The wait is finally over.
In what was a surprise reveal of sorts, officials from the Forrest County Board of Supervisors announced on May 9 the new East Hardy Street bridge is now open to motorists, more than three months after the old bridge was shut down for repairs.
“We’re just tickled to have the bridge open, and I think it’s going to be great for the community,” said Terri Bell, president of the Forrest County Board of Supervisors. “I just see a lot of promise … for the future, that we’re going to have a lot of economic growth due to this beautiful bridge, then also the renovations that will be done to the old bridge once we get some grant monies.
“I’m just thrilled, and I feel like it’s a step forward for Forrest County. Our phones are blowing up, and everybody is just thrilled that they’re able to travel back over the bridge again from Petal to Hattiesburg, so we’re glad we were able to pull it off.”
To get fully around the bridge, however, motorists must take a detour onto Dawson Cutoff that leads to Carterville Road and South Main Street in Petal. That measure is necessitated by a closure of portion of Main Street to complete drainage work, which is expected to last approximately two to three months.
Bell said work on that could measure could have been completed while the bridge project progressed, but that would have made it more difficult for the businesses in that area, including the MJ Discount convenience store and Cochran’s Muffler and Auto Shop.
“We wanted to keep these businesses as accessible to traffic as we could,” she said in a previous story. “We feel like this way, people can get to them, because we’ve poured driveways to them, so people can get to them while we’re in this last phase of the drainage on the Petal side.”
The new bridge replaces the old bridge on its adjacent side, which connected Petal and Hattiesburg for more than 70 years.
Officials had originally considered demolishing the old bridge, but after learning that endeavor would cost approximately $1 million, the decision was made to leave the structure and transform it into a pedestrian bridge. The funds for that project will come from the Leaf and Bouie Redevelopment District, which was recently established to take the taxes from each side of the Leaf and Bouie rivers and reinvest them back into those areas of Hattiesburg, Petal and Forrest County.
“We have that district set up down there, and that’s bringing in some revenue for the second or third year,” said David Hogan, former president of the Forrest County Board of Supervisors, in a previous story. “So we’ll have some money built up to do some stuff to the old bridge once it’s not in use anymore.
“It’s going to be a destination point. There will be a walking path and some lighting, and we’ll probably paint it during events.”
With the help of matching grants from the United States Department of Transportation, officials from Petal, Forrest County and Hattiesburg are working to put forward matching grants to make a walking path possible on the bridge. The funds would come from the department of transportation’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity discretionary grant program for 2024, which is designed to help communities around the country carry out projects with significant local or regional impact.
“We’re kind of waiting to see (on the timeline of that),” Bell said. “We’ve got one grant that is outstanding, and we should know about it by the middle of July.
“There are a couple of other grants that we’ve submitted as well, but it’s definitely something that’s on our plan, and we’re working to make it happen as quickly as possible.”
