Borough Continues To Roll Out The Sidewalks

By John Voket

After weighing the benefits and advantages of traditional repairs for some deteriorating sections of Main Street walkways, Borough of Newtown officials instead decided to expend the balance of last year’s $21,000 sidewalk budget on the highly durable, low maintenance replacement that has been used in other areas of the borough over the past six years.

Borough warden Joan Crick told The Bee Wednesday that a local company from Bethel was hired to tear up several hundred feet of decades-old material and replace it with state-of-the-art architectural Bomanite.

“The installation closes out our sidewalk budget for the 2004-2005 fiscal year,” Ms Crick said. “All the work is being done by Connecticut Bomanite Systems.”

While purists may scoff at the rebar and synthetically reinforced architectural concrete treatment as a replacement for natural paving materials lining part of the north exposure of Main Street west of Church Hill Road, a representative from Connecticut Bomanite said the switch makes sense. Althea Lockwood, who along with husband, Tom, established the local distributor in 1984, said the poured-in-place concrete is colored and imprinted with a pattern to make it look like finished slate.

“It’s really a very widely used material, especially in locations where you want to preserve an antique or old-fashioned style with all the benefits the material presents,” Ms Lockwood said.

She said since the Bomanite is poured and patterned, the surface will not heave or shift like conventional pavers or other separated stone or brick inlays. In addition, the material is low maintenance and generally is resistant to damage caused by weeds and grass growing up between cracks in the pavement.

The color and pattern used on Main Street is called “English sidewalk slate,” and is finished with a pattern that shows both a variety of color shades and tile sizes to closely resemble actual slate installations, Ms Lockwood said.

“We have done similar projects using cobblestone finish, distressed brick, limestone and other simulations,” she said. “The material is significantly stronger than concrete but is constantly curing like concrete, so it is extremely durable.”

The Bethel company is only one of about 250 distributors of the patented material worldwide.

Warden Crick said she is hoping to continue replacing adjacent sidewalks down to the corner of Church Hill Road with the material in the coming year. The current 2005-2006 borough budget has another $20,000 allocated for sidewalk concerns.

“We’ll probably be talking about it at our next borough burgesses meeting [scheduled for Tuesday, July 12], and residents of the borough are welcome to come and express their feelings about future sidewalk projects,” she said.

Along with the sidewalk replacements already completed, Ms Crick said two trees were taken down in front of the Newtown Historical Society’s headquarters at the Curtiss House. Other trees that were taken down by state Department of Transportation crews south of Church Hill Road were done in cooperation with the borough tree warden, she said, but were unrelated to the sidewalk replacement initiative.

Phased sidewalk replacement in the borough has been underway since 1999.