The Florida Department of Transportation has awarded Chicago-based Lochner a contract to design the Cortez Bridge replacement.
Lochner boasts civil and structural engineers, project managers, planners, environmental specialists and construction inspectors in offices across the United States.
Laura Turner, of Laura Turner Planning Services in Winter Park, a member of the Lochner team, wrote Bradenton Beach Mayor Bill Shearon March 16 to give him the news.
“She just wanted to get my feelings and just general information from the area here,” Shearon said in a March 16 phone interview. “I spent some time with her on it.”
Shearon added the DOT expedited its bridge study “so that we could get our bridge in the works. I thank FDOT for that.”
The mayor also said that Roxanne Lake, who serves as the DOT contact for the Island Transportation Planning Organization and worked with Shearon when he was the island representative to the Sarasota/Manatee Metropolitan Planning Organization board, will be the DOT contact for the project.
Lake “is very familiar with the island. She keeps things moving and is in the know,” Shearon said. “I’m very encouraged that we have two people who have a true interest in doing what’s best for the community … which sometimes tends to be forgotten.”
Still undetermined is what type of bridge will replace the Cortez Bridge. The DOT planned to announce one or two options at a public hearing in early 2017, a DOT official said in 2016, but that announcement has not been scheduled.
Under consideration by the DOT are four options — a no build/repair option that would extend the life of the bridge 10 years to 2035, a fixed-span bridge with 65 feet of navigational clearance and two drawbridge options with either a 21-foot or a 35-foot clearance.
The existing drawbridge has 17.5 feet of navigational clearance, while the Anna Maria Island Bridge has 37 feet of clearance.
All of the replacement options would be designed to last up to 75 years.
While the design phase of the bridge is funded, construction of the replacement bridge is not in the current DOT budget, Shearon said. He hopes the DOT will have both the Cortez Road and Manatee Avenue bridges shovel-ready when the government is set to build them. But he cautioned against being overly optimistic.
Bridges are long-term projects.
Shearon joked that maybe his “great-grandkids might live long enough to see it.”