We have a retaining wall at the sidewalk of our property. I am trying to figure who is responsible for it. We live in the St George Park area. There are lots of these retaining walls in the area.
The one in front of our house is leaning outward over the sidewalk. If it’s city owned, I’d like to start my campaign to get it fixed, since I’m guessing it isn’t something that moves quickly.
Posted Feb 24, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC
If the retaining wall is right on the sidewalk it is the City of Guelph's responsibility to maintain it. Send photos to your "councilor" (not sure of term) of your area. The more frequently you hassle them, the sooner it'll be handled. Especially if a safety concern. Source: worked for a landscape company in Hamilton that was hired by the city to do repairs.
Thanks! I figured it may be a long process, as I don’t think there is a safety issue yet. But it’s definitely taking away from the sidewalk space which is already narrow.
If it collapses and erodes your property, the city would be on the hook for repairing not only the retaining wall, but also fixing damage to your property etc.
There are usually caveats though such as you must have notified them of the deficiency in a timely manner etc. The sooner you notify the proper authority, the better. Make sure it's documented as well (if it's a phone call, record it).
I would suggest emailing someone at City Operations (contacts here: https://guelph.ca/city-hall/contact-us/) before putting a request to a city councillor. Operations is responsible for infrastructure maintenance.
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Typically right of ways extend a little bit beyond the outer edge of the sidewalk. If you have a legal survey plan of your property and know where your bars are, it would be a good place to start.
We don’t have a land survey. But I will look into getting one. Thank you!
I’ve recently looked into this. Start at landsurveyrecords.com - one may already exist. After that, check with the cities planning and/or building department. Finally, try calling 2-3 local land surveyors - they may have one on file. This is what happened to me, it was never uploaded to landsurveyrecords.com but Van Harten had one on file. If there is in fact no land survey on record you’re looking at $3,000-$4,000 for a new one.
Holy! I didn’t realize it was that expensive to get a new one. Luckily I found ours in the site you mentioned. $150 is a lot better than $2000+! Thank you!
You may be already aware, there are land registry offices where you can find past legal surveys. If you have the legal description of your property you may be able to use that.
Worth a shot!
Thank you for that information. I didn’t know that!
You might be able to eyeball it yourself here:
https://maps.grandriver.ca/web-gis/public/?theme=MYP&bbox=555855,4818926,565613,4824334
Ooooh. From that map, the wall is on city property. Thanks so much for that map. I had never seen that before!
Be careful about this map, it is really meant to serve as a guide. The aerial photos don't line up exactly with the lines. You can maybe do an adjustment yourself by looking at fences or other markers so you can "realign" it, but best is to just call the city and they can come out and determine.
Just thought about another thing as I was typing this, if you have trees in front of your house or neighbours have trees, you can see who they belong to and it'll give you an idea of where the edges are, especially the boundary trees. https://guelph.ca/living/environment/trees/street-tree-ownership/