toledoblade.com --

East Toledo restaurant owners and their patrons had plenty to celebrate yesterday, and it wasn't all because of the St. Patrick's Day holiday.

The Martin Luther King, Jr., Bridge connecting downtown and the east side reopened to traffic after a three-week shutdown to finish the concrete deck on its replacement drawspans.

In addition, more than five years of lane closings during the bridge's $48 million renovation, including another complete shutdown that lasted more than two months last winter, have nearly concluded.

"It's been a disaster for all the businesses on the east side, not just us," said Tom Cousino, owner of the Navy Bistro, 30 Main St., and other restaurants in The Docks complex in International Park.

Mr. Cousino was sufficiently optimistic about the reopening that on Sunday he reinstated the Navy Bistro's Sunday brunches, which he suspended about a year ago during the bridge's first shutdown. "The bridge absolutely makes a difference.•.• .• . So much commerce on this side of the bridge is driven by the downtown working crowd," he said.

"I would hope [the reopening] would bring us back the 50 percent of the customers we lost since they started working on the bridge several years ago," agreed Jim Stepanski, owner of the Car Wash Co., 611 Front St.

David Welch, city commissioner of streets, bridges, and harbor, said "a lot of little touch-up" work remains to be done before the renovation is complete, including two little bits of paving that will require some very brief lane closings.

Asphalt paving is needed on 100-foot stretches of the concrete-arch spans immediately adjoining the drawspans, and Mr. Welch said that won't be done until local temperatures are expected to be at 50 degrees or above for an extended time.

"We're going to try to do it in the evening, after the rush hour," Mr. Welch said. "It shouldn't take that long."

There's also some painting to do, some finishing touches on the bridge's electrical system, and at least one street lamp that needs replacing, but none of that should cause significant traffic problems.

East Toledo merchants weren't the only ones pleased with the King's reopening.

"The bridge opening makes my life much easier," said Dr. Manish Gupta, 37, a plastic surgeon from Sylvania, as he entered the Real Seafood restaurant in The Docks at lunchtime.

When the King was closed, Dr. Gupta had to use the Anthony Wayne Bridge or the
I-280 Veterans' Glass City Skyway instead - both requiring a longer trip.

So did Bob Brossia, 50, a laborer for Laborers Local 500 who worked on the King bridge renovation and lives in East Toledo. He often had to take the long way around from Local 500's Ashland Avenue union hall to his work site.

"It's good for me," he said of the reopening. "I'll be using it just about every day, instead of going all the way around to the old I-280 bridge."

The project also is near enough to completion that load restrictions have been lifted. In their final years, the old drawspans were reduced to a five-ton limit to minimize the amount of rattling and bouncing they sustained from heavier vehicles, forcing TARTA buses and even fire trucks to use other bridges.

James Gee, the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority's general manager, said transit buses won't immediately resume using the King bridge because riders may have become accustomed to the current routes using the Anthony Wayne Bridge, which were established in 2000.

Instead, he said, any route changes will occur on June 8, the next time drivers' routes are up for assignment, and could include broader shifts in East Toledo service beyond just the choice of bridges to be used.

"We plan to have a public hearing in April so we can get some passenger feedback from East Toledo," Mr. Gee said.

Staff writer David Patch contributed to this report.

Contact Mike Sigov at:
sigov@theblade.com
or 419-724-5074.

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