The City of Athens Engineering and Public Works Department began construction on the Westside Sidewalks Project on Monday, according to a City of Athens public notice.
The project entails 4,000 feet of sidewalk removal and replacement on West State Street and North Shafer Street. Construction will start on North Shafer Street, then continue on West Union Street through November.
The public notice states that the construction may limit access to sidewalks, driveways and street parking until its completion.
The Westside Sidewalks Project is one of several construction projects paid for by the Community Development Block Grant to make the city more compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to Athens City Mayor Steve Patterson.
Patterson said those streets were chosen because they met the CDBG qualifications implemented by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provides development funding for low-income areas.
“We get CDBG, and we get it every two years, $75,000 a year, total of $150,000, that we can use for a sundry of different projects, but again, it has to be within qualifying census tracts in the city of Athens,” Patterson said.
Under the Ohio Department of Transportation’s Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines, ADA standards are applied to any public traffic infrastructure within local and state governments.
“When you think about sidewalk repairs, period, that is making things more ADA accessible for individuals,” Patterson said.
Patterson was the chair of the Athens City Commission on Disabilities from 2012 to 2015 and highlighted the need for disability-friendly construction improvements in the city, specifically Uptown.
To remediate that, Mayor Patterson mentioned a project beginning in December to improve the intersection of North Court Street and West State Street.
The project, starting at the end of Ohio University’s 2026-2027 fall semester, will consist of removing and replacing sidewalks, curbs, curb ramps and related intersection improvements.
Dianne Bouvier, the vice chairperson of the Athens City Commission on Disabilities and committee member for the Accessibility and Advocacy Committee as well as the Communication and Outreach Committee, highlighted that much of the funding for pedestrian improvements is from ODOT grants and block grants.
However, Bouvier said the city does not direct funds toward sidewalk improvements.
“One of my frustrations with the city is they have no designated funds for sidewalks,” Bouvier said. “So they have funds for the streets, they have funds for a lot of improvements, but the sidewalks, they have seemed to need to figure out every time they do a project how to fund it.”
Currently, under the Ohio Revised Code, property owners next to public sidewalks are responsible for keeping the infrastructure accessible.
That has caused complications for implementing ADA compliance because homeowners must be consistent with repairs for pathways to be accessible, according to Bouvier.
According to Bouvier, the Accessibility Committee and Advocacy Committee work with the city to assess if city infrastructure is compliant with ADA standards. Currently, the city does not have staff to monitor ADA compliance.
“So it takes somebody getting hurt, or somebody falling, or somebody having a hard time getting around, for them to know there's an issue,” Bouvier said.
Bouvier said the city of Athens is implementing an ADA transition plan. Sunday Creek Horizons is the consultant the city hired to assess the city’s buildings and infrastructure for accessibility.
“So the thing that will help is an ADA transition plan and requires you to identify what are the barriers to access,” Bouvier said. “And it requires a timeline for remediation, and it requires a budget to show how much will it cost to fix things. And once that's completed, then the city council and the city would need to adopt it.”
