toledoblade.com --

An approximately six-hour closing of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Bridge yesterday was the first of a series of shutdowns occurring through mid March while the structure’s drawspans are replaced, city officials said.

The next closing, expected to last for about 24 hours, is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. Friday , said Brian Schwartz, a spokesman for Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.

That means that the bridge will be closed to traffic during a Toledo Storm hockey game that night.

Gary Wyse, the general manager of the Toledo Sports Arena, said he was “concerned” by the work’s timing, but that he was “given assurances that there will be a detour route established and information given out” to alert the public to the bridge closing.

“Over the last six years a lot of our customers have avoided the construction area and taken alternate routes to begin with,” Mr. Wyse said.

On the positive side, he continued, “Progress is being made on that bridge, and it looks like we’re heading around the clubhouse turn now.”

Mr. Schwartz said the closing Friday, during which the drawspans’ upstream halves will be removed, was scheduled “as soon as we can do it” after the bridge’s closing to river traffic, which occurred yesterday.

The last river freighter of the season left Toledo on Saturday.

“The schedule is very tight and we want to do it as soon as possible,” Mr. Schwartz said. “There is a real deadline here because the navigation channel has to be reopened on time.”

Along with the Sports Arena, city officials have notified the operators of restaurants in The Docks complex in International Park about the bridge closing.

“Certainly we are concerned,” about the bridge closings, said Tom Cousino , owner of Cousino’s Navy Bistro and several other restaurants in the complex.

“Our customers all come from the suburbs, and they don’t like the inconveniences .”

The city’s contract with National Engineering & Constructing allows the bridge to be closed to motor traffic for up to four days.

Mr. Schwartz said the longest closing on the schedule is for three days, while concrete around the new drawspans is poured and cured.

That closing is tentatively scheduled for March 10-13, he said.

Officials expect to close the bridge to vehicles six other times for 12 to 24 hours, Mr. Schwartz said. Most of those closings should occur at night, he said.

Shipping to and from grain elevators and a construction materials terminal upstream of the King bridge historically has been inactive between late December and late March, although Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority officials had hoped this year to develop new traffic that would have continued throughout the winter.

That plan was thwarted, however, when the drawspans’ replacement was postponed for a year because of an engineering error.

Renovation of the 1910-vintage King bridge began in late 2001 with a $10.2 million project to rehabilitate its concretearch approach spans.

That work was completed during the spring of 2004, after which National began work to prepare for the replacement of the drawspans.

Most obvious to motorists was be the replacement of the bridge’s two control towers, but concrete repairs and electrical work have been done below the roadway surface.

Components for the replacement drawbridge spans were fabricated in Eau Claire, Wis., with final assembly done in a yard off Front Street near the Port of Toledo, from which the finished structures are to be barged downtown.

But during the preparation of shop drawings, staff at PDM Bridge discovered design errors that delayed some components’ fabrication by up to six months .

The installation was delayed for a full year because the U.S. Coast Guard denied a city request to close the river to marine traffic during the summer months.

Blade staff writer JC Reindl contributed to this report.

Contact David Patch at:
dpatch@theblade.com
or 419-724-6094.

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