Fort Worth’s Panther Island bridges now expected to cost $20M more than first thought
The three bridges that may one day span a Trinity River channel in downtown Fort Worth will cost almost $20 million more than expected and likely won’t be done until the end of 2021.
That extra money will come from the North Central Texas Council of Government’s Regional Transportation Council in the form of a $15 million grant, officials said Tuesday. Another $5 million may be paid through a special tax district designed to fund work related to a planned bypass channel in the Trinity River that would create Panther Island.
Once scheduled to open in 2017, the bridges were delayed by design issues and the completion date was pushed back two years. Then project officials last year said the bridge would be finished by late summer 2020, with bridges for North Main and Henderson streets following in the spring of 2021.
Now an official schedule shows White Settlement Road will be done by the end of this year with the other two bridges finished by the end of 2021.
Originally budgeted at $69.9 million, the new cost is a little more than $89 million.
Despite the delay and increased cost, city manager David Cooke voiced optimism in an interview with the Star-Telegram.
“Under normal conditions, I’m now very confident they can get get it done,” he said.
Even at the higher price the bridges will cost about what regional transportation experts anticipated in 2014 when construction began, said Michael Morris, director of transportation for the council of governments.
Morris anticipates asking the Regional Transportation Council, a body that decides how to spend state and federal transportation dollars in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, to allocate about $15 million in federal grants to the Texas Department of Transportation for bridge work the agency has already paid Texas Sterling.
The bridges, which would span the bypass channel in the Trinity River north of downtown, have been behind schedule from the beginning.
When asked to participate in the project more than six years ago, Morris said regional transportation officials questioned the bridges’ complicated and unique V-pier design, hoping the Army Corps of Engineers and the Trinity River Vision Authority, which is coordinating the project, would chose a design similar to the W. 7th Street bridge. That design would have cost less and taken less time to complete, he said.
But Morris said Corps officials told them a new bridge design would delay the project by at least three years as engineers completed a new hydrology study.
Each of the 20 V-piers is unique, so regional transit officials pushed for one design for all, but were told that too would delay the project.
Not wanting to be the cause of the delay, Morris said the Regional Transportation Council signed off the the V-pier design and would now help push the project forward.
“I am more confident in the project now than I was before,” he said, adding that Panther Island was a vital flood control effort.
TxDOT reached a new agreement with Texas Sterling late last year and paid the contractor about $15 million to continue work. Loyl Bussell, district engineer for TxDOT, said the new agreement should make it easier for the contractor to complete the bridges. Work is ongoing seven days a week in multiple shifts, he said. The agreement also allows the contractor to work through issues with bridges’ design faster, he said.
Businesses along White Settlement Road expected further delay of that bridge. Members of the White Settlement Road Development Task Force, which advocates for businesses and has been meeting twice a month with TxDOT officials about the bridge work, said in January state officials told them the bridge would be done by the end of the year.
White Settlement Road has created the biggest headache, especially for locally owned businesses across the river to the west of downtown. Unlike the Henderson and Main Street work, White Settlement has been closed at the bridge site since 2014, cutting off the road from downtown.
The lack of traffic between the west side of the river and downtown has hurt several businesses, including Angelo’s Barbecue, a favorite lunch spot of downtown workers. Owner Jason George told the Star-Telegram in January he estimated business has fallen 30% since work began.
Steve Metcalf, president of the White Settlement Road Development Task Force, said business owners along the street have mixed feelings. Some are “ready to get out the pitch forks and torches” but others are more optimistic now that a firm completion date has been set.
The bridges are being built over dry land. The Army Corps of Engineers is expected to dig a 1.5 mile bypass channel under them sometime in the future. That channel is meant to control water flows in the Trinity River in the event of a flood and is the major feature of the $1.17 billion Panther Island project.
The Army Corps has received little funding for the bypass channel since it was first authorized in 2006. Though it was re-authorized for $526 million in 2016, the channel has received $62 million to date.
The local Crops office and the water district asked for $38 million for design and construction work this year, but didn’t receive any. Instead, Washington provided $1.5 million for a feasibility study. A water district meeting Tuesday morning, board member James Hill said he hoped the district would slow work on their portion of the project.
It is no coincidence Morris chose a federal grant program to help pay for the bridges, he said.
“I hope it spurs a conversation,” Morris said. “OK Corps of Engineers, what was your commitment?”
This story was originally published February 18, 2020 at 5:53 PM.
