The concrete is “totally unacceptable,” said Rob Burstein, who has been regularly running along the boardwalk for 36 years. “Sustainable wood or some kind of a wood substance, perhaps a composite, should be used.”
Burstein said he intends to follow up with petitions and will seek out elected officials and Community Board 13 members to make it clear to Parks Department officials that a concrete boardwalk is not a good idea.
"Concrete, simply because it lasts longer, is not an alternative,” he said. “Other criteria have to be used which balances peoples’ use on the boardwalk against how long it lasts.
When you run on concrete, it puts three times the body weight on the joints. When you do it on the softer surface [of wood] it’s obviously somewhat less. He added that wood is a better surface for older people as well.
Michael Greco, an electrician and construction designer, said that more people will get hurt on the new boardwalk than on the old one.
“This portion is one year old,” Greco said as he showed pictures of the new, but already damaged boardwalk. “There are over 120 boards popped already. The whole pier is coming apart. Millions of dollars are wasted. People trip on the daily basis.”
Greco said that contractors of the boardwalk are in the area so they fix the problems daily. He also thinks that police and parks department vehicles damage the new boardwalk in the same way as they damaged the old one.
“The new boardwalk is not engineered to handle vehicular traffic,” he said. “The whole demise of the old boardwalk was caused by the New York City Parks Department and New York City Police Department.” He said there are other ways to patrol the boardwalk such as bicycles or on foot. “You don’t need SUVs on the boardwalk,” he said.
Greco has designed what he described as cheaper and longer-lasting boardwalk made with galvanized steel beams and lumber bolted through to prevent bouncing, but the project was never accepted by the officials, who told that concrete boardwalks are a success in other locales. The Chief of Staff of Brooklyn Parks & Recreation Department Martin Maher, chief of staff for Brooklyn division of the Parks Department, said at a recent CB 13 meeting that the concrete boardwalk in the Rockaways in Queens has been fine for many years.
An organization opposing the new concrete boardwalk, Friends of the Boardwalk, is collecting signatures on a petition to save the boardwalk.
"It has to do with the character. We want to have a traditional boardwalk, not a sidewalk,” said Burstein. “You can have sidewalk anywhere, you can’t have a boardwalk everywhere.”
