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WITH VIDEO: Bagley Street bridge workers race Mother Nature

By Steve Schulwitz 3 min read

ALPENA -- The Alpena County Road Commission announced Wednesday that construction on the Bagley Street Bridge would not be completed in time to meet the Nov. 15 deadline that was established when the project began.

The project began in February.

Managing Director Ryan Brege said a portion of the project needed to be redesigned due to an unexpected issue with the soil, COVID-19, and the ongoing employee shortage caused the project to fall behind schedule.

Crews continue to work at a furious pace to try to get the bridge done before winter weather arrives, but Brege said even if enough work is accomplished before snow arrives, and the bridge is opened, the entire project won't be completed until early next year.

"It is all hands on deck trying to get this open up for winter," Brege said. "That is our main focus at this point. I still can't guarantee it is going to happen. It is not possible to finish the entire project this year, no matter what. This project will leak into next year."

Brege, who described the situation as fluid and ever-changing, said opening one lane and allowing the construction crews to continue to plug away on the other is not in the cards either.

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"If we were to the point to where we could get one lane, we would be able to get two," he said.

Brege said as work progressed on the project, contractors ran into soil issues that forced design plans to be changed, which set the project back. The entire northern section of the bridge needed to be redesigned to overcome the soil issues.

"We found some really poor soil condition and they were so poor they really didn't leave us a lot of options other than to do a complete redesign on how we were going to build that side of the bridge," he said. "That takes time and leads to a domino effect because in construction you can't do Y until you do X. The contractor had to evaluate what they could still work on while we were doing the redesign, so that slowed things down too."

He said COVID-19 restrictions and contractors working through an employee shortage also set the project back. Despite the issues, Brege said everyone involved is working as hard as they can to make the bridge usable before Mother Nature forces the project to wrap up for the winter.

When the project was announced, the road commission asked residents if they wanted the bridge closed for one year, or to have the project last for two years with traffic being maintained. Those who responded chose the one-year option. Brege said if the two-year option was chosen, there would likely still be a delay because of the pandemic.

"Once we got into the design, we recognized right away that a project of this size was going to be tight to do for either option," Brege said. "What folks hopefully understand is that this project was designed before anything having to do with COVID-19. It presented challenges and to a degree it still does with the worker shortage and supply-chain issues. We are doing everything to get this bridge open, but this is northern Michigan and the weather won't hold off forever."

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