YOUNGSTOWN — Both bids for a project to rehabilitate a small bridge on South Avenue came in higher than the engineer’s estimate, but a city official expects the project to be awarded in a couple of weeks.

The estimate for the South Avenue Bridge project was $1,635,232.

The apparent low bid of $1,695,258 came from Marucci & Gaffney Excavating Co. of Youngstown when proposals were opened Friday. The only other bid was $2,109,000 from A.P. O’Horo of Liberty.

Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy director of public works, said the Marucci & Gaffney bid is well within 10% of the estimate so as long as everything with the proposal is in order, he will recommend the board of control award the bid at its May 8 meeting.

Regarding the bids being higher than the estimate, Shasho said, “It depends on the scope of the work and the bidders. You never know how it’s going to go.”

The city received a $1,065,900 state grant for the project.

Because of the need to relocate gas lines, the project won’t start until spring 2026 and take about four months to complete, Shasho said.

The small bridge goes over the Youngstown and Southeastern Railroad Co. train line just south of the larger Peace Officers Memorial Bridge that crosses the Mahoning River.

During construction, the section of South Avenue near the bridge will be closed to vehicular and pedestrian traffic with detours.

South Avenue is one of the city’s main corridors.

The vehicular detour will be three miles long and use Williamson Avenue, Market Street and Indianola Avenue. The pedestrian detour will be 0.7 miles and use Williamson Avenue, Gibson Street and Dorothy Avenue.

Access will be maintained to all adjacent properties, residences, businesses and intersecting side streets during the project. That includes the old South Side Park, which is not open to the public, and the South Side Veterans Memorial.

The work includes rehabilitating the bridge’s substructure, refacing the abutments, replacing the approach slabs that connect the roadway pavement to the bridge as well as the guardrails, sidewalks, bridge railings, curbs and pavement markings.

The bridge was constructed in 1957 and had major rehabilitation work done to it in 1990. It underwent further improvement work in 2015.

The bridge is listed as “poor” and “structurally deficient” by the Federal Highway Administration.

The FHA’s National Bridge Inventory report states the structure is “intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action” while the substructure has a loss of a section or deterioration.

The report added about the substructure: “Local failures are possible. Fatigue cracks in steel or shear cracks in concrete may be present.”

Also, the bridge railings and guardrail do “not meet current acceptable standards or a safety feature is required and none is provided,” according to the report.

About 9,100 vehicles use the bridge daily.

Of Ohio’s 29,960 bridges, about 5% are classified as structurally deficient.