Gordie Howe Bridge groundbreaking message: No stopping this bridge now

John Gallagher | Detroit Free Press

Michigan and Canadian officials will turn the first shovels of dirt Tuesday for the Gordie Howe International Bridge project and, perhaps more important, send a signal to any and all doubters.

That signal will proclaim that work on the Gordie Howe Bridge is underway and now is unstoppable, no matter what the Moroun family and its political allies say or do.

The ceremony Tuesday morning in Detroit's Delray district will feature Gov. Rick Snyder and civic leaders from both sides of the Detroit River. A similar groundbreaking event will take place in the fall in Windsor.

Over the next few months, crews will explore the Delray site to install bridge pilings and otherwise prepare the location for full-scale construction to begin later this year.

U.S. and Canadian advocates of the Gordie Howe project believe that once the public sees construction actually underway that any lingering doubts will evaporate about the bridge getting built.

Such a signal is necessary because the Moroun family, which has lost numerous efforts to block the Gordie Howe project in court and in the political arena, has made a last-ditch attempt to persuade President Donald Trump to intervene and cancel a U.S. presidential permit granted for the new bridge.

In a recent TV ad addressed to Trump, the Morouns claimed that letting Canada take the lead in building the bridge was un-American and would deprive American workers of jobs. The ad was widely condemned as a distortion.

More: Morouns appeal to Trump on 'Fox & Friends'

In an interview Thursday with the Free Press, Snyder expressed hope that Trump would not get involved in the dispute.

"At this point, I would hope we don’t have any issues," Snyder said. "He’s expressed support for this (bridge) when he had early discussions with (Canada Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau and he’s not done anything to indicate any change in that position. The only thing that would cause that perception to happen potentially is that the Morouns went and ran ads on 'Fox and Friends.' That’s just really disappointing to see that kind of thing go on."

And Snyder said that Trump's current dispute with Canada over renewal of the North American Free Trade Agreement should not get in the way, either.

"I would hope not," Snyder said. "If you think about it, those are issues about trade. But you need to have the mechanisms to have trade. And I don’t think the president’s ever expressed his desire to say we shouldn’t have trade, it's on what terms that trade takes place. And to enable that infrastructure you need to do that. ... I would hope he views infrastructure as critically important. And as a real estate guy, a builder, hopefully he understands that."

More: Trump trade war threatens strong Detroit-Windsor ties

The Morouns have opposed the Gordie Howe project for years because the new six-lane span is likely to draw traffic and toll revenue away from the family's 89-year-old, privately owned four-lane Ambassador Bridge.

The family claims that the original grant from the U.S. government to build the Ambassador Bridge in the 1920s gave the owners of the bridge — now the Moroun family — a monopoly over any bridge crossings in this region, a claim that courts have rejected.

Over the past several years, the family's legal challenges filed in courts in Michigan, Washington, D.C., and in Canada have all failed to stop the project. Last-minute lobbying of Trump could, in theory, result in a delay for the project if Trump pulls the presidential permit.

But the more construction gets going on the Gordie Howe Bridge — and the more some of the droves of construction workers who will be needed start to show up on the site — the less likely the Morouns' efforts at disruption will be a danger.

With each new milestone reached, such as last week's selection of the winning bidder to build and operate the bridge, the Gordie Howe project seems more real. Yet work actually has been underway for a very long time, on both sides of the border.

In Windsor, Canadians built the new Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway that will connect the new bridge to Canada's main expressways several miles inland. Almost 16 miles of electrical cables have been installed or relocated to make way for the bridge and its approaches.

About 1 million tons of gravel and fill dirt — equal to 34 shiploads — have been placed to grade at the site in Windsor for the bridge approaches. A new access road almost 2 miles long has been built there.

In Delray, the Michigan Department of Transportation has acquired nearly all of the properties it needs for the project and has already demolished more than 250 buildings to make way for the new port of entry, the toll and inspection plaza.

Gas, electric and sewer lines have been installed or relocated for the project, and an enormous amount of debris has been cleared out to prepare for construction.

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Last week, the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, the Canadian entity that is overseeing the project, announced that a team called Bridging North American has been selected to build and operate the Gordie Howe project.

Bridging North American brings together nine firms that will work with dozens of subcontractors — engineers, architects, traffic specialists, financial advisers. The two lead team members are Fluor Corp., based in Irving, Texas, a leading global engineering and construction firm, and ACS Infrastructure Canada Inc., a major construction firm based in Toronto.

Fluor and ACS previously teamed up to build the Herb Gray Parkway that will connect the Gordie Howe Bridge to Canada's expressways.

The Windsor bridge authority will spend the next couple of months negotiating a final contract with the Bridging North America team, with a "financial close" or contract signing expected in the fall.

From that point forward, construction of the new Detroit River crossing — a subject of debate and delays since the 1990s — will head toward its completion and opening to traffic in 2022 or 2023.

Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.