Rehoboth set to replace Surf Avenue’s wooden sidewalk

A 200-foot section of decades-old wooden sidewalk on Surf Avenue in Rehoboth Beach is set to be replaced with a concrete sidewalk.

City Manager Taylour Tedder announced the replacement of the sidewalk during a commissioner workshop Oct. 6. He said city staff is recommending replacement because most of the boards and all the support structure of the sidewalk need to be replaced.

Replacing the wood with concrete allows the city to make the sidewalk completely ADA-compliant, which is in line with the city’s ADA transition plan, said Tedder. In addition to improved entrance and exit ramps, the new sidewalk will be 5 feet wide instead of 4 feet, he said.

The cost of the concrete sidewalk is about $20,000, compared to $25,000 for the wooden version, said Tedder. The work can be done as part of the city’s annual paving contract, he said.

Following the announcement, Commissioner Mark Saunders asked if the sidewalk has any historical value, citing it being the last section in the city. It would be nice if it could go somewhere, he said.

Tedder said he would contact the Rehoboth Beach Museum to gauge interest.

Following the meeting, Brooke Thaler, city communications director, said the replacement is expected to take place in November.

It’s not exactly clear how long there’s been a wooden sidewalk along Surf Avenue, but it’s generally agreed upon that its current version was installed sometime after the Storm of ‘62.

Caren Euster owns two of the three houses on Surf Avenue that have the wooden sidewalk in front of them. The land has been in her family since the late 1920s. She said she has been walking on the wooden sidewalk since she was a little girl and would like the city to keep the wood.

It has always seemed to be a natural extension of the larger Boardwalk, said Euster. To replace the sidewalk with concrete seems to make it feel more like Ocean City, Md., or Atlantic City, N.J., and not the beachy casual feel that is trying to be preserved in Rehoboth, and North Rehoboth in particular, she said, adding that she and others are willing to continue to maintain the walkway into the future.

Sam Cooper has lived in Rehoboth Beach his whole life and was mayor for nearly three decades. He said he doesn’t remember this section of wooden sidewalk being part of a larger collection of wooden sidewalks. Everything in that area of town, sidewalks and cottages included, was washed away in the storm.

The wooden sidewalk might have been put in place because there was extra wood leftover from a Boardwalk project, said Cooper. It’s an anomaly, he said.

Paul Lovett, town historian, said the original survey of Rehoboth Beach from 1873 shows a boardwalk curving with Surf Avenue after it passes north of where the Henlopen Hotel would later be built in 1883. However, he said, the image shows the Boardwalk on the ocean side of Surf Avenue, not the inland side, and there are no pictures that he’s aware of confirming that portion of the Boardwalk was ever built. 

Additionally, said Lovett, a 1914 picture of the Rehoboth Club, facing Surf Avenue at the corner of Lake Avenue and Surf Avenue, does not show a sidewalk at all. Another photo, an aerial picture from 1926, shows a sidewalk along Surf Avenue in front of the houses between Lake Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue, but it looks like concrete, he said.

Obviously, the current Boardwalk at that section of Surf Avenue has to have been built after the 1962 storm, said Lovett.

“It would be interesting to know why a boardwalk was chosen rather than concrete. Maybe a throwback to the earlier age. The current strip of boardwalk goes along all the way from Lake Street to Pennsylvania, suggesting it was the city that installed it rather than the property owners,” said Lovett.