Cape planning to widen part of Bloomfield, replace bridge

With Cape Girardeau expanding westward, the city is taking steps toward making sure a road and bridge on Bloomfield Road is wide and sturdy enough to handle the growing population.

The Cape Girardeau City Council will be asked at Tuesday night's council meeting to approve an ordinance that will allow the city to proceed with property acquisition for the improvement of Bloomfield Road on the west end of the city between the Siemers Road intersection and the Stonebridge subdivision.

The Transportation Trust Fund II project will improve Bloomfield to a 36-foot-wide street for approximately 400 feet and replace a narrow bridge over Ramsey Branch. The bridge is currently 24 feet wide, and according to civil engineer Abdul Alkadry, who works for the city, the bridge is in poor shape.

Some residents in the vicinity say a wider bridge is needed.

"There's a lot more traffic there now," said Joan Davidson, who lives in the Stonebridge subdivision, just off Bloomfield. "I've only lived here two years, but I can tell a difference in the number of cars. Everybody has to slow down when they get close to that bridge."

Temporary crossing

Juanita West, also living on Stonebridge Circle, said a new bridge would be a good idea because the bridge is narrow. West said she was worried about the inconvenience and had heard that the city was not planning to provide temporary means across the creek.

But Alkadry said that was not true. A low-water crossing will be made available while construction takes place. Construction should begin this spring, he said, and will probably continue for four or five months.

The total project will cost $500,000, Alkadry said, but the Missouri Department of Transportation will pay 80 percent of the project under the bridge replacement program.

The road will be widened from 120 feet east of the bridge to 190 feet west of the bridge.

"Basically, what this is, the approach to the bridge and the streets will come in later to match the approaches," Alkadry said.

Both the street and the bridge project will include sidewalks.

Alkadry said there were too many variables to pinpoint a date for the start of the project. The state is still going over the plans and he said he hopes get approval from MoDOT soon.

The city has another TTFII plan to widen Bloomfield out to Stonebridge, Alkadry said.

There has also been discussion of Bloomfield Road being widened as part of a tax increment financing proposal from the Prestwick Plantation developers, the same developers who built Dalhousie Golf Club at the end of Bloomfield Road.

The developers have plans to build a 900-acre residential subdivision in the area, which would include many high-priced lots and million-dollar homes. The developers say they need TIF -- the process of taking increased tax revenue to pay for infrastructure in or around the development project -- to complete the project in a reasonable time frame. However, the TIF approval process is moving slowly, and the developers are a long way from having the city council decide on the issue.

bmiller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127