By Ken Wyatt
While most residents were huddled in warm places during this bitterly cold winter, workers on the Hanover Road Bridge project have been making steady progress. A visit to the site made clear that completion is well within sight for a spring opening.
Anlaan Corporation, based at Grand Haven, is doing the project. The company specializes in bridge construction and has to its credit more than 1,200 bridges, according to its website.
When asked, a worker confirmed that they were you on track for completing the project in the spring and added detail. The work periodically has to halt when weight limits are imposed by the county. After they’re lifted, he explained, the major work to be completed is pouring the concrete for the bridge surface, the approaches and some gravel work. Some of the concrete work had already been done over the winter.
Aside the new bridge itself, there is a footbridge for workers to go back and forth from one side of the river to the other.
One of the workers said they had previously done quite a bit of pipeline work and was part of that massive project a few years ago when Enbridge ran a pipeline north of here across much of Michigan.
Bridge work, like the pipeline projects, means traveling from home to temporary lodgings closer to the project – which can be all over the state for Anlaan Corporation.
An engineer’s inspection in the summer of 2019 prompted the county to order the bridge closed. Properties and homes to the west of the river were left isolated. One resident owns farming acreage on both sides of the bridge, which created problems tending acreage on the other side from his residence.
In a tragic footnote preceding the removal of the bridge, a Hanover woman tried to drive around the “bridge closed” barriers early last year. She reached the west side of the river, but her small vehicle lost traction and tumbled into the freezing water, where she died.
The old bridge had barely visible in one of its walls the year of completion – “1938.” So its replacement will begin its own life of service in the spring of 2026 – 88 years later. Not a bad record of bearing everything from tractors and firetrucks from east to west and west to east of the river – especially when the bridge was only rated for a 50-year life.
County officials plan to take bids in March for the replacement of the Albion Road Bridge in neighboring Concord Township. That project is scheduled for this summer. One thing that could give Anlaan an edge in the bidding process is that it already has heavy equipment just a few miles south of the Albion Road Bridge.
Photos by Ken Wyatt
