Where the sidewalk ends: Accessibility concerns on Concord’s walkways

The wheels of AJ Avery’s stroller snagged on the jagged, sloping sidewalk outside his house.

The 14-year-old with cerebral palsy loves to spend time outdoors. He relishes seeing all the different plants, especially during the spring when the daffodils and azaleas paint his street in pink, white and yellow.

Deteriorating sidewalks in his Concord neighborhood near Beaver Meadow Golf Course make for a rugged and bumpy ride in his mobility device. This year, they’ve felt increasingly dangerous, especially since winter’s thaw.

As his dad Joshua pushed him along on a sunny spring afternoon, AJ’s body jolted in the seat each time the wheels encountered an obstacle. The bumps, ridges and ditches in the walkways have been a consistent challenge in the two years the family has lived on Gallen Drive.

“Right now, it looks like I’m about to jump right out,” AJ joked.

His parents, Joshua and Robert Avery, have been advocating for sidewalk improvements since they moved into their house, which sits just down the street from the home of Ward 3 City Councilor Jennifer Kretovic. They’re prepared to take legal action against the city to get their concerns addressed.

“AJ can’t play golf, but they’re spending millions on a golf clubhouse, and AJ can’t access his own neighborhood,” said Joshua.

Kretovic knows the infrastructure in the area is old, she said. The neighborhood’s streets date back to the late 1980s.

“It’s all about what was required at the time, and at the time of my development, they required the sidewalks and the curb cuts and the tip downs and all that, but that doesn’t mean that they were accessible,” she said.

For the city, it’s not a matter of caring; it’s more a question of resources. With over 121 miles of sidewalk lining its streets, Concord cannot tend to every area all at once. The city repaves sidewalks and brings them up to accessibility standards when it does the abutting road repairs, tending to entire sections for efficiency and cost-saving purposes, Kretovic said.

In one area near AJ’s house, the sidewalk dips off into a front yard, with a several-inch drop between the pavement and the grass. That’s where the sidewalk ends, Joshua said while the family strolled, harkening back to the classic Shel Silverstein title. He pointed at the spot with a half-smile, half-grimace.

The family believes their neighborhood does not meet standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became federal law in 1990 and mandates that individuals with disabilities receive the same rights and opportunities as the rest of society. This civil rights law “prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in many areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and many public and private places that are open to the general public,” according to the ADA National Network.

Joshua and Robert want AJ to have the opportunity to experience the neighborhood as any other resident would. Beyond that, they say their recent interactions with the city of Concord have revealed a larger issue they want to see addressed.

Under Title II of the ADA, public entities with over 50 employees, including state and local governments, are required to develop a transition plan for adapting their facilities to meet accessibility standards.

The city of Concord, which had around 500 employees in 2025, does not have a transition plan, they found, despite having been legally obligated to create one since 1992, shortly after the passage of Title II. A public records request revealed that the city has other documents pertaining to accessibility, but it lacks a single, cohesive plan labeled as such.

“A transition plan must also include a schedule for providing curb ramps, giving priority to walkways serving entities covered by the ADA, including state and local government offices and facilities, transportation, places of public accommodation, and employers, followed by walkways serving other areas,” states the New England ADA Center.

Concord developed a Complete Streets Policy in 2015 and a Pedestrian Master Plan in 2017, listing accessibility as a primary goal: to make the city “a place where people can get to where they want to go on foot, regardless of their ability.”

Kretovic acknowledged that keeping up with the sidewalks can be “a challenge.”

“Now, obviously, transportation and the way in which we ride and we stripe the roads and everything, it changes over time, but part of the accessibility plan was acknowledging as an old New England town, we don’t have accessible sidewalks, but when we repave the road, we will redo the sidewalk to make them accessible,” she said.

The creation of a formal plan under ADA regulations to address infrastructure improvements in accessibility feels essential, Joshua and Robert agreed, not just for AJ but for everyone in Concord with a disability.

“Let’s do what’s not only obligated by federal law but what’s morally right for residents,” Robert said. “If every resident can’t access the facilities, then why invest in them?”

Seeking solutions

It started with a tree on the edge of the Avery’s property.

When the family purchased their house, they noticed the trunk was encroaching on the sidewalk, which had become cracked and elevated because of the root growth underneath, causing an “eruption,” as described by the city’s ADA Coordinator, Adam Clark, who oversaw an investigation of the area earlier this spring.

The tree belonged to the family but had grown into the city’s right-of-way. Robert said he spent nearly $2,000 to cut it down. Earlier last month, after weeks of back-and-forth with the Averys, the city agreed to remove the stump and fix that portion of the sidewalk, which it did the week of May 18.

Before the work began, Robert submitted a formal ADA grievance in mid-February, explaining that the state of the sidewalks in the neighborhood “effectively denies [AJ] meaningful access to the city’s pedestrian infrastructure.”

Part of his complaint mentioned portions of the sidewalks that are too narrow for a wheelchair. An ADA-compliant walkway must be 36 inches wide. He described “excessively steep otherwise noncompliant curb ramps and crossings” and “heaved, cracked, and deteriorated sidewalk panels creating impassable conditions,” among other concerns.

AJ owns an adaptive tricycle to facilitate therapeutic mobility. Moving his legs with the device helps prevent muscle atrophy, his parents said. But he hasn’t been able to use it in two years because of the condition of the sidewalks, the family said.

“I miss it. I do want to ride it again,” he said, then sighed. “Yes, I do think about it.”

He has cortical vision impairment that has reduced his ability to navigate with a motorized wheelchair. The tricycle provides him with an added degree of freedom; however, riding it in the street isn’t a viable option due to safety concerns about the speed of cars and Amazon delivery trucks barreling down the road, his parents said.

In response to their grievances, city engineers conducted site visits and collected measurements in March and April and “did identify areas that would benefit from improvement,” Clark wrote in a letter.

He said the city would “commit to make patching repairs of the sidewalk surfaces in the near term.”

While parts of the sidewalk on Gallen Drive are due for upgrades, rough patches in Peterson Circle and Governor’s Way need attention, too, the Averys said. Some of those areas have been marked for repair this spring.

Matt Rockwell of Concord General Services described crack sealing as a “band-aid” that doesn’t truly fix the asphalt.

“We hope sidewalks last at least 20 years,” he told the Monitor. “We expect our actual roads to last 10 to 15 years.”

Given the other projects on the city’s docket, such as the police station and the clubhouse, the Averys said they feel frustrated that sidewalks aren’t a higher priority.

“In terms of a larger-scale project, the City is continuing to evaluate more extensive improvements and I can update you as to those improvements as the City has more certainty on a timetable,” City Manager Tom Aspell wrote to Robert at the start of May. “In this, please recognize the timing of road and sidewalk repairs is subject to a number of factors including the time required for engineering work to be formed including planning and design as well as the availability of the necessary funding.”

The Averys said they want to see more action extending beyond their neighborhood, beginning with the creation of a Transition Plan.

“The city needs to do more. They’ve had 34 years,” Robert said. 

Beyond the neighborhood

For Jim Piet and his wife, Patricia Vincent-Piet, sidewalks in Concord have posed problems for years. Piet, who uses a motorized wheelchair, frequently has to ride in the street because the sidewalks — even in his neighborhood —are too rough to traverse or don’t have enough width for safe clearance.

“When you are just learning about your device, it is scary. Even for me, I’ve been using a device for 60 years. At times, I’m still hesitant,” he said.

Going into the road sometimes feels like his only option, he said.

“People get angry when they go by in their cars,” he said. “They think, ‘Why aren’t they on the sidewalk and on the side of the road?’ They don’t realize I already planned my route because it’s not accessible, and the average person doesn’t think about that.”

Downtown Concord is no exception. While parts of Main Street feel accessible, getting there can be a challenge, Vincent-Piet said. Like her husband, she has cerebral palsy. Although she does walk places, the rough condition of the sidewalks makes getting there more challenging.

“From Main Street down to Storrs Street, they haven’t done those side streets,” she said. “You have to go into traffic. You can’t stay on the sidewalk.”

At one corner of the intersection of Green Street and Center Street, a large electrical box juts into the sidewalk, rendering the passageway quite narrow for a wheelchair user —or even potentially pushing someone close to traffic. This is just one example of well-traveled stretches posing accessibility concerns.

The couple hopes the municipality takes sidewalk concerns seriously, but for the two of them, it’s just a part of daily life.

“But again, what do you do? Do you stay home on the nice day or do you make the decision to deal with many different obstacles?” said Piet.

Concord has over 121 miles of sidewalk, according to the Pedestrian Facilities Self Evaluation the city conducted back in 2011, which found that 10.3 percent of the 1457 municipal sidewalk segments “no longer appear[ed] to be safely accessible.” These segments had “cracks and bumps [we]re either so numerous or so severe that the walkway [wa]s unstable and deemed impassible. Under these conditions, handicapped pedestrians may risk traveling along the roadway.”

Over a quarter of the sidewalk segments were deemed “passable,” showing indications of wear and tare with many cracks and bumps, which make use of the walking surface somewhat uncomfortable. This portion of the sidewalk was determined to still be usable for handicapped pedestrians.

AJ, Piet and Vincent-Piet aren’t alone in their mobility challenges.

The 2020 census lists 13.7% of Concord residents as being under the age of 65 with a disability. The state, however, had an overall percentage of 9.5. Concord’s pretty high up there, with only a few municipalities having a larger portion of their population under 65 and with a disability: Berlin, Claremont, Franklin, Suncook and Derry.

Beyond that, with New Hampshire’s aging population, an increasing number of elderly residents will transition into wheelchairs as they climb in years, Piet said. They’ll need accessible spaces too.

The city tries to address sidewalks as it’s able to, Kretovic said.

“So everywhere you go in the city, you’re going to find areas where there is decline in the sidewalks and there’s decline in the road, and it mostly has to do with the type of weather that we have,” she said.

While Concord previously aimed to repave the roads every ten years, Kretovic said, that goal hasn’t been a reality since the 1980s. 

“We can’t afford to keep up with it. We’re trying to do more than what we lose each year in winter,” she said.

Over the next decade, the city plans to spend $1.35 million on sidewalk, bikeway and streetscape improvements, including repairs to existing sidewalks, as well as construction of new segments.

Accessibility is something “we’re always focused on,” said Kretovic.

“We’re always trying to do better,” she said. “It’s not always at the pace everybody wants. It’s the same as the person that sees that crack in front of their house, and they want the city to come and pave their road right away. What we see in front of us is not necessarily the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is way bigger than any of us ever imagined.”

The Averys are not the only family in their neighborhood noticing the sidewalk conditions. 

A resident at 23 Peterson Circle submitted a maintenance request on the city’s See Click Fix site on May 7. Lindsay and John Mullen are listed as the owners of the property.

“The sidewalks in Peterson Circle and the surrounding neighborhoods are dangerous for kids scootering, roller blading, biking, et cetera,” the request reads. “Fulling repaving would be ideal. See attached several pictures of previously filled in areas that have deteriorated.”

As the weather gets increasingly nicer, more and more residents are taking to the sidewalks in their spare time.

AJ loves to read. He’s an avid student of history, which he studies with Joshua as part of his homeschooling curriculum. He enjoys playing with his siblings and eating sweet treats. But above all, he loves being outside.

“Please hurry up and start doing these, because I want to get outside,” he said of the sidewalks. “Not like I’m trying to push them, but I do want to go outside.”