Thank you to all of you who participated in our poll about preferences about the construction project planned for the Franklin Avenue Bridget. At last word, this project is likely to happen in the summer of 2015, but may end up pushed back one more year. In either case, the board passed the following resolution in December:

“SCCA, on behalf of the Seward business community, strongly supports a construction schedule that is as short as possible for Hennepin County’s reconstruction of the Franklin Avenue Bridge, in order to minimize the duration of the impact of the project on businesses in our neighborhood. As such we prefer the tree month full closure of the bridge over the alternative 30 month partial closure. It is critical that this project not exceed 90 days and that every effort be made to shorten the period if possible. In fact, we recommend the contract include incentives to the contractor for finishing early as well as a penalty for going past a three month closure. Also, due to the seasonal nature of retail businesses, we have identified the summer months (June, July and August) as the least problematic months for the closure to occur, and would prefer to see a construction schedule that primarily occurs during those months.”

We’ll be keeping you posted as we get more information, and will be inviting the Hennepin County project manager out to speak to us when more details of the project have been finalized.