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BRIDGE MIX

Is Columbus willing to pay for three postcard-worthy spans Downtown?

 
By Erik Johns/ July 13, 2006
 

	"We wanted to make some kind of statement": An architect's rendering of the Main Street Bridge

Why can't we just build a bridge in this city? It seems simple enough: a couple pillars, some concrete and—bam!—you've got yourself a bridge.

Things only get complicated if you care what it looks like.

Odds are good you haven't noticed the decaying Main Street Bridge has been closed since 2002. Downtown traffic seems to chug along just fine without it. But the powers that be decided Columbus needs to knock it down and build an eye-popping replacement.

You can't blame them. Nobody wants a Downtown bridge that looks like an overpass. But, as the city is learning, beauty comes at a price.

Since 2004, the folks at City Hall had been under the impression they could get the bridge—a stunning architectural feat with a dramatic, sweeping arch—built for about $29 million. But rising steel and material costs jolted the bottom line to more than $44 million, and city leaders are suffering from $15 million sticker shock.

When the bid came in, Mayor Mike Coleman demanded the city explore other options—though he's been careful not to insist that the old plan be thrown out.

Today, a consortium of government officials are meeting privately to discuss the Main Street Bridge's future—and how it relates to a planned replacement of the Town Street Bridge, its neighbor to the north.

It could be one of those fateful days that change the way Columbus looks forever. The current design might go down the tubes. If it does, a whole new set of complications and opportunities arise.

Among the possibilities are a so-called "vanilla" bridge, built to satisfy budget hawks, and a simplified, less expensive version of the current design.

Then there's the most dramatic change in plans: a single unibridge that would replace Main, Town and a planned pedestrian bridge.

The people in today's powwow would probably be happy to snap their notebooks shut at the end of the day with everything resolved. But if recent history is any guide, building a bridge in Downtown Columbus won't be that simple.

Spanning the skinny Scioto is hardly a daunting engineering task, but the mayor's visions for the development of River South and Franklinton on the opposing banks of the river add complexity. He sees the bridges as development tools. Which is why, despite all the moaning about higher cost estimates, the city might go ahead as planned with the $44 million model.

Columbus officials have until the end of next week to tell the Ohio Department of Transportation if they will proceed as planned. If they dump the existing design and start fresh, the construction will likely finish in 2011 or 2012, at least two years later than currently projected.

Any high-profile bridge is a balance between number-crunching pragmatism and grand vision—a bold bid to give the Venices and Amsterdams of the world a run for their money.

Until the new price came down, Main Street's so-called "inclined arch" design seemed to satisfy both objectives. But now even Columbus Public Service Director Henry Guzman—who had previously advocated swallowing hard and paying the higher price—is hedging his bets.

"We might be looking at a different design," he said this week.

While a change in design would push the project back two or three years, Councilwoman Maryellen O'Shaughnessy, who chairs the city's public service committee, sees the financial snag as an opportunity to go in a dramatically new direction.

"I personally am intrigued by the single-bridge idea," she said.

In this model, three planned bridges would become one. Plans have called for the Town Street Bridge, just north of Main, to be rebuilt in tandem with a new pedestrian bridge.

All three spans would be merged into one under the idea that's caught O'Shaughnessy's eye. She's captivated by the notion the city could have one big, fancy bridge for the price of three plain ones.

"If we can get a signature bridge and save some money, hey, why not do it?" O'Shaughnessy said. "Why would you go with the design that might not be the best design just because it's been designed?"

But that's a big change, and it could also cause some future traffic-flow problems with the anticipated revitalization of Franklinton and the continuing Downtown housing boom.

"The other side of the issue is that we need more connections, not less," O'Shaughnessy conceded.

Said Guzman: "We embarked on this design because the consensus was that we wanted to make some kind of statement. Making a statement and cost are two different things. We need to make sure whatever statement were making is in line with cost."

One thing is certain: In a town hardly known for its scenic waterways, Columbus has a knack for generating a good bridge controversy.

In 1989, the city shut down the O'Shaughnessy Dam Bridge near the zoo over safety concerns. The dam and adjoining reservoir are namesakes of Councilwoman O'Shaughnessy's great-grandfather Jerry O'Shaughnessy, a former Columbus water superintendent.

Members of the O'Shaughnessy family—including Maryellen—led an effort to preserve the historic aspects of the bridge when it was rebuilt.

After two years of bickering and negotiating, the bridge finally reopened in 1991, with some of the historic elements in place.

The mid-'90s saw perhaps Columbus's most bizarre debate over bridge design. In 1992, the city finished construction on the new Broad Street Bridge. Its design was the epitome of understated elegance.

It was to be the swan song of Franklin County Engineer John Circle: one last memorable project before retiring from public life. Included were four pedestals at the corners of the bridge, each designed to display artwork—something like, say, a statue.

But the artsy folks in Columbus went way overboard.

At Circle's behest, the Greater Columbus Arts Council held a competition to pick artwork for the bridge. The winner: a massive glass replica of the Ohio Serpent Mound that would hover menacingly over traffic. The translucent snake was wider and longer than the bridge, and would have given motorists the rare treat of driving under tons of jagged glass panes during heavy storms.

But Circle wasn't going to see his baby smothered to death by an abstract snake ingesting an egg. He asked the Ohio Department of Transportation to reject his own proposal for $700,000 worth of bridge art. Undercutting the arts community and the selection process he created, Circle successfully sabotaged the snake.

To this day, the bridge still has four vacant spots for artwork.

Though Guzman has softened his stance to reflect the mayor's cost-conscious approach, it's clear he still leans toward staying the course.

"In the time it will take to redesign, what will inflation do compared to going ahead and moving forward now?" Guzman said. "Even if we wait, with inflation and the cost of other commodities going up, would we be at this same place in 2011 when we start construction?"

And oddly enough, the $44 million bid is $8 million less than the city planned to spend. In the recently adopted capital improvements budget, $51.8 million was allocated for the bridge.

"It's a good bid for what they're trying to do," O'Shaughnessy said.

While Mayor Coleman has asked the city to step back and evaluate options, he's stopped short of calling for a design overhaul.

"The mayor is not going to push in any one direction," spokesman Mike Brown said. "No matter what we do, it will be an expensive public-works project, but a necessary one."

And, everybody hopes, an attractive one.