CLEVELAND, Ohio — The new Inner Belt Bridge will open a year earlier than expected and cost $163 million less than estimated.
That’s the commitment by Walsh Construction of Chicago, which along
with design firm HNTB of Kansas City are the apparent winners of the
contract to build the span across the Cuyahoga Valley.
Walsh, which received the most public support for its open, lacy
steel design, received the highest scores on its proposal and submitted a
bid of $287.4 million to build the five-lane span just north of the current Inner Belt Bridge.
Construction will begin next year. The bridge is now scheduled to open in fall 2013.
Ohio Department of Transportation officials announced the
team Thursday after opening the bids and using a formula to combine them
with the score given to each team’s technical proposal. The scores were
determined after ODOT and Cleveland officials spent five weeks
reviewing the technical proposals, which included the design for the
steel-girder bridge.