Staff Photo/Jordan J. Phelan
BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. — The Rockingham Selectboard, by a narrow majority, changed the town’s replacement plan of Depot Street Bridge on Tuesday, voting 3-to 2 to recommend an off-alignment bridge with an additional bridge for pedestrians, a plan which proponents hope will spur economic growth.
The new proposal, supported by three newer members of the selectboard, reverses course from the selectboard’s decision in 2019 to instead construct an on-alignment bridge in the same location as the existing Depot Street Bridge, a 112-year-old concrete arch bridge that crosses the Bellow Falls canal.
The long debate between the off-alignment versus on-alignment proposals has centered around cost versus benefit.
Proponents of the newly approved off-alignment plan hope it will improve traffic flow between downtown Bellows Falls and The Island, a residential and commercial zone that the town is looking to develop for economic growth.
“If it’s our priority to be developing The Island area, we should be making some investments,” said board member Elijah Zimmer. “We’ve already spent considerable time, money and effort into redeveloping it and I feel that having what I think is a better connection will improve the odds of that coming to fruition over time.”
This investment includes an extensive brownfield cleanup of the former Robertson Paper Mill property, funded primarily through a federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant, with assistance from the Town of Rockingham and the Windham Regional Commission. Rockingham contributed $150,000 from its town revolving loan fund to assist the Bellows Falls Area Development Corporation, a private, nonprofit development group who acquired the Roberston property for commercial development.
Opponents to the project, including board Chairman Peter Golec and board member Susan Hammond, said they worry about the town’s long-term costs with many other aging bridges to address in the near future.
“I like the idea of the off-alignment and the pedestrian bridge,” Hammond said. “But the price tag, when we have so many other bridges that are right behind this one, that’s my biggest concern.”
In 2019, Hammond voted in the minority in support of the off-alignment bridge. That project, if approved, would have included repairs to the existing bridge to keep as a pedestrian-only crossing.
Depot Street Bridge is actually one of three bridges connecting to The Island. But one of those, Vilas Bridge — which connects to the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River — has been closed since 2009 and its repair will require mutual funding from New Hampshire and Vermont.
Depot Street has reached its end of life as a vehicular bridge and needs to be replaced.
An on-alignment replacement would be roughly $800,000 less than the preferred off-alignment. But the on-alignment design, whose intersection is nearly perpendicular with Canal Street in downtown Bellows Falls, is too sharp and narrow for large commercial vehicles or busses to safely turn.
“If we increase economic activity on the Island, the sharper than right-angle turn [at Depot Street Bridge] just creates a situation where you are backing up traffic,” Fox said. “Having the off-alignment bridge, where traffic flows easily onto Canal Street, and having one-way traffic for the trucks and Greyhound busses to come in from Bridge Street and to leave via Canal Street, avoiding the village square, is an attractive scenario.”
Golec, who has frequently expressed skepticism about The Island’s overall potential for commercial growth, said any meaningful development could be at least a decade away. Meanwhile Depot Street Bridge gets very little use at present beyond occasional vehicles from Cota & Cota, a heating systems company located on The Island.
“I don’t think we need it,” Golec said. “I’m not in favor of having three bridges [including the pedestrian] crossing that canal. It makes no sense.”
Golec said the town could have recommended an attached pedestrian walkway to the on-alignment bridge to lessen the town’s long term burden to maintain the bridges.
Additional needs on The Island are estimated to cost a few million dollars, Fox said. That work includes sidewalk and road improvements, additional brownfield mitigations and restoration of the railroad station building.
“If attracting the development, it’s not hard to leverage those private funds with public funds to do those [projects],” Fox said. “But a lack of investment in the infrastructure will deter the type of development that will leverage public funds.”
The off-alignment bridge and pedestrian bridge are currently estimated to cost between $8.1 million to $8.7 million. The Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) would shoulder 90% of the project cost for the off-alignment bridge. Rockingham’s portion for the remaining cost is currently projected around $1.2 million.
The town is looking to finance the project with a 30-year bond with a fixed interest rate. The current interest rate is 2.85%.
The town also has a $500,000 reserve fund to help reduce the cost of the bridge project. While Rockingham would have to cover the cost of the pedestrian bridge, town officials said there are transportation grants available to help cover the project.
Rockingham voters will still have to vote on a bond to fund the bridge. If voters reject the bond proposal, the selectboard may have to resort back to the on-alignment design to propose a lesser bond amount.
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