Fruitport Road bridge opens Thursday

Tue, Jun 24, 2008    to del.icio.us

SPRING LAKE TOWNSHIP — The Bowen Bridge on Fruitport Road is set to reopen to motorists at 1 p.m. Thursday following a brief public ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The bridge has been closed since Feb. 7.

"It's about time (for repairs)," said Carrie Bowen-Kendro, granddaughter of Carl T. Bowen, the bridge's original designer. "The poor thing was falling apart."

Bowen was the project engineer for the original bridge, built in 1948. A plaque on the rebuilt structure displays his name.

"It's still Bowen's Bridge," Spring Lake Township Supervisor John Nash said. "We'll have plaques on the north end. We want to keep the history alive. ... Back in 1948, the entire (county) Road Commission thought it couldn't be done (spanning Pettys Bayou with a bridge), and Carl Bowen went and did it."

The bridge lies just west of the state boat launch dock off Fruitport Road.

Ferrysburg-based Anlaan Construction completed the $2.6 million repair project ahead of schedule and on budget, according to Nash.

State and federal funds paid 95 percent of the tab. The county's local bridge fund kicked in the remaining 5 percent.

"This project went tremendously well, and we're very pleased we hired a local contractor who did such a respectable job," Nash said. "They did everything they said they would do, plus some things. I know it was an inconvenience for residents, but they worked six days a week and 10 to 12 hours a day."

The repairs included replacing pier caps on the 418-foot-long bridge, increasing the road width, and adding an 8-foot-wide bike and pedestrian path on the west side.

"I still remember 'playing cars' in our basement with an exact scaled replica of the Bowen Bridge," Bowen-Kendro said, adding that the bridge was listed with the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

Although Bowen-Kendro has traveled the bridge daily to visit her mother, who also lives in Spring Lake Township, she never met her grandfather. Bowen died in 1957. Bowen-Kendro was born in March 1963.

"The bridge has been part of my life all along," she said. "Building in a marsh presented construction challenges. The design was dictated by the type of material underlying the lake bottom."

Instead of following traditional designs, Bowen created "innovative substructure for the bridge," according to his granddaughter.

"In 1912, they decided to pave Fruitport Road, and nine years later they hired Carl Bowen," she said. "The more I hear about him, the more I admire him."

Prior to the bridge's existence, Bowen-Kendro said commuters took State Road to 148th Avenue.