Berkley

Council, DDA board approve funding to replace brick pavers

By Jeremy Selweski
C & G Staff Writer

» Click on image to view full size « File photo by Erin Sanchez The Berkley City Council and DDA Board of Directors recently allocated $375,000 to remove the brick pavers at the city’s main downtown intersection of 12 Mile and Coolidge. File photo by Erin Sanchez The Berkley City Council and DDA Board of Directors recently allocated $375,000 to remove the brick pavers at the city’s main downtown intersection of 12 Mile and Coolidge.

BERKLEY — The crumbling brick pavers at the intersection of 12 Mile and Coolidge will soon be no more.

City officials are moving forward with plans to remove the bricks and replace them with simpler construction work that requires less maintenance and will make the intersection safer and more aesthetically pleasing.

“I think that Berkley residents and businesses have grown weary of the 12 Mile and Coolidge intersection, and the ongoing problems with the bricks,” said Mayor Phil O’Dwyer. “We are past just the aesthetic issues here, and now it has become a major safety concern. The time has come for us to fix this problem once and for all.”

Officials’ most recent step was to allocate funds for the new project, which is estimated to cost approximately $375,000. At its Jan. 9 meeting, the Berkley City Council approved a budget amendment of $150,000 for reconstructing the intersection, and the Downtown Development Authority Board of Directors followed suit on Jan. 18 by allocating $225,000 toward the endeavor. The agreement has the DDA paying for 60 percent of the project and the city covering the remaining 40 percent.

However, according to City Manager Jane Bais-DiSessa, plans for what the new intersection should look like have not yet been finalized. The city will soon send out a request for proposals that will ask construction firms to submit two different road design options: one that includes only plain concrete and another that features stamped concrete at the four pedestrian crosswalks. If the second option is chosen, the intersection would have a similar look to those at 11 Mile and Coolidge, and at 12 Mile and Woodward.

Bais-DiSessa stressed that although the brick pavers were ultimately unsuccessful, city officials had the best interest of Berkley in mind when the project was first implemented.

“It’s very sad to me that this didn’t work out,” she said. “We wanted to do something that would be long-lasting, something that would make us stand out from other communities. That was the whole idea behind this. We tried to make it a positive thing for the city, but unfortunately, things did not go according to plan.”

Alan Semonian, chair of the DDA board, noted that while a couple of the board’s 11 members felt the brick pavers could still be salvaged, the vast majority was in favor of a change. The bricks are in such bad shape, he said, that officials are worried about the safety of pedestrians crossing the street on top of loose, cracking and broken bricks. They are also concerned that passing vehicles could break off pieces of the bricks and send them airborne.

“We have to put safety first when it comes to making business decisions because this could mean lawsuits against the city,” Semonian explained. “When people’s lives are at risk, that has to be our No. 1 concern. I don’t know why it took us so long to make this decision, honestly.”

Bais-DiSessa is hopeful that the new project can be implemented during the 2012 construction season, but she said that it would not take place until summer at the earliest. Once the city receives bids for the project, officials will determine their best option, which must then be approved by both the DDA board and City Council. Officials also need to gain authorization from the Road Commission for Oakland County to repave the intersection, as well as work with downtown business owners to minimize the impact on business once construction begins.

Over the past decade, the city has faced numerous setbacks at 12 Mile and Coolidge. The brick construction project began in the summer of 2002 as a way to bolster business in downtown Berkley. Paid for with more than $1 million in funds from the DDA, as well as a grant from the Michigan Department of Transportation, the plans were set to coincide with further beautification efforts in the city.

But Berkley officials were far from happy with the results, and in February 2005, the City Council voted to file lawsuits against builder Peter A. Basile Sons Inc. and architect Beckett & Raeder. Litigation in the cases dragged on for a few years while the condition of the intersection continued to decline. After a settlement was finally reached in late 2007, a portion of the money that the city received was earmarked for improvements to the brickwork.

Then, in the fall of 2008, the city spent three months fixing damaged, broken and loose bricks at the intersection. The project cost the city about $276,000 and resulted in the partial closure of the intersection as the pavers were worked on one quadrant at a time. Since that time, other minor brick repair work has also been conducted, including around $13,000 spent last year to fix some of the worst areas.

Still, Bais-DiSessa believes that despite all the problems, the brick pavers did create some positive impact on downtown Berkley.

“I think they actually helped to bring some new businesses into our city and allowed us to see greater economic success,” she said. “They also encouraged some of the existing businesses to make improvements of their own because they saw that the city and the DDA were making efforts to improve the downtown.”

However, it appears that for most Berkley residents, the removal of the bricks can’t come soon enough. Semonian pointed out that during last year’s campaign season, City Council candidates discovered that the 12 Mile and Coolidge intersection was one of the main local issues on voters’ minds.

“People around here are really concerned about this issue,” he said. “It’s actually only been about one and a half or two years that we’ve been talking about this at the DDA, but it seems much longer than that. To me, it feels like it’s been forever.”

You can reach C & G Staff Writer Jeremy Selweski at jSelweski@candgnews.com or at (586)218-5004.