JUNE 24-30, 2024 SPRINGFIELD BUSINESS JOURNAL · 43 NEWS Bridge: Council will vote June 24 on whether to accept bid Continued from page 3 LOCALLY OWNED AND OPERATED BY DOUG & ANDREA WINDSOR © 2023 Five Star Painting SPV LLC. All rights Reserved. Commercial & Residential Painting 417.720.2376 FiveStarPainting.com and a full repaint while eliminating the approach. The full bid amount exceeded the engineering estimate of $8.9 million by more than 20%. If the bid for the project is approved, the bulk of the cost will be paid for through a direct appropriation of $8 million from fiscal 2024 budget of the state of Missouri, signed by Gov. Mike Parson in June 2023. An updated engineering inspection costing $160,000 was paid for through that allocation. Martin Gugel, the city’s assistant director of Public Works, noted the budgeted funds are earmarked specifically for the footbridge project. “We couldn’t use it for anything else,” he said. “If we didn’t use it for this project, the state would use it for something else, and we would lose the funding.” The remaining funds for the project would come from the city’s quarter-cent capital improvement tax, at $193,000, and its eighthcent transportation sales tax, at $352,000, plus a $50,000 contribution by the Commercial Club, a C-Street booster organization. At council’s June 10 meeting, which included the public hearing on the footbridge bid, council voted to approve $26 million in special obligation improvement bonds that would be used to fund multiple city projects, including $4 million for the footbridge project. In all, $12.4 million is available for construction, which allows a contingency, if needed, over the bid amount. City officials say the project would begin with 180 days for permitting and material acquisition, followed by 185 days of construction, with an anticipated opening in fall 2025, if council approves the project. Rising cost The 562-foot-long steel bridge, which was built in 1902 and crosses 13 tracks of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail yard, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. The city notes the footbridge design was the first of its kind in Missouri and was built at public expense by the American Bridge Company of Pennsylvania. Its multiarched, cantilevered design allowed workers to construct the bridge while on it and above the tracks to minimize disruption to the rail lines. The bridge was closed in 2016 due to structural concerns. In April 2018, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting, council fielded an hour of public comment on a bridge rehabilitation plan that came in at $2.3 million, including $1.4 million to restore its main span and the remainder to fund elevators and viewing decks on either end of the structure. Council voted to postpone bidding at that meeting, with then-Councilmember Richard Ollis, whose family once operated a business on C-Street, saying he did not know if the proposal being considered was the right plan. “Sometimes, when we do things fast, we do things wrong,” Ollis was quoted as saying. Council took another crack at the project In December 2021, with an engineering estimate of about $3 million. The city received two bids, one for $6.2 million and the other for $6.4 million. Branco Enterprises was the low bidder at that time. The project was to have been funded through 80% federal surface transportation block grants and a 20% local match, putting the city’s share at approximately $1.2 million. Why so high? According to an old saying, “Hindsight is 20/20.” Viewed through post pandemic goggles, that $2.3 million estimate from 2018 might look fairly rosy. Gugel said there are a lot of reasons the 2024 cost of bridge rehabilitation is significantly higher than it was less than a decade ago. He cited supply chain disruption, labor issues and a large number of public projects receiving federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act. ARPA projects all operate on similar timelines, with a requirement that entities expend funds before the end of 2026. Mary Collette, president of the Commercial Club, said a public survey conducted shortly after the bridge’s closure showed that most people wanted a restoration that kept things simple. “We were presented more complicated variations and iterations,” she said. “Then COVID hit, and prices just skyrocketed, as they have with every single project – city, state, everything is doubling and tripling. That’s what happens when you don’t strike while the iron is hot.” A complicating factor for the project is the danger, with active rail lines running beneath the work site. “I really think that was one of the contributing factors to the price – just the risk the contractor has to take with regards to the presence of the railroad and how to approach the project and maintain those active railroads,” Gugel said. He added that there are a lot of projects available that offer less risk to contractors. “Every contracting firm needs to balance schedule based off workforce,” he said. “They want to keep everyone busy and maintain their bottom line, and they don’t want to overextend. There’s a high likelihood other projects currently on the street had less risk than this.” Inflation is also a factor, he said, noting a Federal Highway Administration index showing that road construction prices have risen 75% since the COVID-19 pandemic. Gugel said the project has been a long time coming for the city, with challenges to overcome. “I understand why some people would have concerns or sticker shock,” he said. “Honestly, with the amount construction has gone up, it was a shock to our system as well, but it’s something we’ve had to adjust to.” Symbolic importance Gugel said the bridge is an important project, especially to the city’s north-siders, for whom the bridge has offered pedestrian access and connection. “It provides not only a symbolic presence, but it gives a solution to a need as far as getting folks across the rail yard,” he said. Collette agreed. “People don’t realize how much foot traffic that bridge carried when it was open, or what kind of inconvenience it has put on people who are already inconvenienced to the max,” she said. People who live north of the bridge are among the city’s poorest population, she said. “It is cruel what they did when they closed that bridge,” she said, offering her opinion that with something like a turnstile system to control flow, the bridge could have continued to serve the people who needed it. She noted the bridge is an economic accelerator for north Springfield, and for the city as a whole. “When it was open more than eight years ago, we would have bevies of tour buses with people visiting from other countries on a regular basis,” she said. “The community is largely unaware of that, but we certainly were not.” Tourism was one impetus toward an investment in repainting and repairing small parts of the bridge in 2002, she said. “We have always prided ourselves in being not just family and pet oriented, but free. You can come to Commercial Street and just stroll. You don’t have to spend money; you can spend a lovely afternoon enjoying the architecture, landscaping, outdoor art and the Jefferson Avenue Footbridge.” She added that there is no better sunset anywhere in the city than from the footbridge. When the sun sets between two grain towers to the west, the view is “simply spectacular.” “We’ve lost that for eight years now,” she said. “When people get back on it again, they will see that.” • Martin Gugel: Multiple factors have contributed to boosting the price of repairs. $8.9M Engineer’s estimate for bridge rehab project $10.8M Amount of sole bid for bridge repairs
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