A biker passes beneath the new I-35W bridge on the reopened Southeast Second Street.

Photo by Jeremy Stratton

For 13 months, around-the-clock workers have filed in and out of the Interstate-35W bridge site, dismantling and rebuilding both the fallen thoroughfare and the surrounding riverfront area.

Now that the new St. Anthony Falls/I-35W bridge has ceremoniously reopened with a fresher, safer feel, Marcy-Holmes community members are feeling more than the congestion relief that comes with an extra 10 lanes of road — they’re looking ahead to the area’s facelift and its impact on the community.

As the bridge design process progressed, neighborhood leaders were concerned about spans of the bridge over Southeast Second Street and further south, over a private road on University of Minnesota property.

It was important to have an open roadway on Second Street, east of the MetalMatic facility near the Stone Arch bridge, because the industrial vehicles used by the carbon steel tubing supplier had been diverted onto heavily residential streets after the bridge collapse and reconstruction caused the closure of the eastern portion of Second Street.

The road reopened two days after the main span. As workers applied a final coat of paint, drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians dipped beneath the northern end of the interstate bridge before heading uphill toward the distant spire of Our Lady of Lourdes Church to the west and past Florence Court apartments to the east. The whitewashed walls inside the new tunnel are lined with tiles of small blue, green and gold fiberglass flecks, created by 1,800 Twin Cities-area schoolchildren, who took field trips to learn about bridge construction.

The bridge itself is not the only change to the environs. Near the MetalMatic facility, what before the collapse was a childcare center is now a section of green space. The small pond at the center of green grass is meant to catch drainage. Project plans stipulate that areas on the north side of the bridge, near the on- and off-ramps, also be landscaped.

The extra landscaping is a welcome addition to the area, said Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association (MHNA) President Arvonne Fraser, who joined MHNA Executive Director Melissa Bean and Marcy resident Ted Tucker on a tour of the area — just hours after the bridge opened — led by Amy Barrett, spokeswoman for bridge contractor Flatiron Manson.

A promise that the north-end streets, pathways and new observation deck would open simultaneously proved premature, but the occasion offered an opportunity for the Marcy stakeholders to discuss improvements — realized and hoped-for — to come with the bridge project.

Tucker, who sat on the Marcy-Holmes committee that met with the Minnesota Department of Transportation to discuss the project, said a top priority was to keep open the pathway, south of Second Avenue through the university property.

Someday, he said, the neighborhood would like to open access to the East Bank riverfront near the new bridge and complete a parkway system from Southeast Main Street to East River Road. While there would still be a negotiation process with the university — and plenty of funding to be secured before that would happen — it was necessary to keep that potential opportunity available, Tucker said.

“We’re always campaigning for more access to and along the river,” he said. “They didn’t block any possibility [with new construction], so that furthered it a little bit.”

Overall, the bridge, the attention surrounding it and the revamping of the area that it spurred have potentially opened a window of opportunity for Marcy-Holmes leaders to do more with the area.
“It’s heightened the draw of this little piece of riverfront,” Tucker said.

As far as the existing roadways near the bridge site, such as the University Avenue Southeast and Southeast Fourth Street overpasses, plans for the new bridge were smart in that they took care to accommodate them, Tucker said.

The new bridge is low enough to match up with the existing overpasses, meaning, they won’t need to be elevated, with small inclines that back into neighborhood streets and block driveways.

“It shows that they’re investing now to get it right,” Tucker said.

last revised: September 26, 2008

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