RUMSON – The $1.2 million Lafayette Street Area Improvement Plan work is scheduled to begin after Labor Day.
The plan includes more angled parking near Victory Park and new curbs, sidewalks, driveway aprons and ADA-accessible curb ramps along the well-traveled road.
“The plan calls for a completely ADA-accessible route between Rogers Park and Victory Park and all the way down to the river. We don’t necessarily have that right now,” borough administrator Thomas S. Rogers said.
Rogers stressed the importance of accessibility along this active artery, not only for special needs residents, but also for families transporting young children in strollers to and from the parks and river views.
Local resident Allyson Sheehan was taking her grandson for a walk in his stroller recently along Lafayette near Rogers Park. It’s a pleasant walk, she said, but the tree roots can make for a rough ride.
“I walk the road enough to know where the (trouble) spots are. There aren’t a lot of cars driving up and down so we’ll go into the street at those spots. But that’s obviously not ideal,” Sheehan said.
Borough engineer David Marks said the project goes beyond Lafayette Street to nearby crossroads Narumsunk Street and Hunt Street. It is expected to be completed by spring 2020.
Narumsunk Street will receive an extension of drainage piping from Washington Street west to Lafayette Street. Concrete curbing will also be installed on both sides of the roadway.
In addition to traffic circulation changes, new curbs will be installed on both sides of Hunt Street and the north side of the roadway will receive new sidewalks. The street will be repaved once concrete work is complete.
As for the half-mile stretch of Lafayette Street, there are more elements to contend with, and the work calls for resident cooperation.
“Lafayette Street is fairly narrow and almost entirely built out with houses on both sides. These are the confines we had to work in while designing the plan. We’re basically replacing what exists, but with that means there are going to be some trees that are impacted,” Rogers said.
Lafayette Street is lined with trees, varying in size and specimen, that years ago were planted in the slim grassy section of earth between the sidewalk and the roadway.
Some of these trees are very large with roots that have extended underneath the sidewalk, raising the concrete and making navigating the sidewalk difficult.
“There are a number of existing trees that have just outgrown the space allotted for them,” said Stephen Barrett, who chairs the borough’s environmental commission and shade tree commission. “Some of them have fully matured and have reached their max lifespan, which makes them a risk.”
Barrett said in a recent summer storm one of the neighborhood’s trees toppled and damaged a borough property.
“Just by looking at it you would have thought it was a strong, healthy tree. But after observing it, the trunk was hollowed out,” Barrett added.
Barrett said both the environmental commission and shade tree commission were consulted before the improvement project was approved. With several trees expected to be removed from the roadway, the groups are prepared to implement a borough program that was launched two years ago.
In 2017 the borough performed a similar road improvement project in the area of Washington Street. The scope of the work extended to Center Street, Avenue of Two Rivers and Ward Lane. The project uprooted about 50 trees and impacted approximately 90 homes.
The removal of the trees from the right-of-way of these thoroughfares led Barrett and the shade tree commission to formulate a plan that offered impacted homeowners new trees for their front yards at no cost.
“It’s about putting the right tree in the right place, and over the last 50 or 60 years, we’ve learned that planting trees in the right-of-way is not the right way to do it. It damages property, sidewalks and the tree itself. With this program, everyone who is impacted will have an opportunity to receive a new tree in a proper location,” Barrett said.
Marks said, for those residents that would like a replacement tree, the planting will follow the roadwork.
