Edgewood Avenue Bridge to Close March 18 for Replacement Work

OLD FOURTH WARD — The Atlanta BeltLine Inc. and the Atlanta Public Works Department said the year-long replacement of the Edgewood Avenue Bridge, is expected to begin March 18.

Of all the bridges in the city, the 107-year-old span, which connects Old Fourth Ward and Inman Park, is the most structurally unsound, underscoring the need for a replacement.

The $4.5 million project to replace the 200-foot concrete bridge is expected to last until April 2014 and will close the stretch of Edgewood between Krog and Randolph streets.

And with its closure, traffic on Edgewood, a major thoroughfare into Downtown, will have to be diverted:

• The detour routes will bypass that affected stretch of Edgewood and motorists will be diverted to a route that goes from Randolph to Irwin to Krog streets, to DeKalb Aveue/Decature Street to Boulevard.
• All nearby businesses will be open and accessible during construction.

The detour routes weren't necessarily seen as optimal by residents of those streets, particularly Irwin, where residents complained their street already suffers from a high volume of traffic and speeders.

The new bridge, officials said, will better integrate it with the Atlanta BeltLine's Eastside Trail — which runs along the former Norfolk Southern Corp. rail line between Airline and Gumby streets.

The bridge replacement also is being done in advance of the Atlanta Streetcar project, which will have a transit extension onto the BeltLine corridor.

URS Corp. is the designer and C.W. Matthews Contracting Co. Inc. is the prime contractor for this project, which is being funded by U.S. Department of Energy Recovery Zone Economic Development Bonds.