Paul Bass Photos
Goatvillers Charlene McMillan and Padilla Nash take their first walk in six years across the State Street Bridge.
(Update Friday 5:05 p.m.: The bridge is open!)
A hole in the fresh blacktop of the rebuilt State Street Bridge gave celebrants an understandable moment of pause Thursday, one day before the long-closed span reopened to the public.
After all, the bridge closed in 2009. It was supposed to reopen in 2010. It was supposed to cost $5 million to fix.
Six years and $28 million later, after one of the most notorious and painful state government screw-ups in recent New Haven history, the Connecticut Department of Transportation announced it has finally completed repairs to the bridge. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy even drove onto the bridge Thursday to join officials in announcing that all other drivers and pedestrians will finally be able to cross the essential connection between Upper State Street and Fair Haven come Friday afternoon.
Cars (other than the governor’s) couldn’t yet cross the bridge on Thursday. Because of a row of small holes in the ground (pictured above left).
Celebrants gathered for Thursday’s announcement on the repaired bridge above the Mill River and below an I‑91 overpass didn’t notice the holes at first. When they did, they drew a breath.
The area’s state representative, Roland Lemar (pictured), who has listened for years to frustrated neighborhood merchants who saw their businesses shrivel amid repeated broken state promises of a pending bridge reopening, said he took a look at the holes and hesitated to declare the job done.
“After six years, I’m not quite certain these [“Road Closed”] gates are coming down,” Lemar remarked. “So I’ll be here” Friday afternoon to make sure the bridge will in fact reopen.
DOT Commissioner James Redeker vowed that the reopening will happen then. Thursday night or Friday morning a crew will install one final joint below the asphalt, where those holes were drilled, to ensure the bridge will weather the elements.
New Haven City Engineer Giovanni Zinn expressed similar confidence. (Watch him explain in the above video.)
“The joint is a flexible material that goes between the roadway on land and the bridge to make sure that as things expand and contract and shift a little bit, the integrity of the bridge stays,” Zinn explained. Routine installation.
Even Gov. Malloy joked about it as he heralded the bridge’s completion.
“I got a little nervous. I saw a couple of holes in the blacktop,” Malloy confessed to the assembled celebrants. “It was explained to me that it has to be cut out and the braces will be finally installed tonight. … So don’t get nervous about that.”
“Don’t report that,” he added.
David Salinas
Malloy (pictured) spoke of the economic benefits of the bridge’s reopening. On the Fair Haven side, occupants of the former Robby Lens swimsuit factory building at 1175 St., now a struggling center for emerging small businesses and studios, have been stymied by the closing. Now that building’s revival will get a better shot. And across the street, at 470 James St., a team of local entrepreneurs will get a boost in turning an abandoned former state bus depot into a $20 million technology incubator center (pictured above) along with an expanded home for a CrossFit gym as well as a kayak launch and riverfront beer garden and bakery run by Caseus’s Jason Sobocinski, featuring suds from his Black Hog craft brewery. (Read about that here.)
On the Upper State Street side of the bridge, by the Ralph Walker skating rink, crews are at work transforming the former Star Supply factory into the State Street Lofts — 4,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space with three residential units on the second floor. Just behind that will be another 232 market-rate apartments. The bridge reopening comes none too soon for marketers of that project, or for long-suffering small businesses like Mezcal Restaurante Mexicano, Chestnut Fine Foods and the Rice Pot restaurant. (Click here, here, here, here, here, and here to trace to the saga over the years.)
Malloy was asked if the state drew any lessons from having a bridge project take more than five times as long and almost five times as much money as predicted to build.
“Yes,” he said. Then he removed his administration from responsibility for the problems by calling it his predecessor’s project — because it was begun in 2009. Malloy has been governor since 2011.
“I wasn’t governor. I think we’re doing a better job in bringing projects in my administration on time and under budget,” Malloy said. “But this is not one of my projects. Having said that, when you discover pollution you’ve got to clean it up. This was a part of town that was industrial for a long period of time. You’re going to get surprises from time to time even when you’ve done appropriate testing. Tar is undisclosed … peat is not something you can build on top of. Those kinds of things happen. On the other hand, you had to connect these neighborhoods.”
“About every construction nightmare and problem you can encounter, we encountered here,” observed New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney. Among the reasons for the delay: Groundwater contamination discovered after the project began, the need for a new 42-inch water main, I‑91 supports above the bridge discovered to be threatened, an inaccurate map misidentifying the location of underground utility lines. The state accused the city of screwing up original plans, including failing to account for a 170-year-old pipe; the city accused the state of messing up the job.
City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson (pictured telling state transportation chief James Redeker that the area around the bridge is becoming New Haven’s “Williamsburg, Brooklyn) cited the location’s long history connecting people from both sides of the Mill River. It was the site of the first bonafide bridge in New Haven Colony, the mid-17th century Neck Bridge.
Charlene McMillan and David Padilla (pictured) of Nash Street didn’t wait for Friday’s official opening. One joint left to install or not, they decided to walk across the bridge. Because they could. Because they couldn’t for the past six years.
“It’s about time,” said MacMillan, who has lived in the area for 15 years.
“I was tired of going all he way around,” agreed Padilla, a 28-year resident of the neighborhood.
They aren’t bitter. “I’m glad,” McMillan said. “Our taxes are being put to good use finally.”