Missing bolts, faulty planks mar new Coney Island Boardwalk

New boardwalk, same as the old Boardwalk.

Newly rebuilt chunks of the famed Coney Island Boardwalk are already starting to fall apart, advocates said.

On the stretch of the Boardwalk fronting Coney’s amusement area, where the Parks Department finished installing new planks last spring, there are now screws popping out of their holes and planks coming loose and protruding.

“It’s not even a year old, and we’re right back to square one,” said Todd Dobrin, chairperson of Friends of the Boardwalk.

The new planks are part of a $30 million project to rebuild 15 blocks of the fabled 42-block stretch.

Dobrin said he “expected that with all the money they’re spending with planning and architecture…that the plan was foolproof.”

“Something is wrong, and we need to find it out now before we waste all our resources on something that needs to be done again,” he said.

So far, the city has spent $5 million on the project.

Parks Department spokesman Phil Ambramson said the city is repairing the “small percentage” of planks where screws are broken, and using a different, more secure method of installing screws on sections of the Boardwalk currently under construction.

Mike Greco, 48, of Bath Beach, who has pressed the city for years to fix the beachfront walk, pointed the finger at Parks Department and NYPD vehicles that drive on the Boardwalk.

“This is not designed to handle vehicles,” he said. “They have bicycles. They could walk. Why do they have to drive trucks up here?”

“It’s crazy. It’s just insane,” he said, predicting conditions would only get worse. “This is just the start…There’s no doubt in my mind, people will keep getting hurt.”

Abramson said some trucks are necessary to empty trash, but the department has “drastically reduced the number of vehicles that are permitted to travel on the boardwalk over the past decade.”

By Erin Durkin
Daily News

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