The $95 million Commercial Street Bridge replacement project is already a headache for the countless Pittsburghers who commute on the Parkway East and will honk their way through detour routes until Aug. 3.

But it’s more than an inconvenience for Frick Park’s plants and animals, which have surrendered several acres of land to make the project possible. City Forester Lisa Ceoffe is responsible for looking out for their best interests as PennDOT prepares to install a new, 22-million-pound bridge.

“It’s a cool engineering project, but in the same breath, it’s very impactful to the Frick Park open spaces and forests,” Ceoffe said.

Ceoffe has worked as an urban forester in the Pittsburgh area since 2008, and has served as the city’s head forester since 2014.

The Forestry Division is a specialized division within the Department of Public Works responsible for the plant life in Pittsburgh’s parks, trails and spaces, as well as around 60,000 trees along the sidewalks.

The division also maintains a 24-hour emergency rapid response service for storms that bring down trees or leave them blocking roads.

The Commercial Street Bridge replacement, on the other hand, required years of meticulous planning.

Ceoffe said she began preliminary conversations with PennDOT and Public Works about how replacing the bridge could affect the surrounding forest as early as 2021. She negotiated the construction area’s total footprint down to 7.26 acres, but it still involved clearing 3.6 acres of forest.

Sprucing things up

Fortunately, the tree coverage will not be missing for long.

PennDOT is responsible for restoring the area and will use contractors to do so. The city has a series of restoration standards, like planting certain amounts of native vegetation, and watering and monitoring the area to make sure the plants survive and are sustainable, Ceoffe said.

PennDOT’s contractors will plant 9,250 trees and shrubs once the bridge is open, including over a dozen native species like white fir, elderberry and American holly. The former vegetation was struggling with vines and invasive species, Ceoffe said, so starting fresh may come with a silver lining.

There will be a variety of mature bare-root trees and burlap-wrapped saplings to help the reforested area blend in, Ceoffe said.

The Forestry Division is also taking the opportunity to create a trail through the reforested area that connects with Frick Park’s existing trail system.

“It’s going to be a higher-quality level of an environment when we’re done with it,” Ceoffe said.

PennDOT will begin its reforestation effort in earnest this fall. Ceoffe expects the process to take one year to complete, since some of the vegetation the agency is bringing in is too risky to plant in cold weather and will have to wait until the spring.

In the meantime, the City Forestry has repurposed some of the felled trees in the adjacent woods, so the animals that inhabited the area have some temporary shelter and will not have to relocate far.

“We’re hopeful that you’re going to see the wildlife still being on the site and foraging around throughout these spaces,” Ceoffe said.

Demo day

PennDOT is expected to detonate the old Commercial Street Bridge Wednesday utilizing hundreds of dynamite charges.

While a chain-link barrier should catch the large pieces of the bridge, some smaller pieces less than two inches in diameter could fly hundreds of feet, according to PennDOT’s District 11 senior assistant construction manager, John Myler.

Ceoffe thinks the blast itself will have a negligible impact on the surrounding woods beyond a potential coating of dust that would wash off during Pittsburgh’s next storm. PennDOT will also scout the project perimeter and remove any debris it finds near the trees.

“I don’t think there’s going to be too much of it,” Ceoffe said.

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