Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The City of Buffalo announced that the Michigan Avenue Bridge will close Thursday morning for repairs lasting four months.
This announcement provides very short notice for businesses of Kelly Island, as they now have to find ways to adapt and accommodate.
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"We do a lot of events over the river back and forth, where people can walk over, we have a small parking lot that fills up quick. So when we do large events, like Music Is Art, where there's 50,000 people, it's paramount that people are able to walk over that bridge to get to our facility and go back and forth," said Bill Casale, Buffalo RiverWorks GM.
"That's the only way we can accommodate that many people on that island. So with less than three days, notice we've had no time to prepare, we've had no options presented to us, they're shutting that bridge down for pedestrians, as well as cars, so there's no way for people to walk over."
According to communications from the city to the nearby businesses received Monday, the bridge repairs include, "rehabilitation of the concrete abutments, replacement of the timber fenders and repairs to the timber dolphins." The bridge will be in an opened position for boats to pass through.
The detour route includes the Ohio Street bridge, but for the RiverWorks employees who don't drive to the facility, this provides a rather extra lengthy commute and a potential major inconvenient traffic backup for cars trying to get on and off the island.
"It creates a mile detour and inconvenience for our employees, many in which need to take public transit to work, they don't have cars. You look at the infrastructure on Ganson Street, it's not great. We have a sidewalk that's less than 12 inches at some points with telephone poles down the center. We're creating an unsafe and unpleasant atmosphere for our employees to have to walk an extra mile just to get to the nearest bus stop," Casale added.
Casale also noted that this is the fourth consecutive summer where one of the two bridges, Ohio or Michigan, have been closed due to repairs. Casale said he has contacted South District Councilman Chris Scanlon for answers and solutions.
"We are trying to do everything we can do to delay this, in hopes that we can come to a solution to benefit the tenants of Kelly Island. RiverWorks is a blue-collar facility. We reinvest all of our money into that area trying to make it as great as we can be. We just cannot keep having these hurdles that are uncontrollable. Repairs are necessary and there's infrastructure improvements that are required in that area. It's an old industrial area. It's the transparency and the communication that has created this problem so we're just hoping next time we get more communication and that way we can make some other arrangements."