Emergency Services and Economic Development Teams Brace for the Blatnik Bridge Closure
Even though naming of the general contractor is still a year away and the bridge closure itself isn’t scheduled until early 2027, there’s already been a good deal of brain power applied to considering all the contingencies that could affect quality of life during the long-term closure and rebuild of the Blatnik Bridge.
“I’ll say as soon as the ink was dry on the federal infrastructure bill, and the funds were committed to this project, we began working on our own contingency planning because it’s going to have such a great impact on emergency services in this area. And we are probably the most impacted of emergency services agencies because we operate on both sides of the bay,” said Dave Brooks of Mayo Clinic Ambulance.
“We’ve, we’ve put together adjustments to our operations plans, adjusting where our crews are posted,” Brooks said. “We’ve identified alternative launch points for marine or ice craft and alternative landing zones for helicopter and air resources. We’ve met with the county emergency managers and some of the state folks, as well as the DOTs and other partner agencies, big and small, that we work with every day, looking at traffic control and how that’s going to be mitigated. Thankfully, they took our input. We were able to identify some gaps and some better alternatives that would work well with everyone. We have to be adaptable and be able to move on the fly, because when you have 34,000 cars a day that travel across the
Blatnik that’ll be redirected across the Bong, which will effectively triple its normal daily traffic,
we’re kind of looking at all of it.”
Brooks said Mayo Ambulance also requested the DOT add a dedicated wrecker or tow truck on permanent standby.
“If and when we have accidents that that will shut down one lane of traffic, that’ll be really important to keep it clear so that you know if there are true, massive, big emergencies that our routes of travel will remain clear no matter what.”
“It will be a big undertaking and there will be some things that public safety agencies will need to adapt to ensure that timely service can continue while the Blatnik is out,” said Douglas County Emergency Management/911 Risk Management Director Adam Olson.
“Since Douglas County is served by Mayo Ambulance, based in Duluth, and our main hospitals are also in Duluth, there is a concern about delayed response time and delayed travel time to the hospitals while a patient is being transported,” Olson said. “The City of Superior Fire Department has been thinking about this issue, as well as Mayo. There are a few options on the table for consideration to alleviate the possibility of delays, but nothing has been set in stone yet.”
Superior Fire Chief Camron Volbrecht confirmed that he and his team have met with Duluth Fire Department representatives and Mayo Ambulance.
“We’ve met to work on plans on how we would move patients across in the event that the Bong Bridge was unavailable, if we have a weather closure or closure due to due to a traffic accident or something else, we’ve worked out some scenarios to move critical patients across,” he said.
“And then internally, we’re working on improving or increasing some of our EMS skills so we’ll be able to provide some more emergency medical skills from our EMTs, our firefighters, in case that we have delayed responses due to traffic and or bridge closures,” Volbrecht said. “Anticipating traffic is definitely a concern for us getting around. We have been looking at and trying to get some stoplight controls, a preemption system that would allow us to control the stoplights.”
Thinking of worst-case scenarios, Volbrecht anticipates challenges with the response time of mutual aid partner Duluth in the event of a multiple fires or emergencies.
“The closure will definitely delay their responses, especially to the north end of the city,” he said. “It’s also going to affect our callbacks because a number of our folks do live on the Minnesota side, and so when we have off-duty callbacks, that will delay them. So, operationally for us is to make sure that when we think we’re going to need the callbacks, we’re issuing those callbacks as quickly as we can.”
Volbrecht said there are plans to start construction of a new Fire Station No. 2 serving the city’s North end next April, with completion the following spring. It will be on John Avenue, a block to the west of the current station on Hammond Avenue.
“It is a little larger building. We’ll have a couple more bunks well, so on days, if we do have weather conditions that we anticipate affecting the Bong Bridge, we can bring in extra staffing for those events, and we actually have somewhere to put them,” he said. “Right now, I just don’t have anywhere to put extra staffing. So that will allow some flexibility with staffing.”
“The upcoming closure of the Blatnik Bridge is going to be one of the most significant challenges our community will face in the coming years, and public safety will be front and center in that discussion,” said Superior City Councilor Tylor Elm, who chairs the city’s Public Safety Committee.
“At this point, the Public Safety Committee hasn’t had too many items formally come before us on the topic, though I expect that will increase as the closure date gets closer,” Elm said. “One of the key areas already being looked at is the implementation of an emergency vehicle preemption (EVP) system to improve response times across the city during periods of congestion. That system would allow police, fire and EMS units to move more safely and efficiently through signalized intersections, which becomes even more critical with the increased traffic load expected on city streets once the bridge closes.”
He added that city staff are coordinating with the DOTs on both sides of the bridge to identify how traffic will be redirected, with an emphasis on priority corridors for emergency vehicles once the Blatnik is offline.
“We all recognize that ensuring reliable emergency response during the bridge closure will require close coordination, and while planning is still in its early phases, it’s something we’re taking very seriously,” Elm said.
Bill Fennessy, chair of the Douglas County Public Safety Committee, agreed with Elm.
“Planning the bridge project is a priority for Douglas County officials,” he said. “One focus of the Public Safety Committee is ensuring dedicated ambulance service stationed in Douglas County and planning for transporting patients to Duluth during an incident that temporarily restricts traffic on the Bong Bridge.
“A major unknown is the impact of increased traffic on roads that could be used to bypass the city to avoid the Bong Bridge and traffic congestion,” Fennessy continued. “We need to develop a comprehensive plan for managing traffic flow on city and county roads before the bridge closes. For that reason, we are encouraging a pre-planned multiple day shutdown of the Blatnik Bridge to monitor traffic conditions with one bridge. The results would be used to develop an effective plan for city and county roads. We will continue interacting with local emergency service providers and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to identify and address impacts related to the project.”
Superior Mayor Jim Paine said he most commonly hears from community members their concerns about traffic congestion during the closure.
“It is something people are stressed about, and rightly so in terms of emergency services,” he said. “We do have an emergency room with a Life Flight helipad in Superior. We do have critical access to hospitals in Duluth, even via the Bong Bridge. It doesn’t add a significant amount of response time if you’re going under lights and sirens, but we’re still mapping that out and taking steps to make sure we’re prepared, like installing an intervention system on our stop lights so those emergency vehicles can get unimpeded where they need to go.”
Economic Impacts
How will the multi-year bridge closure affect business in Superior? Of course, no one knows for sure, but The Development Association is gearing up for whatever may come.
Jim Caesar, executive director of The Development Association, said the team of Superior/Douglas County advocates who went to Madison for the 40th annual Superior Days last February made the bridge closure a prominent speaking point.
“We were told by Missy Hughes (secretary and CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation) that we should try to get a proposal in, at least get it surfaced and try to get it into this budget session.”
The proposal was a one-time request for $48 million from Wisconsin’s $4 billion-plus budget surplus to be used much like the Paycheck Protection Program created by the U.S. Small Business Administration during the COVID era to provide loans that could be forgiven if used for business continuity, job retention and economic stability. The proposal went nowhere in the last session, but that didn’t surprise savvy veteran Caesar.
“Approval, it takes years and repetition to get things done,” he said. “Things like getting Belknap done much sooner. That was originally not planned to be done until the 2030s. We went down there for a couple of years in a row to get that advanced, and we were able to do it. But it wasn’t like, hey, we went down there in 2019 and all of a sudden in 2020, we were under construction. It took several years to get those things done so I guess from this year’s effort we set the stage. And now we gotta keep going and persevere, keep talking and talking and talking and to try and get something done.”
And does the proposal have support from the three people elected to represent the interests of the region in Madison?
All three were contacted but there was no response from either Rep. Chanz Green or Sen. Romaine Quinn. However, Rep. Angela Stroud has faith in the Development Association to make things happen.
“I worked with the Development Association to advocate for funding in this budget but we weren’t able to secure any dollars,” she said. “I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to make some progress in the next budget as the potential impact to area businesses is significant. The Association is made up of an incredible team of people who will do an amazing job shepherding local businesses through what will be a tough time, but they’re going to need some resources to do that work. I’m happy to help them in any way I can.”
Caesar also applied through WEDC for a capacity building grant, which is given to organizations to strengthen their internal systems and improve long-term effectiveness and sustainability.
“We received $50,000, which allowed us to bring Jenice (Meyer) on board, to specifically work on this bridge project. Missy Hughes suggested that we apply for that grant because we were down there kind of going, we don’t know what to do, but we know this is going to have a big impact to the economy up here.”
Caesar said Meyer came on board in January.
“Jenice is taking point on this for us, and she’s got the depth in the background and roadmap, so to speak, of which way we’re going on this and, and that’s exactly why we brought her on board,” he said.
“People are afraid,” Meyer said. “Change is hard anyways, but when it’s going to be for so long. We know that when a downtown has a main street closure for 120 to 180 days, that can really impact the bottom line for those small businesses. This is going to be more than 1,800 days. It’s five years. And, so, people are rightfully worried about what this is going to mean.”
Meyer said the $48 million request was a shot in the dark.
“We don’t know if that was too high. We don’t know if that was too low. We knew we needed to put some kind of framework together, because there was a budget surplus. And so this was our best guess, but we’re going to continue to work on this going forward. We just had a meeting with Tammy Baldwin a few weeks ago and her staff, when they were up here, just got some information on what we could potentially do for grants….So, we may not get it all in one package from one single source, but we’re looking at wherever we can bring in resources and partnerships to really rally behind the businesses before and during the bridge closure.”
It’s critical to be thinking these things, she said, because of all the work that has gone into making Superior what it is today.
“Downtown Superior looks so different than it did even 5 or 10 years ago,” she said. “There’s so much life and synergy. It’s safe, it’s walkable and it’s fun. We want to keep that energy that a lot of people have worked hard to make happen over the years. It’s hard. It takes time to build. We don’t want to lose that. Superior has always been a community that really can come together and rally around a cause. So how can we get people to start thinking about, how do we support small business? There’s going to be a change in traffic patterns, but how can we also change our behaviors to help support Superior and show that we are Superior? I think that there’s some of those opportunities there, but right now, primarily people are just afraid, and part of that is because we don’t know what we don’t know.”
While Mayor Jim Paine applauds the efforts of The Development Association, he sees a nothing but opportunities for Superior to thrive during the closure.
“I’m always the optimist in the room on this,” he said. “I don’t know that the evidence bears out that there’s going to be a negative impact. In fact, nobody has explained to me why there would be a negative impact. The fact is, we see no evidence that significant customer traffic is coming from Duluth to Superior for our restaurants and retail shops. In fact, it goes the other way. And so if we make it harder to get to Duluth, that’s good for our local businesses. Furthermore, historically Superior experienced a significant decline in our retail economy, beginning right about the 1950s or more precisely, when the Blatnik Bridge opened. So as soon as we made it easy to get to Duluth, that’s where people went to the larger city to go shopping and to eat at restaurants.
“Finally, if this were any other construction project of any size whatsoever, we would be talking about it as an economic opportunity, because our workforce is simply not large enough to build that bridge,” Paine said. “Right now people will come to this area to build it. They have to. And so if we’re adding a small army of construction workers that will stay in the two hotels, or three or five, depending how you count all the hotels at the superior side of the bridge, all of those workers that have to eat, that have to shop, that have to sleep, that’s a massive amount of cash that’s coming into this economy, to say nothing of all of the materials, time, wages that will be spent on that project right here in Superior, so I’m looking at this as possibly an economic boom, the scale of which we haven’t seen in decades.
“Let me, let me put it another way: If I thought there was going to be a massive detriment to the businesses in the north end, what I would be doing is looking for a way to bring them more customers. That is the only way you protect businesses. The bridge brings more customers, full stop.”
Jim Lundstrom is editor of Positively Superior.
