The whole project is set to be finished June 15.

If you are planning to come this weekend, paid parking is in effect until the end of September.

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