The Bethany Beach Town Council took its first major step on Friday, July 18, toward a major facelift one of the town’s major attractions — its boardwalk. The council on a unanimous vote of all seven members approved having Town Manager Cliff Graviet proceed with engineering documents created toward the eventual goal of widening the boardwalk to the east by 8 feet.
Bethany Beach officials in recent weeks received something they weren’t entirely sure they would get when they asked: approval from the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) to make the 8-foot expansion of the generally 12-foot-wide boardwalk, if they so wish. That led to the July 18 vote on whether to move forward with the project in the immediate future.
The project’s engineering and construction is currently estimated to cost the town $780,000, which would be borrowed from its beach and boardwalk emergency fund and repaid over as much as five years. That total includes an estimated $58,000 in engineering costs.
With the approval granted last Friday, Graviet will be working with town engineering contractors Kercher Engineering Inc. (KEI) to develop documents for a bid package that will go up for bid in the coming months.
Also during the coming weeks and months, Graviet will be meeting with the members of the town’s Budget and Finance Committee to help develop a detailed funding plan for the project, which will then be submitted the town council for its approval.
The potential to expand the boardwalk has been referred to by Graviet and some council members as a “once-in-a-lifetime” or “at least a once-in-a-decade” opportunity.
Graviet noted that, at 12 feet, the town’s existing boardwalk is by far the narrowest among those in municipalities along the coast of the Delmarva Peninsula. Concerns have arisen as the town’s summer population has boomed that the sheer volume of people on the boardwalk on a summer’s day or evening is reaching the limit of comfort.
“We actually have more people crossing over and walking on our boardwalk on a busy Saturday afternoon in August than the city of Rehoboth Beach does,” said Graviet, noting the results of a traffic and pedestrian study the town had done in August 2004. “We have one count that indicates 33,000 to 34,000 people cross Atlantic Avenue, going to and from the boardwalk area.”
Complaints about crowding, slow progress of some pedestrians and potential accidents between pedestrians and cyclists during hours when bicycles are permitted on the boardwalk have pushed the concept of nearly doubling the boardwalk’s width forward to where it came up for a vote on July 18.
Earlier this year, the council had considered a full ban on bicycles on the boardwalk, owing to such potential accidents by virtue of those increasingly crowded conditions. They have not pursued the idea, which was raised by Mayor Carol Olmstead, but the potential bicycle ban was cited as evidence that time has come to do something about boardwalk crowding.
Council Member J. Robert “Bob” Parsons said addressing the issue — and some degree of future growth — is a wise fiscal decision for the town.
“The spending of this $750,000 is a recognition that we are a destination,” said Parsons, a lifelong Bethany resident. “We are not the isolated community that I grew up in.”
Parsons jokingly added that the expansion would change the dynamics of a crowded walk down the boardwalk from one in which he would be waiting behind a family walking slowly with small children to one in which one such family could walk in each direction.
However, there were some reservations expressed on July 18 about the move.
Council Member Steve Wode said he had concerns about spending such a large sum on widening the full length of the boardwalk. Wode said he hadn’t seen much evidence of crowding being a problem along the whole stretch, but rather just in the bandstand and commercial area.
Wode said he felt such money could be better spent making other pedestrian improvements around town, which might serve better to improve pedestrian safety.
Other council members, including Council Treasurer Jerry Dorfman, said they felt there was no question that the entire length of the boardwalk needs to be widened, particularly since the area the expansion will take up is currently space lost to use by the town, being between the boardwalk and dune crest.
Council Member Tracy Mulligan, who announced this week that he does not plan to run for re-election in September, also expressed some reservations about the funding process for the project, noting concern that the town could just pull $780,000 from a reserve fund specifically dedicated to the beach and boardwalk without a full review of the town’s overall capital plans and reserve budget.
In response, Graviet emphasized that the beach and boardwalk reserve fund are permitted only to be spent on such projects, or on emergency repairs. He said that means the funds can’t really be considered in the light of the town’s overall finances.
Moreover, Graviet said, any substantial delay in moving forward with the project could kill it permanently. DNREC gave the town a permit for the project that lasts just one year, during which the project must be completed. Graviet said he further felt that DNREC would never give the go-ahead for the boardwalk expansion once the recently planted dune grass has been allowed to fully take hold and thrive.
So, if the town wants to expand the boardwalk, it could well be now or never.
If the project is given the full go-ahead by the council after bids are opened, it would create an 8-foot extension to the east side of the existing boardwalk, covering over the western slope of the new dune. That may potentially also help ease another concern from boardwalk aficionados: the loss of view with the 16-foot-high dune running in front of it.
Some have opined that the real problem with the dune’s impact on the boardwalk’s waterfront view is not its height but rather its width at that height. By moving the edge of the boardwalk closer to the dune, it could serve to reduce the visual impact of the dune crest, potentially reducing concerns about the dune’s overall height.
Any potential reduction in the dune height is not expected to come for several years, during the next scheduled replenishment. No word on whether that change would be approved has yet been given.