ADA COMPLIANT STAMPED CONCRETE???

[mjwalsh]

The joys of working with different gov't mandates!??? Our city has determined that the existing hard surface of the property away from our building to the curb is not good enough. Think in terms of well over $15-$25K in costs. They have a list of 52 lic & bonded by the city that we can contract directly as an option. Whatever chosen contractor has to pay 11% of their bid to the city for their permit which of course is included in the the bids we will receive ... obviously. The 11% added $$$ charged by the city is their standard for their hopefully exemplary inspections & other approval documents. We are leaning towards using an allowed option of concreting the entire boulevard.

The reason for this thread is to possibly gain some outside insight about what the civil engineering department is talking about when they say the sidewalk can not just extend out to the curb ... kind of making the sidewalk over 15 feet ... they will allow that greater than 6' sidewalk width ... if the non sidewalk is stamped concrete special gray to make it ADA compliant. Anybody with thoughts or experience on this. For over 25 years now we have always cleared snow 100% off of the entire city owned boulevards but never planted trees, shrubs, flowers like they have been known to advocate from time to time. No snow piles on our boulevards make the local PD happy because it help to lessen the danger of a snow pile impairing a driver's visibility when entering or exiting from the two streets ... we are a corner lot. We would rather not be bringing in a bunch of black dirt for our specific corner lot. Maybe hanging flowers in the laundromat itself but it seems like that shrubs-flowers amenity outdoors as part of the more vulnerable boulevard landscaping could turn out to be more maintenance that we would prefer.

We have a short construction season here in North Dakota & concrete contractors tend to get booked up early in the season. That makes our decision very quickly somewhat urgent as to how we beautify out boulevards. An alternative is to not respond & just let them show up with their chosen crews & boink us with possibly a "less value driven special assessment" than if we chose our own contractor & had more input on the how it is done. Another issue is that they require 3 trench drains. We are seeking to make sure the trench drain is better than the below photo of a close-by elementary public school's trench drain that is in the process of being repaired partially by using a cutting torch. As you can see ... during snow removal a heavy skidsteer's tire made the trench drain collapse & become uneven.

There is a lot of experience on this forum ... any thoughts &/or suggestions???

 

[JMMUSTANG]

My first thought is could you use asphalt instead of concrete?
It might not look as nice or be feasible in your environment though.

 

[mjwalsh]

My first thought is could you use asphalt instead of concrete?
It might not look as nice or be feasible in your environment though.

JMUSTANG & others,

No asphalt allowed on the boulevard area as far as I know. A neighbor the east of us went with the city's fancy trees on the boulevard approach about 10 years ago ... I notice weeds growing in the area where one of the trees died.

Within a day or so ... we will know more. We are hoping to start getting bids as soon as we get final clarifications. Stenciled & stamped concrete is nice but whether the extra cost is justified could be another story.

One of the three trench-drains-thru curb to street ... might be required by the neighboring property since it is their gutter runoff from their 5K sq ft building.

 

[mac]

It also has to be LGBTQ friendly. And make darn sure no manatees are harmed in the process.

 

[mjwalsh]

I looked at what to expect with the ADA compliant stamped choice if we choose to concrete whole boulevard. It looks like the bricked concrete stamp is what they require if it is not sidewalk. Apparently the year when this Bismarck, ND street was done Bismarck just required a lesser width closer to the street??? I am not sure as to the trade-offs for the bricked stamped compared to normal smoother concrete.

As I was taking this pic on my cell phone this afternoon ... lo & behold ... what appeared to be a person who appeared to be using a blind man's leading stick & the type of sunglasses that the blind tend to wear walking as shown in the attached pic. What are the odds? Potentially Lifesaving?

 

[MEP001]

Yes, it does "appear to be a person," but that's a walking stick, so not a blind man. Poor guy has vitiligo though, as evidenced by his legs being a completely different color than his upper body.

 

[br549ms]

So let me get this right, you have to provide public through ways for pedestrians across a public right of way. Most state and local hwy right of ways extend well past the curbs on the road? Since you are constructing the walkway and it is on "your" property, can you restrict access?

 

[mjwalsh]

So let me get this right, you have to provide public through ways for pedestrians across a public right of way. Most state and local hwy right of ways extend well past the curbs on the road? Since you are constructing the walkway and it is on "your" property, can you restrict access?

It varies around the city but most of the time the boulevards are around 16' & they belong to the city.
About 16' from the curb to where the actual private property starts. It is not likely that they will be widening the two streets so that will work in our favor for not losing our investment depending how we do it. Business owners & residences are required to maintain their boulevards even though it is city property. So if grass is chosen ... it must be cut. The 6' sidewalks in commercially zoned also have to have snow removed besides the residential sidewalks. Apparently the city wants to have all property with sidewalks. We got by without sidewalks but it was never like walkers could not walk through because they could just walk across our three driveways & concreted lot.

Trees planted on boulevards are supposed to meet the city forestry dept's approval. The forestry dept does come with a boom truck & supposedly does some branch trimming in the case of boulevard trees.

The initial part of our well maintained concrete block building was built in 1959 & at that time commercial buildings could be built right up to the edge of the publicly owned boulevard. They might have different requirements now that would make ... like you say ... farther distance to the curbs ... allowing for more room that always was supposed to include a sidewalk. It is a special assessment kind of proposition ... anybody want to complain about what shows up on their yearly property tax bill ... that must be paid or the whole property is lost to the city govt making it no longer private. Specials can be paid on payment plan but then the city gets significant interest added on to each payment ... if going that route.

Hopefully to be able to co-ordinate & pay directly to any licensed & bonded with the city contractor will allow us a bit more control in terms of seeing a better job. Also as long as the contractor is paid directly ... the amount will not show up on the yearly tax bill. Time will tell. Trying to get bids is starting now. I notice that heavy duty metal trench-drains seems like... for the lengths that will be needed could cost possibly over $10K alone. Anybody familiar with less costly trench-drains other than these?:https://www.trenchdrainsupply.com/proddetail.asp?prod=R-4999-CX

 

[Alpine Dreams]

That really sucks... Living in a city is a double-edged sword. It's great because you're typically around more densely populated areas than us rural operators. But, you have more costs because you operate around that dense population. I guess the only repercussion you have, if you aren't able to petition the city to try to appeal this or something, is to raise prices. As your operating costs rise, so must your price.

 

[Earl Weiss]

Anybody familiar with less costly trench-drains

If you don't hve to have metal covers.

Search Results for trench drain at The Home Depot

Search Results for trench drain at The Home Depot

www.homedepot.com

 

[Earl Weiss]

" It is a special assessment kind of proposition ... anybody want to complain about what shows up on their yearly property tax bill .. " You have highlighted a problem . City hear says you have to maintain (As well as shovel) public property sidewalks abutting your property. BS because a corner with the same square footage as a middle block piece may have 200 feet of sidewalk versus 50 feet. I found case law that say maintaining government walks unlike shoveling is a government duty and non delegable. Told the city to pound sand when they said I had to pay 50% of sidewalk replacement. Once at a public meeting fora client there was a complaint that parkway adjoining a property wasn't well kept and I said it's not the owners responsibility to maintain someone else's property . There response was that they would pass a special assessment to pay for it then. Where does it end? The street light in front of your property goes out ad you have to pay? Same for potholes in front of your property ? Used to be any issues with your water line you paid for repairs on your property. Now you are responsible up to the connection to the main.

 

[srr5008]

Hopefully I can help answer some of your questions. Civil Engineering is my "day" job.

The sidewalk width and desire for landscaping and/or stamped concrete has to do with providing people with vision issues a safer avenue to walking (whether you agree, or disagree - that's the goal). By limiting the width to 6' it helps keep a blind/vision impaired person moving in a straight direction, as opposed to zig-zagging across a wider space. The purpose of the landscaping or stamped concrete is to provide a physical and visual barrier between the sidewalk and traffic. The stamped concrete allows a blind person to feel the difference in texture with their cane. In PA/NY, it seems that the trend is for smaller municipalities to stick with the traditional lawn/landscaping and larger municipalities are moving towards colored stamped concrete along the curb. I haven't seen any special "ADA" colors - usually the municipality provides a color so everything matches throughout the city/town limits.

As for trench drains - do you have a scenario similar to the one shown in the picture, where you have a curbed island that extends into the road, and you need to provide a pass-through for water to cross from one side of the island to the other? Or are you looking for trench drains that will sit down in the pavement with open grating at the surface? Whatever you go with, looks for H20 loading (heavy duty traffic loading). The example shown in your picture is clearly not traffic-rated.

 

[srr5008]

Used to be any issues with your water line you paid for repairs on your property. Now you are responsible up to the connection to the main.

Typically ownership of the watermain is from the building to the property line (where there is usually a curb stop). However, I have seen some municipalities moving towards having ownership extend to the main - which is ludicrous because it puts some pretty extensive permitting requirements on the landowner, whereas the municipality could do the work for a fraction of the cost.

 

[mjwalsh]

Typically ownership of the watermain is from the building to the property line (where there is usually a curb stop). However, I have seen some municipalities moving towards having ownership extend to the main - which is ludicrous because it puts some pretty extensive permitting requirements on the landowner, whereas the municipality could do the work for a fraction of the cost.

I have posted this before I am pretty sure.. but it has been awhile. When we put in our new car wash equipment back in 1987 ... it was newly configured with multiple small tanks vs 2 huge tanks for soap & water for our original 1968 equipment ... we found out that we had too small of a water line coming in. As in PUMP CAVITATION PROBLEMS! We were responsible for about 300 feet away of that copper line ... in the event anything would cause it to burst etc.

Contractor said they could not give a firm bid because contrary to what the city said about the accuracy of where the tie in to safely shut off to the main ... the exact spot was considerably off. The contractor was fair but they needed to protect themselves from potential added expense. So that part of the job was strictly time & material.

Out of the 4 ports one of the ports had never been opened to the 2" line to building which meant that we would not have needed to bring in a whole new bigger water line but the new line was already put in. No problem ... when we turn the other cheek we never run out of cheeks ... right?