29-01-2025
City to hold meeting to discuss Dewey Street Bridge replacement
EAU CLAIRE — A meeting will take place today to discuss the replacement of the Dewey Street Bridge and look at possible design options. Also, it is now unclear if there will be federal dollars available to help pay for it.
'The Dewey Street Bridge is one of three bridges that cross the Eau Claire River in downtown Eau Claire,' said Leah Ness, the director of engineering for the City of Eau Claire. 'The structure was originally built in 1931 and has reached the end of its youthful life. We are looking at alternatives for replacement.'
The meeting will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Riverview Room at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Library. It will feature a number of design alternatives for residents to review and give input on, as well as room for discussion on other purposes the new bridge can serve.
'There has been discussion about parking downtown,' Ness said. 'Historically, there was quite a bit of parking along Dewey Street Bridge, so that will be a point of discussion. Do we maintain parking across the structure or [do we want] a bicycle connection from the trail on the north side to the trail on the south side?The library has an access point very near to the structure and there is a lot of pedestrian access along Dewey Street with the trails going through there.'
The information collected will go into a preliminary plan which will be submitted to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) in April. In May, a second public meeting will report back on project progress.
'Ultimately, final plans should be near complete near the end of 2026,' she said, adding that construction would likely begin in 2027.
Plans to replace the bridge began almost a decade ago when WisDOT approved financial assistance to the City of Eau Claire for the project. The aim was for construction to begin in 2020. However, in 2019, the project got pushed back to 2021 when the 2019 bids were rejected by the city due the bids significantly exceeding the original project estimates.
A re-bid was done on the project in 2021, but they remained three times higher than the 2016 estimates, and the city resolution to accept the bid failed.
Early in 2023, the city council authorized the Engineering Department to apply for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Grant monies.
A hole was discovered in the bridge two months later and the bridge was temporarily closed for temporary structural repairs. In June of 2024, the city posted 10 tons weight limit signs before the bridge.
'The existing bridge sufficiency rating is 48.3 out of 100,' Ness said. 'Typically structures with a sufficiency rating of less than 50 are eligible for replacement through FHWA bridge replacement and reconstruction program. The bridge [is] inspected on a three month basis at this point. Typically bridges are inspected not that often, so we have increased our bridge inspection to maintain safety and decisions with relationship to the structural integrity.'
The total estimated cost of the bridge replacement depends on the design the city chooses to go with.
As of Tuesday evening, the City of Eau Claire had not been informed yet if the federal grant money for rebuilding the bridge would be affected by President Donald Trump's freeze on federal grants.
'We at the city found out about the news the same as everybody else,' said Deputy City Manager David Solberg. 'We haven't received any communication either from the federal DOT, the Federal Highway Administration, or the Wisconsin DOT whether or not our funding for that bridge is affected.'
As of 4 p.m. on Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the freeze.
