The Edgewood Park Midbridge, back in January 2023. The city’s long-in-the-works effort to replace a deteriorating footbridge in the middle of Edgewood Park took a big step forward, after the City Plan Commission signed off on the state-funded project.The commissioners voted unanimously in support of the Elicker administration’s planned demolition and reconstruction of the Midbridge during their latest monthly meeting in December.In particular, the commissioners approved the city Engineering Department’s site plan review and inland wetlands review applications for the replacement of Edgewood Park’s existing Midbridge with a new truss bridge.As City Engineer Giovanni Zinn explained, the existing bridge consists of two spans with a center pier. The city will be replacing that structure with a single 48-foot-long, 9‑foot-wide truss span that will be prefabricated offsite and that will be lowered onto two new abutments built out of pre-cast blocks.One of the biggest benefits of this project, besides getting a new bridge, ​“is removing the center pier,” Zinn said. Removing that ​“central obstruction will reduce the debris that gets captured on the bridge” as it floats down the West River.Zinn said the city will be planting four new trees and cutting down one tree as part of this construction project. The new bridge’s ​“truss-type superstructure” will be put in place with the help of a crane.“We went through an extremely thorough process both at the city level and the state level to go through all the permitting for replacing the existing pedestrian bridge,” Zinn said at the start of his presentation.Indeed, the project dates back more than two years. Back in November 2022, alders officially accepted from the state legislature $800,000 in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for improvements to Edgewood Park, including for the replacement of the Midbridge. In January 2023, Zinn led a community meeting where he detailed the Midbridge replacement, and identified its estimated pricetag as around $200,000 to $250,000. And in February 2023, the Board of Park Commissioners approved the pedestrian bridge replacement project, teeing it up for the City Plan Commission.Why did it take all the way until December 2024 for the City Plan Commission to hear and vote on this project?“We’ve had a huge amount of permitting with this” at both the city and state level, Zinn told the commissioners. He said the time it took to line up all the permits for the Midbridge replacement should be ​“longer than the construction by a large margin.”In a followup interview, Zinn told the Independent that his department wound up needing a state permit to remove the central pier because that pier is ​“below the high tide line, as opposed to the coastal jurisdiction line,” a small but important difference when it comes to securing necessary approvals. He said his department also had to do a survey for certain plaint species, which can only be done certain times of year; that added several months to the project. And then he had to apply for a city wetland permit. All of that is now done, and his department’s ready to go out to bid for the bridge replacement work.City Plan Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe and Vice Chair Ernest Pagan asked about how this construction project will impact the public’s access to Edgewood Park.Zinn said that people will not be able to walk across the bridge during construction, but the ​“recompense for that is having a bridge that is in good shape for many years to come.” Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand praised the project as he and his colleagues voted in support. ​“I’m excited for this to happen, and I hope it can happen soon.”Zinn said during the meeting that the city plans to go out to bid ​“immediately on the project” and will try to get it built ​“as soon as we can.” A narrative submitted as part of the city’s application for this project indicates that construction should take between five and eight weeks to complete, with the construction start date dependent on the city’s contract and procurement process.