St. Joseph Preparing for County Road 75 Bridge Closure

WAITE PARK (WJON News) -- One of the bridges that connects St. Joseph to the rest of the St. Cloud metro area will be closed for about six months, which has St. Joseph leaders concerned.

The County Road 75 bridge over the Sauk River will be closing in a few weeks.

Mayor Rick Schultz says it will have a major impact on traffic in his community, especially next spring and early summer.

The good thing is we see a decrease in activity during the winter months. I'm really more worried about the spring when we open up in April, May and June. We're going to talk to businesses about this as well. We'll get our CVB involved in marketing what we can.

Stearns County Engineer Jodi Teich says starting the week of November 27th they will be opening the median along County Road 75 just west of the bridge to provide access to Modern Barnyard and Opie's Gold. Once that is done they will close the bridge.

Work will continue into the spring as the concrete overlay can't be placed on the bridge until after April 15th.

Teich says the bridge will likely be closed for six months.