John Gallagher|Detroit Free Press
The planned Gordie Howe International Bridge that willspan the Detroit River to Windsorcould end up as the tallest or second-talleststructure in the region, rivaling the height of theRenaissance Center andcreating a dramatic new architectural icon on the skyline.
There are two possible designs — a suspension bridge like the Ambassador or a newer model known as a cable-stayed bridge that looks like a giant A-frame with cables fanning out from two towers.Final design will be left to the architectural team that has the winning bid from a group of interested international firms already winnowed down to six. Thewinning team will be selected late next year.
New design details are emerging that show thetwo bridgetowers risingto a height of up to 250 meters, or about 750 feet.The bridge deck itself that will carry traffic could rise 150 feet above the river to allow for clear ship navigation — about as high as downtown Detroit's One Campus Martius building,the former Compuware headquarters.
The total length of the bridge and its approaches will be about 2miles, making itone of the five longest bridges in North America.
These details and more are provided by the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, the Canadian crown corporation, or quasi-public body, that will manage the project. The bridge is not yet designed so final details won't come for more than a year, but the estimates are considered close to what will be the final dimensions after fine-tuning. The bridge is slated tobe opened by the end of2020.
Other details provided by the bridge authority:
• Abouthalf a million tons of concrete will be used to construct the bridge, or roughly 25,000 cement truckloads.
•Approximately 22,000 tons of steel will be used for the new bridge. Only steel produced in Canada and the U.S. will used.
• Up to5,000 tonsof bridge cables will be used, which roughly equals the weight of 3,500 midsize cars.
Although construction crews won't start to raise steel for the bridge until at least 2017, preliminary work is moving briskly ahead.
On the Canadian side, site preparation work has been under way for some time, with dozens of construction workers getting the land ready at theWindsor end of the project for the heavy construction to come. This early site work includes construction of a perimeter access road, utility relocation, and theplacement of fill dirt, gradingand drainage.
Then, too,the Windsor Detroit Bridge Authority, created to manage the project, now employs about40 staffers, a team of engineers, plannersand othersled by CEO Michael Cautillo.
In Detroit, meanwhile, the Michigan Department of Transportation continues to negotiate to buy property in Detroit's Delray district for the approaches and customs plaza on the U.S. side of the bridge.
In June, MDOT began meeting with owners of some of the700 to 800 parcels in the Delray neighborhood in southwest Detroit neededfor the approaches to the bridge and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection plaza. Of those parcels, the state already controls nearly400 through various government land banks. Another 310 are either residential properties or vacant lots. There are about 60 commercial sites and a smattering of city-owned parcels.
Of the residential sites, many are abandoned, but the state hasestimated that about 150 occupied residences remain in the area.
The process of buying the land needed on the Detroit end could take more than three years, MDOT officials have said.
A key part of the bridge-building process will be the hiring of a team of international construction, engineering and architectural firms to design and build the bridge.In July, the Windsor-Detroit authority requested "expressions of interest" frominternational companies thatwould hope to build the bridge. After an initial screening, theauthority invited six teams to submit their credentials, which are now being studied. The authority plans to ask up to three of those teams to submit a formal bidpackage in response to a request for proposals.
It takes a lot of time to vet applicants for a job this big, which could total about$2 billion, includingcustoms plazas in each country and in both directions. The authority plans to name a winning team by the end of 2016. The winning team will have four yearsto design, build, and open the bridge to traffic by the end of 2020.
One thing is clear: The bridge will dwarf almost every other structure in both cities.In the past couple of weeks, Cautillo and other authority staffers have been speaking at open houses and events in Windsor and Detroit to talk about their progress.
At six lanes wide, the Gordie Howe Bridge will have greater carrying capacity than the four-lane Ambassador Bridge.
A great deal of work needs to get done on both sides of the river before armies of construction workers start to work on the Gordie Howe span itself.It will still be at least another year before steel starts to rise against the skyline. But this much is clear. The early work is getting done and theGordie Howe International Bridge project is real and moving ahead.
As the Gordie Howe bridge plans move forward, hopes by the private owners of the Ambassador Bridge to build a replacement span next to their bridge appear to remain in a holding pattern. The Moroun family that owns the Ambassador has been feuding with Windsor and Canadian authorities for years over the status of property the Morouns own in Windsor where their hoped-for span would land. Windsor authorities accuse the Morouns of letting dozens of homes there deteriorate in hopes of winning approval to raze the structures.That issue as well as the Morouns' hopes of winning permits fromCanadian authorities appear to be far from resolution.
Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.
