Pine Street Pedestrian Bridge Moving Forward

Traverse City officials will move forward with a planned $1.36 million Pine Street pedestrian bridge across the Boardman River near J&S Hamburg after giving up on plans to bury neighboring utility lines underground, which had previously held up the project.

Traverse City Light & Power (TCL&P) has a planned new electrical circuit for the Pine Street area, which officials hoped to align with the new bridge by acquiring swaths of property from J&S Hamburg and Federated Properties to underground the electricity. However, at least one parcel had an asking price of $250,000, and negotiations to acquire the parcels at a cost-effective rate for the city led to a dead end.

In an email to Mayor Michael Estes and a handful of city officials, City Manager Jered Ottenwess said the city was "moving forward with the project without any property acquisition," and that he would provide more details to commissioners at their Tuesday night meeting after meeting with TCL&P Executive Director Tim Arends. Authorization for construction on the bridge will be required by the city-owned utility, which will likely now run its new lines overhead instead of underground.

Estes said the move will "ultimately get the project going and save money." Construction on the bridge, which will be funded by the Downtown Development Authority, is scheduled to begin in 2015.