Center Junction work running 'months ahead of schedule'

The diverging diamond interchange project at the junction of Interstate 55 and U.S. 61, slated for completion by early November, could be finished several months sooner, according to the project’s general contractor.

“Everything is really clicking well on that job,” Phil Penzel, chief operating officer at Penzel Construction Co. in Jackson, said Wednesday. “I’m guessing we’re three months ahead of schedule.”

He said he believes an August or September completion is well within reach.

“That’s what our current goal is,” he said.

It was a year ago this week work began on the $17.4 million projection, which involves replacement of both northbound and southbound interstate bridges as well as redesign of the U.S. 61 interchange below the interstate.

Favorable weather and modification of the project timeline have helped move the work well ahead of schedule.

“Last summer, (the weather) was pretty decent, and when we did have weather delays, it didn’t necessarily hurt critical pieces of the project,” said Penzel, whose father and grandfather helped build the original bridges nearly 60 years ago.

Most of the new pavement along U.S. 61 has been laid and the southbound interstate bridge has been replaced. Work is now underway on the northbound bridge.

“We don’t have to be done until the first of November, but we already have one of our (bridge) abutments finished and we’re working on the other one,” Penzel said. “And the last I heard a day or so ago is that we had 50% of the holes drilled for the next bridge piers. There are 12 of them and I think they’re on number seven and that’s awesome.”

Working with the Missouri Department of Transportation, Penzel Construction has modified the original construction schedule to accelerate some aspects of the project.

“We made decisions along the way that greatly affected the public in a good way,” Penzel said. “For instance, we opened the southbound ramp (from I-55 onto westbound U.S. 61) way early and we went ahead and finished everything east of the bridges on the Cape side. It was supposed to be two-way traffic all the way to where Enterprise car rental is, but we were able to finish all the way to Cape County Park, which created a better traffic flow for the public heading west.”

Beams for the new northbound I-55 bridge, Penzel said, will probably be installed by early summer.

Bridge ‘experiment’

The northbound I-55 bridge, Penzel said, will differ slightly from the southbound bridge because it will use a new type of concrete reinforcing steel material, commonly known as rebar, that is coated with chrome rather than the standard epoxy-coated rebar used in construction of the southbound bridge last year.

“It’s not that often we get a chance to do a side-by-side comparison of different products,” explained Brian Holt, Missouri Department of Transportation resident engineer in Jackson.

The bridges will be monitored in the coming decades to see which rebar holds up better in terms of its resistance to rust and corrosion.

“It’s an interesting twist to the project,” Penzel said. “But we’ll all be long gone before anybody figures it out; I honestly believe the way these bridges are built they could theoretically easily last 100 years.”

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