The Ben Sawyer Bridge, the swing bridge that links Mount Pleasant and Sullivan’s Island, will close to vehicles overnight Sunday for final repairs, according to WCSC-TV.
The South Carolina Department of Transportation will close the bridge from 9 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 8, until 4 a.m. Monday, Nov. 9, the station reported. The work will finish repairs and restore access to maintenance areas, and it is part of a larger structural repair project that is nearing completion, according to the report.
Drivers should use alternate routes and take care near the work zone, according to the report. During the October closures, drivers were rerouted to the Isle of Palms Connector, WCIV-TV reported.
The repairs have already slowed business on the island. In late October, SCDOT closed the bridge in both directions from 9 p.m. to midnight while crews replaced concrete, the third such closure in a week, WCIV reported on Oct. 27. The agency did not immediately give a timeline for the work, the station reported.
Jamie Mahar, general manager of Dunleavy’s Pub, told WCIV that island businesses were in their slow season, “but now, it feels even slower.” At the restaurant Longboard, sous chef Jack Fournier told the station that “one of the guys was slow so we sent him home a bit early.”
The repairs followed a string of breakdowns over the summer. The bridge had four malfunctions in about a month, involving its traffic arms or closing mechanism, according to Sullivan’s Island Police Chief Glenn Meadows, WCIV reported in July. SCDOT said those problems “all appeared to be related to wiring or fuses that were replaced,” according to the station, and that the bridge was never unsafe.
The state highway department built the bridge in 1944 and 1945, according to SCDOT. Its main span is a 248-foot swing span.
Neither station’s reports named the repair contractor or the project’s cost.
