Anybody need a bridge?
If so, look no further than the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department. The agency is hawking the 80-year-old Locust Street bridge in North Little Rock to anyone who can provide it a good home.
Wait, there's more. The department, which plans to replace the bridge, will give it away "to any government or entity that demonstrates a willingness to move the bridge and accept title for" the bridge.
The bridge has been deemed eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. As such, federal law requires the department to try to unload it. But accepting the donation comes with a three caveats that might give someone interested in the bridge pause:
Whoever takes it must preserve its "historic integrity" and, secondly, "assume the financial responsibility for the continued maintenance on the structure," according to an announcement posted on the department's website.
Furthermore, anyone who takes the bridge won't receive preservation reimbursement money, which is sometimes available, because all those funds "will be exhausted when the bridge is dismantled," the department said.
The deadline for the department to receive letters expressing interest in acquiring the bridge is Sunday. So far, no word on any takers.
The bridge is to be replaced as part of the project to ease congestion and improve safety in the 6.7-mile Interstate 30 corridor between Interstate 530 in Little Rock and Interstate 40 in North Little Rock. The project also includes replacing the I-30 bridge over the Arkansas River and improving a part of I-40 between I-30 and U.S. 67/167 in North Little Rock.
As bridges go, Bridge No. 02001, as the Locust Street Overpass also is known, might not be a looker, like the War Eagle Bridge in Northwest Arkansas. That quaint bridge features a steel structure and stone piers that support a single lane of wooden planks.
The Locust Street Overpass, by contrast, is a continuous steel multibeam bridge with four lanes. It is 1,018 feet long and 40 feet wide. The original plans indicated it originally had painted steel beams, but the department said a protective coating of gunite, which is simulated concrete, was added later at an unknown date.
The bridge was completed in 1̶9̶3̶6̶ 1937* by Fred Luttjohann of Topeka, Kan., to carry vehicle traffic over the Union Pacific Railroad tracks in North Little Rock between what is now Scipio A. Jones Drive on the south and East 13th Street on the north. Interstate 30 later was built just to the west of the bridge.
The department has given away bridges in the past, but the design of the Locust Street Overpass bridge makes it an unappealing prospect to take down and put somewhere else.
"This type of bridge would be more challenging to move to another location," said Danny Straessle, a department spokesman.
About five years ago, the department found no takers for another historic but unremarkable bridge in Little Rock. The U.S. 70/Roosevelt Road bridge over the Union Pacific Railroad tracks near the Arkansas State Fairgrounds, which also is a continuous steel multibeam bridge, will be demolished once its replacement is built.
The same fate awaits the Locust Street bridge if if remains unwanted.
Any potential takers for the North Little Rock bridge should note that while it remains safe, the Highway Department's bridge inspectors have rated it "structurally deficient." They inspect it annually.
The bridge deck has a rating of 5 on the structural evaluation scale for the National Bridge Inventory database maintained by the Federal Highway Administration. The best rating is 9 and the worst is 0. A rating of 5 means the deck has "somewhat better than minimum adequacy to tolerate being left in place as is."
The substructure, which is the bridge's foundation, also has a 5 rating. The superstructure, which supports the deck, has a 4 rating, which means it "meets minimum tolerable limits to be left in place as is."
Anyone wanting more information on acquiring the bridge can call the Highway Department's architectural historian, Nikki Senn, at (501) 569-2979.
The city of North Little Rock won't be among those calling.
"The city has no interest in taking ownership of the bridge," said Nathan Hamilton, the spokesman for North Little Rock. "We look forward to the replacement."
Metro on 02/16/2016
*CORRECTION: Construction of the Locust Street bridge in North Little Rock was begun in 1936 and completed in 1937, according to accounts at the time published in The North Little Rock Times. This article, citing the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, gave an incorrect completion date.