More progress is being made at the East Hardy Street bridge that connects Hattiesburg to Petal over the Leaf River, as workers completed several measures at the site last week and are working on a few more this week.
The following items were finished last week:
- Removing the existing South Main Street from the old bridge to Carterville Road for drainage work before the road is replaced;
- Grading the existing roadway;
- Grading the sidewalks on the Petal and Hattiesburg sides;
- Pouring curb and gutter at the Carterville Road intersection;
- Forming and pouring the concrete driveways;
- Forming the tops of some curb inlets; and
- Cleanup at the site.
This week, workers will focus on continuing to grade South Main Street, completing the curb and gutter, completing the concrete driveways, forming and pouring the tops of the curb inlets, and forming and pouring the remaining sidewalks.
If all goes according to plan, all work will be completed in approximately the next five weeks.
“We really have made a lot of progress over there … and (this week’s work) is going to put us in a good place to be getting real close to doing some asphalt,” said Terri Bell, president of the Forrest County Board of Supervisors. “So we’re real excited.
“There might be a little (while) where we have to (close) one lane to do some painting, but other than that we’re going to be good to go.”
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 currently underway.
“Everybody is really excited to be able to commute that way from Petal to Hattiesburg, and Hattiesburg to Petal,” Bell said in a previous story. “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.
