Welcome, disdain greet Durham bridge

DURHAM -- For Deborah Morgan, the new crescent-shaped pedestrian bridge over the Durham Freeway is the first stitch in the effort to reunite and rebuild a tattered community.

"This will be the start of something," said Morgan, a Durham Open Space and Trails commissioner. "It is going to be a part of the new fabric of the community."

But some residents and business owners near the 192-foot-long steel bridge fear it will shuttle crime into their neighborhood on the north side of N.C. 147.

About 1 a.m. Thursday, contractors rolled the 115,000-pound bridge on two tractor-trailers to its new location. A crane rotated and then hung the structure above the freeway, just east of Alston Avenue.

"It took about 30 minutes," said Byron Brady, senior contract engineer for the city. "It went pretty quickly."

The bridge, which includes a blue LED light that arcs over the freeway, will probably open to pedestrian traffic in about a month, city officials said. It replaces a 1970s bridge that was meant to connect two neighborhoods separated by the freeway. In 1995, city officials shut down the older structure after concerns about crime.

In 2003 the N.C. Department of Transportation and the city agreed to replace the pedestrian bridge with money left over from the original construction of the Durham Freeway. The city put up about $200,000 for the nearly $2.2 million bridge project with the department and Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization covering the rest.

Last year, the City Council voted to name the new bridge after R.Kelly Bryant Jr., a local historian and advocate for various projects, including the reconstruction of the raised walkway.

On Thursday morning, Bryant took his first peek. "I looked at it and said, 'Lord, look at that,'" said Bryant, 91. "And I made a picture."

For Bryant, the pathway that connects Lakeland Street on the south to Gillette Street on the north completes a series of convenient and level trails to churches, convenience stores, downtown and the weekend flea market on Pettigrew Street.

"It was a need all the time, and it still is," Bryant said.

Later Thursday morning, Bryant, Morgan and John Goebel, all Durham Open Space and Trails commissioners, stood in the nearby McDougald Terrace public housing complex's community room packed with residents. The commissioners asked the residents to take ownership in the area by cleaning and maintaining established trail systems that they hope to continue to build on.

Wisdom Pharaoh, president of the housing project's resident council, said many in the 360-unit complex don't have transportation or money to ride the bus.

"So that bridge will open up a whole new world," she said, adding she is putting together an exercise group to walk the various trails and the bridge.

Not everyone shares that enthusiasm. Evangelina Hood, who lives north of the freeway, said the old bridge brought loud, cursing drunks to her now-quiet neighborhood.

Vance Hoover, who has worked for a business on the north side of the freeway 30 years, said before the city closed the bridge, employee cars and the company's motor coaches were broken into often, sometimes in the middle of the day. But, he said, the crime fell off when the bridge was closed in 1995.

"That was probably our last break-in," Hoover said.