City of Aberdeen hosts second Young Street Bridge open house

By Matthew N. Wells • June 17, 2024 5:00 pm
Matthew N. Wells / The Daily World A sparse crowd showed up on Thursday night to the second open house for the North Aberdeen Bridge Project. There’s a substantial funding gap between the $23 million in grants the city received for the bridge replacement and the cost of option 2B. “If (the) city is able to secure commitment for approximately $10 million additional private funding prior to the June 26, 2024 city council meeting, city staff will recommend Option 2B as (the) preferred alternative,” stated one of the boards that showed information about the costs for the bridge alternatives.
Matthew N. Wells / The Daily World A sparse crowd showed up on Thursday night to the second open house for the North Aberdeen Bridge Project. There’s a substantial funding gap between the $23 million in grants the city received for the bridge replacement and the cost of option 2B. “If (the) city is able to secure commitment for approximately $10 million additional private funding prior to the June 26, 2024 city council meeting, city staff will recommend Option 2B as (the) preferred alternative,” stated one of the boards that showed information about the costs for the bridge alternatives.

Staff from the city of Aberdeen’s Public Works Department and David Evans & Associates, Inc., hosted an open house on Thursday night in order to provide more information about the North Aberdeen Bridge Project to a sparse group of residents.

The person in charge of taking a headcount of the group tallied 24 people throughout the three-hour event. The event was the second open house and it was supposed to show the “preferred alternatives” for the bridge, which is also called the Young Street Bridge. People can still weigh in with an online survey on the North Aberdeen Bridge Project website: https://naberdeenbridge.participate.online/index

The alternatives are:

• Option 2A — Build a new bridge next to the existing Young Street Bridge for vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists, rehabilitate the southern end of the Young Street Bridge and leave that end in place, which saves the personal graffitied messages written to Nirvana and the late-Kurt Cobain. Remove the northern portion of the existing bridge

• Option 2B — Build a new bridge next to the existing Young Street Bridge for vehicles, rehabilitate the existing bridge for pedestrian and bicyclist use only

• Option 3C — Build a new bridge in the same location as existing bridge for vehicles, pedestrians and bicycle access, remove the existing bridge and repurpose parts of the bridge in Kurt Cobain Memorial Park. Build a new bridge in two stages — in first stage build a shared use path (for pedestrian and bicycle access) section and use for temporary bridge, which avoids a separate temporary bridge

The shared problem with 2A and 2B is the cost for each of them. 2A has a subtotal cost estimate of $28 million. 2B has a subtotal cost estimate of $30 million. 3C has a subtotal cost estimate of $22 million.

Harold Warren and Patricia Warren were two Aberdeen residents who spoke about the bridge, which is known to have a connection to the late-Kurt Cobain from Nirvana. A lot of people want to save it because they see it as “Kurt’s Bridge.” People have come from as far as South Korea in order to walk where Cobain walked. The current bridge is one of those spots.

“Kurt Cobain is such a prominent name in the history of Aberdeen and he draws so much to our community,” Patricia said. “He grew up with our youngest daughter at Weatherwax. I wasn’t fond of his music, but everybody else was, my kids were. He still brings people in.”

While there weren’t many people who showed up to the open house, the Warrens were strong on the bridge’s appeal for locals and for tourists.

“When we were driving into town this afternoon, I was remarking that the sign (on the outskirts) of Aberdeen, there were young people standing there, teenagers, young adult people standing there taking pictures of the ‘Come As You Are (sign),’” Patricia said. “And people come because of him. They come looking for the bridge that he spent part of his hours under.”

But at the same time, if the bridge doesn’t get the funding needed to keep it, the Warrens both want to see the bridge, and its significance to Cobain and Cobain’s fans, respected.

“I love all the writing that’s there under the bridge and I hope we can maintain that, move it into the park,” Patricia said. “Do something for the future.”

It sounds as though the Warrens are happy with what city staff and the consultants at DEA have done through the overall outreach process.

“I’m pleased with as much attention as the city of Aberdeen has given to either rebuilding, or renovating or putting a new bridge in,” Patricia said. “We need the bridge one way or another. This is wonderful, I’m glad that we had an opportunity to see it.”

The main, simple reasons for the project that have been chronicled for months are the following:

• The bridge needs to either be rehabilitated or replaced for safety reasons

• The city has about $23 million in grant funding that would replace the bridge, but at the same time it needs to make a decision soon so it doesn’t lose that funding and it doesn’t have to provide a partial city match that would cost the city millions

• The city needs to keep access to the north side of Aberdeen open as the only other option should the bridge not get worked on and fail is Think of Me Hill, which would be a traffic nightmare for residents and EMS.

The city staff who were there admitted the turnout was lower than they expected. But as Nick Bird, city engineer, pointed out, the hope is the people who decided not to show in person will fill out the online survey that is readily available on the North Aberdeen Bridge Project website.

The survey asks about level of satisfaction with the process, clarity of communication for the project, how you feel your input has been considered throughout the process, if you have anything to say about your experience with the project, plus demographics and where you live.

While the city has looked into other funding options to add to the approximate $23 million in grants there doesn’t seem to be much hope unless that source, or another private source who can bridge the financial gap appears before the June 26 Aberdeen City Council meeting.

Bird did reach out to the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) via voicemail and email on May 29. He noted how the bridge is noteworthy for its cultural ties, how it needs replacement for “numerous deficiencies and limitations,” how the city has been trying to “come up with a creative solution” to meet transportation needs and the culturally significant bridge. Bird explained how the alternatives that would keep the bridge, or at least part of it, would be “cost-prohibitive” for the city and how the city needs private support to help keep the bridge.

Bird noted on Thursday night that the overwhelming choice for the residents and the city is 2B, which would keep the entire bridge for pedestrian and bike traffic, and build another next to it.

Bird’s other hope that he expressed to MoPOP was if MoPOP gets involved and can help the city with funding, maybe it could do so before June 21.

“In an ideal world, it would be awesome to have a solution in place prior to the community’s World Music Event on June 21 so that it could be announced there!” Bird said in the email to MoPOP.

Kyle Fisher, another engineer with the city, talked about the turnout. He was hoping to see more people show up in person.

“Even if it does turnout to be a little bit lower of a turnout, it is what it is, and we’re trying to get the word out as much as possible,” Fisher said. “We have to live with the turnout. But honestly, we wanted everybody to be able to see this and have the ability to make time in order to make it here and provide their comments. But there’s always the online open house part of it. We put that link on our website, I think on our Facebook page and a lot of other outreach material. So hopefully people see that at least. All of this information, or most of it is gonna be on our website for people to view and comment on.”

Fisher said he thinks there’s a chance the funding gap closes so the bridge can be saved. 2B was the overwhelming choice.

“I don’t know how good of a chance that is,” Fisher said. “I know since the last stakeholder (outreach) group meeting, we as a group voted for 2B, because that’s preferred. Everybody wants that. That gets everybody what they want, really, even the city. But there’s a funding gap we have to take into account. 2B is about $30 million based on this preliminary concept estimate and the actual funding for right-of-way and construction is about $20 million, so there’s about a $10 million gap. The funding gap, the city can’t bear that. Taxpayers, unfortunately we’re not big enough. They can not bear that. We can not put that on the citizens, we don’t feel like that’s responsible.”

Residents who aren’t with the city seem to think it’s unlikely an angel investor will come in at the last minute to save the bridge. More than a couple made a similar comment to the one Harold Warren made.

“The unfortunate part is between two options, there’s about a $10 million gap, which would have to be funded through the city of Aberdeen, or through tax dollars, or through private donations. That’s a pretty tough nut,” Harold Warren said. “They need to do something. They need to save part of that history. I guess they could do that with the least expensive of the two, but that part would not be part of the bridge. It would be a standalone monument, I guess, would be the right word. If they could keep the bridge, that’d be cool.”

But, maybe, there’s a chance to find money locally.

Patricia said “there’s hidden money in the community. You just have to push the right buttons.”

Contact Reporter Matthew N. Wells at matthew.wells@thedailyworld.com.