New bridge over Indian Creek opens

It's been several decades in the making, but a new bridge over Indian Creek in the north part of town opened for traffic Tuesday afternoon.

The two-lane, 323-foot span extends 29th Avenue west to North 10th Street on the south edge of the main Linn-Mar campus.

The $5.2 million roadway provides a long-needed east-west connection in a rapidly growing area of Marion. It's also expected to relieve a jumbled traffic bottleneck at the diagonal intersection of 10th Street and Indian Creek Road.

As he took pictures at the ribbon-cutting Tuesday, former City Engineer Erv Mussman said the project has come full circle for him.

He was involved in planning it during his tenure with the city from 1986 to 2000, and he said the idea was in the long-range improvement discussions for many years before that.

“The problem was always coming up the huge sum of money to pay for it.” Mussman said.

City Engineer Dan Whitlow said a pledge of $3 million in federal road use tax funds was secured seven years ago to set the plan into motion.

Another $400,000 federal grant and a $1.8 million capital improvement bond issue completed the funding.

The bridge, which includes an 8-foot-wide multiuse lane connecting a trail to 35th Street, was designed by Shive-Hattery Inc. of Cedar Rapids. Now an engineer with the firm, Mussman served on the design team.

Linn-Mar school district Superintendent Katie Mulholland, who attended the ceremony along with Kathy Murphy's first-grade class from nearby Indian Creek Elementary, said the new street will be convenient for parents from several of the district's schools.