RECENT COMMENTS
Eric S. Huffstutler on What is up with the Church Hill Post Office?
Eric S. Huffstutler on What is up with the Church Hill Post Office?
Yvette Cannon on What is up with the Church Hill Post Office?
crd on Power Outage on the Hill
Can you take a second to help get this sidewalk repaired?
05/27/2014 7:55 AM by John M
Do me a solid… go to SeeClickFix and vote to get this sidewalk repaired:
The stretch of brick sidewalk on the west side of 28th Street just north of Franklin has become pocked by missing bricks and tree roots. One person has already broken a leg because of this.
[…]
Your vote will increase the chance of a fix by 5% and the chance of letting your neighbor know that you have their back by 100%.
Got any other SeeClickFix projects we should know about? Drop a link in the comments.
…and at last week’s 7th district meeting, Newbille specifically requested Bobby Vincent of DPW to take care of this.
I have been in touch with the city a couple times a month about the side walk beside my house. This is the corner of E Broad and 33rd, to about a third of the way to towards Marshall, on the east side of the street. It’s a stretch of about 80-90 feet by about 10 feet wide. They originally told me it was going to be 3 years, now they said it would be the end of the summer before it is repaired because it is so bad. This sidewalk is WAY worse than the pictures above. There is a section that is probably 7 x 11 feet that is completely missing bricks. I asked if I could plant grass there so it would not be a muddle hole, but they refused. When I first moved in, there were some areas of brick almost a foot out of the ground due to roots. I dug these areas out and how they are only 6-8 inches out of the ground.
Is there any way I can upload pictures?
This has to be some sort of liability to the city?
I have seen numerous people fall flat on the ground from tripping or rolling their ankles…… It’s a wonder no one has been seriously injured.
Just curious, the person that broke their leg, was the city liable?
Good luck! I have been complaining about our sidewalk for the past 6 years or more and there are still open tickets from years past. They work on around a 3-year timeline for sidewalks, totally unacceptable and then they never follow up! I see sidewalks going in on streets that do not need the repairs (doing it for cosmetic) over those who have legitimate complaints.
@Daniel – send me the photos at murden@gmai.com, or add an entry on SeeClickFix and post the link.
John:
Here is a SCF project that is posted for the fourth time. You can find the others in the system. I always vote for this because it happens to be a block from me, but evidently it never gets resolved and it involves a safety hazard.
http://www.seeclickfix.com/issues/1092810-overgrown-lots
On a side note… here we are with the stadium debate again which boils down to funds and where they should go. OK, why in the hell then are funds going towards replacing stoplights or light poles, sidewalks and other items NOT immediately needed over things that are? Isn’t that considered mishandling or misappropriation of funds?
It still burns me up that in 2007 right after blocks of historic landmark department stores were demolished to make way for an Arts Center, locals fought to save and preserve the old Murphy’s Hotel at 8th and Broad which had become a city office building in disrepair but failed. Yet the city and mayor “promised” that it WOULD NOT tear down the building without starting immediately on a new replacement which artists renderings had been distributed. Then $185-million was earmarked for the 2009-2010 budget for the building construction. Here we are 7-years later and that corner is still only a surface parking lot!
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d103/richmondpics/Random/newstaterend1.jpg
So, with track records like that, what are the odds if the stadium is voted down that any sort of high-rise hotel or super duper supermarket which were tagged with it will be built in our area to help bring in revenue as well as clean up the blighted area which has remained an eyesore for years?
I’ve all but given up with our City & SeeClickFix. The City of Richmond is an absolute joke. I submitted an issue over a year ago regarding an unclear traffic pattern on 5th & Byrd which they kept saying was “being reviewed”, then would try to call it “Closed” without doing a thing. I wish you the best of luck in getting this fixed, but based on my experience & the comments above, it looks like a long-shot.
30 votes in one day! If each vote is 5%, then there is a 150% chance that this will be fixed, right?
Gotta try, anyway.
Meanwhile perfectly visible and even crosswalks are being torn up in Carytown to lay brick.
acg, exactly my point. How much do those crosswalks cost having to tear up the old, lay down beds and stone borders, and then the bricks including supply costs, labor, etc… Those funds could have gone towards fixing up damaged and dangerous sidewalks in Church Hill in which people like myself have been complaining for years about yet ignored.
Oddly I’ve had pretty good luck with ClickFix and the City. My entire sidewalk was redone in front of my house. It was not missing any bricks but did have hills and valleys due to tree roots.
More on Carytown.
http://www.richmondbizsense.com/2010/02/21/remodeling-carytown/
I assumed the Merchant’s Association paid for this. I was wrong. All I can guess is that the City figured it should keep plowing money into the area–needed or not–because it is constantly lamenting its lack of retail tax base, i.e., the rationale for the stadium idea. Maybe they feel they have to keep putting money into Carytown to help sell the idea of retail viability to others.
The brick use for pedestrian areas around the city is something that needs to be reconsidered. Personally I think the brick on these sidewalks is very nice. That said, the city clearly doesn’t have the wherewithal to maintain it–and it does seem like an ongoing maintenance nightmare relative to normal cement and asphalt. So laying more brick in Carytown is probably a bad idea. And maybe they need to take up some of the brick they have down now. I know that’s not a popular idea, but if the city doesn’t have the resources to maintain it and if it is creating safety hazards–one neighborhood woman broke her leg it was reported at Councilwoman Newbille’s meeting–then maybe the City needs to look at a more practical and manageable material for sidewalks and crosswalks.
I have heard from a City employee that SCF is more useful for things like heat mapping vacant/blighted building complaints and bulk item pickup or illegal dumping. I agree that when submitting requests for work to be done it is a hard route. I would recommend reopening the ticket after the City closes it, until the work is actually complete. It’s ridiculous, but that’s the way they behave. I have continually reopened a ticket to fix the storm drain on Broad at Chimborazo, which floods every time it rains. They fix the one that was completely collapsed on the north side of Broad but not the one that actually blocks Broad when there’s a heavy rain. Oh well.
Eric, I hate to cry foul (ok maybe I don’t) but your information is way off. The state government, not the city/mayor, tore down the murphy’s hotel (which was a state, not city office building) and then the state proposed the state lottery building shown in your post 10 above. The current parking lot is a state government (general assembly) parking lot now, not city government parking at all. Point the finger in the correct direction. The city has no power over the state.
Even a cursory wiki search backs this up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_Hotel
Sorry bud, but if you are so wrong on this, I hope someone is fact-checking your CHA newsletter articles.