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The city council approved an $87,000 change Tuesday to the Suspension Bridge overhaul related to brackets in the bridge’s anchor houses that had to be reconfigured. The $12.8 million project is expected to wrap up by September, a delay from previous estimates it would be done by the end of spring.

Special brackets for the Waco Suspension Bridge costing an additional $87,000 will stabilize the bridge’s cables for the long term, while fitting in the narrow confines of the bridge’s anchor houses, according to parks and recreation officials.

Waco City Council voted Tuesday to approve a change order to the ongoing bridge overhaul’s budget to include the brackets, increasing the contract amount to $12.8 million.

Senior Parks Planner Tom Balk said each of the bridge’s 14 cables are connected to an anchor rod on each side of the bridge with mechanical fittings. The brackets, already being custom built for the bridge, are intended to prevent rotational forces at those connection points from causing movement that could damage the anchor houses.

“While brackets were anticipated, the shop drawing submittal process revealed that revised configurations were necessary to allow assembly in the extremely limited space,” according to city council documents for the change approved Tuesday.

Balk said the damage the anti-spin brackets are intended to prevent would not be catastrophic, but would take a toll over time.

“The space in the anchor houses is so tight that, without bracing, there’s potential that under wind load or under event load you could get this strange rotational movement that pivots inside the anchor house,” Balk said. “These points of attachment … there’s a small risk that it could, if unchecked, bump into the masonry.”

He said from there it could crack the masonry and compromise the structure over time.

The city council approved an $87,000 change Tuesday to the Suspension Bridge overhaul related to brackets in the bridge's anchor houses that had to be reconfigured. The $12.8 million project is expected to wrap up by September, a delay from previous estimates it would be done by the end of spring.

The bracing will be added to the ground in the anchor house, then covered in concrete. Balk said engineers realized about a month ago the space inside the anchor houses is so tight that the brackets will need to be assembled in place by someone small enough to fit into the space.

“That’s what the whole surprise was,” Balk said.

Balk said the additions will not slow the project down, and he expects the project to wrap in late summer or early fall.

The city awarded a $12.4 million contract with an $870,000 contingency for the suspension bridge project to Gibson and Associates in May 2020, after bids came back about twice as high as the council expected. The bridge opened in 1870, and this is its most involved overhaul since 1914.

The change approved Tuesday was the eighth so far for the project, leaving about $442,000 in its contingency fund.

The council also voted Tuesday to approve a total of $3.9 million in public money to support Magnolia’s $21 million conversion of the former Tribune-Herald building at 900 Franklin Ave. into the company’s headquarters. The money includes $1.25 million from the Waco-McLennan County Economic Development Corp. and $2.6 million from the downtown Tax Increment Financing Zone.

McLennan County commissioners must also approve the Waco-McLennan County Economic Development Corp. grant for it to take effect. Commissioners have not yet considered the grant but plan to have it on a meeting agenda in the coming weeks. That piece also comes with a requirement to create 75 new full-time jobs, finish construction by March 31 next year and to have 200 employees at the new facility by the end of 2026.

The council also voted to approve an $8.7 million contract with Hensel Phelps Construction Co. for renovation of Waco Regional Airport’s terminal, roof, and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system. The city previously estimated the cost of the project at $3 million.

Before the vote, Airport Director Joel Martinez gave a presentation explaining that bids on the project came back much higher than he anticipated. He said he and city staff from the city manager’s office as well as the purchasing and facilities departments worked to lower the project cost.

Changes include scaling back renovations of the dining area from $650,000 to $362,000, getting rid of a decorative LED canopy that would have stretched above the baggage claim area, and changing a material choice to cut the cost of the ceiling from $671,000 to $621,000. Altogether, changes carved about $864,000 out of the total project cost.

“It’s tough,” City Council Member Jim Holmes said. “Those are some cool things we had to cut out, but I think you still retain 90% of what that’s going to look like.”

“As the first bridge over Brazos and the earliest example of permanent bridge construction, the Waco Suspension Bridge was a major technological feat that influenced Texas bridge building for debates to follow,” the Texas Department of Transportation wrote in a 1996 survey of Texas bridge history. San Antonio and Dallas soon followed up with attempts at engineered metal bridges, but mostly Texans crossed rivers on ferries or rickety wooden bridges.

A photo from about 1890 shows a fence around the toll-keeper's cottage. The brick anchor on the right held cable stays that stabilized the bridge deck. The castellated top of the bridge was removed in 1914 as the towers were reinforced and additional arches were added.

It was especially ambitious for its time and place: a remote frontier village of about 3,000 emerging from the devastation of the Civil War. The wire cables and iron components had to be hauled from New Jersey to Galveston by ship, then by railroad to Bryan, then overland by oxcarts to Waco along dirt roads. The budget was $40,000, but the project ballooned to $144,000.

The photo above is view of the Suspension Bridge taken in the early 1900s, likely from the new Washington Avenue bridge that was built about 1902.

A group of businessmen got a state charter as Waco Bridge Co. in 1866 and sent its president, John Flint, to New York and New Jersey to investigate bridge designs. He picked Thomas Griffith of New York, who had helped design major projects for the company of John A. Roebling (pictured above), the leading engineer of stayed suspension bridges in America and later builder of the 1883 Brooklyn Bridge.

But the oft-repeated local lore that Roebling used it as a model for the Brooklyn Bridge does not hold up. Besides the New Jersey iron, other materials included cedar logs from Chalk Bluff for a substructure and bricks made from pits in East Waco — against the objections of Griffith, who had called for stone masonry.

The cables installed in a 1914 renovation, pictured above, will be replaced as part of a $12.4 million renovation now getting started.

At 475 feet, it was not the longest suspension bridge in America when built, contrary to some local history accounts, but some sources allow that it was the longest in the West. Suspension bridges in Cincinnati and Wheeling, West Virginia, were significantly longer, along with one over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis that Griffith had designed in 1855.

This picture taken by Fred Gildersleeve some years after the 1914 renovation shows high water on the Brazos River. The river was known for damaging floods until dams were built upstream in the second half of the 20th century.

It had a charter giving it 25-year monopoly on bridge crossings within 5 miles. It enforced its rights by driving heavy pilings in the riverbanks to block local fording spots on the Brazos. It successfully sued when McLennan County sought to build a new free bridge nearby.

This photo taken by Fred Gildersleeve before the 1914 renovation of the Suspension Bridge, when the wooden decking support was replaced with steel, the towers were modified and cables were replaced. Over the bridge hangs a sign with the message, "Fine for riding or driving over this bridge faster than a walk."

Tolls from the bridge quickly paid off the project as Waco became a primary river crossing for the north-south travel through Texas, including cattle drives on the Chisholm Trail. The town quickly got a railroad tap line and doubled in size over the next decade.

This photo from about 1900 on the west end of the bridge shows a lively Victorian scene.

Geoff Hunt, an audio and visual curator at the Texas Collection at Baylor University, said the bridge helped make Waco what it is today.

“A lot of people don’t put together the significance of it,” he said. “Looking at it now, people don’t realize how revolutionary and important it was in its day, and that it necessitates the money we’re putting into it now. Future generations will be very pleased we did.”

The bridge company sold the bridge for $75,000 in 1889 to McLennan County, which transferred it to the city of Waco for $1, completing its transition to a free bridge.

This recent photo shows a herd of statue cows at the west end of the Suspension Bridge, commemorating the early days of the Chisholm Trail.

Officials went back and forth on whether to renovate the bridge to accommodate heavier traffic or build a new steel bridge next to the new Washington Avenue bridge (at left), according to newspapers from the time. The renovators won out by 1914, and the city and county hired Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Co. to add a new steel “pony truss” stiffening system, heftier cables, new heavy duty rivets and an extended deck to allow pedestrian traffic, along with additional arches to beef up the now-stuccoed towers.

The bridge continued to be an important crossing for motorized traffic in the 20th century, even after it was damaged by the 1953 tornado. It carried one-way traffic to Taylor Avenue, while the old Interurban Bridge carried traffic to Elm Avenue. The new Franklin Avenue bridge made the bridges unnecessary, and by 1971, the Suspension Bridge had become a footbridge the first property in McLennan County on the National Register of Historic Places.

In the vintage photo above, westbound motorists could take the old interurban bridge to Elm Avenue or the Suspension Bridge to Taylor Street until 1970, around the time this photo was taken. The interurban bridge has been reduced to its pylons, and the Suspension Bridge became a walking bridge.

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Rhiannon Saegert is a graduate of the University of North Texas who formerly worked at The Ardmoreite in Ardmore, Okla., the Denton Record-Chronicle and Eater magazine.

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The city council approved an $87,000 change Tuesday to the Suspension Bridge overhaul related to brackets in the bridge’s anchor houses that had to be reconfigured. The $12.8 million project is expected to wrap up by September, a delay from previous estimates it would be done by the end of spring.

The city council approved an $87,000 change Tuesday to the Suspension Bridge overhaul related to brackets in the bridge's anchor houses that had to be reconfigured. The $12.8 million project is expected to wrap up by September, a delay from previous estimates it would be done by the end of spring.

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