Downtown Santa Rosa sidewalk reopening along east side of Old Courthouse Square

To date, the reunification of Santa Rosa’s Old Courthouse Square has appeared to onlookers largely like a dirty, downtown demolition project.

Guys in hardhats operating heavy machinery have chopped down trees, torn out fountains, ripped up streets and dug ditches.

But the $10.5 million project has now moved into full-on construction mode, and in the New Year, the first small piece of the new square will open to the public.

Workers finished pouring the new 25-foot-wide eastern sidewalk Friday, which should allow the key downtown pedestrian corridor closed since Dec. 16 to reopen next week. “I’m so excited,” said Janet Rogers, vice president of programs for the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce. “Aesthetically, it’s going to be really, really nice.”

Rogers, whose first floor office looks out on the work, said she was pleasantly surprised to see how wide the new sidewalk is, predicting it will allowing future restaurants to have expanded outdoor dining.

The new sidewalk represented a piece of positive news for a project that has fallen behind schedule and gone over budget.

The closure of the pathway between Third and Fourth streets annoyed some downtown business owners, who said it further disrupted the flow of foot traffic by forcing pedestrians to walk around the block.

The city initially told businesses the sidewalk would reopen by Dec. 24.

But making sure the new hardscape conformed with the strict requirements of the federal Americans With Disabilities Act and site conditions took a little more time than expected, said Steve Dittmer, the supervising engineer in the Transportation and Public Works Department.

“It takes a while to set it up so that there is enough slope but not too much,” Dittmer explained.

For example, the ADA requires sidewalks to have slopes in the direction of travel of no more than 5 percent. But it also requires the slope from the building toward the curb - known as the cross-slope - to be no more than 2 percent, Dittmer explained.

That doesn’t leave much room for error, especially when the buildings don’t even have uniform doorway heights, he said.

“The challenge isn’t where everything is new, Dittmer said. “It’s where you’re conforming with existing buildings.”

Crews from R.E. Maher Inc. used a concrete pumper truck with a huge boom on it to squirt the tan-colored concrete into the precisely laid-out wooden forms in front of 50 Old Courthouse Square.

Masons wielding screed boards, levels and long-handled trowels smoothed and grooved the concrete as it cured.

Employees of the six-story building, which in addition to the chamber houses a U.S. Bank branch, have been using a rear entrance while the old sidewalk was jackhammered out and the new one installed.

Next week, the crews from Thompson Builders of Novato will shift to the west side of the square, tearing out the sidewalk in front the Empire Building in preparation for its new wide walkways.

The new square is expected to fully open in March.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 707-521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.