Oct. 2, 2018 — Lake Park Friends’ additional investigations of the Ravine Road Footbridge demonstrate that the bridge can be rehabilitated to meet today’s safety standards AND would last at least another 50 years. The County completed their review of the final report (click here to see the report: 2018-08-06 Analysis FINAL Letter[2]). Lake Park Friends representatives and the County’s engineers recently discussed these results, and we jointly concluded that if any bridge elements need to be strengthened, that can easily be done as part of the bridge rehabilitation and that with proper rehabilitation methods and long term maintenance, the bridge could last at least 50 years. These results significantly change the comparison of the cost-benefit analysis between the rehabilitation and replace in-kind restoration alternatives previously presented by the County and its consultant. And, now that federal grant funding (in the amount of up to $2 million) has been awarded, federal, state, and local historic preservation laws require that the County first and foremost evaluate bridge rehabilitation. As a result, Lake Park Friends is recommending that the County proceed with rehabilitating this iconic footbridge.
