Walking to shops and eateries in West Palm Beach’s Warehouse District is expected to become safer as city leaders plan a sidewalk on the narrow bridge that connects the district to the city’s central neighborhoods.
Commissioners on March 2 approved a $1.9 million sidewalk addition to the Caroline Street bridge, which spans a canal that runs alongside Parker Avenue and separates the burgeoning area from most of the city.
The Warehouse District, long an industrial zone, has become a popular location for shopping, dining and recreation in recent years, drawing increasing numbers of residents to walk or bike from neighborhoods east of Parker. The district southwest of downtown includes the Caroline Station food hall and event space as well as the 178-apartment District Flats community.
But with no sidewalk, walking across the narrow bridge can be a risky undertaking.
“There’s no way for pedestrians to walk unless they walk out on the street” Kevin Volbrecht, the city’s director of engineering services, told commissioners
The planned sidewalk “is not the fanciest thing in the world,” he said, “but it certainly provides a means for people to be able to walk across a street and get over the railroad tracks and across the Stub Canal without having to walk in the street.”
City engineers have been looking to add a sidewalk since 2022 but struggled to find money in the budget to do so, Volbrecht said.
The project, he said, was made possible by an $800,000 federal grant secured by U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, a West Palm Beach Democrat who served as the city’s former mayor.
The city, which is putting up the other $1 million, says the sidewalk should be complete by summer 2027.
Commissioner Christina Lambert, whose district includes the Warehouse District, said the sidewalk was “a long time coming.”
“I know that people have been traversing and, sometimes, taking their lives in their own hands, but I’m grateful to see that we now have a safe option for them,” she said.
Andrew Marra is a reporter at The Palm Beach Post. Reach him at amarra@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: West Palm to spend $1.9M for bridge sidewalk to warehouse district
Reporting by Andrew Marra, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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