Surf Avenue’s wooden sidewalk in Rehoboth replaced
The old wooden sidewalk on Surf Avenue in Rehoboth Beach is being replaced.
During a workshop Nov. 10, City Manager Taylour Tedder announced work to replace the deteriorating sidewalk would begin the same day. Work will take about a week, maybe less, he said.
Located between Pennsylvania and Lake avenues on the north side of town, it’s not exactly clear how old the 200-foot, decades-old section of wooden sidewalk is. However, it is the only stretch of wooden walkway in the city and is connected to the mile-long Boardwalk by a crosswalk on Lake Avenue. The general consensus is that its current version isn’t any older than March 1962, because that’s when the Storm of ‘62 ravaged Delaware’s coastline.
The city announced in early October plans to replace the 4-foot-wide wooden sidewalk with a 5-foot-wide concrete sidewalk that would be ADA compliant because the whole structure needed to be replaced, not just the boards being walked on. A couple of weeks later, following complaints by neighbors and residents, the city said it had changed its mind and would replace the old wooden sidewalk with a new wooden sidewalk.
Chris Flood has been working for the Cape Gazette since early 2014. He currently covers Rehoboth Beach and Henlopen Acres, but has also covered Dewey Beach and the state government. He covers environmental stories, business stories and random stories on subjects he finds interesting, and he also writes a column called Choppin’ Wood that runs every other week. He’s a graduate of the University of Maine and the Landing School of Boat Building & Design.
