SOUTH PITTSBURG, Tenn. — South Pittsburg High School’s new pedestrian bridge was delivered and installed this week, two years after a truck collided with the old bridge, causing damage so bad it had to be replaced.
“This has been a long time coming,” Marion County Director of Schools Mark Griffith said Wednesday in a phone interview. “It’s been hit a few times but never to the magnitude of the one on March 27, 2020.”
Griffith said the new bridge was in place by about 3:30 p.m. CDT Tuesday, and now the contractor can begin work on elevators and stairways on each end.
In 2020, a tractor trailer passing under the bridge with a piece of construction equipment accidentally struck the pedestrian bridge that spanned South Pittsburg’s South Cedar Avenue between the school and its football and baseball fields on the other side of the street, according to Griffith.
“Once the inspector came in, they determined everything would have to come off from the elevator shaft and the elevator lobby and the bridge itself and the existing structure on the other side of the street due to unsafe conditions,” Griffith said. “We demolished it all and then started the process from scratch. We hired an engineer, who in turn hired an architect, and they put it out for bid.”
The school system’s attorney and the truck driver’s insurance company are still working through the claim, but Griffith said some payments have been made by the insurance company as the case continues.
“We’re excited to finally get it up, and I’m going to say that sometime in August 2023, it’ll be utilized,” he said.
Until then, Griffith said, no one is supposed to be on the bridge or its structures aside from work crews.
At $2.1 million, Chattanooga—based T.U. Parks Construction Co. had the winning bid for the replacement bridge and new landings on each side of the street. The work includes the construction of elevators and steps that are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, Griffith said. He said money has been set aside to help with costs until the insurance case is resolved.
The old bridge had taken a beating over the years from large commercial trucks and big rigs striking it with their loads, but Griffith said the last time it was struck in 2020 the damage was so severe it could no longer be used. The bridge is not only needed for pedestrians to cross South Cedar Avenue safely, it’s a piece of history the community has demonstrated its love for in the past.
The aging span became the target of an update completed in 2009 as a fundraising project to make the bridge match an $18 million school expansion and new gym project at the high school and answer complaints the bridge had become unsightly, according to Chattanooga Times Free Press archives. The community and South Pittsburg High School students began a fundraising drive in early 2008 to collect the $30,000 needed for the face—lift.
South Pittsburg High School Principal Paige Hill, also a member of the school’s Class of 1986, said the return of the span over South Cedar Avenue was like replacing a missing piece to a puzzle.
“I’m so excited it’s there,” Hill said Thursday in a phone interview. “It was built there when the school was built in the 1960s. With it not being there, it’s like a big piece of us is not there, and it’s not been there for several years.”
Hill and South Pittsburg High’s students didn’t get to see the new bridge as it arrived, she said. Students are undergoing state testing this week, so they were occupied much of the day Tuesday, she said.
“After state testing, they knew that the bridge was there, so it was kind of hard to keep a lot them from looking out the windows,” she laughed. “They were so curious to see what was going on, and they’re excited, too.”
Since the old bridge was dismantled, students have used crosswalks to make their way to the other side of South Cedar Avenue.
Hill said the day the truck hit the bridge the students were at home because of COVID—19. Had students been at school, some could easily have been crossing the bridge when the strike occurred.
The collision with the bridge rattled classrooms on the school end of the bridge, she said.
“We have classes right next to the bridge landing,” she said. “I’m just so thankful we weren’t in school. I hate to be thankful for COVID, but I’m thankful they weren’t there.”
Hill said the bridge will be named for Jimmy Wigfall, a running back on South Pittsburg High School’s first state championship team in 1969 who remained one of the most recognized residents in the community. Wigfall died of complications from COVID—19 despite being otherwise healthy. Wigfall’s death two days after the pedestrian bridge was struck was a devastating blow to the community in 2020, according to Hill.
The new bridge will be used primarily by the students headed to the athletic facilities and some new student parking to be developed on that side of the street, according to Griffith.
“It will not be accessible 24/7 but it will be open for students, any special events during the school day and ballgames,” he said.
— Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423—757—6569.