Gold, silver, diamonds, and platinum sparkle in the shop windows on the Fulton Mall, but some area residents think the street’s new sidewalks don’t sparkle enough!
Newly poured concrete sidewalks — part of an ongoing city reconstruction project — lack the promised glitz and glam, Community Board 2 Chairman John Dew told Department of Transportation officials on Tuesday night.
“There is no glitter on the sidewalks,” Dew complained, claiming that the city hadn’t laced the sidewalks with enough fairy dust — in this case, silicon carbide — to produce the visually stunning sparkle that had been promised.
“I was there today and I didn’t see glitter,” said Dew.
But the city claims the slabs of concrete twinkle as bright as the stars in sky — or the diamonds in the Fulton Mall’s windows.
“I was there today, too, and there is glitter,” said Chris Hrones, the Department of Transportation’s Downtown Brooklyn rep.
Hrones said the city laced the tinted concrete with silicon carbide, but workers smoothed out the slabs for a “broom finish” — a process that can temporarily bury the sparkles beneath the surface.
“The glitter will become more visible after profuse pedestrian traffic wears away the top layer,” he said.
Some Fulton Mall regulars say they don’t want to wait so long for the promised pizzazz.
“It’s ugly and it’s bad,” said Ema Camacho, the owner of a roasted peanut cart at the corner of Duffield Street. “I’d rather see a shiny sidewalk, plus I like the old sidewalk any way. [The new one] doesn’t sparkle too bright.”
But Javed Awan, a diamond merchant at the Hot Spot, said the new sidewalks are an improvement over the uneven and occasionally slippery paths they replaced.
“You can’t make concrete sparkle like my diamonds,” he said. “But the glitter is good enough for me.”
It’s unclear how strongly Dew plans to push the point. A few days after the meeting, the district manager of Community Board 2 called The Brooklyn Paper to say that Dew had been speaking only as an area resident, not in his role as the board chairman.