DEENA WINTER / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 7:00 pm
Gone are the nearly identical old houses city officials called the Triplets. Gone is Glenn’s Auto Body at 2121 P St. And gone are more than a block of houses between P, Q, 21st and 22nd streets.
In their place: heavy equipment, huge concrete pipes and detoured traffic.
The way has been cleared and construction has begun on bridges that will take P and Q streets over what will eventually be an open-air Antelope Valley channel between what are now 21st and 22nd streets.
The 163-foot bridges will be similar in design to the new Antelope Valley bridges on Vine, Y and Military streets.
Why are they building bridges over the ground?
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will dig a channel once the bridges are finished, perhaps next year. The up side is that the roads won’t have to close, since traffic can be diverted around the bridges while there’s no channel.
“We’re trying to stay a year ahead of them,” Antelope Valley Project Manager Wayne Teten said of the Corps.
“We don’t want to have a bridge sitting out there for years and years, but on the other hand, we don’t have the traffic severed because the channel got there before we did.”
Right now, utility work is being done — sanitary sewers, water lines and storm sewers — and workers will start driving pilings on the Q Street bridge in about a week, Teten said.