They have to cross this bridge before they come to it.
The city is giving Gowanus area residents just a few weeks to choose a replacement design for the 111-year-old Union Street Bridge across the Gowanus Canal, offering the local community board the option between another ugly drawbridge, or a fixed crossing that is cheaper and easier on the eyes, but would jut into private property and make it impossible for tall boats to pass — which the members worry will impede the forthcoming federal cleanup of the fetid waterway.
“I like the idea of a fixed bridge as a concept, but the Feds are planning to cleanup the canal and they need a movable bridge to get dredging up there,” said Community Board 6 transportation committee member Jerry Armer at the meeting on Tuesday night.
A Department of Transportation rep said the cleanup can use trucks to dredge instead, and the city will foot the increased cost of using the four-wheelers. But it cannot wait for the cleanup to be completed since the bridge is in need of dire repair and its structural integrity is surviving only on short-term fixes.
“The bridge is in really bad shape,” said Joannene Kidder from the department’s Division of Bridges. “Structurally, the bridge has got a lot of temporary fixes.”
Kidder said she didn’t know how often the bridge was raised for other vessels, but city data shows it hasn’t gone up for a boat since 2012.
The community panels’ opinions are usually just advisory, but the reps told the committee they plan to seriously consider whatever it decides, because they don’t want to put the time and money into fleshing out two bridge plans.
Nevertheless, it is only giving members a short time to make up their minds, and some expressed reservations about making a hasty decision that could have unknown affects on local residents well into the future.
The fixed bridge’s mooring would intrude on private land — affecting the owners’ access to the waterfront and potentially devaluing their properties. Kidder said the city will compensate them, but wouldn’t be able to say by how much until an external company does a lengthy property appraisal, and at least one member said he is reluctant to make a decision until he knows how much money property owners will be losing out on.
“What if someone comes back and says they’re decreasing the property value by $300 million?” he said.
Still, most committee members ultimately preferred the fixed bridge, voting 6–3 in an informal preliminary poll held at Kidder’s urging, arguing it looked better than the heavy-duty, industrial drawbridges that were presented.
It will also be cheaper and take less time to build than the drawbridge by at least nine to 12 months, according to the city — 24 to 28 months, as opposed to 30 to 39 months for a new drawbridge.
Work on the project is expected to begin by at least July 2018, but could be sooner depending on how the design process goes, according to Kidder. The new bridge is expected to last 75 years.
