Community Government Transportation

Fox Island Bridge neighbors worry they’re in replacement span’s path

Janice Cramer’s parents bought the waterfront house next to the Fox Island Bridge in the community once known as Warren during her junior year at Peninsula High School. That was in the late 1950s. After moving back to the home some 20 years ago, she and her husband, John, have been avid users of its beach on Hale Passage.

The bridge itself has mostly been a good neighbor. Cars blasting music while crossing can be annoying, but brush growing along their eastern property line helps dampen the noise. It’s a rare case in which invasive blackberry thickets are welcome, Cramer noted.

But changes surrounding the Fox Island Bridge could disrupt, or even end, the Cramers’ peaceful retirement at the beach. Though currently safe to cross, a 2013 study determined the span is “structurally deficient.” The bridge is approaching a point where it can’t be patched up any further. Pierce County is planning its replacement.

The picturesque mainland shore near the Fox Island Bridge. Photo by Ted Kenney

5 to 10 homes impacted

Plans are still at an early stage. But the county estimates some 5 to 10 homes would be “impacted” by a replacement bridge. This could range from disrupting waterfront views, to having property borrowed for use during construction, to demolition of homes.

Pierce County is adamant that it does not yet know which homes will be affected. For homeowners living around the bridge, the uncertainty multiplied earlier this year, when the county disclosed it is considering three routes across Hale Passage. A previous report by the county focused on a single route.

The county also disclosed this year that the project will need permanent stormwater treatment ponds at both ends of the new bridge and may include a roundabout on the mainland side.

The Fox Island Bridge as seen from the east, facing the mainland. Photo by Ted Kenney

The expanding list of features and options for the new bridge has already-anxious neighbors feeling whiplashed, said Brian Redman, whose home is across the road from the Cramers’. The county’s plans are “sketchy as hell” with “a lot of half-cocked ideas coming through,” he said.

Janice Cramer is more fatalistic. “Who knows what they’re going to do in the end? I don’t have a lot of faith in common sense.”

Four options

At public information sessions held online and at the Fox Island United Church this year, Pierce County introduced three large graphics. Each featured one of the proposed bridge routes superimposed on an aerial photo of surrounding land and water.

The east option for a 2,000-foot span.

In one of the images, a new 2,000-foot-long span runs just east of the existing one. In another, a new 2,000-foot bridge hugs the west side of the current span. The third route has a new 3,000-foot bridge starting on the mainland just west of today’s crossing but bulging out westward as it crosses Hale Passage.

The west option for a 2,000-foot span.

Pierce County estimates that construction under any of these scenarios may start in 2030 or 2031. It is a hugely expensive project, with estimated construction costs ranging from up to $205 million for a 2,000-foot bridge and $245 million for the 3,000-footer (all in 2024 dollars).

The 3,000 foot option.

But a fourth option adds still more uncertainty. The county says it may keep patching up the existing bridge and defer replacement until the span develops major structural problems that are difficult or cost-prohibitive to repair. That could take another 20 years. At the end of that period, the county says it would build one of the 2,000-foot bridges now under consideration.

The three graphics from the county’s public events also display houses and property lot lines. They show some parcels near the bridge crossed — and in some cases virtually blotted out — by the proposed new bridges and related features such as approaches, embankments, stormwater ponds, and a new roundabout.

‘Right over my house’

Pierce County says the images do not accurately reflect the impact of the three proposed bridge routes, and that some aspects, such as the roundabout, may not be built at all. But for homeowners who are following the bridge replacement process, it’s hard to look at the graphics and not come to conclusions.

“The path [on] the east side is right over my house,” said Don Huber, who lives on the mainland next to the bridge.

“You’ve got a picture of my house where the bridge is going, you’re saying this is not going to affect me?”

Huber is fighting back, in his own way. He has filed for a property tax reduction with the Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer based on what he claims is a reduction in his home’s value. The decline is caused by the possibility his house will be demolished, or otherwise negatively affected, by a new Fox Island Bridge, he argues.

The mainland peninsula as seen from the Fox Island Bridge. Photo by Ted Kenney

A longshot

With his appeal, Huber submitted a letter written to him by Michael Putnam, a local realtor.  “With good conscience and having to disclose about a possible pending eminent domain of the property, I do not believe your property is sellable at market value,” it reads.

“While I do not know the exact value someone would pay for the property and take on the risk of possibly losing the property in 3-5 years, I do know there would be a significant reduction in market value to the current value of the property.”

Huber allowed that his tax appeal is a longshot. A county appraiser has already responded, writing to him that it’s still unknown whether his home will be affected by the new bridge. Until a taking of the property is reasonably certain, “its effect should not be reflected in the valuation.” The realtors’ letters submitted by Huber lack “market evidence … to support the conclusions,” appraiser Sheri Mapes wrote.

Huber still expects to get a chance to argue his appeal before the Pierce County Board of Equalization, which could reduce the value assigned to his home, thereby lowering its taxes. But the county’s reliance on comparable sales to determine market value doesn’t fit his situation, he said. His property is worth less than before but “do I have to go out and sell the house at a huge discount to prove that’s the case?”

Long planned

The Fox Island Bridge’s end-of-life is not an issue that cropped up suddenly. It has concerned Pierce County and sparked analysis by officials and consultants for more than a decade.

A Pierce County timeline of the Fox Island Bridge project.

In 2013, the county commissioned a technical memorandum on bridge replacement from consultants HDR Engineering. That document, published in 2016, now comprises phase 1 of a detailed type, size and location study on a new bridge. The county expects HDR to complete the study by the end of this year.

Brian Redman has studied the 2016 technical memorandum, and for good reason. His home sits adjacent to the east side of Fox Island Bridge Road as it curves down to the bridge on the mainland side.

Before putting down roots there, Redman and his family searched properties for almost four years in their quest for a “legacy beach house for the family to use forever.” Feeling that they’d found the ideal spot, they bought the property in 1988.

Taken by surprise

Redman is proud of the house they built from scratch. A southwestern exposure enables family and guests to enjoy long, sunny afternoons, often on their deck that offers a 120-degree view out over the water. An easement provides access to 188 feet of no-bank beach and the legal right to use it.

A Pierce County photo of the Fox Island Bridge.

To Redman, the 2016 memo is notable for what it doesn’t include. It focuses on just one potential route, similar to the 3,000-foot-long route on the Fox Island Bridge’s west side that is under discussion today. Absent is any depiction or detailed discussion of the 2,000-foot options east and west of today’s bridge (though an appendix consisting of meeting notes briefly discusses a possible “shorter bridge alignment”).

It was jarring, then, when the county earlier this year introduced the possibility of the two additional routes — especially the eastern one, which the county’s graphic depicts running through Redman’s property. He pointed out that anyone considering buying a house near the Fox Island Bridge from the time the 2016 report was issued, up to this year, and using that report for guidance, would have gotten the mistaken idea they would be safe if they stayed out of the path shown in the report.

Stormwater

Redman also was surprised that all three images released this year show stormwater treatment basins at both ends of the bridge. No such ponds exist now, and none were in the depictions in the 2016 memo. In the new graphics, the pond on the mainland is shown sitting some distance up the hill from beach. It looks quite large — bigger than some nearby properties.

“Currently, on-site pavement drainage (stormwater) flows directly from the existing bridge and roadway into Hale Passage without water quality treatment, a common practice during the time the original bridge was built,” said Danielle Winski, communications specialist for Pierce County Planning & Public Works.

“Today’s design practices require treatment of runoff before discharge into the Puget Sound. As a result, all roadway runoff between the Warren Drive NW and Bella Bella Drive intersections must be collected and carried to a treatment location,” she said.

She noted that features shown in the county’s depictions do not necessarily accurately show the their impacts on neighboring properties. “More information about water treatment requirements” including the size, volume and location of the basins, will be determined in the “preliminary engineering phase of the project” following completion of the TS&L study later this year.

Redman said that at the open house held on Fox Island earlier this year, “I asked if it was possible to filtrate the runoff without the retention ponds. The answer [was], ‘yes, but it may be more costly!’”

“I responded that the people whose homes were being demolished to provide for retention ponds may not agree,” he said.

Homes near the Fox Island Bridge. Photo by Ted Kenney

Roundabout

A roundabout shown in the county’s three graphics, at the intersection of Fox Island Bridge Road and Warren Drive on the mainland side, is another possible new feature that draws some neighbors’ ire. The traffic circle appears to be large in these pictures. But the county says it does not yet know its impact, if any, on nearby properties — or whether the traffic circle will be built at all.

The proposed single-lane roundabout “is a concept that is being recommended in the TS&L at the Warren Drive NW intersection,”  Winski said. More information about its impact and about why it is thought to be necessary will be available when that study is complete.

To Janice Cramer, the traffic circle is “absolutely not” needed. “You’re not going to have that increase in the population” in the neighborhoods served by Warren Drive, or on Fox Island, that would justify it, she said.

“I think [county planners] have a tendency to overkill” in adding features to public works, and the addition of the traffic circle to the bridge plan is an example of that, she said.

“That sounds like a bunch of people sitting around their offices, trying to justify their jobs,” Cramer said.

However, some neighbors feel more favorably about a roundabout replacing today’s v-shaped intersection. Such a feature “might slow some of the people down coming to the bridge and make it a safer bridge,” said Tim Williams, who lives on Hale Passage, three houses west of the Fox Island Bridge on the mainland side.

Next steps

Following completion of the TS&L at the end of 2025, the county will start “on environmental permitting using the options finalized” in that document, Winski said.

“Once the environmental permitting is done, by the end of 2026, and a preferred alternative [out of the four bridge replacement scenarios] is selected, we can move forward with design and begin building our funding strategy,” she said.

When design is 30% complete, the county will finalize its right-of-way plans and be able to identify the properties that will be affected, Winski said.

“Property appraisals, acquisitions and relocations” will occur in 2028 and 2029, , according to the county’s presentation at the Fox Island open house earlier this year. “Construction, dependent on environmental permitting, funding and right-of-way,” would occur in 2030 and 2031.

Or – identifications of the properties that will be affected and their acquisition won’t happen at all, if the county chooses the “no build, defer replacement” option.

“If the deferred replacement of the bridge is selected, design decisions for the bridge will be deferred until that time,” Winski said.

Hoping for a deferral

In that case, Pierce County “will not move forward with the work necessary to create right-of-way plans, identifying affected property owners or compensating homeowners for property acquisition. Twenty years is a significant timeframe for making investments when technology, design standards, and environmental regulations may change.”

Homeowners near the bridge appear to agree that the 20-year deferral is the most likely outcome, given the huge fundraising job that will be needed in order to replace it.

“We’ve spent about 8 to 10 years now talking about the bridge,” Tim Williams said. “It’s hard to build something that you don’t have any money for.”

“Until Santa Claus shows up with a big bag of money,” nothing is going to happen, Redman predicted.