Leeds Civic Association members have been busy this summer and early fall attending meetings and speaking with city officials about the need to restore the 1880\u2019s bridge to a walking bridge. Ward 7 city councilor, Alisa Klein has been helpful in getting the Hotel Bridge on the agenda at these city committee meetings and the city is in support of a restoration effort.<\/p>\n
Since the bridge closed this summer, three newspapers have run articles about the Hotel Bridge. After the Sept. 16th front page Gazette article came out the LCA was contacted by the director of Workin\u2019 Bridges, an Iowa based organization committed to helping communities restore their historic iron bridges. Workin\u2019 Bridges\u2019 engineers are experts in iron and passionate about saving historic bridges.\u00a0 <\/span>We hope to have the Workin\u2019 Bridges team visit the bridge, assess the scope of work, meet with city officials, and help us layout a step-by-step plan for restoration. In the mean time we will be consulting with UMass civil engineering professor, Sanjay Arwade. An application is being prepared to have the Hotel Bridge placed on the National Register of Historic Places which will then make it eligible for certain grants. A bike ride fund raiser for the Hotel Bridge will take place this coming Spring which will be organized by Alice Baedecker and Stephy Cho. Along with securing grant funding, support from the community is needed. A few fundraising ideas being considered are Hotel Bridge mugs, calendars, cards, shirts, and of course \u2013good old individual contributions which can be made out to: LCA-Hotel Bridge Account and mailed to Florence Savings Bank, 85 Main Street, Florence 01062.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Leeds Civic Association members have been busy this summer and early fall attending meetings and speaking with city officials about the need to restore the 1880\u2019s bridge to a walking bridge. Ward 7 city councilor, Alisa Klein has been helpful in getting the Hotel Bridge on the agenda at these city committee meetings and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n