Motorists who use the Halbert Heights neighborhood to dodgenoontime traffic on Brookway Boulevard are absolutely going to hateit, but their cut-through road is going to be closed for amonth.

Lincoln County Board of Supervisors President Doug Moak said thebridge on Halbert Heights Road will be closed started Mondaymorning for at least three to four weeks while contractor OddeeSmith and Sons, Inc., performs a major overhaul of thestructure.

The job was given the green light for October because thecontractor could respond quickly, Moak said. Otherwise the onlyother option would have been lowering the span’s weight limit byalmost half.

“As much traffic as the bridge has got, we felt we needed to goahead and get it done,” Moak said. “We’re going to basically justredo the bridge completely.”

Halbert Heights Road is a city lane, but the bridge is thecounty’s property. The city and county are splitting the cost ofthe $48,000 project.

Brookhaven Director of Public Works Steve Moreton said the spanwould be removed and set aside while its aging wooden pilings arereplaced with sturdy steel supports. The bridge itself is still ingood shape and will be reused once the pilings are installed, hesaid.

“It’s a 10,000-pound bridge, and if we weren’t able to do thisfairly quickly we’d have to lower it to 6,000 pounds,” Moretonsaid. “Once we get this done, it won’t have a weight limit.”

Moreton said Halbert Heights Road would be closed on the eastside near Home Hardware and on the west side adjacent to Avenue A.The Halbert Heights community will still be accessible by OliverDrive, Spring Drive and Virginia Avenue – the north/south streetsthat connect to Natchez Avenue and Zetus Road, and by its MageeDrive connection to Brookway Boulevard.

But for 30 days, the popular shortcut to bypass BrookwayBoulevard will be sorely missed.

“The only thing that’s going to happen is people on the westside of the bridge are going to have to go to Brookway or Natchezto get out,” Moreton said. “I know a lot of people like to useHalbert Heights to get around the boulevard. I do, too.”

The detour around Halbert Heights Road will also affectemergency services, which will have to take a longer route to getinto the Halbert Heights community in case of a fire or otheremergency. But with four other streets leading in and all of themrelatively close by, Brookhaven Fire Chief Tony Weeks isn’t worriedabout response time suffering.

“It will kind of delay us a little bit, but not much,” he said.”We’ll still get there fast – we’ve got central station right here(near Home Hardware). We’ve got warning lights, air horns andsirens. We’ll make enough racket to get drivers out of theway.”