Sidewalks are the concrete everyone uses — and in most California cities, the property owner is responsible for keeping the one out front safe. Whether you’re answering a city repair notice, fixing panels a street tree lifted, or adding an ADA ramp to a building entrance, this is right-of-way work: permitted, inspected, and built to your city’s standard drawings.
We build public sidewalks, curb and gutter, curb cuts, driveway aprons, and ADA-compliant ramps across the Bay Area — from a single lifted panel in front of a house to full-frontage replacements like our Durant Avenue sidewalk at UC Berkeley.
- Licensed C-8 · CSLB #1020281
- Permits & inspections handled
- Richmond-based, Bay Area-wide
What sidewalk work actually involves
The pour is the easy part — right-of-way work is won and lost in the permits and the prep.
Permit & city standards
Work in the right-of-way runs on an encroachment permit and the city’s standard drawings — widths, thickness, scoring, slopes. We pull it and build to it.
Demo & haul-off
Damaged panels saw-cut and broken out clean, keeping the panels and curb that stay.
Base & roots
Grading and compacted base — and where a street tree did the damage, the root situation is handled per the city’s rules before anything is poured over it.
Forms to spec
Set to the city standard: panel widths, expansion joints, cross-slope for drainage, ramp slopes and landings where access is part of the scope.
Pour & finish
Broom finish for traction, tooled joints to match the existing walk, detectable warning domes set into new ramps.
Inspection & reopening
The city inspects right-of-way work before sign-off — then barricades come down and the walk goes back into service.
A typical residential sidewalk repair is measured in days, not weeks — and the walk is back in service quickly once the city signs off. Larger frontages and ramps run longer; pedestrian routing and traffic control stay up the whole way.
What right-of-way work turns on
Repair notices & owner responsibility
California law generally makes the fronting property owner responsible for sidewalk maintenance, and Bay Area cities enforce it with inspection and repair-notice programs. If a notice landed in your mailbox, the fix is a permit, a licensed contractor, and a city inspection — we handle all three.
Street trees & roots
Tree roots are the number-one sidewalk killer — lifted panels, trip hazards, repeat repairs. Cities protect their street trees, so the rebuild has to work around them: root handling per city rules, and panel details that give the tree somewhere to go.
ADA slopes, landings & domes
An ADA ramp is geometry: running slope, cross slope, landings, and detectable warning domes, each with hard limits measured at inspection. Our West Portal ramp shows what compliant looks like when it’s also built to match the building.
Right-of-way inspections
Public work is inspected work — forms and base before the pour, the finished walk after. Bids that skip the permit look cheaper until the city red-tags the job. Ours carry the permit, the inspection, and the pedestrian routing to get through both.
What we build in the right-of-way
Sidewalk panels and full frontages, curb and gutter, ADA ramps and curb cuts, driveway aprons, and commercial walkways and pads — the same crew that pours our driveways handles the public strip in front. Finish is set by the city standard: broom texture, tooled joints matched to the existing walk, domes on ramps. See more completed work in the flatwork portfolio.
What sidewalk work costs in the Bay Area
Sidewalk pricing is driven by panel count, access, demo and haul-off, tree roots, and whether curb, gutter, or a ramp is in the scope — plus the permit itself, which varies city by city. Some cities also run cost-share programs for qualifying repairs; it’s worth asking your public works counter before you start. Our cost guide explains why bids that skip these line items aren’t really cheaper.
What you get from us: a free, itemized estimate — permit, demo, base, concrete, finish, inspection — whether it’s one panel or the whole frontage. For small repairs, photos of the damage are usually enough to price it.
Right-of-way work we’ve built
ADA Ramp & Sidewalk — West Portal
West Portal, San Francisco
A sleek, ADA-compliant access ramp and a brand-new sidewalk for a San Francisco residential building in West Portal, built by New Edge Concrete in…
View projectDurant Sidewalk — UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
A public sidewalk replacement on Durant Avenue at UC Berkeley, built by New Edge Concrete in 2024 — a piece of public-space work that shows our…
View projectCommon questions
I got a sidewalk repair notice from the city — what do I do?
Don’t panic, and don’t ignore it — notices carry deadlines, and unrepaired hazards are a liability that sits with the property owner. The fix is straightforward: a licensed contractor pulls the encroachment permit, replaces the flagged panels to city standard, and the city inspects and signs off. We handle that full loop routinely — and for most notices, a few photos of the flagged panels are enough for us to scope it.
Who is responsible for sidewalk repairs — me or the city?
In most California cities, state law puts sidewalk maintenance on the owner of the fronting property, and Bay Area cities — Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, Richmond — each run their own inspection and permit process on top of it. Some cities share costs for specific causes like city-owned street trees, so it’s always worth asking your public works department what programs apply before paying for the whole repair yourself.
Do I need a permit to replace my sidewalk?
Yes — sidewalks, curbs, gutters, and aprons sit in the public right-of-way, and every Bay Area city requires an encroachment or sidewalk permit plus inspection for work there. It isn’t optional, and it isn’t a formality: unpermitted right-of-way work can be red-tagged and redone. A legitimate bid includes the permit and builds the inspection into the schedule — our East Bay permit guide covers each city’s process.
What makes a ramp ADA-compliant?
Hard geometry, measured at inspection: a running slope no steeper than 1:12, cross slope within tight limits, level landings at the top and bottom, compliant handrails where required, and detectable warning domes where the ramp meets the street. It’s precision formwork — being close doesn’t pass. Compliance details come from the current ADA standards and your city’s standard drawings, and the inspector checks them with a level in hand.
Can you replace just one cracked or lifted panel?
Yes — single-panel and small repairs are normal sidewalk work, and doing them right matters as much as on a full frontage: saw-cut edges, compacted base, thickness and joints matched to the existing walk. If a root caused the lift, we deal with the cause per the city’s tree rules, not just the symptom, so the new panel doesn’t lift the same way.
How long is the sidewalk closed during the work?
For a typical repair: demo and forming one day, the pour the next, then the concrete needs a few days before it reopens to foot traffic — call it most of a week end to end, with pedestrian routing in place the whole time. Larger frontages and ramps phase the work so a walkable path stays open as much as the site allows.
Ready for a real number?
Send us photos of the sidewalk — or the repair notice itself — and we’ll put together a free, itemized estimate. If the job needs eyes on the site, we’ll come out.
Request an estimate