SIOUX CITY | An anticipated five-month closure of the bridge on Military Road crossing from Riverside into North Sioux City may not happen until 2019.
The exact timing of the bridge re-decking project, which the city had originally slotted to begin this year, is uncertain due to a languishing permit process through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Sioux City is awaiting approval of a permit application it submitted to the Corps in February of last year. The permit is a requirement for the project.
Senior civil engineer Brittney Anderson said the Corps ran into funding issues that hampered its ability to approve and review the permits, leaving the city's permit application backlogged among several other project permits from other cities and entities.
Sioux City has contacted the Corps to request an agreement that would allow the city to submit its own funding to speed up the process but has yet to hear back on that offer, Anderson said.
Public Works Director Dave Carney told the Sioux City Council on Monday he has received indication that the permit may not be approved until around April. Everything else is ready to move forward and go out for bid, he said.
Anderson said even if the permit is approved in March or April, it's hard to know at the moment what the project's timeline might be.
"We're going to have to look at when the permit comes in, when the project comes out for bid and when it comes out for the schedule," she said.
The bridge re-decking is one of two stages in a 10-month, $5 million project along Military Road. The second stage includes a full reconstruction of the road from the bridge to Riverside Boulevard. Funding for the bridge project, an estimate of $3 million total, will come from Sioux City and the Iowa and South Dakota departments of transportation.
The permit is delaying the entirety of the project, Anderson said.
The Sioux City Council in April had decided to fully close the Military Road bridge for the re-decking project rather than keep one lane open at a time, which engineers said would drive up the cost of the project. The decision came despite push-back from several nearby North Sioux City business owners who believe the bridge closure will prove detrimental to their sales by blocking incoming traffic.
During Monday's council meeting, the council granted 4-0 approval to a request for $11,375 more in funding for design services related to the street project. That amount will allow the city to design electrical outlets into street lights, at the request of the Riverside Neighborhood PAC, to allow for the hanging of lights holiday decorations.
The approved added cost will cover the design services only, and the city expects an additional $31,500 will be needed to cover the additional construction costs related to adding the outlets to the poles.