Engineer Anna Gahm of Shuck-Britson addresses the Tama City Council during their regular meeting on March 21. According to Gahm, the restoration plans for the Lincoln Highway Bridge in Tama will next head to the Iowa DOT for review before the DOT puts them out for a third round of bidding in July. Should bids be turned in and a contract signed later this year, the expectation would be for the construction work to occur on the bridge during the 2023 construction season. – Photo by Darvin Graham

Restoration efforts look to continue for the historic Lincoln Highway Bridge in Tama following the Tama City Council meeting on March 21.

The council voted unanimously in favor of a plan to seek a third round of bidding for construction work to repair the bridge that is over a century old.

The previous two bidding attempts that were conducted through the city’s engineering firm Shuck-Britson both hit roadblocks which have left the project in limbo over the past six months.

In the fall of 2021 the first round of bidding for a construction contract yielded three bids that ranged from $338,873 to $732,900, well above the $150,000 estimate the city had previously been working with. Those bids were invalidated by the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) due to required language about small businesses not being included in the bidding documents.

A second round of bidding was opened by Shuck-Britson on behalf of the city in January for the same project. The second attempt however brought in no bids. Shuck-Britson engineer Anna Gahm believed one of the key reasons the project failed to attract bidders the second time was due to the timing of the search and contractors already having their 2022 season schedule filled up.

A February 2022 view of the Lincoln Highway Bridge in Tama. -- News Chronicle File Photo

The option approved by the Tama Council Monday will shift the procedural work for the third round of bidding from the city’s contracted engineering firm to the Iowa DOT. Gahm said she felt bids put out by the DOT would reach a wider audience of potential contractors.

The project will first be sent to the DOT for review before they send it out for bids. The bidding process is expected to occur in July with a construction contract to hopefully be awarded in August. The contract would look for restoration construction to occur during the 2023 construction season once the weather warms up for that spring.

The funding plan for the current restoration project will remain the same as the city holds around $69,000 in grant funds and donations with the DOT committing to fund the remaining balance of the project cost.

Should the project fail to attract bidders again this summer or if the bids for the work increase beyond what was seen in the first round of bidding last fall, the DOT funding commitment could be in jeopardy. The current funding arrangement with the DOT sets a deadline for the spring of 2023 to have a construction contract for the project signed.

Additionally, City Clerk Alyssa Devig spoke to the council regarding the bridge’s status on the National Register of Historical Places (NRHP). She recommended the council pursue a full renovation of the bridge for the current period rather than attempting to work with the governing body that oversees the NRHP, a process that she said could take two years.

Devig said as the process begins for restoration work on the bridge in the coming year, the city will also begin to look toward having the bridge reclassified on the NRHP so as to allow for it to be altered in the future without losing its designation on the register.

“We already kind of got the information that the bridge as a whole can’t be moved without probably destroying the railings,” council member Emily Babinat said. “So obviously, we don’t want to do that.”

According to Gahm, the restoration work would prolong the life of the bridge for another 15 years before it would need to be worked on again. The hope, if all goes to plan in the coming years, is to work with the NRHP to have the bridge re-designated on the register from a transportation structure to an arts and culture structure. Devig said she believed re-designating the bridge on the register would allow for the decorative railings and light posts to be preserved and reused on the bridge but for the floor and the supporting structures underneath the bridge to be fully replaced in 15 years without the bridge being removed from the register.

Following the discussion, several members of the public thanked the council for their efforts in continuing to pursue restoration for the 106-year-old bridge.

“On behalf of those of us that have been working hard in getting the bridge preserved, we thank you for your consideration,” Tama resident Charlie Betz said. “We know it’s not an easy decision by any means. I’m sure everyone here is behind preserving those railings and keeping them on that historic registry. You know, nobody crawls under the bridge to look at the bridge structure, right? It’s the railings that people come to see.”