Lynn seeks solution for sidewalks

LYNN – Pine Grove Avenue residents say sidewalks rebuilt by a city-hired contractor have left them with unusable driveways and defective retaining walls.Liz Kelley, Adriana Garcia and another neighbor said city officials assured them in July and again in August that Allied Paving Company will send a crew back to their small Pine Hill side street to replace or repair sidewalks poured in July.”I’m extremely frustrated. The clock is ticking on the construction season. We haven’t seen Allied,” Kelley said.Acting Public Works Commissioner Manuel Alcantara on Thursday said no date has been scheduled between the city and the Chelmsford contractor to return to Pine Grove and repair the sidewalks.But Allied President Robert Joyce on Thursday said he is waiting for a city order to send his workers back to Pine Grove to make repairs.”Let’s finish this for these people. This is the last thing we want,” Joyce said.He said the work – when the city authorizes it – will include paving the driveway shared by neighbors Kim Hamilton and Joanne Simard. The gravel-covered drive is several inches below the sidewalk poured by Allied workers.”The whole thing was done wrong. We were told a month ago they were going to come by,” Hamilton said Thursday.Simard said Allied workers patched cracks in a wall abutting the driveway, but said paving work she was assured in July would get done has not been completed.”We haven’t heard from anybody,” she said.Alcantara on Thursday acknowledged that sidewalk work done by Allied “? instead of alleviating ? contributed to problems” with rainwater running down Hillcrest and down Pine Grove to Winthrop. He said he plans to consult with Lynn Water and Sewer Commission officials to discuss Pine Grove’s drainage problems.Alcantara described Allied as the “city street contractor of record” and the company currently has city authority, according to purchasing department records, to do $120,000 worth of local concrete sidewalk work and $340,000 in street resurfacing work with the state reimbursing the city for money spent on the work.Alcantara said Allied has “done excellent work” repairing sections of Chatham, Chestnut and other local streets.”The only street that has an issue is Pine Grove,” he said.But Garcia questioned the firm’s workmanship.”The fact they are doing work somewhere else in the city with state money concerns me horribly,” she said.Joyce said Allied has an “excellent reputation” for its Lynn paving work and said the Pine Grove Avenue project represents a fraction of the local work it has done.”We try to make everyone happy,” he said.Joyce said he walked the street during a recent rainstorm to check drainage.”The water flows very well,” he said.But Garcia said Allied’s sidewalk work in front her home lowered the sidewalk’s elevation so that water now flows down Hillcrest into her driveway.”We can’t use our driveway,” she said.Kelley said she has the opposite problem: Allied workers raised the sidewalk level in front of her home and she is worried a section of granite curbing placed in front of her garden fence will topple into the garden located several feet below the sidewalk.Kelley said she has city assurances that the curb section will be removed and the sidewalk lowered. Joyce said the sidewalk alterations are “a balancing act” because Allied must comply with engineering standards for walks, including federal Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, while addressing water flow patterns on Pine Grove.If anyone is happy with the sidewalk work on Pine Hill, it is Diane Myers. She lives at the corner of Hillcrest and Pine Grove, and said she is happy to see the sidewalk replaced after 15 years of wear and tear from the weather and snow plows.”It’s a nice new sidewalk,” she said.Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].