More delays in Monroe Street Bridge reopening

The long-awaited Monroe Street Bridge reopening will be at least three months late.

Weather delays and problems with a pier on the north side of the bridge have already postponed reopening the bridge until August. Now a recently discovered structural problem on the south side of the bridge could push the closure into the fall.

“We’re really, really interested in not going into the next holiday season,” said Dick Raymond, the city’s principal engineer for capital projects.

The Monroe Street Bridge has already been closed for more than two years, and business owners to its north and the Spokane Transit Authority have been anxious for it to reopen so they can get back to business as usual.

Just after the new year, construction crews discovered a major problem with the pier on the south side of the 90-plus-year-old bridge.

“You dig into an old structure like that, you never know what you’re going to find,” said Spokane Mayor Jim West.

The pier is hollow and is not reinforced, said Raymond, adding, “Unfortunately it’s not an easy fix.”

City officials declined to speculate on how long it will take to fix the south pier problem.

They will meet with the bridge contractor next week to discuss possible fixes for the pier, how long it would take and how much it would cost.

A similar problem on the north side of the bridge added three weeks of work and about $100,000 in costs to the project. That pier had to be torn down 15 feet and then reconstructed using reinforcing steel.

The problem is more complicated on the south side because an arch is also attached to the weak pier, Raymond said.

Any opening date will come too late for Little Nell’s Records, located just north of the bridge.

“It’s killed us already,” said owner Eloise Moeller. “For the last two years now, we’ve gone down the drain.”

Moeller said the store might have survived until June, but it won’t make it until the fall. She’s now closing out the merchandise.

The construction hasn’t been as bad as feared for the Monroe Street Bridge Antique Market, said Diana Robbins who has a stall in the antique mall.

“It’s like everything else in life, we take one day at a time, and we’re thankful for the customers we do have,” Robbins said.

The bridge delay could postpone STA’s proposed new bus routes and schedules.

The plan was to change the routes in September.

“If there’s a delay until even the end of October, we’d delay implementation. Otherwise customers would have to go through two changes in close proximity,” said STA Operations Director Steve Blaska.

Bus detours around the bridge construction are costing STA $76,000 a month, Blaska said.

City officials stressed that they won’t rush the bridge job.

“The last thing we want to do is slap on a Band-Aid when we’ve spent so much money to do it right,” said Public Works Director Roger Flint.

The roughly $20 million project is still within budget, despite about $500,000 worth of change orders, said Raymond.

“That’s only 2 percent. That ain’t bad,” Raymond said.

Two of those changes, totaling $231,000 – the promenade along Spokane Falls Boulevard and some structural patching – were anticipated prior to construction but not included in the original specifications.

West isn’t worried about the delay putting a crimp on his planned three-day weekend bridge party.

“If it’s in the winter, we’ll just have snowball fights,” West said, quickly adding that he thinks it’s unlikely bridge construction will be delayed that long.