Stamford bars pedestrians from crumbling bridge
STAMFORD — More than 21 years after it closed to cars, Stamford’s West Main Street Bridge will stop permitting pedestrian traffic as well next week.
The deteriorating 135year-old bridge will officially close for construction Feb. 20, according to a sign posted on nearby fencing. It had been labeled hazardous by city officials last July, with pedestrians advised to walk only on specific parts of the structure.
And though city officials have yet to decide on how exactly to restore the historic bridge, construction on a $1.6 million stopgap will soon begin.
A contractor is prepared to begin construction on a new, pre-fabricated steel bridge just north of the existing structure in the coming weeks.
The contractor, ROTHA Contracting Co., was selected through a city bidding process. They intend to complete the project by July 4, city spokesperson Lauren Meyer said in an email.
In the meantime, city officials are advising pedestrians to use Tresser
Boulevard to access Main Street.
The first phase of construction will include new signs, fencing and erosion control measures, city engineer Lou Casolo said.
“The structure will be brought to the site in large pieces and assembled, then craned into position over the new abutments,” Casolo said. “Once all of that is completed, then there’s site work to transition sidewalks and that type of thing to the approach of the bridge.”
The new bridge is being paid for entirely through city funds, engineer Domenic Tramontozzi said in an email. Costs include the construction contract, and design and inspection work.
As for the existing bridge, no decisions have been made, Casolo said.
“The Board of Representatives has asked the city to evaluate different options,” he said.
Stamford lawmakers and residents have wrestled over the fate of the once-purple bridge for decades, and the end result, so far, has been inaction.
The city, in years past, has attempted to make the Purple Bridge pedestrianonly permanently. But some longtime West Side residents and their city representatives have argued that a bridge closed to cars cuts the neighborhood off from the rest of the city and increases emergency service response times on the way to Stamford Hospital.
Representatives for the city and Mill River Park, which the bridge abuts, have consistently argued that cars would interrupt the largest pedestrian path in Downtown Stamford and create a five-way intersection on the West Side. In addition, the bridge affects city planners’ long-term goal to expand Mill River Park and create a riverside walking path connecting Scalzi Park to Kosciuszko Park, they argue.
Recently, an $850,000 federal grant to fix the bridge, awarded to Stamford in 2012, expired after years of indecision.
All options remain on the table, Casolo said.
“Nothing has been finalized, but those are all options that the city will be exploring once this prefabricated pedestrian bridge is in place,” he said.
Built in 1888, the bridge was once used as part of Stamford’s trolley system. In 1982, the construction of the Stamford Town Center mall “effectively cut off Main Street,” significantly decreasing its use by motorists, according to a 2021 presentation made to the Board of Representatives.
According to a June 2021 presentation to the Board of Representatives, the bridge still has active telephone conduit lines in place that would “be extremely disruptive to the city” if they were damaged.