The highly anticipated Rock Island Bridge project, located in the West Bottoms near the Hy-Vee Arena, is set to open the first weekend of April after years of delays.
Originally built in 1905, the bridge once served as a railroad and cattle crossing but went out of service in the 1970s. Despite its age and many years sitting unused, the structure was designed to last and is capable of carrying up to 3 million pounds of live animals at one time, according to Mike Zeller, CEO of development company Flying Truss.
When living in Prague, Munich and Taipei, Zeller saw how other cities reinvented older structures for modern use, but his inspiration for this particular bridge came much later, during a canoe trip back in the States…