WHEELING, W.Va. — Around 12 hours before the Monument Place Bridge in Wheeling was set to close for 14 months due a rehabilitation project, highway officials and the contractor for the work decided to delay closure until next spring.
Tony Clark, the District 6 Engineer for the West Virginia Division of Highways (DOH) told MetroNews the decision came mid-Tuesday afternoon with traffic concerns in mind. The detour for the project on the heavily trafficked bridge that connects US Route 40, National Road, over Little Wheeling Creek in the Elm Grove section of the city, was portions of Interstate-70 that are being worked on as part of another multi-million dollar project.
In a statement given to MetroNews on Wednesday morning, Clark said some work will still be going on:
“We reevaluated the sequence of construction to do as much work under the bridge as possible and minimize the duration of the complete bridge closure. Due to it already being June, this will push the closure to start earlier next spring to have an entire construction season to complete the work during the closure and still meet the October 21, 2022 completion date,” he said.
I had a story ready to publish this evening on the Monument Place Bridge in Wheeling closing tomorrow for a major rehab project lasting til Oct. ‘22.
DOH District 6 Engineer Tony Clark just informed me the bridge WILL NOT close tomorrow.
— Jake Flatley (@JakeFlatley) June 1, 2021
The $3.78 million bid for the work was awarded to Clearwater Construction, from Mercer, PA. The crew was set to close the entire 204-year old structure down at 2 a.m. on Wednesday and begin with the removal of the bridge deck. Crews have been staging heavy equipment near the site over the past week.
Other plans in the project included removal and replacement of the road surface and sidewalks, along with excavating all the backfill material between the arches and road. Clark said crews are going to do any repairs “to sure up the arch and maintain its historic nature and traffic loads we expect on the structure.”
The bridge was built in 1817 as part of National Road and is known as the oldest bridge in the state of West Virginia. The structure was placed on National Register for Historic Places in 1981. Approval on the work was needed from various environmental and historical agencies.
Clark told MetroNews the work is decades overdue.