Those of you familiar with Ventnor might lament the passing of an age: that aluminum section of boardwalk is being replaced, at last, with plain old wood. From the AC Press:
About two blocks of Ventnor's Boardwalk near the Atlantic City line are so odd because the surface is made of aluminum, not wood. Those aluminum planks have also been in place for more than 35 years, much longer than even the most durable wood can survive when it's exposed to all the oceanfront rain, snow, ice, sun, salt, sand and other enemy elements that Boardwalks face every day.
But after a test run Monday, city workers started Tuesday to tear out the metal section of Ventnor's Boardwalk, which runs between Austin Avenue and Vassar Square. Because for all their years of staying nearly maintenance-free, the aluminum planks tend to get slippery when they're wet – a tendency that many Boardwalk regulars say they won't miss at all when the metal is just a memory.
Dave Smith, the city's Public Works director, could not give an estimate on how long it will take to remove roughly a tenth of a mile of aluminum and put wood back in the planks' place. But Smith says the metal has been part of Ventnor's Boardwalk scene since 1972.
“And we never had to replace one piece,” Smith said, as his crew used power saws to cut the aluminum planks in their center, then unscrewed the metal boards and pried them up with an oversized crowbar.
The aluminum generated controversy right from its start in Ventnor. Charlie Cianci, a former member of the City Commission, led a petition drive in 1974 to give voters a say on the metal Boardwalk. In a referendum, the town's residents approved a measure saying “the Boardwalk shall not be altered, and it shall remain forever more a basically wooden structure as it exists now.”
Cianci and his allies were worried both that the surface was too slippery and that electricity to the metal Boardwalk – for street lights – could also be dangerous. He says Atlantic City Electric stepped in to make sure the electricity was grounded correctly to eliminate that safety hazard, and the opposition movement kept metal from slipping much farther into Ventnor than it did.
“Otherwise, that whole Boardwalk would have become aluminum,” Cianci said Tuesday.
Current City Commissioner Stephen Weintrob says it wasn't electrical worries that led to the decision to get the aluminum out, but it was “a safety issue. It's tough on bikes, they slip and slide. And runners have complained over the years.”
via Ventnor scrapping metal Boardwalk – pressofAtlanticCity.com : Latest News.
Interesting that they considered making the whole boardwalk aluminum. I actually always liked the metal boards because they were way friendlier to rollerblade/skateboard wheels than the wood, which wasn’t as well maintained during my formative years as it is today.
Gotta love those comments, too, especially the repetitious guy who likes the Wildwood promenade. It reminded me of Manos: The Hands of Fate.