The city of Toledo ceremonially presented a $300,000 check Friday to the Ohio Department of Transportation as payment for its share of a dynamic lighting system for the Anthony Wayne Bridge.
Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz honored Susan Reams, a former director of what is now the Toledo Arts Commission of Greater Toledo who headed the reconstituted Toledo Alight fund to raise the money.
The lighting system “is something that is going to make our city even more liveable, more attractive, and contribute to the ongoing momentum that we have,” Mr. Kapszukiewicz said.
The canvass included $50,000 donations from ProMedica, Owens Corning, and Block Communications, Inc. — the latter of which owns The Blade.
WATCH: Preview of lighting system to be installed for Anthony Wayne Bridge
The landmark bridge’s new lighting system is to be installed during an upcoming Ohio Department of Transportation project that also will include adding a dehumidifying system to preserve its suspension cables and repairing hold-down devices on those cables.
ODOT plans to award a contract for the total project, estimated to cost $14.8 million, on May 21, with work to start immediately thereafter and be finished by November, 2019.
When Mike Gramza, ODOT’s district planning and programs administrator, said the state expects the lights to be in service in July, 2019, Ms. Reams enthusiastically suggested a July 4 deadline.
Rebecca Dangelo, a department spokesman, said afterward that while a worthy goal, that date is not guaranteed.
Also known as the High Level Bridge, the 1931-vintage Anthony Wayne Bridge is the last suspension bridge on Ohio’s state-highway network.
The Blade contributed $65,100 to a previous Toledo Alight campaign during the 1980s that covered one quarter of a previous decorative lighting array on the 3,750-feet-long structure.
“Local businesses know when we all invest, everybody will do better in Toledo,” Diana Block, BCI’s executive vice president, said during the check presentation Friday. “Block Communications is proud to be able to make the skyline a little bit brighter once again.”
The state’s budget for the upcoming project included $600,000 for a basic system to replace those lights following recent state projects that overhauled and repainted the bridge.
Ms. Reams then inspired the local effort to make up the cost difference for a more dynamic system that will feature variably colored, pulsing light-emitting diodes on the bridge’s suspension cables as well as flood lighting for its towers.
Erwin Redl, an Austrian-born artist now based in Bowling Green, designed the system after Ms. Reams enlisted him into the project.
“It’s going to be really spectacular when we connect this bridge and the I-280 [bridge],” Ms. Reams said Friday.
ODOT is replacing the decorative lighting system on the I-280 Veterans’ Glass City Skyway.
Other leading donors include Taylor Automotive, Key Bank, PNC Bank, Huntington National Bank, the Toledo Mud Hens and Walleye, the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, and the Lucas County Commissioners. A $3,000 arts commission contribution from Toledo’s 1 Percent for the Arts fund is the city money involved.
Mr. Redl’s local works include “Floating, in Silence,” an array of 381 suspended glass spheres in the Toledo Museum of Art's Glass Pavilion. The spheres, half filled with red liquid, move with air currents and cast ever-changing light reflections.
Other works are on display at Bowling Green State University; in Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton, and farther afield in such places as New York, Toronto, Charlotte, Charleston, S.C., and Istanbul.
Contact David Patch at dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.
First Published April 13, 2018, 3:27 p.m.