The Fifth Street pedestrian bridge has been hyped as an extension of Riverwalk, awaited by the public to become a party span, but now many are wondering if it is becoming just a bridge to nowhere.
The city of Augusta hoped to have the $10 million project wrapped up in time for the July 4th celebration. To the naked eye, work on the bridge looks finished and the city has tested the colored lights that illuminate the historic structure at night, yet barriers are still in place preventing public access.
Augusta Engineering Department Director Hameed Malik says, at first, the supply shortage slowed everything down and now the dwindling workforce is causing the delays.
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While the bridge may look ready, it is still missing safety cables. Malik says those cables and other metallic materials such as braces were ordered months ago, and the nationwide supply shortage caused the delay. The materials just arrived this week.
Now that materials are in hand, Malik says he is facing another problem — worker shortage. The problem is not a city worker shortage, but that subcontractors have walked off the job because of the labor shortage.
“It’s very stressful for me. We have the money and materials to get it done, but the subcontractors don’t have enough workers to do the job. I don’t understand it. People are still spending money, but I don’t know where they are getting the money because no one wants to work,” Malik said.
According to Malik, it is not as simple to just fire the contractors who hire the subcontractors, that would mean putting the work back out for bid which would cause a massive delay and lead to much higher costs for a project that is coming in, right now, on budget.
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Also, putting the project out for bid wouldn’t guarantee that anyone necessarily would bid for the work. Malik says that his department has put out two separate bids recently and the packages came back with no bidders.
“I have six projects right now, but there are only two contractors that are certified to do the work. There is no way that two contractors can complete all six of those projects,” Malik said.
The Augusta Procurement Department confirmed that the shortage of bidders has become a city-wide problem with some closed bids receiving no response, other bids have contractors saying the price is way too low for them to complete the project.
According to Procurement Department Director Geri Sams, the supply chain issues have a tendency to snowball.
“Once we get commission approval to move forward with a bid, the prices have already shot up and we have to either put it back out for bid a second time or go back to the commission and ask for more funding. This is not just something that is happening in Augusta, it’s happening all over the country,” Sams said.
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Malik says his office has been inundated with requests to know when the bridge will be open to the public and says he is trying to be honest without flat out stating that he doesn’t know.
“I want to say that I am optimistic we can have it open by the third week of August now that we have the materials we needed, but the workforce issue is really out of our hands,” Malik said.
The bridge was built in 1932 and after its recent decommissioning by the state, the city decided to make the structure a recreation area spanning the Savannah River. Officials in North Augusta currently have no plans for development on the South Carolina side.
Scott Hudson is the senior reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
