Marshall Street span nears completion

The bridge has been closed since August 2002.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A long-awaited bridge project is expected to be completed this month.
Although there's no official date in place, Carmen Conglose Jr., the city's deputy director of public works, expects the roughly $3.1 million Marshall Street Bridge project to be completed in about two weeks.
"It will be a relief to many of us in the city," Conglose said.
Work on the 72-year-old span between Oak Hill Avenue and Front Street started in September 2004. Soda Construction of Niles is the contractor. The city obtained $1.3 million in federal highway money for the project several years ago and more recently received $1.4 million in federal money from the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments. The city pitched in about $462,000 for the work.
The project has been years in the making.
Funding issues and historical preservation concerns kept it from coming to fruition sooner.
Plans to rehabilitate the bridge began in 1987 but the high cost shifted the plans to replacement instead.
"Ultimately, the state deemed that it would not be cost-effective to save the structure," Conglose said.
Unique design
Historical preservationists wanted to save the bridge because of the unique design of its truss, which dated to just after World War II.
"The design of the truss of the structure was distinctive," he said. "There aren't many left in Ohio."
The main issue that convinced state and federal officials that replacing rather than rehabilitating the bridge was a better choice was cost.
Rehabilitation would have included painting, which would have meant following environmental regulations requiring encapsulation of the bridge during the work. That would have cost about $2 million.
It took a few more years of design and approval to get the project started.
The bridge closed for structural reasons in August 2002; one lane and the sidewalks closed because of the same problems in 1998.
Replacing the Marshall Street bridge is important, Conglose said, because it reopens a major link into the southwestern quadrant of the city's downtown, and eases traffic on the Spring Common bridge.