Beginning Monday, the Willis Avenue bridge between W. Fourth and W. Fifth streets will be closed for replacement. Construction is expected to last until late May, according to city sources.
Detour maps are published here by ThePerryNews.com and provided by the city of Perry and Bolton and Menk.
The replacement of the 100-year-old bridge over Frog Creek has been in the planning phase for nearly three years. The Perry City Council in October 2017 accepted a $753,500 bid from Elder Corp. of Des Moines for replacement of the Willis Avenue bridge, which is not structurally sound enough to permit standard truck traffic without strict weight limits.
The Iowa Department of Transportation, which also approved the Elder Corp. bid, will cover 50 percent of the cost of the bridge replacement, with the city of Perry matching the state funds.
Matt Ferrier, the city of Perry’s engineering consultant with Bolton and Menk, said a Contec culvert will replace the current bridge structure. The engineer’s original cost estimate for the Frog Creek bridge replacement was about $540,000.
City Manager Sven Peterson said the city’s share of the replacement project will be borrowed from the Road Use Tax Fund and repaid with local option sales tax funds.
The design of the new culvert “is meant to preserve the historic architecture of the original bridge as well as tie in elements from Perry’s downtown streetscape enhancements,” according to a statement from the city.
Ferrier said the Contech replacement “looks kind of like a culvert but not a full-blown culvert that you normally see. The way this thing looks when you actually do drive up to it, it will not have the feel of a bridge. It will look like you’re just going to keep driving down the road. You won’t even know it’s there. You’ll have sidewalks through it and fencing on the outside because of the guardrail over the creek for pedestrians, but it will be just like an open roadway section.”
The city originally intended to time the replacement of the bridge over Frog Creek on Willis Avenue, between W. Fourth and W. Fifth streets, to coincide with the redesign of the Willis Avenue and Iowa Highway 144 intersection in order to minimize the disruption to downtown traffic. The intersection reconstruction was completed in spring 2016.
Why are semis allowed to drive through town anyway? Isn’t 141 a better, safer route?
Semis are allowed to drive through town because Willis Avenue west of First Avenue is considered a farm-to-market road. As well as all of First Avenue and other roads like, I believe, 16th Street, 18th Street, Park Street, 130th Street, Willis Avenue from 16th Street east and whatever street it is that is in front of East Perry Plaza, to name a few.