WHERE THE SIDEWALKS END: CITY BEGINS OUTLINING WHERE REPAIRS ARE NEEDED

Sidewalks create a neighborhood.

Bernice Steck couldn't imagine life in her Sunset neighborhood without a sidewalk.

"I would have hated to have my children grow up without sidewalks," she said.

After all, sidewalks create a place for people to walk without fear of passing vehicles. Children can ride their bicycles, skate or walk safely to and from school.

Sidewalks are important, but they aren't necessarily abundant in Cape Girardeau.

Many of Cape Girardeau's newer subdivisions and housing additions do not have sidewalks. Until May 1997, city ordinances didn't require developers to create sidewalks.

So only older neighborhoods, particularly in the central and southern section of the city, have sidewalks. (A map on Page 2A shows the general outline of where sidewalks are in Cape Girardeau.)

City engineering staff are trying to create a map of the existing sidewalks so that older sidewalks can be repaired or replaced.

And it's a tough job.

Melanie Gertis, a city engineer, has been trying to map the sidewalks for more than a year through the sidewalk rehabilitation program. She has driven around city streets looking for cracks, crumbling concrete and tree roots pushing up the sidewalks.

She has found them.

When the city began replacing broken sidewalks nearly two years ago, it meant cutting down old trees whose roots were causing uneven sidewalks.

Steck and her husband, Charles, lost two trees in the process of getting a new sidewalk in front of their home on Bessie Street. But they prefer the even pavement now to the tilted concrete they had before.

The sidewalk was raised before, but now "you don't stumble" when you walk, Bernice Steck said.

And being able to walk along a smooth path is important, especially for people who get their exercise or who push strollers along the sidewalks, she said.

Like the Stecks, Candy Swingle can't imagine her neighborhood without its sidewalks.

They were the place her daughters learned to ride their bicycles and where the family walks its dog, Beau.

"I just can't imagine it without sidewalks because they've always been here," Swingle said.

But some neighborhoods have the reverse problem: They can't imagine life with a sidewalk.

Many subdivisions in the city don't have sidewalks. Most of the subdivision developments approved by the city in the last two months are additions to existing plats on the city's northwestern edge. So those additions don't require sidewalks under city ordinance.

Under the 1997 ordinance, any new subdivision with lots smaller than three acres must build sidewalks. Since the city enacted its sidewalk ordinance, only one new subdivision has been built and required to lay sidewalks. That was a subdivision by Holigan Homes along North Sprigg Street near the newest elementary school. The city also wanted sidewalks there because of the subdivision's proximity to the school.

Because so many subdivision developments have been additions and not new plats, the city's planning and zoning commission "didn't feel like it would be fair or necessary to require them to put in sidewalks," said R.J. McKinney, the commission chairman. Those subdivision developments were grandfathered into the sidewalk ordinance, he said.

McKinney said the ordinance is written exactly as the commission wanted and was approved by the council.