‘They have a vote’: MDOT fields public input on Blue Water Bridge Plaza plans
It’s been more than a decade since Cathy Mcouat sold her home on Elmwood Street to the state for the expansion of the U.S. Customs plaza at the Blue Water Bridge.
“We were one of the holdouts, kind of, and we expected the bridge to go up pretty soon. We were surprised when nothing happened,” she said. That was April 2006.
Years later, Mcouat — still a Port Huron resident and motivated by her curiosity — was one of hundreds who turned out last week to inspect the Michigan Department of Transportation’s latest iteration of those plans amid their first formal unveiling to the public.
Draft timelines call for early construction steps to begin later this year and in 2024 with other phases over the next several years.
The new Blue Water Bridge Plaza plan calls for constructing new facilities for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to help address federal requirements, while relocating the duty-free south of the bridge, splitting and reconstructing intersections around 10th and Pine Grove avenues, and installing an entrance loop along Scott Avenue.
It’s a shift from past alternatives of the project, which included more of an expansion on the north side of the bridge such as where Mcouat lived, and marks an iteration that’s ballooned in cost by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Now, MDOT officials said they’re still working with CBP to finalize needs before pursuing the final acquisition of commercial property north of the bridge, where the federal agency’s facilities would be located.
In the meantime, Carrie Warren, senior project manager for the plaza expansion, said they’re still accepting feedback from the public as part of a larger intent to be good stewards of property MDOT owns, particularly along Scott, where a strip of greenspace and a potential noise wall would separate residents from the new truck loop versus the larger setback against the current offramp from interstates 94 and 69.
During an interview Tuesday, Warren said they’ve seen “a number of people from the Optimist Park neighborhood” share concerns about that feature, and she wanted them to understand “that they have a vote” in what amenity MDOT incorporates with the space.
“They are allowed to have input as to whether or not they’re interested in having the noise wall, and that they’re allowed to have input as to what they would like to see in that 50- to 80-foot greenbelt area that will be north of their neighborhood,” she said. “Is it a bench? Someone asked me for a dog-walking area. Someone has mentioned playground equipment. People have wondered about some kind of gardening-type situation. And those are all really, really important valuable pieces of feedback that we won’t necessarily be making any decisions on today, but we’ll follow up on in the coming weeks. I think that neighborhood is probably most impacted by the changes.”
In all, regional MDOT spokesperson Jocelyn Garza said they had about 325 attendees at the open house Tuesday.
Early on, she’d said she was surprised at how busy they were with visitors, adding, “This is very different. A lot of this is in (the) proposal phase, so people don’t know exactly what to expect. We don’t know yet what the final design is going to look like yet.”
Not all of those in attendance were armed with concerns about MDOT’s current proposal.
Some said they thought the state’s project updates made sense, pointing to things like traffic flow and moving duty-free from the north side of the bridge to eliminate truck traffic off Pine Grove. Warren agreed that seemed to get "a big thumbs up from everyone."
Others, like Mcouat, included the new intersection set up in that area on her list.
“They’re going to change this, which is a good idea. Because the way they have it now, the way it comes down and stops there, I don’t think it’s good,” Mcouat said, looking at a birds-eye view of plaza expansion.
The proposal calls for moving the eastbound offramp farther down — and because of the truck loop that encircles the new duty-free — dumping that traffic farther away from the bridge.
Where the offramp currently lines up traffic with Harker Street perpendicular to 10th Avenue, new separate intersections would dead-end north-bound 10th to the south and pick it back up across from the exit.
“I think this will make it (safer). This must be what they want about having an on-ramp on Scott Avenue,” Mcouat said. “It looks a little bit smoother. Like maybe better for truck traffic.”
What were the concerns for nearby residents?
Port Huron city officials raised an early alarm last fall about the truck loop proposed for the south side of the bridge plaza. They called for further impact studies and accommodation for residents in addition to the traffic flow and noise studies already made public.
For Michelle Albers, who lives at 12th and Scott avenues, the noise wall — shown in renderings as a brick structure — was the first thing she named when asked about concerns.
“For one thing, this is going to be my front-door view — it’s going to be a brick wall. And it’s going to be closer,” she said. “At least, the expressway emptying off on the other side of the berm with a pathway. … This is what we’re going to have to contend with. I’m concerned that our property values are going to go down, and the truck noise is terrible. …. You listen to that all night long. You get woken up by it.”
Neighbors shared her concern about the wall, noting the renderings they saw may not be the final result.
“We don’t know that’ll be brick. I was also told that’s not exactly the wall of choice — that’s just one of them,” said Sharon Conard, who lives on Scott with her husband Joe. “So, in other words, we don’t know (yet) what we’ll be looking at.”
Similar to Albers, residents also summed up their concerns about noise in two words: Jake brakes.
Both Conard and Riverside Drive resident David Callas referenced the compression-release engine braking of passing trucks.
And Callas floated signage along the interstate that’d encourage trucks to slow down sooner before they approached the bridge itself. A consulting MDOT official called it the question of the day.
“That’s what happens with the brake systems the truckers use to slow down. It happens on the bridge 99% of the time,” he said. “… So, I said, ‘Why can’t we go over to … Lapeer, where it breaks off between the U.S. and Canada, put a 55 mile per hour speed zone, go a couple hundred feet, put a 45 mile, then 35?’ Then, they don’t have to use the Jake brakes. They said they’ll take a look at it.”
Otherwise, concerns for neighbors were much broader, and in some cases, philosophical.
Ready with a list, Callas questioned where businesses still operating on commercial property MDOT plans to acquire will go — namely, the Comfort Inn and Port Huron Lanes — as well as long-term impacts of the project that, he said, officials couldn’t answer yet.
“There’s property tax going up. There’s the depreciation of home value,” he said. “… They said, ‘Well, it’s not going to go down for you.’ I said, ‘Well, can you guarantee that?’ ‘No, we can’t.’
Callas also questioned whether they’d need to expand and need to acquire more homes.
That was a notion that MDOT officials were quick to dispel.
In advance of the public open house, hundreds of notifications to promote the event were passed out to properties around the bridge, and Warren said, “Somehow there seemed to be a rumor that grew some legs that if you received a postcard or received a door-hanger or something, we were coming to buy your house, and the number of houses that we propose to acquire moving forward is zero. We are done buying houses.”
Still, fearing the noise, Albers said she almost wished they’d bought hers. She’s lived there since the late ‘70s.
“Over time we’ve wound up putting a fence up, putting a new roof on,” she said, but “for a lot of years, (my husband) didn’t want to make improvements because he thought our house would be taken. I’d prefer that they take it.”
Joe and Sharon Conard were equally as skeptical.
“My big thing about this whole thing is, is this really necessary?” Joe said. “They’re building another bridge in Detroit. Is that going to cut down on the amount of traffic at the Blue Water Bridge? … I don’t know.”
“I hope it’s not just a money grab,” Sharon chimed in, citing a $25 million grant MDOT received for the project. “Use it or lose it.”
So, what happens next?
In 2020, MDOT announced it’d received the $25 million Infrastructure for Rebuilding a America, or INFRA, grant. At the time, the plaza expansion’s cost was put in the $300 million.
Since then, it’s grown to the over $600 million range, and MDOT officials have said it’d be paid over time with Blue Water Bridge revenue and potential bonding.
As of last fall, a draft report in a feasibility study process for the project pegged a new design, in part, on increased special requirements.
MDOT materials put the new offramp and Pine Grove construction in the earlier of work phases over the next couple of years, followed by the entrance loop and new duty-free area on the southside, and later, MDOT facilities, roadway connections, and toll booths. CBP inspection facilities and canopies would also come later. And construction packages presented to the public put the latest phase out over the next five years.
Officials said the remaining owners of properties MDOT still hopes to acquire were aware of the state’s plans. Warren emphasized talks with CBP, as it’s the agency’s facilities that would be located in that area north of the bridge.
“We’re finishing some conversations with Customs and Border Protection. We feel like we must have as absolute of a commitment. … It’s not MDOT operations,” she said. “It is effectively commercial secondary inspections, which now occurs in Marysville and is proposed to be moved here.”
Warren said that means they won’t make “good faith offers for that property” until they’re “convinced we will be continuing that phase of the project.” Currently, she said they expect to execute those agreements “in what I would call a reasonable timeframe.”
“And that’s government, so six months — something like that,” she said. “Then, at that point, we will be free to move forward on those acquisitions. But it’s not a clear timeline.”
For now, MDOT officials encouraged residents and stakeholders to visit the project’s website, where study materials and a formal presentation on the plaza expansion have been posted.
Warren’s contact information, too, is made available at Michigan.gov/bwbplaza.
“I do understand the ups and downs of this project have led to an understandable, maybe lack of trust toward MDOT and how we do business. And I would just really appreciate an opportunity … to earn (that) back,” she said. “… Not everyone is going to be pleased or satisfied, but they are given an opportunity to have accurate information.”
Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith.
This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: ‘They have a vote’: MDOT fields public input on Blue Water Bridge Plaza plans
