St. Cloud Celebrates New East Side Crossing Bridge Ahead of November 3rd Opening

(KNSI) – St. Cloud celebrated the completion of a bridge tying together the city’s east side on Friday.

The first people to cross the new bridge-Jake Judd/KNSI News

The new connector on 4th Street Southeast over Highway 10 will officially open to traffic on November 3rd. The city decided to hold the ribbon-cutting early so they wouldn’t need to block cars from using the bridge after it’s finished.

Mayor Dave Kleis told KNSI News why this project was essential, “It’s an important piece of not only the vehicle traffic but even more so, I think, the pedestrian traffic because that’s where it really culminated. Where the start of that discussion was.”

Jake Judd/KNSI News

For years, pedestrians have dodged Highway 10 traffic to get from one part of town to the other. Kleis explained why they chose the name East Side Crossing for the new span. “This connects [the] east side to the other side of [the] east side. So it’s a great opportunity to celebrate the completion of a very long process of road construction and really a vision of transportation that has been in the works for a very long time.”

Work on the bridge took two years, and talk of building a crossing in the area has been ongoing for decades. The work made sense after the $43 million Highway 10/Highway 23 interchange project was announced, and it eventually became included.

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