Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Sweet Home Economic Development Group delivered a $20,000 check to the city of Sweet Home on Thursday, Jan. 19, following the installation of a new roof on Weddle Bridge at Sankey Park.
SHEDG pledged the money to the bridge late last year as a match to money raised by the community and city. The community as a whole has raised about $41,000 to fix the bridge.
The new roof includes three layers of cedar shakes, Code Enforcement Officer Mikayla Rossiter said. Rossiter is working on the bridge repair project on behalf of the city. The south end of the bridge is covered temporarily with a tarp to make it easier and cheaper to repair the structure of the bridge underneath the roof.
The city closed the bridge to the public in October after learning that the bridge was structurally unsound.
Since then, the city has been working on a plan to repair the bridge and coordinating the construction of a new roof. A community effort to repair the roof began in 2004 after holes were discovered in the roof.
In the meantime, officials have learned that the structure of the bridge was deteriorating, largely a result of the leaking roof.
High Mountain Cedar cut and installed cedar shakes purchased by Jim Cota, Rossiter said. The roof will help protect the bridge structure and minimize further water damage.
“We needed to get that protection on the rest of the upper chords,”Community Development Coordinator Carol Lewis said, referring to the upper horizontal beams that have sustained damage. “We had to get it covered.”
The roofing cost $19,200, plus $2,074 for materials to finish the roof and $875 in miscellaneous hardware.
For an airline ticket and lodging, Phil Pierce, an engineer from New York, has agreed to come to Sweet Home to consult on the bridge project, Lewis said.
“He’s really the premiere covered bridge engineer,” she said.
Officials are applying for a grant with Alaska Airlines to fly him to Oregon.
Engineers in Oregon keep offering a “Cadillac bridge,” Lewis said. They won’t help with a phased approach to the project, which is estimated at more than $125,000 at the low end.
They also have not taken local volunteer efforts and donations into account.
“He’s going to give us an opinion I can trust as to how to move forward,” Lewis said of Pierce.
In the meantime, Cota is working to find timbers to replace deteriorated structural pieces, the largest being the upper chord on the southwest side.
The bridge has some other problems underneath as well, Lewis said.
Hoy’s True Value donated some $2,000 worth of paint, and the bridge restoration effort will need volunteers to paint it, probably in the spring.
The funds raised so far are not completely tapped out, Lewis said, but what’s left isn’t going to last long.
For information about donating, contact Lewis at 367-8113 or Alice Grovom with the President’s Club, which is handling donations and can provide tax-deduction status. Grovom can be reached at 367-5231.