Canadian Bridge Plaza
Canadian officials are prepared to start a $54 million (Canadian) project to revamp the Blue Water Bridge Plaza in Point Edward.
The project includes a 120,000-square-foot, four-story building to house Canada Border Services Agency, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, commercial brokers and Blue Water Bridge Canada administrative offices. The project also includes building seven new inspection lanes for commercial traffic.
The project will start this month and be completed in December 2010. The new building will be west of the existing Customs building.
Chuck Chrapko, president and chief executive officer of Blue Water Bridge Canada, said travelers to Ontario barely will notice the project has started.
"It will not divert traffic in any way," he said.
The work is the first phase of what is expected to be a three-phase project costing a combined $110 million.
Phase two includes building secondary processing stations for passenger vehicles and 14 new inspection lanes. Phase three includes new toll booths and toll offices and updating infrastructure.
At the end of the project, which could take between six and 10 years, virtually everything on the bridge plaza will be replaced, Chrapko said.
Timelines for the second and third phases have not
been established. Chrapko said the project is designed in such a way that each phase is not required to be finished but can be depending on need and money.
The design of the new plaza, Chrapko said, increases security by making it less open. Currently, people can walk easily across the plaza from other places, such as the Duty Free parking lot. That won't be possible on the new plaza.
All one needs to do is travel on the Blue Water Bridge. This bridge, which was once a beautiful alternative to going through Detroit to New York State or Toronto, now maintains lines through Detroit Customs to the Canadian side of the bridge. Clearly, no PR blitz is needed for one to understand that something must be done with the plaza. It is simply a decision of how best to maintain the City of Port Huron's commercial existence while substantially interfering with commercial activity because of the acquisition/eminent domain process.
The bridge clearly will hurt the United States far more than Canada because Canada has been attempting to purchase the land over the years. Canada probably destroyed values by the process, but the same process has been used by the Detroit International Bridge Company for the past 20 years; with some results not totally destructive of individual property rights but other results which created great harm to neighborhoods.
