FAIRFIELD — For nearly two years, people working in the Tide Mill Building have coped with the noise and upheaval caused by a $3 million bridge replacement project.
The two-story building, offering an expansive view of picturesque Southport Harbor, sits on an island midway along a bridge spanning the Mill River and connecting Harbor and Sasco Hill roads.
"We moved in about a year before the bridge started, the construction, so it's been in the way, so to speak, since that date forward," said Charlie Horn, president of NGC Worldwide Inc., a direct marketing company that moved to the Tide Mill Building in May 2002.
Horn said he looks forward to completion of the project because the building's parking lot is "much more crowded" with the construction equipment on the scene.
Jack Franzen, an architect whose office is on the other side of the building, said he also eagerly anticipates the end of construction, expected in November.
But Franzen said the lack of cars driving by his office is one thing he likes about the project. "It's so dangerous here when it's two-way traffic and people don't obey the speed limit," he said.
William Kueffner, who owns and lives in the Tide Mill building, and who had his medical practice there for decades, said he, too, has enjoyed the lack of through-traffic. "It's very peaceful," he said.
Nevertheless, Kueffner said, he'd like to have a parade across the bridge after the new span is done.
"It's been very entertaining, but one can get tired of it," his wife, Nancy, said.
The Tide Mill Bridge consists of two spans on opposite sides of the building.
The westerly span was recently completed, and the eastside span, closer to Sasco Hill Road, is now being constructed, Richard White, director of the town's Department of Public Works, told the Board of Selectmen at a recent meeting.
When the westerly span was built, motorists could only get to the building from Sasco Hill Road. Now, motorists must access it from the corner of River Street and Harbor Road on the other side of the river.
The bridge project originally was projected to cost $2.4 million, but the Board of Selectmen has approved another $600,000 to finish the work. The extra funding was to be reviewed Tuesday night by the Board of Finance and it also requires a vote of the Representative Town Meeting.
The new $3 million total is fully reimbursable by state and federal grants, White said.
However, town officials said Monday the total cost could exceed $3 million because of the recent collapse of a cofferdam by the east span.
White said the additional $600,000 cost was needed because of unanticipated rock excavation, the severe winter, which required concrete pours to be heated, and environmental work related to some town officials' fear the project would stir up lead contaminants that traveled downstream from the former Exide Battery Co. building.
Kueffner, though, said that only very low levels of lead have been found through water testing.
Selectman Denise Dougiello said town boards first discussed the replacement bridge in November 1997 — eight years before its expected completion date. Construction actually began in the fall of 2003.
White said construction of the bridge has been challenging, and its appearance stirred up a spirited and long debate before the town's Historic District Commission.
Dougiello is pleased the project is expected to end in November. "Pretty soon, I can close that file," she said.
