News File Photo A construction crew works on the Bagley Street Bridge in this May 2022 Alpena News archive photo.

ALPENA — Another design change for the Bagley Street Bridge has clouded the timeline for when traffic can begin flowing over it again.

Hard limestone, discovered during soil boring work, forced minor adjustments to the bridge’s design. Alpena County Road Commission officials remain hopeful crews can complete the project by June 10, but officials had hoped to allow vehicles to use the bridge before construction wrapped up.

Officials have yet to determine when or if that will occur.

Construction on the bridge began in February 2021 and officials expected to complete it in December of the same year. Issues with limestone forced a large redesign of the bridge early in the construction process, however, and that pushed the timeline for completion back into this year.

The bridge reopened to traffic in December, but was closed again in April so construction crews could wrap up work that needed to be done with traffic absent.

Road Commission Managing Director Ryan Brege said the limestone is more solid in some areas in and near the Thunder Bay River, and, when crews find hard masses of it, they have two possible solutions. They can tweak the bridge design, which Brege said is the cheapest but more time-consuming option, or they can hammer through the rock, which is a quicker process but more costly.

Officials elected to just amend the design.

“We’ve had more setbacks because of the limestone, and we’ve been discussing with the contractor when our open-to-traffic date could be, but, right now, we just don’t have a good target date for that to happen,” Brege said. “We appreciate the public’s patience while we work through this.”

Because the project is very close to completion, Brege said it is unlikely limestone will be an issue after crews address the current issue. He said most of the structure is built and cosmetic work, like new guardrails that protect pedestrians from the traffic, are installed.

The bridge has undergone a complete renovation and the deck on the new bridge will double the width and include a turn lane, a sidewalk, and a mixed-use walkway.

The cost of the project was in the neighborhood of $10.3 million.

Brege told The News previously that the bridge will more easily handle the volume of traffic that crosses the bridge each day. He said an average of 15,000 vehicles cross the bridge each day, which is much higher than the volume of traffic that crossed the bridge when it was first built in 1976.

Funding for the project came from state and federal grants, as well as necessary matching money from the Road Commission.

Brege said, early in the design process, he wanted the bridge to be visually pleasing and not appear as drab as many of the concrete bridges around the area. He said he believes people will be impressed with its look when they see it up close.

“I think it is turning out very well and looks great,” he said. “We wanted to make something visually pleasing for the community. Like the railings — we could have just used chain-link fencing. We wanted it to look attractive and not industrial looking.”