Bridge near West Chicago to reopen

A small bridge on St. Charles Road near West Chicago that supports a surprising amount of traffic goes back on active duty Friday.

Construction on the bridge, which spans the West Branch of the DuPage River between Fair Oaks and Prince Crossing Road, was a long process, officials said Thursday.

"We fought our way through federal red tape, broken funding promises, utility delays and even a flood," Wayne Township Highway Commissioner Kenneth Spitz said in a written statement. "It always seemed another 'plot twist' arose. But now, the seven-year soap opera is at an end."

The bridge was in the design phase in 2005 when the Army Corps of Engineers had to stop working on it to assist with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, officials said. Then the grant money was temporarily held up in 2007. Finally, when work was scheduled to start on the bridge north of North Avenue this year, the utility companies weren't prepared.

There were two parts to the project: replacing a narrow triple-box culvert in the river with a two-lane, clear-span bridge and realigning St. Charles Road.

Spitz said that the goals of the $1.27 million project were to remove the culverts and raise St. Charles Road out of the flood plain, thereby reducing flood potential upstream.

The newly-constructed bridge will open for traffic after a ribbon-cutting ceremony at noon Friday. Before the project began, an estimated 5,000 vehicles per day used the bridge, which is a little more than 100 feet long.