Herculaneum officials have decided to accept a gift from the state for the town’s Bicentennial celebration.
The city’s Board of Aldermen voted at its July 23 meeting to accept an offer from the state Department of Transportation to repair and repaint the Hwy. 61-67 (Commercial Boulevard) bridge over the Joachim Creek in Herculaneum.
An overhaul of the bridge, which is estimated to cost about $85,000, was scheduled for the 2009-2010 state budget year, meaning the earliest the work could be done was June 2009.
However, after a Pevely businessman, Don Thomas, offered to paint parts of the bridge for free, Judy Wagner, area engineer for MoDOT, started trying to move the state’s project forward.
Thomas, who owns Thomas Industrial Coatings Inc. in Pevely, proposed repainting only the visible parts of the bridge later this year so that it would look good for the city’s celebration in 2008, the 200th anniversary of Herculaneum’s founding.
Wagner said he was able to swap the Herculaneum project out with another job that could be postponed for a couple of years. She said bids could be advertised for the work as early as January and that work could be done in April.
“We appreciate all the work that Judy’s done on our behalf,” City Administrator Bill Whitmer said. “She went out and worked to get the project moved up.”
Wagner said the state will hire a firm that will sandblast the old paint off the bridge as well as repair decaying parts of the structure, which last was painted on November 1970.
“The bridge has some deficiency ratings,” Wagner said. “It will require some kind of work. They’ll be working on the girders underneath.
“We don’t know at this point how much (structural) work will be required. We’ll be working on figuring that out before we go out to bid.”
She said state engineers will determine the new color of the bridge.
“This will depend on whatever system the bridge will require,” Wagner said. “The system of paint determines the color based on a number of factors, including what will adhere to the structure best. Normally, though, the state paints its bridges green, brown or gray.”
The federal government would pay for 80 percent of the work and the state 20 percent.
Wagner said the state preferred to do the complete overhaul rather than allow Thomas to paint only the visible beams of the bridge.
Thomas’ offer was valued at about $100, 000.
Whitmer credited Thomas for offering to paint the bridge in the first place as well as state Sen. Ryan McKenna, D-Barnhart, who told Mayor Gina Vinyard that he would try to get the bridge painted.
