The Sundial Bridge

I've been hearing about the Sundial pedestrian bridge for years, having regularly visited my sister in Redding. It's been a subject of considerable controversy amongst the local population, but there's no question the bridge itself is rather elegant...can't wait to walk across the finished product.

The Redding Record Searchlight has a nice collection of articles on the subject, written from the perspective of folks who love the bridge. The San Francisco Chronicle loves the bridge too; I'll use their recent article on the grand opening as a base for this post.

World-famous architect Santiago Calatrava's new Sundial suspension bridge -- his first project on the West Coast -- seems like a piece of public art built to grace San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles or another of the state's urban centers.

Instead, the bridge's slanted 20-story pylon rises above pine trees just off the intersection of Highway 299 and Interstate 5 near the heart of Redding, looking more like a construction crane than a span across the Sacramento River.

Redding, population 85,000, a city best known as a stopping point on the way to Oregon or a gateway to somewhere else like Mount or Lake Shasta, is now the home of a $23.5 million harplike structure supporters hope will become the state's second most recognizable bridge.

I'm sure it was unintentional, but this type of writing can set some Rural folks' teeth to grinding. So, the hicks in Redding actually have something capable of gracing a major city. And there's a flyover reference (actually drive-through) opining that there was nothing worth stopping for in Redding. The arrogance in the opening of this article would be embarassing if the writer and editors had any self-awareness.

"I saw it was a great place to do a bridge. I wanted to do a bridge that was not just a link but a place to go and a story by itself,'' Calatrava said in a telephone interview from his New York office.

The bridge's birth was inauspicious.

More than 10 years ago, Redding decided to consolidate several of its museums into one structure, what's now known as the Turtle Bay Museums and Arboretum.

A pedestrian bridge was needed to link the museums to the rest of its 300-acre campus on the other side of the Sacramento River.

It was certainly rather audacious of a few folks to look across the Sacramento River, as wide as it already is in Redding, and decide they needed their own bridge connecting their properties. Not many dreams like that become realities. Sure it takes vision to come up with such a plan, but lots of folks come up with visionary ideas that will never be implemented...most of them are rather impractical. It's hard to get a public works effort funded that doesn't end up purely utilitarian...unless you live in an area that can tax folks enough to enable government extravagance (and often incredible waste).

The city said it would kick in $3 million for the bridge. After Calatrava was hired in 1996, design and construction costs began to escalate, imperiling the project. But $8 million in state bond proceeds and the deep pockets of the Redding-based McConnell Foundation kept the city from spending more than its initial $3 million.

"It could have been a $3 million Caltrans thing, but instead we have a $23.5 million piece of art,'' said Bob Warren, manager of Redding's Convention and Visitor's Bureau.

Congrats to the Chron for not falling for what several articles on the bridge presented. Many praised the bridge for only costing the taxpayers $3 million. They skipped right past the bonds as if the government doesn't pay those back with tax revenues.

At least that might help explain some of Gov. Schwarzenegger's success with the voters. His big bond issuance to salvage California's solvency was just like credit cards to some...the state floats some bonds, and now taxpayers pay on the installment plan and get to keep on living large(r than the bugdet would allow). Need more stuff, just float some bonds/get another credit card and make the minimum payments. It's the American way.

More than eight years in the making, the project had more than 800 construction drawings and an international cast of components. The bridge's 4,342 feet of cable were made in England.

Bits of broken white tile -- more than 600,000 -- came from Calatrava's native Spain.

The 2,240 nonskid translucent glass panels that form the surface of the bridge were made in Quebec. Beneath are 210 lights, one-third facing downstream, one-third facing upstream, the rest facing up. A factory in Vancouver, Wash., prefabricated the steel.

Eighteen 40-foot sections of the bridge were transported from Vancouver to Redding on trucks so wide that rolling closures of Interstate 5 in three states were required.

Architects salivate over deep-pocketed customers who want something they think is groundbreaking. Calatrava sold the good folks in Redding on his concept, and was able to bring an idea to life that otherwise would have remained just another dream. As long as everybody is comfortable with the price tag, it's win-win.

This sounds like a project where the architects/engineers got to open up all the supply books and choose the most expensive and/or exotic stuff...the photos of things that are great to look at but are generally unaffordable.

The bridge has its detractors, some of whom wrongly believe the $23.5 million price tag -- up sharply from initial cost estimates -- is taxpayer money that could have been better spent.

"There's certainly no organized opposition to the bridge,'' said Ken Murray, a Redding Realtor and former mayor who hosts a radio talk show called "Murray in the Morning." "There's a small percentage of people who call my show, but their complaint isn't about the bridge, it's about if McConnell is going to spend that kind of money there are more important things than a bridge."

Murray worded things cleverly to steer folks away from the reality on the ground. Every time I've gone to Redding in the last few years, I've heard and read beaucoup complaints about what the bridge was costing. Just because those complaining aren't organized doesn't mean there's not a fair amount of concern over the cost. There is...though the final product may have changed some attitudes.

From taxpayers, it was $3 million of Redding's money (not a trivial amount) and $8 million of a nearly broke state's money (for a project many others in the state called pork). $11 million for something completely non-essential needs to produce both some tangibles (like tourist dollars) and intangibles (like civic pride) to justify the expense. Based upon the feedback so far, it may turn out to be a good investment.

Redding is a city with ambition, and many of the locals want to surpass the Joneses. The focus used to be Red Bluff...buildings needed to have more grandeur than that smaller city/county. The ambitions have grown as the city has exploded in population over the past several years. Redding was revelling in the "all publicity is good publicity" mode regards the national coverage of the bridge's grand opening.

More than half the cost of the bridge and much of the credit for securing Calatrava belongs to the nonprofit McConnell Foundation. John Mancasola, the foundation's vice president, said the group didn't expect the bridge's cost to balloon so high but they didn't balk at the investment.

"When the bridge started moving in the direction of Calatrava we knew we were going to be the court of last resort,'' Mancasola said.

Carl and Lea McConnell were Redding residents and some of the largest shareholders of the Farmers Insurance Group, stock Carl McConnell's father bought in 1928. When sold in 1988, the stock was worth more than $344 million.

The foundation's stated purpose is to "build better communities through philanthropy.'' Its efforts are concentrated mainly in Shasta and Siskiyou counties.

Redding is in Shasta County, while Siskiyou County is immediately north, the county one enters when crossing from Oregon to California on I-5 (Yreka is the county seat). The McConnell fortune was a great example of buy-and-hold investing. It's much easier to justify extravagance when its paid for through philanthropy.

When a city-appointed committee deadlocked on selecting a bridge design team, Mancasola, the foundation's representative on the committee, suggested Calatrava. Mancasola and city officials telephoned the architect.

"I thought, if somebody is looking for you from so far away it must be important," Calatrava recalled.

The city asked for three designs. Calatrava submitted them, but one was his clear favorite -- a 217-foot-tall curved pylon with a fan of cables to support the bridge. The pylon also would act as a huge sundial with the hours marked off in a plaza before the bridge.

Adding to the cost and construction challenges was the bridge's location over some of the Sacramento River's finest salmon spawning beds. That meant the pylon anchoring the bridge could not be placed in the river.

"That was an expensive decision. It would have been a lot cheaper to build a bridge with pylons in the river. But it would have been the wrong decision,'' said Mancasola.

Calatrava wanted the bridge not to cast a shadow on the water, which would lower water temperature and affect spawning. So he chose translucent glass for the bridge's surface.

"It was necessary not to disturb the ecological equilibrium,'' Calatrava said.

I'm sure Calatrava was well-meaning, but salmon swim under shadows with some frequency...ever looked at the banks of a bunch of the Sacramento River and seen all the trees? And the occasional vehicle and train bridges?

Regards spawning, Shasta Dam tends to warm up the waters of the Sacramento River more than is good for salmon health. A little cooling would be desirable...and that's all the bridge could provide, even if not translucent, would be a microscopic bit of cooling. And for the salmon on their way under the bridge, it's just a few more miles until the salmon are confronted with a 500+ foot dam...and he's worried about the disturbance of a pedestrian bridge?

Asked if his creation will muscle past the Golden Gate and become the state's most recognizable bridge, Calatrava laughs. His bridge is just a chispa of the Golden Gate, he says in Spanish. A spark.

"The Golden Gate I think is the greatest bridge ever built.''

If the Golden Gate isn't the greatest, it's sure way, way up the list. The Sundial sure is unique, and hopefully it's what most people hoped it would be. Redding wants to be a destination, not a jumping-off point, and the bridge should help.

We'll know when Redding has really made it though when it spends egregious amounts on a monorail.

Comments

[Click]

I'd like to illustrate this dramatic story with my Sundial Bridge Virtual Walking Tour which brings you to the location of these dramatic events described in this wonderful blog. We all have to thank you Reddingers and California People and McConnell foundation for making this great masterpiece be built.
Click is San Francisco Click - virtual tour photo magazine.

[Josh Emington]

I am part of a team that competitively constructs bridges out of spaghetti, I was wondering if anyone knew were I could get copys of someof the scale sized dafting and modeling that was done in order to better reproduce the bridge. My biggest problem is that I need it to be scale sized for a 2 foot gap