MOUNT VERNON — City officials, engineers and other volunteers will be checking out an old bridge on Monday. The city is considering moving the bridge from its current spot on Mill Road outside of Bladensburg to Foundation Park.
The bridge under consideration is a bowstring truss bridge that was closed in the 1980s.
“Even though it’s a delicate bridge, I think it’s still worth the attempt to move it,” Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Mavis said Friday. Along with the mayor, the city and county engineers; an engineer from Richland Engineering, a crane operator from United Precast, Jim Buchwald and Dave Glass, the city’s safety-service director, will look at the bridge and develop a strategy for moving it to Foundation Park.
Mavis said a city in Indiana was able to lift intact and move a similar type bridge recently, and that’s one of the options the group may explore. If the bridge is able to be salvaged and moved, the city expects to place it on a peninsula on the middle lake and make it part of the walking trail in the park. City Council recently approved $20,000 for the move.
“We’d like to preserve a bit of history with this. It’s the only bowstring truss bridge left in the county,” Mavis said.
The bridge is just one of several items in the planning stages for Foundation Park. Mavis recently met with members of the Kiwanis and Rotary clubs to discuss long-term plans for the park. The first item needed, according to Mavis, is a restroom. They also talked about building a larger pavilion, continuing to develop the trails, planting trees and improving the park’s entrance at Harcourt Road.
Another city park project on the agenda would be a Born Learning Trail at Riverside Park. Mavis said parks director Geoff Oliver and Jennifer Odenweller of the United Way are expected to discuss installing a children’s trail near the playground at the southern edge of Riverside Park. The trail would include stops where different activities by children and families could be performed.
Mavis also noted several construction projects are anticipated in the near future around the city. He said bids were delayed a week on the Blackjack Road improvement project, but shouldn’t affect the time frame for it being started and completed.
Blackjack Road south of Moundbuilders Guidance Center will be widened, and water and sewer lines will be put in as Sanoh America gets started on its expansion project in the area. The street department will begin work Tuesday on widening the turning radius onto Jennings Road from Blackjack Road, Mavis said, in an effort to help construction traffic flow better in that area.
The city accepted the bid of $141,280.80 from Rietschlin of Crestline for the Curtis Street improvement project, Mavis said. The fixing of the bricks and new curbs and sidewalks in the area between North Main and Mulberry streets will begin shortly after the Dan Emmett Music & Arts Festival, which begins Thursday in downtown Mount Vernon.
With the beginning of the festival, Mavis reminds motorists that Main Street, from Chestnut Street to Ohio Avenue, and Public Square will be closed Wednesday evening through Sunday evening. Traffic will be rerouted down Mulberry and Gay streets, as well as Ohio Avenue, and the traffic signals’ pattern will be changed in an attempt to alleviate some congestion.
As the Curtis Street project begins, the city will be looking for clubs, groups or individuals to help place some of the bricks on pallets for long-term storage at the water treatment plant. Mavis’ idea is to have a stockpile of bricks for future projects around the city.
“I think it’s in the city’s best interest to maintain our 7 1/2 miles of brick streets,” Mavis said. “By doing this, it may be possible to restore them later.”
Some of those bricks from earlier projects have recently been used to help workers take out the humps and dips on East Vine and North Main streets.
