Palm Coast – Since March of last year, the City of Palm Coast has been working to complete renovations and upgrades on a busy stretch of a walkway along Belle Terre Parkway that extends from Pritchard Drive to Buddy Taylor Middle School after the previous iteration was deemed compromised.

The walkway, which serves as a daily travel route for many students of Buddy Taylor Middle School and Wadsworth Elementary, had been marred with structural damage in recent years, all which stemmed from an unstable foundation beneath the walkway. In order to provide a long-term solution that would also be traffic-friendly during construction, crews needed to remove the walkway entirely and provide stabilization to the pipes below. In doing this, it was discovered that the scope of the project would need to expand, since new headwall design and a significant amount of additional grout would be required for proper stabilization of the road and pipes near the walkway. This factor, coupled with complications from structure and storm pipe damage sustained from Hurricane’s Ian and Nicole, meant even more delays for the project.

Despite these unforeseen setbacks, Project Manager Carmelo Morales understands external factors as being part of the process and is confident that the project will be completed in the coming months.

“This project is one of those unique situations where we discovered additional needs during the construction process and while that news almost always means there will be a delay, we want to make sure that the project is seen through correctly for long-term sustainability,” Morales said. The fact that we also had two storms impact this project was another unfortunate factor that we had to endure but we are confident in getting this project done this Summer and appreciate the patience of our residents as we see it through to completion.”

This week, the project saw the reinstallation of the lighting adjacent to the walkway and maintenance around the site as as crews prepare to begin work on installing the new walkway. The project is slated to be completed, and the walkway reopened, by the end of July. View a video update of this project now at the following link: https://youtu.be/3U7vEuk4iU8

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