Chatham-Kent council has given the go-ahead for spending $1.6 million to rehabilitate the L.O. Stonehouse pedestrian bridge in downtown Wallaceburg.
Council unanimously approved spending the money to fix the bridge and make it operational again, as the bridge has been closed since the fall of 2021 due to public safety concerns.
It’s estimated the rehabilitation will give the bridge an additional 60 year life-span.
“They’ll be doing various things including galvanizing the steel, so it’s going stop it from rusting,” Mayor Darrin Canniff said. “Talk about cool construction, they might actually take the whole bridge up, drive it off to a plant somewhere, fix it, and then bring it back and put it back on.”
Canniff would also like to add LED lights to the walking bridge, as is being done to the Third Street Bridge in Chatham, that can change colour for special occasions.
The last major restoration of the walking bridge took place in 2015 at a cost of just over $540,000.
The latest rehabilitation project is scheduled to take place in 2023, but the span will remain closed until the work is done.