CORALVILLE, Iowa (AP) The Interstate 80 bridges over Highway 965 near Coral Ridge Mall will get a face lift designed to blend with the area’s limestone theme this construction season.
The twin spans will be widened as part of the Iowa Department of Transportation project to expand I-80 from four to six lanes in Iowa City and Coralville.
Kimball Olson, the DOT’s aesthetic bridge specialist, said Coralville officials requested that the DOT do something different in the area, which has scores of stacked, rough-cut limestone blocks and earth-colored brickwork.
”When we’re building a bridge in a community, we take a good, hard look on the impact of that bridge’s architecture on the area,’ he said recently.
Olson said the DOT replicated the bridges’ existing pier work and will incorporate that into the $2.58-million bridge project. Other plans call for installing decorative lighting atop the pier columns and shaping the bridge abutments to give the look of cut limestone.
