ALLENTOWN The state has awarded the borough a $55,000 grant that provides most of the funds needed for fixing and replacing sidewalks on North and South Main Street, borough officials said last week.
The Borough Council passed a resolution Sept. 27 accepting the grant and giving its engineer the go-ahead to move the project forward.
”We’re trying to make a safer passage on a county right of way,” Mayor Stuart Fierstein said in a phone interview after the meeting.
Main Street was designed as a stagecoach corridor, not for the heavy traffic now traveling through the downtown. Heavy trucks rumbling through jeopardize the borough’s historic buildings and create a dangerous situation for pedestrians.
The sidewalk repair and replacement will make Main Street safer for pedestrians, especially children walking to and from school, Mayor Fierstein said at the Borough Council meeting.
The borough attempted several years ago to get the money for the sidewalks through a county grant, but without success. In its successful application to the state, the borough said it was seeking the grant because the Upper Freehold Regional School District no longer provides free courtesy busing to students, the mayor said.
Allentown students whose homes are outside the state-set distance requirements for free busing, are instead offered “subscription busing” by the school district at a cost of $300 per student.
Council President Michael Schumacher said at the meeting that in light of Upper Freehold’s opposition to building a westerly bypass around downtown Allentown, there is a greater need than ever to fix the Main Street sidewalks.
The proposed westerly bypass has been included in Monmouth County’s regional traffic plan for two decades, but has never been funded. It is strongly opposed by Upper Freehold Township, where most of the road would be built and two weeks ago that municipality’s Township Committee approved a resolution that asked the county freeholders to scrap the plan once and for all.
”We’ve seen the recent resolution by the Township Committee to remove the westerly bypass from the county Master Plan, and so there is no relief coming in the traffic,” Mr. Schumacher said.
The proposed road would connect Route 539 in Upper Freehold to Route 524 and then back to Route 526, thereby bypassing High Street, Mayor Stuart Fierstein said. It would also give trucks and buses a route to avoid the tightest, most congested area of North and South Main Street, making that area safer for pedestrians.
Mayor Fierstein emphasized in a phone interview after the council meeting that the borough’s sidewalk project had little to do with the proposed bypass.
”We didn’t file for the (sidewalk repair) grant based on whether or not there would be a westerly bypass,” Mayor Fierstein said. “This grant was applied for over a year ago.”
The borough has been trying to address sidewalk issues on the north and south sides of Main Street for about 12 years, Mayor Fierstein said. The $55,000 state grant will pay for most of the project, which is projected to cost about $59,000.
”Until you bid the project you don’t know what the prices are,” Mayor Fierstein said. The work probably won’t begin until at least spring 2013, he said.
The council has plans to renovate the entire pedestrian environment in Allentown. The sidewalk project on Main Street is part of a much larger historic streetscape plan to provide new concrete curbs, pedestrian roadway crosswalks, curb ramps to allow handicapped access to the sidewalks, lighting, bike racks, planters and benches.

