Concrete replaces street bricks
Folks love brick streets in Springfield.
“There’s a keen interest in preserving the brick streets in the neighborhoods,” says Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin. “The brick work is so highly unique and rare that there’s an interest in preserving the past. We’re not talking about engineers saying this, we’re talking about homeowners.”
And so a section of State Street between Laurel and Ash streets has become a guinea pig of sorts as the city tries to satisfy homeowners, engineers and cost-conscious budget watchers with a concrete surface reminiscent of, but a whole lot cheaper than, brick.
Faced with a street that became a lake during heavy rains, the city this summer completely tore up the brick on State Street to address drainage issues. It didn’t make financial sense to reinstall bricks over such a large area, says public works director Mark Mahoney. And so the city opted for a more cost-effective solution: stamped concrete patterned to look like brick.
“I think it’s pretty cool,” said Kathy Schneider as she gazed out at the street fronting the home where she’s lived for 15 years. “We’re the guinea pigs, huh? I’ve been a guinea pig for a lot worse things.”
Schneider was impressed enough that she took photos of workers embossing a brick pattern on the wet concrete with a roller device while work was underway this summer. Stamped concrete has been used at least once before on a Springfield street, but not in a residential neighborhood. The city used stamped concrete on portions of Capitol Avenue when it renovated the street downtown several years ago, Mahoney said, but the type used on State Street is better in at least one respect. The coloring used on Capitol Avenue isn’t fully blended with the concrete, and so chips, which are a different color than the surface, tend to stand out, Mahoney said. By contrast, the coloring, which turns grey concrete into a brick tone, is sufficiently mixed on the State Street project that any chips shouldn’t be obvious, he said.
Stamped concrete isn’t a one-sizefits-all solution. If it’s a matter of fixing a dip here, replacing a cement patch with brick over there, the city has opted to repair rather than replace brick, Mahoney said. The city is on target to rehab two miles of brick streets this year, he said, and will decide over the winter what to do with the remaining 11 miles of brick street in the city.
Some residents whose brick streets have been paved over with asphalt have asked the city to remove the asphalt and restore the brick as part of an $86.6 million infrastructure improvement plan approved by the city council in 2013, Mahoney said. While it is possible to remove asphalt from atop brick and restore the original surface, it’s expensive, and stamped concrete might be an option for some of those areas, he said.
“ There’s a keen interest in preserving the brick streets in the neighborhoods ”
The State Street project wins high marks from McMenamin, whose ward includes the west side of the street.
“I think it’s very impressive,” McMenamin said. “On State Street, it was a major, major construction project – that was a block that had a lake in the middle of the block. It was a major, major rebuild. The bricks weren’t really a good idea after doing all that.”
There haven’t been any heavy, sustained rains since the work was complete, but the street so far appears to be draining well, McMenamin said.
While McMenamin says that he hears from constituents who want their brick streets either preserved or restored, Schneider says that she isn’t sorry to see the brick go from State Street.
“We had a car that had the struts go out on it from the old brick,” Schneider said. “I won’t miss the bumps.”
Contact Bruce Rushton at [email protected].
