RIVER BRIDGE EVENT FRIDAY

Federal Highway Administrator Rodney Slater, Missouri Highways and Transportation Department Chief Engineer Joe Mickes and Kurt Brown of the Illinois Department of Transportation will be in Cape Girardeau Friday to participate in groundbreaking ceremonies for the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge.

The ceremony, to be conducted by the highway department and the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce, will be held at Asher Street and new Highway 74 at 3:30 p.m.

Among lawmakers who will attend are Republican U.S. Sens. Christopher "Kit" Bond and John Ashcroft of Missouri and Republican U.S. Reps. Glenn Poshard and Jerry Costello of Southern Illinois. Area state legislators. Missouri and Illinois highway officials and Flat Iron Construction Co. representatives have been invited.

Also attending will be Jo Ann Emerson, wife of the late U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson and an independent candidate for 8th District representative, and Marie Hahn, Bill Emerson's mother.

A tent will be set up at the groundbreaking site, which is about a block east of the South Sprigg-Highway 74 intersection.

Seven of the officials will address the ceremony, said John Mehner, president of the Chamber of Commerce. Speakers will include Slater, Brown, Mickes, Ashcroft and Bond.

Flat Iron Structures Co. of Longmont, Colo., has the contract for construction of the first phase of the bridge across the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau. The Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission awarded a $50,854,029 contract for the major part of the Route 74 bridge July 5. The contract consists of construction of the cable-stay section of the bridge, which will span the navigational channel of the river.

Two separate projects will be let later for construction of the remaining section of the bridge, which will cross into Illinois and over wetlands in that area.

The work will be coordinated to complete the entire structure at one time. Construction of the bridge will start in early October with a completion timetable of three to four years.

Work is already under way on an Interstate-55 interchange at the Bloomfield Road intersection that eventually will connect the interstate and the bridge route.

The four-lane span will replace a two-lane bridge that was constructed during the mid-1920s.

Overall cost of the new bridge, which will be just south of the existing span, is expected to range between $85 million and $90 million. Eighty percent of the funding is being provided by the federal government.