WILDWOOD – The race is on to lay the decking in the final phase of this year’s Wildwood Boardwalk renovation.
With Memorial Day rapidly approaching, the city has been forced to adjust its plan due to supply chain challenges but said it is still on track to complete the job by mid-May.
Wildwood Mayor Peter Byron said he understands concerns from business owners along the city’s iconic wooden strip but is reassuring them the job will be done on time.
“I want to say 100%,” Byron said of the odds the Boardwalk will be completed before the busy holiday weekend that serves as the unofficial start of summer.
The city changed its Boardwalk strategy when Byron took over as mayor and voted with other Commissioners Steve Mikulski and Krista Fitzsimmons to have an engineering team survey the state of the city’s largest tourist attraction.
While Byron was a commissioner and Ernie Troiano Jr. was mayor, the city felt it needed to replace the Boardwalk entirely and asked the state for most of the money to do it. However, in 2019, Gov. Phil Murphy vetoed a bill that would have sent $56 million to the city for Boardwalk replacement.
The city’s new engineering team said in early 2021 that not all of the Boardwalk’s support structures had to be replaced completely and they could be repaired, and the wood replaced, giving it a facelift and reinforcing its structural integrity at a much lower cost, a total of around $20 million.
The city decided to go about it that way and to do things incrementally, with a few blocks completed each year for the next four or five years. Byron went to Murphy with the new plan and to the mayor’s delight, Murphy greenlit $4 million from the state toward the project, and sources say there is a handshake agreement in place for that contribution to continue annually for the next few years.
L. Feriozzi Concrete, an Atlantic City contractor, was awarded a $3.5 million contract for the job Oct. 20, 2021. The project hasn’t been without its hiccups since it first got underway between Oak and Maple avenues soon after.
The city originally planned to use Cumaru, a Brazilian wood that is similar to Ipe, the type of wood used from Schellenger to Oak avenues. The city found out the imported wood wasn’t going to arrive in time due to the all-too-familiar supply chain problem, so they went with pine.
Cumaru and Ipe are both more expensive than pine but are hard, durable, smooth, with a rich finish, do not trap heat, and are termite, rot, and fire-resistant. Cumaru is a more economical alternative to Ipe and more environmentally sustainable, as Ipe’s rich feel and durability created a competitive market, which has led to concerns about deforestation.
The Cumaru is still ordered, and Byron said the city will plan to use it in a different section of the Boardwalk.
Crews are in the process of laying the pine decking now in the three-block stretch. The entire surface of the Boardwalk will be wood. The tramcar track will no longer be concrete, which Byron said created a tripping hazard where it met the wood decking and just looked ugly.
Still to come are railings, light posts, benches, and other amenities, but the progress is visible.
The project is causing some disruption, with businesses that might want to open spring weekends forced to keep their metal shutters rolled down since no one is able to access the front door.
Mack’s Pizza, which announced its opening day will be April 1, said it will open at its Roberts Avenue location, not its Wildwood Avenue location, like normal, since that is in the middle of the construction zone.
Others are not as fortunate to have an alternate location and will be forced to eat zeroes on weekends they are used to making their first sales of the year.
However, all will be forgiven as long as a project that received almost unanimous support is wrapped up before one of the year’s three busiest weekends in the county.
The only thing that could challenge that, Byron said, is the weather. Otherwise, he said, the project is on target.
To contact Shay Roddy, email sroddy@cmcherald.com.
