HOLLAND, MI (WHTC) – A second bridge to Windmill Island will still have to wait.
Holland City Council members last night voted to table a proposed joint resolution with neighboring Holland Township that would lead to a non-motorized span from Holland’s North Side to Windmill Island Gardens. The delay comes from an additional 159 thousand dollars needed for building a longer bridge due to ground foundation issues near the Holland Township side that had not been seen in earlier estimates.
The resolution is needed to help secure a grant for the project from the state Department of Transportation that would pay the lion’s share of the three million-dollar price tag for the project. City Manager Ryan Cotton told council members that state officials have not gotten back to him about increasing the grant from nearly 825 thousand dollars in the wake of this latest development, so the panel decided to hold everything up until such word from Lansing comes.
In his monthly appearance on “WHTC Talk of the Town” today, Cotton defended the project when criticized by a caller claiming that it was a “bridge to nowhere” and it diverted state money from roads: “It’s part of the culumnation of the Windmill Island Gardens ‘strategic plan’ that signifies that the Gardens is in the center of the whole 107,000 population region, and to maximize the cultural education and the environmental resource that that whole 140 acres provides, there needs to be better connections.”
The matter may be brought back off of the table when Council holds its next business meeting on January 18th.
