Saturday, October 30, 2010

Coney/Brighton Beach Boardwalk To Sidewalk Uproar

Stroller walks from traditional wood to prototype concrete on Boardwalk.
A boardwalk user walks from traditional wood to prototype concrete in Coney Island. The Parks Department, in concert with the Department of Design and Construction are attempting to replace the historic boardwalk with concrete. The City refuses to allocate proper funds to maintain the wooden boardwalk. (Photo: Egan-Chin/News)

Brooklyn

That's no boardwalk. That's a sidewalk.

The iconic 42-block Riegelmann Boardwalk at Coney Island may be headed for a makeover as a concrete-slabbed walkway, city officials said, according to the New York Daily News.

Outraged residents hissed and shouted at Parks Department officials who presented a $7.4 million project to rebuild a five-block chunk of the fabled stretch with concrete.

City officials indicated at a local meeting they were thinking about redoing most of the rest of the stretch the same way.

"It is a boardwalk! It is not a sidewalk!" shouted Brighton Beach resident Ida Sanoff at the Community Board 13 meeting Wednesday night. "It looks like crap. ... You're looking for the cheap way out and the easy way out. Not acceptable!"

City officials hope to eventually rehab the whole beatup walkway and are leaning toward using concrete everywhere except the Coney Island amusement area, which already got a wood makeover.

"Certainly if we use it and it's successful, as we expect it would be, we would be proposing it for future projects," Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Kevin Jeffrey told the Daily News after the meeting.

Locals, fiercely protective of the Boardwalk, weren't having it.

"This is a historic, hundred-year-old, world-famous Boardwalk ... and we're going to turn it into a sidewalk which is harmful to people's feet, their joints, their bones?" railed Ruby Schultz, 76, who walks the Boardwalk every day. "This is an absolute disgrace."


Read More:

New York Daily News - October 29th 2010 - By Erin Durkin

Call Boardwalk plan a concrete bungle - Borough President Marty Markowitz
New York Daily News - October 30th 2010 - By Ben Chapman

CBS - October 29, 2010

No comments:

Post a Comment