By Denise Di Stephan
For OCNJ Daily
Demolition work resumed this week on the Ocean City Boardwalk, and city officials still expect the rebuilding project to be done by a mid-March deadline, according to James Mallon, Ocean City business administrator.
After the project was stalled the previous week, work resumed Tuesday morning, Mallon said. This third phase of the project calls for demolishing and then rebuilding the boardwalk between Plaza Place (just north of Seventh Street) and Eighth Street.
Mallon said Walters Marine Construction of Ocean View is still on track to complete the project by the original deadline of “Palm Sunday weekend,” so planned spring activities can be held as usual. Palm Sunday is March 20 and Easter is March 27.
Workers build sections of boardwalk off-site, a process that is nearly completed, and then install the sections on site, Mallon said.
A gas line under the boardwalk near the line of storefronts has been removed.
The work is part of a multi-year reconstruction project that will replace the boardwalk between Fifth Street and 12th Street. The project last year took four months — with a block and a half of the boardwalk closed from mid-October to mid-February.
The project work runs only in the off-season and began at Fifth Street in fall 2013. It will continue from Eighth Street to somewhere past the Ocean City Music Pier (2016-17), Music Pier to somewhere past 10th Street (2017-18), and to the finish at 12th Street (2018-19).
Walters Marine underbid the contractor for the first two phases of the project, Fred M. Schiavone Construction, and eight other companies with a winning bid of $1,888,347. The project will include adding two more access points for the disabled and a new pavilion on the ocean side of the boardwalk.
