SANDPOINT — At 50 years old, Bridge Street Bridge is beginning to see some rust, corrosion and cracking. While this is not cause for a full replacement of the bridge, city officials said it does need some work.

The bridge provides the only vehicular access to City Beach, the Lake Water Treatment Plant, the train station and other private and public facilities on the east side of Sand Creek. A bridge inspection report by the Idaho Transportation Department in 2015 gave the nearly 50-year-old bridge a sufficiency rating of 33 out of 100. 

Council members discussed the bridge nearly a year ago to decide whether it should be rebuilt or rehabilitated.  

"Rehabilitation of the bridge would be better than replacement in the fact that engineers believe we could keep access over the bridge during that process," Ryan Luttmann, Public Works director, said at the time.

The cost of the rehabilitation, at approximately $1.3 million, is an estimated one-fourth the cost of full replacement of the bridge and will add about 25 years to the life of the bridge, he said.

On Wednesday, the topic came before council again as city officials sought approval to apply for funding to rehabilitate the bridge. Due to the low sufficiency rating, the bridge is eligible for funding through the Local Federal-aid Incentive Program, which is administered through the Local Highway Technical Assistance Council.

The program has a limit of one project application per year, per jurisdiction. If approved, the city will be required to provide a 7.34-percent match.

Sean Scoggin, the city's grants administrator, said if it is approved, the city will receive the funding in April 2018. The project would then take place over the summer, but would be offset from the timeline for construction of the Downtown Revitalization Project, he said.

Downtown revitalization is set to continue this summer with improvements on Cedar Street between Fifth and Second avenues. The Cedar Street improvements were originally scheduled for last summer, but were postponed after the only bid only bid for the project was much higher than anticipated. To get the project completed in the original time frame, the three-phase project may be re-designed to two phases in 2018 and 2019.

Mary Malone can be reached by email at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.