Beverly Hall-Whitaker Bridge Replacement Update Set For Wednesday

BEVERLY, MA — A long-awaited state update on the construction of a temporary replacement for the Hall-Whitaker Drawbridge that was closed to traffic 2 1/2 years ago has been rescheduled for a second time in January after the public forum was postponed in November.

State Department of Transportation officials will be at the Beverly Middle School on Jan. 29 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. to provide construction timeline and other updates for the planned temporary bridge and the eventual construction of a new permanent bridge over the Bass River. The meeting had previously been rescheduled from November to Jan. 16.

Beverly Mayor Mike Cahill provided a cautiously optimistic update in October during his report on city capital projects, saying that "the story on the progress is a better one than, I think, people had been fearing."

State Department of Transportation officials said in the fall of 2022 that Beverly residents may have to deal with 13 years or more of bridge construction and traffic disruptions before both bridges were finished.

Cahill said in early October that the date to advertise for the construction of the temporary bridge had been moved from September 2025 to February or March 2025.

Cahill said the hope is that with the accelerated design and bid schedule construction could now begin this summer. He said that would likely put the bridge on schedule to open "in the first half of 2027."

"Which is not a great improvement over what we've heard before," he allowed. "But we're still trying to beat that."

A public forum had been scheduled with MassDOT officials to go over the new timeline in November — but that was canceled days before it was set to occur upon the request of MassDOT and amid a pending teacher strike in the city that lasted three weeks.

MassDOT said updates for the permanent Hall-Whitaker and Kernwood Avenue bridges and the Kernwood Avenue Bridge Maintenance project will also be provided.

The proposed project still consists of the installation of a temporary bridge replacement for the Hall-Whitaker, followed by the demolition of the existing bridge — which is currently open to pedestrian and bicycle traffic only — before the reconstruction of that bridge and the subsequent removal of the temporary bridge.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)