The new East Hardy Street bridge that recently opened to motorists is steadily making progress, as officials recently announced work is nearing completion on the Petal side of the bridge that connects the Friendly City and Hattiesburg over the Leaf River.
According to a recent Facebook post by the Forrest County Board of Supervisors, several items of work have recently been completed on that side of the bridge, including:
- Installation of 18-inch drainage pipes at the tie-in with Carterville Road;
- Installation of borrow material and grading the subgrade at the tie-in with Carterville Road;
- Continuing to remove the overhang forms from the bridge;
- Continuing to rub the barrier rails and overhang them with grout; and
- Continuing to pressure wash the steel beams.
“I think that project is definitely on target where we wanted it to be at this point,” said Terri Bell, president of the Forrest County Board of Supervisors. “We’re going to be finishing up with that in the near future, and have this behind us.
“We’ll have a great roadway and bridge for many, many years to come.”
The new bridge opened on May 9, approximately three months after officials closed the old bridge – which is adjacent to the current bridge and had connected the two cities for more than 70 years.
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 more months.
“Everybody is really excited to be able to commute that way from Petal to Hattiesburg, and Hattiesburg to Petal,” Bell said. “So I think it was great that we went ahead and opened it up, even though the roadway was not complete at that time.
“I think that was a good decision, and we just look forward to finishing up this project so that everyone can continue to enjoy that pathway of travel.”
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.”
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.”
