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One lane of historic bridge will open by Memorial Day Workers swarm over the Rock Point Bridge near Gold Hill Tuesday. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Jim Craven Wednesday Apr 14, 2010 at 12:01 AM GOLD HILL — The good news is the Rock Point Bridge will be partially open to traffic by Memorial Day weekend, state transportation officials say. By Sanne Specht GOLD HILL — The good news is the Rock Point Bridge will be partially open to traffic by Memorial Day weekend, state transportation officials say. The bad news: Efforts to rehabilitate the historic bridge are behind schedule, the project is over budget and local business owners are chafing at the delays. "Any time you open up a 90-year-old bridge, there are going to be things you can't anticipate," said Gary Leaming, Oregon Department of Transportation spokesman. The bridge spans the Rogue River at Rock Point, a narrow stretch of water downstream from Gold Hill on old Highway 99. Leaming said both lanes of the span should be open by the end of October. The bridge has been closed since September 2009. Detours have rerouted traffic to the Gold Hill interchange at Exit 40 on Interstate 5. Plans to have both lanes open by Memorial Day in time for the summer tourist season have been derailed because of unanticipated construction problems, Leaming said. A single lane will reopen for one-way traffic on the bridge's downstream side, allowing Interstate 5 traffic from exit 43 to flow from the freeway to local businesses. Construction crews will continue their work on the upstream lane during the summer months, Leaming said. After Labor Day, the bridge will be closed again for about a month while the bridge deck gets new concrete and the two approaches are paved with asphalt, Leaming said. Rob Wallace, owner of Del Rio Vineyards, said he is grateful at least one lane of the bridge will be open soon, but he's frustrated that the project is already months past the initial January completion date. Wallace said Interstate 5 is the lifeline to Del Rio's retail store and tasting room. The detours are located three to five miles from of his business, and "traffic is way down," Wallace said. "Hopefully we will have a new bridge when it's all done," he said. "That's a good thing. But (the delays are) having a pretty negative effect on everybody around here." Built in 1920, the narrow two-lane bridge is structurally safe, but was considered "functionally obsolete" and "in serious need of repair," Leaming said. It was designed by Conde McCullough, who created many of Oregon's graceful early highway bridges. The goal is to bring the bridge back to its original grandeur, while keeping its aesthetic beauty and meeting crash standards. The rehabilitation project includes repairing the bridge's damaged side railings with reinforced concrete, as well as upgrading its deck, Leaming said. Three months were added to the original five-month time line for the $3.9 million repair and rehabilitation project at the request of Wildish Standard Paving, he said, because the contractors were concerned about what they might encounter in the old structure. For example, workers had planned to use high-pressure water hoses to "hydro-blast" the outer areas of the bridge, taking precautions to prevent the aged concrete from falling into the Rogue River. But the concrete deck proved too stubborn for high-pressure water. Workers had to use a jackhammer to remove the material on both sides of deck, Leaming said. He said ODOT looked at accelerating the work schedule for Wildish, but that would have added "several hundred thousand dollars" to the project costs. "That didn't pencil out," he said, because ODOT was trying to be "good stewards of public money. "So we directed the contractor to get one of the sides done so we could at least open it to a single lane," he said. Leaming said he did not yet have a figure on the costs the extra work would add to the project. Wallace said local business owners support the project, but he would have preferred that ODOT accelerate the construction schedule. "Maybe they'll save some money," he said, "but they're extending their construction project at the expense of the local businesses." Dennis Speers, ODOT's liaison between businesses and contractors, said he understands the frustration of local business owners. Del Rio Vineyards, the House of Mystery and others rely heavily on summer tourism and free-flowing traffic, he said. "It's carried on longer than they originally anticipated," said Speers, but cost and safety concerns dictated the current course, he said. "We've really tried to keep our promise," Speers said. "We're getting the bridge open and getting customers directly to them across the bridge." Reach reporter Sanne Specht at 541-776-4497 or e-mail [email protected].