*For much more information about the rebuilding process — including construction updates and a place to make comments or ask questions — visit MnDOT’s website.*

Less than a week before major construction began on the rebuilding of the I-35W bridge (see related story here, the firm designing the new bridge held an all-day meeting, at which more than 100 community embers and elected officials voted to finalize decisions about the bridge’s appearance.

Billed as an “all-day community engagement process” by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), the Oct. 24 event was actually an invite-only affair, at which approximately one-third of the attendees were elected officials from various levels of government.

Still, the select group — gathered during weekday business hours at the Four Points Sheraton in Northeast Minneapolis — did represent a wide range of interests and expertise. Attendees included residents, business owners, representatives from the parks, preservation and arts communities; and elected and appointed officials from local, state and federal governments.
By day’s end, some important design decisions had been made. Figg Engineering Group put six elements of the bridge design to a vote after the group debated the merits of the options presented for each decision.

The six decisions were:
• The orientation of the bridge’s piers;
• The concept of gateway monuments at the entrances to the bridge;
• The type of retaining walls at the bridge abutments;
• The design of the bridge railings, whether open or solid;
• The color of the bridge, whether white or “sandstone”;
• The amount and placement of lights shining on the bridge’s supports for effect.

By the day of the meeting, much about the bridge’s design had already been decided. Most aspects of the massive project, on a compressed design-build schedule for completion by Christmas Day 2008, were not open for discussion. (Some in attendance did try to discuss them anyway.)

Figg President Linda Figg guided the daylong affair, opening with three themes her firm’s designers chose for the bridge: arches, water and reflection. They sought to apply those themes to the project using a “simple and elegant” philosophy of design, she said. While fine for bridges, that philosophy often lost out to the messy and complicated decision-making common at public forums. Still, the limited number of choices – decided by majority rule — kept things relatively simple, if not always elegant.

The biggest decision — in sheer scale anyway — came first: whether the signature vertical curves of the 70-foot piers holding up the new bridge should be oriented along the length of the bridge or across its width. By 74 percent of ballots cast, the group favored the lengthwise orientation known as Option A.

But there was an elephant in the room. As the discussion leading up to the vote progressed, some expressed distaste for the way the piers as proposed met the river, flanging as much as 30 feet wide into were termed “elephants’ feet.” Proponents of the proposed Whitewater Park — on the east bank of the river, near the site of the collapsed bridge — conceded that Option A was “sexier” but said the wide pier bases consumed too much of the narrow river gorge, especially with planned pedestrian platforms at the bottom of the piers.

A third option not on the ballot appeared to gain broad support: piers that flared at the top to meet the gentle curve of the bridge deck structure, but met the ground without such wide bell-bottoms.

David Wiggins, supervisory park ranger at the National Park Service’s Mississippi National River and Recreation Area commented afterward that slimmed-down piers would echo the Stone Arch Bridge, whose piers had an even more slender profile originally before 20th century dams raised the water level around them.

Tom Fisher, dean of the University of Minnesota’s College of Design, asked for another option: a cable-stay design similar to the new Midtown Greenway bridge over Hiawatha Avenue. But Figg said her firm had decided a cable-stay design would not be the “most appropriate structure type at the site.

“There is a lot going on [there] that takes up so much space in the eye’s view,” said Figg. Instead of a tall mast to grab attention, the goal was to “create the greatest amount of simplicity.”

Fisher was joined by Ben Heywood, director of the Soap Factory art gallery, in seeking a different approach to the next design element on the agenda: gateway monuments for the bridge approaches. Landscape architect Tom Oslund presented preliminary sketches that adapted the decorative towers that traditionally mark the entrance to bridges with motifs from river navigation buoys. But Fisher and Heywood said the concept cried out for a public artist experienced at creating such sculptural or decorative elements. In the end, the group was asked not to vote so much as to comment on what was clearly an idea in a preliminary stage.

The invited guests registered much more emphatically a preference for the type of retaining walls at either end of the bridge. “Gabion walls” — stacks of terraced metal baskets filled with stones — carried the day, over flat-wall alternatives that several people commented would attract graffiti, even with inscribed quotes or subtly-incised arch shapes.

Participants similarly favored the most open style of railing for the outside edges of the 10-lane freeway bridge. Figg presented two other options, one solid concrete and the other partly open, that she said were the only ones already approved by the Federal Highway Administration. Seeking approval for alternative designs would take too long, she said.

Options for the bridge’s color presented a classic Minnesota design dilemma: white or beige? Minneapolis Preservation Planner Carol Ahlgren favored white as the best match for the neighboring 10th Avenue and Third Avenue bridges, as well as the nearby (but soon-to-be-demolished) white concrete grain elevators behind the Pillsbury A Mill.

Two-thirds of the group agreed with that choice, which Figg said would work better with the last design element to be decided: feature lighting. By this time at the end of a long day, a palpable fatigue had set in. While there was still spirited debate, the effort felt similar to shopping for a lamp at a lighting showroom with 75 other people. Should lights shine on the underside of the bridge and edges of the piers only, or the sides of both, or everything under the bridge deck? Should the lights be white or blue? Again, Fisher and Heywood recommended hiring artists who do this sort of thing. Voting by the remaining electors (many had petered out and left early) ended in a tie, which Figg said was almost unprecedented at bridge design charettes she has held. Her staff was prepared with tie-breaking ballots, but the group decided to let an already-formed Visual Quality Advisory Team make the final decision.

Gathering up her materials she had brought along for a proposal to make the proposed Bluff Street Park into a memorial for bridge collapse victims, Cedar-Riverside resident (and former chair of the West Bank Community Coalition) Rosemary Knutson said the process felt like “a marathon.” “But for a bridge that will be built in just 400 days, the one-day design charette was really more like an early stride in a sprint.

last revised: November 1, 2007

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