CLEVELAND — Your commute to and from the flats just got easier following the reopening of the Center Street bridge after more than 21 months of repair work. The historic swing bridge connects the east and west banks of the flats.
This is a story we have been following closely for nearly two years. News 5 first reported back in January of 2022 that the bridge would be closed for what was supposed to be 10 months of construction. Crews were tasked to give the bridge a new paint job and replace its driving surface and steel. Additional lighting was also added among a few other mechanical fixes.
We don’t just report the initial story—we follow through to its conclusion. Read and watch our previous reporting on this story below and see more stories that we've followed through on here. “This is a very historic bridge. It's a Bobtail Swing bridge, which means it rotates off-center and it's very unique. There's only a handful of them in the U.S.,” ODOT Public Information Officer, Isaac Hunt, said. “It's not something that everyone has experience with…when we first got in there were unfortunately some delays…it just presented some challenges that were not aware of.
Though as James explained, the Monday celebrations were a survival tactic to help keep business afloat as construction created chaos and disruption for customers.“It's only been about a decade since they did this to us before. They were about six months past schedule last time. They were about 14, 15 months past schedule this time. So, we're pretty used to this kind of thing around here, unfortunately,” James said.