A footbridge across Biscayne Boulevard from Brightline’s rail station in Aventura to land owned by retail giant Aventura Mall that was to have opened by Thanksgiving 2024 “in time for the holiday rush at the mall” instead is due by Thanksgiving 2025. Details aren’t final, Jose Gonzalez, senior vice president of Brightline owner Florida East Coast Industries, told the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust in December. He said he will show the trust in January how “passengers who will be on Brightline will be able to go across to the mall.” But he assured the trust that Brightline finally has a site where the bridge that so far has been a bridge to nowhere can end up landing. “I’m glad to report that they actually had a deal with the county attorney and the Department of Transportation and Public Works and Commissioner [Eileen] Higgins, who pushed this and got real creative how to push it, and the county got an easement to land the bridge on the east side” of the Aventura station, Mr. Gonzalez told the trust. “That landing will be there permanently.” Back in February, Brian Kronberg, the rail line’s senior vice president of development, had told the trust that “the bridge is ready. We’re just making sure that we’ve got a place to put the bridge.” Now, that end of the bridge from the station seems assured. The aim, Mr. Kronberg said in February, was to allow rail passengers and others to cross busy Biscayne Boulevard on foot and reach Aventura Mall, which annually has 28 million visitors. The company needed a use and occupancy agreement for an aerial easement for the bridge over the boulevard to make that happen. At the same time, Brightline had been negotiating a lease for the point where the bridge will discharge users onto property owned by the mail and its developer Turnberry. This, as Mr. Gonzalez recounted in December, is just the latest hiccup in opening the bridge. When planning the Aventura station that Brightline developed using funds overseen by the transportation trust, Mr. Gonzalez said, mall owner Turnberry had a project to connect the bridge to an office building that it planned to develop on the site but ultimately didn’t. “It would have been perfect,” he said, but “they pulled it out. Everything else got scrapped. So that was part of the delay.” When the station was constructed and completed in October 2022, the bridge was built and sitting in the station parking lot, Mr. Gonzalez told the trust. The developers had it manufactured “and it was sitting there waiting for it to land.” Now that a landing site has been agreed to, however, the job isn’t finished. A water main and drainage are in the way and must be moved, “but our goal is to have that bridge up by Thanksgiving.” Once the bridge is up with stairs to the landing site, a walkway will go to the county transit hub at the Aventura Mall to provide connectivity “and passengers who will be on Brightline will be able to go across to the mall.” The bridge won’t connect to the mammoth mall, Mr. Kronberg noted in October 2023, and Brightline passengers will need “to cross a few streets to get into either the county bus facility or the entrance of the mall.” In October 2019, the transportation trust approved the property acquisition and development agreement between the county and Brightline and $76.7 million in transportation surtaxes to develop the station. Under the agreement, the county got $4 million from the City of Aventura to develop the east side bridge that’s still in the works. A direct connection to Aventura Mall at 19501 Biscayne Blvd. has vital implications. The mall is Florida’s largest and third in the nation in square feet, with 350 stores and restaurants. Related Posts:Brightline gets back on track at Aventura stationBrightline bridges the gap in Aventura27% of Brightline riders come from new stationsBiden budget funds Northeast Miami-Dade rail startupWith Orlando link, Brightline revenues and riders jumpThe post Bridge to Aventura Mall put off another year appeared first on Miami Today.