Front St. sidewalks getting fix

Tim Newcomb
Tribune assistant editor

Dale TeVelde works with a crew for the City of Lynden to replace sidewalk along Front Street last week.

LYNDEN -- The sidewalk work currently being done on Front Street is part of the city’s overall planned sidewalk improvement program.
  City crews are tearing out sidewalk that is badly separated and pouring new sections, according to Duane Huskey, public works director.
  Some parts being torn out date back almost 100 years.
  Huskey said that one family even requested a panel that was stamped with an old relative’s name.
  Some of the historic pieces are stamped with the WPA (Works Progress Administration) logo, representing President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policy of putting people back to work during the Great Depression.
  Huskey said that Front Street is the final phase of the sidewalk fixes for 2008 and that Public Works will now concentrate on identifying the highest sidewalk priorities for the 2009 budget.
  In other sidewalk improvement phases, trees that had roots pushing sidewalks up were removed and replaced with trees that contained root barriers.
  Huskey said that practice simply is not possible with the historic pin oak trees that line Front Street and that the sidewalks will remain an “ongoing problem.”
  Some parts of sidewalk were simply ground down, while others were fully removed and replaced with two inches of rock and four inches of concrete.
  Work on Front Street should end this week.
  E-mail Tim Newcomb at tim@lyndentribune.com.