BizSense Beat is a weekly collaboration between VPM News and Richmond BizSense that brings you the top business stories during NPR's Morning Edition on Fridays.
Here’s a recap for the week of February 14, 2025:
Richmond takes a step forward in the planned replacement of the Mayo Bridge
Reported by BizSense’s Mike Platania
A grant request filed by the City of Richmond last month indicates a reworked design of the 66-foot bridge has made progress.
VPM News Reporter Dean Mirshahi also shares that the city said, without this “essential” federal funding for the bridge that connects Manchester and Shockoe Slip, the Mayo Bridge would be deemed “unusable to the public” in 10 years.
The redesign of the bridge would incldue two protected bike lanes, a 6-foot sidewalk on the west and east side, and a 14-foot shared-use path. The shared use path would act as a connector for the Virginia Capital Trail and the Fall Line Trail.
The bridge itself bisects a planned future city park on Mayo Island. The city purchased a majority of the island last year for $15 million, though one small piece of it remains privately owned.
Plans to replace the Mayo Bridge have been in the works since 2022. The current bridge was initially built in 1913 and replaced an original Mayo Bridge that had opened in 1788.
Initially the consensus was the 112-year-old bridge’s surface, called the superstructure, needed to be replaced. However, last spring a Virginia Department of Transportation analysis found that its piers, what’s known as the substructure, also needed to be replaced.
That meant the planned replacement bridge would have to be built entirely new and the projected cost would nearly double.
The city proposed a new design in an application for a federal Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant, applying for an additional $25 million to help finance the nearly $200 million project.
Around $88 million of the project’s $195 million cost is already accounted for, and the remaining $82 million would come through state, local, and regional funding sources.
The federal grants recipients are expected to be announced this summer, with funds coming available in the fall. In the meantime, VDOT will continue conducting an environmental study on the existing bridge.
At present the bridge remains open, but will be considered unusable to the public by 2035. The project’s construction timeline has yet to be determined.
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