Guysborough has secured roughly 35 percent of its $1.3 million wharf replacement costs and aims to finish construction by late 2026 or spring 2027.

Though a third of the funding is already in hand, construction on a new wharf to replace the ageing centrepiece of Guysborough’s downtown waterfront likely won’t begin until late next year or early 2027.

That’s the latest from Bayne Horton, chair of the Guysborough Waterfront Development Society (GWDS), who confirmed in a telephone interview last week that roughly 35 per cent of the project’s estimated $1.3-million cost has now been secured through a combination of municipal funding and community donations.

“We’re 25 to 35 per cent there,” he told The Journal on June 7. “We have a lot more solid information on what we believe it’s going to cost … and we’ll be pursuing more funding.”

That figure includes $300,000 pledged by the Municipality of the District of Guysborough in 2023 and approximately $100,000 raised locally. Horton said the GWDS also has access to the municipal funds to support feasibility, design, and other “seed costs.” “They [granted] it to us last year, and then we ended up forecasting it forward to this year and next year.”

However, most of that money remains untapped. “We can’t really start to access the municipal funding until we have some other funding avenues in place,” Horton said. As a result, no construction contracts will be awarded until additional government partners come on board.

That process is underway, but even in a best-case scenario, provincial or federal commitments over the summer may arrive too late to secure contractor availability for the fall season.

“If [they] were to come back in the next two or three months and say yes – we’re [still] going to have a hard time getting contractors for the fall [as] they’re probably booking up now,” he noted. “A more realistic option would be next fall or next winter … basically completing construction in, I would guess, the spring of 2027.”

The project, years in the making, is intended to replace the town’s marginal wharf – long a fixture of local industry, recreation and tourism, and considered a keystone of a comprehensive revitalization plan underway – with new infrastructure that matches the community’s aspirations as a vibrant, active and beautiful place to live, work and play.

Initial estimates placed the cost of full replacement closer to $3 million, but a series of revised designs and consultations have brought the working figure down to between $1.25 and $1.4 million, including contingency.

“With this whole marine stuff, you never know what happens when you start to tear stuff apart,” Horton said. “Sometimes … like an old house … you pull back the face of it and you find out there’s a lot more issues.”

Even so, he said, the waterfront is showing signs of renewed life.

“There’s a lot more activity around there … It feels like there’s momentum.”