ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — There’s one way in and one way out of St. Petersburg’s Tanglewood neighborhood and construction to replace the Bayou Grande Boulevard bridge has seen frequent delays, causing frustration for neighbors who haven’t seen much progress and want transparency.
10 Tampa Bay went to St. Petersburg City Hall to talk with City Council Member Ed Montanari who represents the district that includes Tanglewood. We asked some of the questions neighbors have been looking to get answered over the past couple of months, including whether the now one-lane 70-year-old plus bridge is still safe to use.
“Yes, we had a major inspection done, the bridge is constantly being inspected,” says Montanari, adding safety for residents is paramount.
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“Before Halloween, we put some more lighting in, we got police officers out there, we're trying to, we're trying to make it the best situation possible for neighbors as they have to live through the disruption. We’ve also been sending crews out there to police the site and clean it up,” Montanari added.
Most of the frustration for folks around Tanglewood is because this project is still only half-done, long past a December completion date.
So, when will the project be completed? That’s still unclear.
“I totally understand the frustration that the neighbors have. If you lived there, if I lived there, I’d be frustrated as to when's this project going to get done,” Montanari explained.
The city says it’s a situation they haven’t seen in 20-plus years — a contractor defaulting, leaving a big project in limbo.
The construction company who was awarded the bid, American Empire Builders, has been cited and fined several times for delayed work and in mid-January was told by city leaders it was in default.
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The same company is under fire for delayed work at other bridge projects in Pinellas County. County leaders ended up terminating contracts with the builders for two projects in Palm Harbor and Harbor Bluffs after 10 Tampa Bay’s coverage earlier this year.
While Pinellas County commissioners voted to fire the AEB for the bridges under their jurisdiction, Montanari says the city is going as far as they can at this point with the contractual process, now working with the surety company to bring a new contractor in to finish the job.
“This company has disappointed governments on multiple levels. And we're working as hard as we can to get this project back on track,” Montanari said. “We're putting pressure on the surety company to try to get them to perform because we all want this bridge completed.”
The city says at the time the project was put up for bid in 2021, AEB — a highly-certified company at the time — was the only contractor to bid on it.
But now, Montanari says at least two companies are interested in taking over what’s left of the $3.6 million job. As of Tuesday, one company says they are putting their bid together now.
The city though is not yet putting out a timetable for when work will or could resume, but is committing to being as transparent as possible as soon there’s an update.
“Right now, we just don't have a definite timeline. The minute we have one we're going to share it,” Montanari added. “It's a long and kind of a tedious process that we need to go through but it's something that's a priority for all of us.”
