Chamberlain bridge opens next week

BANGOR — If your heart’s desire is to go over the river and through the woods by way of the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge for Thanksgiving, go for it.

The middle bridge over the Penobscot River, linking Bangor and Brewer, will reopen sometime the day before turkey day, Wednesday, Nov. 26.

“It will be open and raring to go,” said Bob Zimmerman, engineer for the bridge project for the Maine Department of Transportation. The estimated price tag for the repairs is $2 million.

The Chamberlain bridge has been closed since the July opening of the new Penobscot Bridge just up the river.

For the last four months, the DOT and Reed & Reed Construction of Woolwich have been working on repairs to the Chamberlain bridge, demolishing the old Bangor-Brewer Bridge next to the new bridge, and finishing up last details on the new bridge.

“They’ve done a good job,” Zimmerman said of Reed & Reed.

Even after the Chamberlain bridge is in service, some work will remain to be done underneath the bridge, he said. “There is pier repair work to do, especially on the Bangor side.”

The Chamberlain bridge also will be closed for two or three days next May, Zimmerman said. “Half the pavement is temporary,” and that will be replaced in May.

“It could easily have been closed all winter,” Zimmerman said of the bridge. The actual completion date for the repairs was set at May 1998, but the company has accelerated the work.