Standing along the riverwalk, near Virginia Street in downtown Reno, you can see a lot of activity around and in the Truckee River.
Crews began removing the old Virginia Street Bridge, more than three months ago. Now, they are making strides in the construction of its replacement. The new bridge will not have a center pier, in order to ease debris build-up during flood events. The arches that will highlight the new bridge are being put together on the south side of the river.
"Here, in September, we're calling it the awesome arches, the month of the arches because when the arches went up, everybody got supercharged and really excited," Kerrie Koski, Project Manager for the Virginia Street Bridge said.
Concrete will be poured in the arches, next week. In October, they will be slid across the river and into place. The process should take about one week.
"It's not going to happen real quick," Koski said. "It's not going to be like launching a rocket. It'll be a lot slower than that but we think that there's going to be a lot of interest."
Concrete pads are being poured on the river bed, that will be used to support the bridge during construction. That requires altering the river's route.
"The river, itself, has to be moved around in order to accommodate the work and that takes a lot of planning and patience," Koski said.
The ongoing drought has had catastrophic impacts across the west, but it is actually helping during construction. The river flows are only about 10% of normal, and that makes rerouting the river easier and faster.
"We couldn't have asked for a better year," Koski said. "Unfortunately, we are in a drought but it's a good time to build a bridge."
50-60 construction workers are on-site, six days a week. Others work on steel and wooden construction, off-site. Along with the bridge, they are building new flood walls and an access point from the ice rink to the river. Detours will continue and so will work on the bridge, itself.
"We'll be putting in steel beams, the decking, some of the utilities will start to go in and then the site work will start to fall into place," Koski said.
The project should be completed by May and will cost $18.3 million. Koski says the everything is on time and on budget.
