Workers from GLF Construction Corp. cut steel during
the replacement of the Ocean Avenue Bridge in Lantana.
Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Tim O’Meilia
The final resting place for the soon-to-be-demolished East Ocean Avenue Bridge in Lantana will be, well, here and there — beneath the Lake Worth Lagoon, near the new fishing pier under the new Lantana bridge and somewhere around the town hall.
Work on replacing the 62-year-old drawbridge with a taller, wider $32 million replacement has begun by Palm Beach County.
Manalapan, South Palm Beach and Hypoluxo Island residents have begun making their 12- or 16-mile detours to buy groceries. Business owners on the east side of the old bridge are already counting their losses.
Instead of being hauled out to sea and dropped to the ocean’s floor to form an offshore reef, the 5,000 tons of the span’s concrete will be used as part of the underwater base for the Snook Island restoration project just north of the Lake Worth bridge.
The county and contractor GLF of Miami will save $300,000 by not moving the concrete by barge up the Intracoastal and out the Palm Beach Inlet to sea.
It’s even cheaper than breaking the concrete span into smaller pieces and hauling them by truck to a clean landfill.
“They’ll be used as the subbase for some of the estuarial islands off the Lake Worth golf course,” said biologist Carmen Vare, of the Palm Beach County environmental resource management department.
Other debris — some of the pilings — will be used as a reef to attract fish to a $560,000 fishing pier that will run beneath the eastern end of the new bridge. That won’t happen until late 2013 just before the bridge is scheduled to open.
Bits of the bridge that have some historic value — a plaque from the 1950 dedication, the roof of the bridge tender’s house, the gear box the raises the spans and several street lights from the span — will find their way to displays around town.
Demolition work is on schedule, said Kristine Frazell-Smith, who is overseeing the work for the county’s engineering department.
When it opens, the new bridge will be 11 feet higher and reduce drawbridge openings by 40 percent.
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