Structural and facade improvements on the Main Street Bridge are close to complete, according to the Florida Department of Transportation. The $7.2 million upgrade should be finished by early December.
“That’s our goal,” FDOT spokesperson Mike Goldman said Monday, adding that protective tarps on the bridge were removed over the weekend. “All the bad weather we were experiencing pushed us back a little bit, but we’re on target to be finished sometime in the first week in December. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel now.”
Originally, the work was expected to be finished by now.
“Before we got started, that was something we thought we’d be able to accomplish,” said Goldman, “but in addition to the storms there was more work that needed to be done than we anticipated.”
That work included “substantial repairs” to a beam in the bridge’s lift span that resulted in a 10-day closure back in June.
Goldman said there will be no more permanent closures associated with this project.
“We don’t plan on any,” he said. “The bridge was built in 1941 and it’s just going to require a certain amount of maintenance every so often.
I can say that we have absolutely no plans to
replace it.”