116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
For Lansing merchants and commuters, a bridge too far
Retailers and drivers cope with Black Hawk Bridge’s temporary closure
LANSING — When half your usual customers suddenly can’t drive to town, that gets your attention.
“We felt it almost immediately,” said Makenna Eiden, working the counter one recent morning at Coffee on the River, a coffee shop featuring baked goods and sandwiches owned by her mother and aunt in a historic building next to the Mississippi River. “With the bridge closing, we noticed how many of our regulars come from La Crosse,” about 45 minutes away across the river in Wisconsin.
Dave Janzen, who owns and operates Lansing Hardware Hank with his wife, Laurie, noticed, too.
“About half of our business comes from the other side of the river,” he said. “It’s 30 miles to the closest anything.”
The historic Black Hawk Bridge, which began carrying traffic over the Mississippi River between Lansing and Crawford County, Wis., in 1931, was closed Feb. 25 after crews building its replacement nearby detected movement of its supporting piers. With repairs underway, the bridge could be reopened by the end of April.
But for now, that leaves the two closest crossings across the Mississippi for traffic at either to the south using Highway 18 between Marquette and Prairie du Chien, Wis., or to the north, crossing the river on Highway 14 between La Crescent, Minn., and La Crosse.
The Iowa Department of Transportation estimates that over 2,200 drivers cross the Black Hawk Bridge every day. So on March 18, it launched a free service — for people only, not their cars — on a water taxi between the Lansing Marina on the Iowa side and the Big Slough Landing on the Wisconsin side. Shuttle buses also operate on both sides of the river, in Lansing, population 950, and De Soto, Wis., population 300, to bring commuters for free between the water taxi and parking areas.
“There was not a clear path forward right away,” said Clayton Burke, an Iowa DOT project manager. “It’s a question of how can we work with the existing bridge and repair it and get it back open to traffic, rather than saying ‘There’s nothing we can do, we just have to close it and leave it closed?’”
With the Black Hawk Bridge’s $124 million replacement being built nearby scheduled for a 2027 opening, a three-year closure could have decimated downtown Lansing, where businesses count on customers and workers from both sides of the river.
Impact of closing
Susan Finley, manager of Quillin’s Lansing IGA grocery, said Lansing and De Soto are “like a little community, even though it’s another state. We support Ferryville and De Soto (both in Wisconsin), and they support us.”
“It’s hitting people pretty hard,” said Andrew Boddicker, executive director of Main Street Lansing, a business support organization that focuses on economic development and tourism. “We’re the only grocery store for 25, 30 miles for our people across the river.”
“I noticed it in the pass-through traffic,” said Justin Shephard, owner of Shep's Riverside Bar and Grill, which offers an expansive view of the river and the now-closed bridge. “People who were coming over for appointments would stop here for lunch.”
Mild late-winter weather helped buoy the trade at Shep’s, which sits at the foot of Lansing’s Main Street along the riverfront. “It was 70 degrees in February, and that picked up the slack,” Shepard said. “We hope the weather stays decent, so they can keep working” on the bridge.
Water taxi launches
Robert Vavra and his wife, Deb, sold a restaurant in Harpers Ferry and bought a small campground and a 49-passenger pontoon boat. They launched Maiden Voyage Tours, based in Marquette, in 2006.
Their river tour business typically starts around Memorial Day, so the boat was available when the Iowa DOT came looking for a water taxi to ferry commuters across the Mississippi while the bridge was closed.
Vavra runs the water taxi for the Iowa DOT “primarily to keep the workers going back and forth, to keep the nursing home staffed and the dental office open,” he said.
Service was interrupted a few days due to bad weather. “When it was really cold, it was pretty tough,” said employee Gerry Weis, who was piloting the boat one recent — and more pleasant — afternoon.
Vavra said the eight scheduled round trips each day — three each in the morning and evening, with two trips around midday — have drawn 70 to 130 passengers a day. The trip across the river takes about 10 minutes.
“There’s a couple of nurses who ride, a couple of schoolteachers who ride every day,” Vavra said.
Luke Steiber is one of the riders. He lives on a farm about 3 miles outside of Lansing and also works two jobs — as a custodian and as a cook — on the Wisconsin side.
Steiber said he uses the water taxi at least twice a day. But since his shifts often end late at night, he has had to sleep in his car on the Wisconsin side of the river until morning when the service resumes.
“Both sides are hurting terribly” because of the bridge closure, he said.
Businesses still open
Letting visitors know Lansing businesses are still open — even if the bridge isn’t — remains a priority for Boddicker and business owners. Working with the overall Main Street Iowa, the Lansing organization obtained $300-per-business funding for advertising for its members.
“We’ve never really had marketing dollars before, so we’re pretty excited,” Boddicker said. “We’ve tried to advocate for direct funding for business, but I don’t think it’s going to happen because that money is going toward fixing the bridge.”
Finley estimates Wisconsin customers account for 40 percent of her grocery store’s business. “Some of the customers are using the charter boat,” she said. “And I have some customers so faithful they’re driving all the way around.”
Still, “I’ve been managing for 14 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever been down in sales,” she said.
Dave Janzen is delivering hardware orders to Wisconsin two or three times a week while the bridge is closed.
“You can only take so much with you on the water taxi,” said Laurie Janzen.
“It’s just, hang on for the ride,” Dave Janzen said.
Old bridge piers
Burke, of the Iowa DOT, said the water taxi and shuttles are estimated to cost about $255,000, assuming repairs are finished on schedule. He said the department has applied for emergency federal funding for the repairs, estimated to cost $2.65 million.
There’s no conclusive evidence of the cause, but it’s reasonable to assume the bridge piers’ shifting was triggered by construction on the nearby replacement bridge.
“It would be kind of facetious to say the construction didn’t play some part in it,” Burke said. “It’s been fine for 93 years, then we start building next to it and it starts moving. That’s at least one of the factors.”
Burke said the existing bridge’s timber piers, essentially its foundation, extended only about 50 feet below the riverbed. “They moved north to south, which would be transverse to the bridge, and they settled toward the north side, so they moved forward and they tilted down,” he said.
The new piers and temporary piers, made of concrete, will go into bedrock — about 150 feet down. The repair is something of an engineering feat.
“We’ve got an awesome bridge inspection team,” Burke said. “They came up with ideas right away.”
Using cranes brought in for the replacement bridge, crews from contractor Kraemer North America of Plain, Wis., removed four spans from the bridge on the Wisconsin side, making room to drive pilings that will support the temporary piers.
“It was really incredible how it all came together,” Burke said. “The contractor was a great partner. They actually drew up most of the design. It just all came together, and we were able to get this going.”
The repairs haven’t caused a major delay on the new bridge construction, Burke said.
“We’ve lost a little bit of schedule, but nothing we can’t make up,” he said.
Nick Rohlman of The Gazette contributed to this report.
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