After a yearlong fight over the city’s proposal to use concrete to replace the wooden boards along stretches of the aging, 2.7-mile Coney Island Boardwalk, the city’s parks department is offering a compromise of sorts — but wood is not part of the plan.
Instead, the department is promising to use a combination of concrete and a type of recycled plastic that looks like wood. They want a 12-foot concrete section for emergency vehicles, with 19-foot-wide sections of the plastic polymer on either side for pedestrians.
This is not the all-concrete sacrilege that local preservationists had feared, but they still see the hybrid product as a travesty of tradition — not to mention a worrisome indicator of what could happen when the city decides to renovate other portions of the fabled walkway.
The five-block stretch in question is in Brighton Beach, a mile from the heavily-traveled historic district of Coney Island, where wood is still used.
Two small sections of the Boardwalk are already concrete. The push for new materials followed a campaign by environmental advocates and a directive from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to reduce the use of tropical hardwoods from endangered rain-forest supplies.
The parks department’s plan must be approved by the Public Design Commission, whose members are appointed by Mr. Bloomberg. If the commission approves the plan, as it is expected to do, reconstructing the Boardwalk would take at least another year, said Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner.
The plastic composite, which can last 75 years, is cheaper than wood to build with and maintain. According to City Council member Domenic M. Recchia Jr., it costs more than $1 million a year to maintain the wooden Boardwalk.
Under the hybrid plan, it would cost the city $6.85 million to replace the 60,110-square-foot stretch of the Boardwalk from Coney Island Avenue to Brighton 15th Street. That is more expensive than concrete, but cheaper than some natural woods that could last just eight years, the parks department said.
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2 Responses
Typical of the city to waste our tax dollars. I built a 350 sq ft deck for $4k. Based on the above numbers it shouldn’t cost more than $700k for 60,000 sq ft. Why the city has to spend 10 times that is beyond belief.
The boardwalk has to be much stronger then a private deck. Thousands of people use it each day and also police and other vehicles drive on it. So it’s going to cost more money to construct.