Traverse City Record-Eagle

Garfield Township

Related Photos

  • Douglas Tesner

    Hammond to Keystone
April 24, 2009

$6.5M project to join roads

Hartman-Hammond Bridge funds will be used

BY BRIAN McGILLIVARY

TRAVERSE CITY -- A new road extension planned this summer will exhaust the bulk of money set aside more than a decade ago for a hotly contested bridge project that would have connected Hartman and Hammond roads.

Grand Traverse County's Road Commission on May 6 is expected to award a $6.5 million contract to extend Hammond Road a half-mile into the Boardman River Valley to connect with Keystone Road. The road commission also will reconstruct and straighten a section of Keystone Road, with work scheduled to begin in May and last through November.

Road commissioners began diverting would-be bridge funds to major road improvements, mostly on Three Mile Road, when the Hartman-Hammond Bridge project stalled in 2003.

"The state told us we better use whatever we have," said road commission Manager Mary Gillis. "That's why we went ahead with this (Hammond to Keystone) project."

Little money remains for a Hartman-Hammond Bridge and prospects are bleak for new funding. Gillis said state officials won't provide additional funding for that project.

Environmentalists who waged an all-out campaign against the road commission over the proposed Hartman-Hammond Bridge voiced support for the Hammond-Keystone project. They recommended it years ago as part of their Smart Roads bridge alternative.

"This was probably the most specific alternative to the Hartman-Hammond Bridge and it's satisfying to see it move forward," said Jim Lively, of the Michigan Land Use Institute.

The Hammond-to-Keystone connection is designed to extend into a bridge over the Boardman River, but that won't happen, bridge opponent John Nelson said.

"What really stopped it in the end was a number of environmental hurdles to build that bridge that couldn't be crossed then and can't be crossed now," Nelson said.

Bridge planning began in 1988, and by 2002 the road commission readied for work on a $30 million, 200-foot long span through the valley to link Hartman and Hammond roads and create a new east-west route south of Traverse City.

But a 2002 lawsuit slowed the project, and it halted in 2003 when the road commission couldn't gain environmental permits from state and federal agencies. Toward the end of 2004, the road commission shelved the project to seek a mediated solution, an action taken at the request of the county board of commissioners.

The result was a $1.6 million comprehensive land use and transportation study funded with federal money originally allocated for the bridge. That study was dubbed The Grand Vision.

"The Grand Vision sprouted from the demise of the Hammond-Hartman connection and it's the one good thing that really came out of this," Nelson said.

The Grand Vision isn't final, but its draft reports don't include the bridge project.

"The Grand Vision showed that 95 percent of all traffic is coming to Traverse City, not trying to bypass it," Lively said. "The traffic models show Hartman-Hammond doesn't work."

But road commission officials refer to the bridge project as "paused," not dead.

Road commissioners question how much emphasis The Grand Vision gave to east-west traffic patterns, board chairman Jim Maitland said.

"You have a four- to five-mile stretch with no (east-west) connection ... and the Cass Road Bridge adds a whole new thing to it," Maitland said.

The Cass Road Bridge sits atop Boardman Dam, a structure county officials have slated for removal.

A Hartman-Hammond Bridge project would be considered when the dam is removed, but funding for a new bridge, as opposed to replacing an existing bridge, would be more difficult, Gillis said.

Text Only