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The
St.
Augustine
Record BRIDGE
OF
LIONS
PROJECT
However, an environmental impact statement on the bridge's future construction must be approved by the Federal Highway Administration first. The state transportation department in 1999 said it supported rehabilitation. The environmental statement, says Bill Henderson, Florida Department of Transportation project manager, will go to the federal agency in January 2002. Both Halback and Henderson said Thursday they are sure the environmental statement will be accepted. Halback outlined the bridge project at a meeting at the St. Augustine Lighthouse Museum. Henderson was interviewed by phone from his Lake City office. If that the plan floats, hereís how rehabilitation will impact the businesses and traffic on and near the Bridge of Lions: It will not close down businesses on the east side of the bridge, as once feared, Halback said. This made the roughly 20 people in the audience gasp in relief. Construction will not impede traffic from the road or in the Matanzas River, he said. People greeted that skeptically. And as far as details of rehabilitation, Halback said the Bridge of Lions, by the 1999 state transportation department decision, will remain a two-lane bridge. This will make it mesh with the roads on either side of it, and it jibes with the preservationist sentiment. The new lanes, however, will be a foot wider on both sides, Halback said. A crash-proof wall will separate the sidewalk and the road, but people in cars will still be able to see the river, he said. Henderson said the bridge will look like it did in 1927, the year it opened. The original towers will stand, the same steel spans will arch, and the same light fixtures will shine, Halback said. Last but not least, the guardian lions, the bridgeís namesakes, will be removed for a while, cleaned up, and re-situated when the work is done. While rehabilitation takes place, vehicles will cross the river over an $8 million temporary bridge just north of the construction. It will curve into almost the same endpoints used now, Halback said. The same west-side streetlights that now direct traffic will also direct future traffic from the temporary bridge, he said. There will be minimal changes to the historic downtown. The temporary bridge will bear the same speed limits and quality of light, and the same amount of weight -- 15 tons -- and traffic as the Bridge of Lions does now, Halback said. That traffic can reach 22,000 vehicles daily, he said. The temporary bridge will be flat, and therefore lower in many places than the Bridge of Lions. Halback said this will not affect traffic in the water nor on land in a major way, though some boats that now slide under freely might need to use the draw bridge. Henderson said he did not know how long it would take to build the temporary bridge, but he said its construction will not impede the planned 30 months for the whole project. When the rehabilitated bridge opens, the temporary one will be torn down. In keeping with the no-guarantees flavor of the project at this point, he added that Jacksonvilleís Fuller-Warren Bridge is in its fifth year of construction -- it was supposed to be finished in three. Questioning of Halback was dominated by Bill Puckett, director of the St. Augustine Alligator Farm and Zoological Park. He said rehabilitation might damage business on Anastasia Island. He said he doubted that the project would proceed as Halback and the state say it will. "It's not that it's not going to work, it's just that it won't be anything better than what we have," Puckett said. Other business owners said less than Puckett. Theresa Segal, president of the Save Our Bridge Committee, said she was impressed with Halbackís presentation. She was surprised by what she considered a muted audience response. "I expected a lot more fireworks," Segal said.
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