It’s time to rebuild Ocean City’s Boardwalk.

Built in 1928, Ocean City’s Boardwalk has been a part of the lives of its residents and visitors for four generations. For 82 summers and 82 winters, the Boardwalk has withstood everything Mother Nature and the Atlantic Ocean have thrown against it, and each spring the Boardwalk has stood ready again to be enjoyed by the people who live and play in America’s Greatest Family Resort.

Sadly, the Boardwalk’s very longevity may have lulled the leaders of years past into believing that the Boardwalk could fend for itself indefinitely. But time and neglect have taken their toll on the Boardwalk. After decades of dependability, the Boardwalk’s substructure has reached the end of it’s serviceable life. The corrosive process eating away at the concrete and rebar cannot be reversed and the rate of decay is increasing rapidly. Going forward, complete failure will become harder to model or predict with any certainty. Repairs are no longer economically viable. If we want a Boardwalk to be part of our families’ memories for the next four generations the time has long past for Ocean City to start planning for the replacement of the Boardwalk.

But all is not lost. The process necessary to plan for a large scale project like the replacement of our Boardwalk starts with one simple question: “What do we want the Boardwalk of the future to be?” Before we can decide who can build it and how to budget for it, we first need to develop a “community vision” for our new Boardwalk. If Ocean City’s leaders work together effectively with the citizens and visitors of Ocean City to answer this simple question, the rest will follow easily and we can make up for the time that has been wasted by previous city administrations.

To that end, Redoit is teaming together with Ocean City’s leaders and top-notch design, material, and construction professionals to build a Boardwalk Sample Area that will allow the citizens and visitors of Ocean City to see and experience first hand some of the design options available to us. Input from Ocean City’s Boardwalk community will shape this Sample Project and create a community Boardwalk Vision that will help ensure that a Spring doesn’t come when there is not a Boardwalk ready to greet the residents of Ocean City and their summer guests.

For more details, or to add your ideas and support to the Boardwalk Sample Project, click on the CONCEPT, NUTS & BOLTS, or FUNDING links to the right.