Kudos: LB Public Works Director Reveals New Shoemaker Bridge WON'T Have Its Supports Inside L.A. River Channel; It Will SPAN L.A. River, Apparently Including Cables, Avoiding Major Issue In Leaving Old Shoemaker Bridge Up For New Park

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Editorial

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(June 17, 2015, 5:20 a.m.) -- LBREPORT.com is pleased to report that during a June 9 City Council presentation on an agenda item awarding a contract to design a new Shoemaker Bridge across the L.A. River [reconfiguring the connection between the 710 and downtown LB, part of the new I-710 project], LB's Public Works Director told the Council that it's planned to design a bridge whose supports WON'T be inside the L.A. River channel.

Instead, its support structure will be e outside the channel, apparently using cable stays to create a signature bridge spanning the L.A. River at the entryway to downtown Long Beach.

This addresses a major issue LBREPORT.com had raised when then-Vice Mayor/now Mayor Robert Garcia first proposed leaving the old (current) Shoemaker Bridge up and turning it into an elevated park (similar to New York City's High Line Park.) LBREPORT.com supported Garcia's proposal, calling it intriguing, but editorially cautioned in June 2013 that the new bridge shouldn't put any new obstructions inside the L.A. River channel that might reduce its flood carrying capacity and bureaucratically invite the unintended consequence of flood insurance requirements and building restrictions for residential and commercial property owners. '

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At the June 9, 2015 Council meeting, 4th dist. Councilman Daryl Supernaw asked about this and LB's Public Works Director Ara Maloyan replied:

[Public Works Director Maloyan]: Part of our design is to repurpose the existing bridge, and because of that we're going to leave the existing bridge in place, modify the, I would say, west end to allow for a bike lane to connect the east side to the west side. Because of that, and also because of Army Corps [of Engineers] requirements that hydraulic calculations have shown that putting anything in the river will increase the hydraulic grade line or will cause the water line to exceed the dam at this point so we probably will have to design a bridge that is a simple span, spanning the entire span of the river without any supports.
So even if the existing bridge remained or did not remain, the new bridge had to be designed to be spanning over the entire span of the River but also if we want to have a signature bridge, we do want to have some kind of a stay, cable-stayed design that will be a signature to the entrance or the exit to the city at that point.

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Invited to elaborate on this, Mr. Maloyan added:

...This [current] bridge is approximately 1,300 foot clear span. The new bridge will be 1,300 foot span, spanning over L.A. River. It's 200 foot longer than the Gerald Desmond Bridge...[The new bridge] has to connect to Cesar Chavez and Drake Park master plan and also be part of park expansion and reuse of the existing bridge...Aesthetically [the new bridge] has to be a significant and a signature gateway to Long Beach. My comments have been to the consultants and to city staff, I would like to see this bridge on a U.S. stamp one day...It has to be sustainable and it has to have the safety elements that the current bridge does not have.

In our view, what Mr. Maloyan describes would be an optimal outcome. LBREPORT.com had editorialized in June 2013:

...We remain intrigued with the idea of adaptively reusing part of the old Shoemaker Bridge up to the river's edge and linking to Drake Park and elsewhere. However, the only way to ensure that this won't reduce the L.A. River's square footage capacity is to remove portions of the old bridge from the River. This won't prevent the park but it will prevent costly unintended consequences.
Vice Mayor Robert Garcia's agendizing memo is vague on this matter, but taxpaying Long Beach homeowners and commercial property owners deserve protection from, not potential exposure to, additional costs. The Corps of Engineers isn't willing simply to accept assurances of some paid consultant and neither should Long Beach taxpayers, especially on matters affecting life and property.
LBREPORT.com urges the Council to allow management to pursue the feasibility of a Shoemaker Bridge reuse project to the extent it doesn't leave portions of the soon-to-be-former Shoemaker bridge within the L.A. River channel.

We reiterated our concern in a June 9, 2015 editorial timed for that night's Council agenda item...and we appreciate Mr. Maloyan's public presentation on this.

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We're not saying that anything we wrote had anything to do with what LB's Public Works engineers are doing; we're just glad that that they're doing it...and the Public Works Dept., its management, staff and engineers deserve credit for approaching this project in the way they've indicated.

And as an added benefit, it sounds like the end result could look terrific. Good! Vice Mayor-now-Mayor Garcia deserves credit for seeking to apply the concept behind New York City's High Line Park (reusing an abandoned elevated train track on the west side of Manhattan at about 23rd St.) to the soon-to-be-former Shoemaker bridge here. It's a clever and wise reuse of taxpayer infrastructure.

Kudos to all involved.

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