The Whittier Street bridge is now fully open in both directions.
Columbus officials reopened the bridge during a Tuesday afternoon press conference.
The bridge to the Scioto Audubon Metro Park, and the Lower Scioto Greenway, now includes a separated 10-foot wide multi-use pathway for bikes and pedestrians, and repairs to prolong the bridge’s life.
“The work was complex and tedious, jackhammering the old bridge decks on each side of the roadway to remove all the old concrete, then pouring both sides of the new concrete structure and applying a new overlay to the surface to extend the bridge life,” Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said.
The $3.3 million project was funded by city bonds for public infrastructure.
A point of pride for Tim Moloney, executive director of Columbus Metro Parks, was that access to the park was never cut off.
“This was a true partnership of how this was done. We ‘closed’ a bridge, and I put that in quotes, to a park that sees three quarters of a million visitors every year. And not one visitor was turned away because of that closure,” Moloney said. “Sure, there were some headaches. Sure, people were going 'why is Front Street closed?' But it worked and it only worked because of that partnership because we know this is our project.”
The Front Street bridge is still currently under construction, with the Ohio Department of Transportation estimating the project will be completed later this summer.