Cleveland Metroparks moves closer to lakefront trail connection by placing first section of Wendy Park Bridge

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland Metroparks notched another milestone Tuesday in its effort to help build a regional hike-and-bike trail system connecting directly to Lake Erie by erecting the first of four sections of the Wendy Park Bridge on Whiskey Island.

Additional sections of the bridge will be lifted into place over the next month. When finished in early summer, the 14-foot-wide bridge will measure 500 feet long and will span the lakefront Norfolk-Southern rail line that bisects Whiskey Island.

“It’s pretty exciting,’' said Sean McDermott, chief planning and design officer for Metroparks. “We’re getting it done.”

Around 9:30 a.m., after more than two hours of preparatory work that began before sunrise, a crane operator and ironworkers from Youngstown Bridge Co., working for Great Lakes Construction Co., lifted the 40-ton bridge section gently into place on steel-reinforced concrete abutments.

The bridge section spans a dusty driveway leading to Ontario Stone Co. and the lakefront Cargill salt mine. Truck traffic paused briefly as the crane lifted the bridge section and slowly swung it counterclockwise into position. Ironworkers dampened the movements of the massive load by hauling on ropes attached to two corners of the bridge.

Just before the crane set the load down, an ironworker atop one of the abutments could be seen and heard striking a stubborn bolt with a mallet so it would align with the hole in a plate on a corner of the 125-foot-long bridge section.

The $6 million span will make it possible for cyclists crossing the old channel of the Cuyahoga River on the Willow Avenue Bridge to reach Wendy Park on Whiskey Island directly from the south via the Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail and the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail.

The Cleveland sections of the Towpath, which will also be finished this summer, will become part of a 101-mile hike-and-bike route extending south through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Akron, Massillon, Zoar, and New Philadelphia.

The Wendy Park Bridge is part of a series of trail segments totaling 4 miles that are designed to better connect the Towpath and the Lake Link Trail to the Cleveland Lakefront Bikeway and Edgewater Park.

Today, anyone wishing to ride from the West Bank of the Flats to the 22-acre Wendy Park on the north side of Whiskey Island, north of the railroad tracks, would have to take a 3.6-mile detour west to Edgewater Park and then turn back east on Whiskey Island Drive, where Metroparks is finishing another new trail.

The bridge was partially funded with a nearly $8 million grant awarded in 2016 under the Obama-era TIGER grant program, short for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery.

Of the $8 million, $1.8 million went to the bridge. The Wendy Park Foundation provided $3 million; the State of Ohio contributed $1 million.

Upcoming stages of construction will involve using cranes to lift a pair of two, 125-foot-long sections into position atop temporary abutments to form the center of the span over the railroad line.

One lift will set the two pieces of the bridge deck, and a second will place the “tied arch” arcing above them. Once all the pieces are spliced together, the temporary abutments, or falsework, will be removed.

At that point, the northernmost section of the bridge, also 125 feet in length, will be lifted into position.

“That’s when we find out if everything fits,’' McDermott said Tuesday, indicating he was joking.

But seriously, did he have any doubts?

“Not at all,’' he said.

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