Last week, our IBA group (Mainstreet Stillwater Independent Business Alliance) had a meeting with the people who are running the St Croix River Crossing Project for MNDOT. Many of us have been very supportive of the new bridge project, we very much believe that the new bridge is going to make historic Downtown Stillwater a better place to live and visit.

Me back in the day

We believed it then and supported the St. Croix River Crossing Coalition. Even with threats of boycott. Remember that? Oh well…water under the bridge:)
Anyway…I was fascinated with this guy, the MnDOT project manager. I asked all sorts of enlightened questions like…”Do you sleep at night?” and “How do you even know both sides will meet up perfectly in the middle”.  In case you wonder, “No” was the answer to the first question and “GPS Coordinates” is the answer to the second question.  There were more questions that were equally hard hitting but I don’t want to bore you.

 

But I couldn’t imagine having this job. I can’t imagine the stress.  When someone special orders yarn and it doesn’t come in to meet their deadline I feel so bad about it. I feel terrible disappointing someone. Imagine if you made a mistake or missed a deadline on the St. Croix River Crossing project. Whoa!

But you can tell this guy loves this job.  Someone would ask a question about something and he was genuinely excited to answer. You could tell he felt lucky to have this gig. He talked with what seemed like pure joy about creating new habitat for the over 30 different mussel species in the St. Croix.  He talked about how the water quality in the St. Croix River will improve because of this project. He knows how special this is. How this is a project that doesn’t come along often.

How cool to know that he helped build this bridge that will last through the lifetimes of his children’s, children’s, children.  How cool to know that I was around when the bridge was built too.  My kids will be able to say, “I remember when…”

Among those other hard hitting questions, he answered lots of others that were much more interesting.

 

They updated us on the timing of the bridge completion. It’s still set for Fall 2016.

They updated us on the cool bike trail that will be completed.  Some of the loop will be finished as soon as this fall!

There are really cool video animations on the website.  Check them out!

The updated us on what will happen with the liftbridge when the new bridge opens.  It’ll close to cars and will be modified with a bike path and a walking path.  It’ll be repainted green.  The same color it was when it was built.

In case you are dying to see up to the minute photos, there is a cool webcam webpage!

 

We hope you love to see the changes as much as we do. We are excited for the changes to come!