Jermaine Jordan with Coastal Bridge walks behind a wheelbarrow down the Perkins Road overpass Wednesday afternoon.
August 6th, 2009
Perkins Road overpass to open
By STEVEN WARD
Advocate staff writer
The Perkins Road overpass will be open to traffic Friday morning, city-parish Public Works Drainage and Bridge Engineer Jim Ferguson said Wednesday.
The 72-year-old bridge has been closed a little more than four months for repairs.
The work, performed by Coastal Bridge Co. LLC, cost about $3 million, Ferguson said, with $2.5 million coming from the federal government and the other $500,000 from the state.
The overpass, near the Garden District, is owned by the city-parish.
Ferguson said the same contractor that made the repairs this year built the structure in 1937.
The city-parish closed the overpass March 25 for the repairs.
“It was a rehabilitation. The deck shifted off the piles and that caused the concrete to crack,” Ferguson said.
He also said that contractors put a new overlay on the bridge and rebuilt the south approach.
Before the work began, Ferguson said, about 15,000 vehicles a day used the overpass.
Mayor Kip Holden will be out of town when the overpass opens to traffic Friday, but he is inviting residents and business in that area to a ribbon-cutting party at 11:30 a.m. Monday to celebrate the completion of the project, Mayor’s Office spokesman Scott Dyer said.
The event will be held on the south side of the overpass, and will feature music by The Michael Foster Project, Dyer said.