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Carl Wernicke: We Deserve A Better Bridge

IHMC

  Count me among those who are underwhelmed by the design of the winning bid for the new Pensacola Bay Bridge.

I also was hoping for a distinctive, signature design that would showcase Pensacola in an unforgettable way. Architecture, at its best, marks a community with a style that enhances local pride and sends a message to visitors.

But from the drawings released to the public, I see a pretty basic bridge gussied up with a minimal bit of structural flair on the main channel span. Visually, it’s sort of like nailing latticework around your patio. Yes, it’s better than the current bridge, but that’s faint praise. The existing span has the architectural flair of a convenience store.

It’s worth noting that the new bridge will include a badly needed pedestrian/bike path separated from the traffic lanes. Local input was crucial to ensuring this amenity, and it’s good to see it there, and that the state valued this enough to spend money on it.

But the announcement of the winning bid acknowledged that it received the lowest score among the various bids on design aesthetics, making up its ground in the scoring system with a substantially lower cost. Let’s just hope that this advantage isn’t lost in future change orders, which would leave us with a boring bridge without the cost savings.

And yes, it’s hard to argue against spending less for the bridge, especially in an era when we have been taught that cheaper is always better, that the mark of value is spending less money. But with the way the Pensacola area is developing, especially downtown, it’s intriguing to think about having a really interesting bridge serving as a major gateway in and out of what is becoming a compelling urban center.

Contributing to the pedestrian design of the bridge is the brute-force utility of concrete. It’s a marvelous construction material, but is able to perform its function without frills of any sort. One of the advantages of the old-style steel bridges was how their basic engineering could easily translate into a pleasing appearance. One of this nation’s architectural tragedies has been the steady replacement of visually captivating steel bridges with boring concrete structures.

I saw the remnant of one of those steel bridges recently, sitting in Fanning Springs, where U.S. 98 crosses the Suwannee River. And on a much smaller scale, the Blackwater River State Forest used to host a number of steel-caged bridges over its creeks and rivers, most or all of them now gone except in visually compelling pictures.

Concrete can and often is used in creating captivating structures, although generally it costs more to design and build them. But given that this bridge will stand for the next 50-plus years, and that the money was available in the state budget, it’s too bad we’re missing the chance to make a more impressive statement.

Carl Wernicke is a native of Pensacola. He graduated from the University of Florida in 1975 with a degree in journalism. After 33 years as a reporter and editor, he retired from the Pensacola News Journal in April 2012; he spent the last 15 years at the PNJ as editor of the editorial page. He joined the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in 2012 as Senior Writer and Communications Manager, and retired from IHMC in 2015.His hobbies include reading, traveling, gardening, hiking, enjoying nature around his home in Downtown Pensacola, as well as watching baseball and college football, especially the Florida Gators and New York Yankees. His wife, Patti, retired as a senior vice president at Gulf Winds Federal Credit Union and is a Master Gardener. Carl is a regular contributor to WUWF. His commentaries focus on life in and around the Pensacola area and range in subject matter from birding to downtown redevelopment and from preserving our natural heritage to life in local neighborhoods.