T-L File Photo The Bellaire Bridge still stands rusting away above the Ohio River between Benwood and Bellaire more than three decades after it closed.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Times Leader presents a look back at the past year this week with Eastern Ohio’s Top 10 stories of 2024, as selected by the newspaper’s editorial staff.

A FIVE-WEEK series published in March took a fresh look at the long-closed Bellaire Bridge, revealing that no one wants to take responsibility for the span and that there are no plans for its removal.

Initially constructed and owned by the Interstate Bridge Company, the Bellaire Bridge began operating as a toll bridge in September 1922. The privately owned structure was closed to all traffic in 1991 when the Bellaire side of the bridge was sold to the Ohio Department of Transportation to make way for construction of Ohio 7.

The bridge ramp on the Ohio side of the river was demolished to accommodate highway construction, which rendered the bridge unusable.

While the bridge stood unused for the past 33 years, it passed through the hands of several owners, none of whom acted to improve or demolish it.

Today the span is owned by KDC Investments, which was ordered in 2020 by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio to demolish it.

Our reporting on the topic included interviews with several people, including a former toll collector who worked on the bridge who now has a large collection of bridge-related artifacts and news clippings.

We also talked to everyday people on both sides of the Ohio River to get their opinions about what should be done with the span.

Our reporter talked to officials with the city of Benwood, which could seize the bridge but has no motivation to do so, and with state and federal transportation officials about what would happen if the bridge should collapse into the river below. We also talked with former state and federal lawmakers who were in office at the time the bridge was closed. They believe it will take federal intervention to have the span removed.

“There was also supposed to be money set aside to demolish the bridge,” Jack Cera, a former Ohio legislator, regarding the deal to sell the bridge ramp in Bellaire to ODOT. “What ever happened with that money, I have no idea. I think it was $700,000, but I forget the exact amount. The next thing we knew, the deal was made and the bridge is still there. I don’t know who the stockholders were, but evidently they walked away with a nice sum of money.”

Bob Ney, a former state and federal lawmaker, believes demolition of the bridge should be funded through a three-way split among the states of West Virginia and Ohio and the federal government.

“If we can give billions to foreign countries for wars, we could do federal money for the Bellaire Bridge,” he said. “I think the federal government has a legitimate ability to get into this.”

Cera agrees.

“What would be ideal would be if West Virginia, Ohio and the feds would all come together and share the cost to tear it down,” Cera continued. “The feds should pick up most or all of the cost because we’re talking about commerce on the river. … I don’t know that it’s on anybody’s priority list.”