City singing On the Boardwalk tune

By Meg Olson

City staff have set a deadline of next summer to get construction rolling on a downtown boardwalk.

“I’m going to need help at the staff level and from citizen groups to get this moving fast,” said community and economic development director Terry Galvin at the June 10 city council meeting. “I think it will be a tremendous asset to our community. Our hope is once the boardwalk is developed it will attract a whole lot of commercial establishments. It’s unique.”

The plan is to build the boardwalk by segments, starting with the easiest first. The first phase would be to build segments 60-feet out from the street-end parks where H and G streets end at Peace Portal Drive. “If we can only do that we’ll be doing very good,” Galvin said. “We feel the property owners will see it and want to move in.”

The second phase would involve getting easements from property owners in that block whose buildings back onto the railroad and connecting the segments built on city land. The boardwalk would have parking underneath it, accessible from the foot of F street. Galvin said the city was looking at options for boardwalk elements such as shelters, a stage or sculpture display areas.

So far the city has used a $20,000 coastal zone management grant and $70,000 in city matching funds to do preliminary design, survey, soils and title work. “There are still a lot of details to work out but the concept is there,” Galvin said. The funds will get the project through the rest of the preconstruction process and out to bid by February 2003, he said.

The first phase of construction, 3,200 square feet at the foot of H Street and 4,000 square feet at the foot of G Street, is scheduled to get rolling in August 2003, and is estimated to cost from $350,000 to $500,000. Cost for the second phase, which would be built in 2004, is estimated at $600,000.

“Our hope is we can get enough from grants and other funding options for there not to be a lot of burden on businesses and the community,” Galvin said. .
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