BY LIZ SHEEHAN
Correspondent
The Patten Avenue Bridge reopened, viewed from the Long Branch side. MONMOUTH BEACH –– Borough residents got an early Christmas present last week when the Patten Avenue bridge, closed since September 2004, reopened on Thursday, Dec.15.
Monmouth County Freeholders William Barham and Theodore Narozanick joined with Mayor Susan Howard, Commissioners James Cunniff and Kim Guadagno and other borough officials and county staff members for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Monmouth Beach side of the bridge on Tuesday morning.
Barham, who served on the borough’s Board of Commissioners before becoming a freeholder, said it was great to be at the ceremony for the bridge after having lobbied for it as a commissioner.
At a commissioners’ meeting in November 2001, Barham said that the county would begin the work on the bridge after Labor Day.
The starting date was actually after Labor Day two years later.
The new bridge, which crosses Manhasset Creek, replaces one built in 1942 to connect the borough and Long Branch which was reconstructed in 1951.
According to the county, the new bridge is six feet wider than the old bridge and four-and-a -half-feet higher.
It cost $4.47 million, the county said in a statement about the bridge, and has a six-foot wide sidewalk and black ornamental lamps for street lighting.
The press release also said that the 507-foot -long timber span of the old bridge was removed and then replaced “with a reinforced concrete deck slab on top of concrete abutments and pilings.”
The sidewalk will be welcomed by residents who biked, walked or jogged over the old bridge which was just wide enough to accommodate two cars passing in different directions and did not have room for a pedestrian or bicycle rider.
Richard Lally, of HNTB, Wayne, who worked on the bridge project for the county, said the bridge will close again for a week in warm weather so the road can be coated for its protection. This work can’t be done in the cold weather.
Borough Police Chief Richard White, who was at the ceremony, has in the past said that the closure of the bridge was in a way a good thing for the borough because it cut down on the traffic, especially in the summer.
On Tuesday, he said police would be patrolling near the bridge to make sure that the 25 mile speed limit was observed by those entering the borough by Patten Avenue.
Asked about the probable opening date for the nearby Atlantic Avenue bridge in Long Branch, which had been delayed because the original contractor went bankrupt, Lally said the county “would like to have it done in February.”

