By Donald Wittkowski
Think of how many mats you could buy for around $110,000.
Well, these are not the run-of-the-mill mats that you plop on your doorstep at home.
Sea Isle City is spending $110,815 to buy 70 handicap-accessible beach mats that will save people from the hassle of having to trudge all the way through deep sand.
The purchase is part of Sea Isle’s plan to install the mats at every beach entrance this summer along the entire length of the island – from First Street to 94th Street, city spokeswoman Katherine Custer said.
“It’s a big project,” Custer said. “There have been a lot of requests for the mats, so the city has budgeted the money. People enjoy them.”
After listening to complaints from local residents about the difficulties of walking through the powdery sand, City Council and Mayor Leonard Desiderio’s administration agreed to buy more of the mats in 2018 and are getting even more for this summer.
Councilwoman Mary Tighe has noted that her 76-year-old mother, Marie Tighe, is one of the local senior citizens who want more mats to make it easier for them to enjoy the beach. Councilwoman Tighe said she, too, struggles to walk through the thick sand at times because of her bad knees.
Seniors, small children, people with disabilities and mothers lugging strollers to the beach will all be helped by the mats, Tighe pointed out.
“Our goal is to put something out at every beach entrance,” she said of the mats. “Some will be longer, some will be shorter, depending on the need of that entrance.”
Of the 70 new mats Sea Isle is buying, 60 of them will each be 5 feet wide and 50 feet long, while 10 others will measure 5 feet wide and 33 feet long, according to a City Council resolution authorizing their purchase from Deschamps Mat System Inc. of Cedar Grove, N.J.
Sea Isle already has the mats at its six handicap-accessible beaches at 32nd Street, 40th Street, John F. Kennedy Boulevard, 44th Street, 63rd Street and 85th Street. During the summer of 2018, the mats were also placed at intervals of about every three blocks between 29th and 91st streets.
Now, the mats will be installed at every beach entrance beginning this summer, Custer said.
The non-slip mats look like bright blue carpet strips from a distance. They lie on top of the sand, providing an easier transition from the gravel pathways over the dunes to the beaches.
The mats do not extend the entire width across the beach. At the handicap-accessible beaches, for instance, they average about 70 feet long, the city said.
A $40 million beach replenishment project supervised by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2015 and 2016 beautified Sea Isle’s shoreline with nearly 3 million cubic yards of new sand. However, the wider beaches are harder to walk on, especially for senior citizens or disabled people who struggle to navigate through the sand.
Ever since the replenishment project was completed, Sea Isle has concentrated on maintaining the gravel pathways that cross over the dunes to provide easy access to the beaches. But local residents have been calling for the city to install more mats to make their treks across the beach even easier.
“The hardest part for them is the soft sand that builds up by the entrance. The mat gives them stability to get down on the beach,” Tighe said.
