Demolition may be in the cards for an historic wooden bridge that connects two large parcels of land on the city’s east end – the provincially owned former Guelph reformatory lands and developer-owned property planned to become part of the Guelph Innovation District.
A spokesperson for Infrastructure Ontario (IO), which manages provincial properties such as the former Guelph reformatory lands, confirmed the process needed in order to remove the former spur rail line bridge has begun.
“While a demolition is not imminent, we are doing preliminary assessments in the event it is required in the future,” wrote IO communications advisor Catherine Tardik in an email to GuelphToday. “IO will continue to prioritize health and safety around the bridge as we move through our due diligence requirements toward future disposition of the property.”
Trail users regularly use the trestle bridge, which was built in the early 1900s as a way to deliver materials to and from the reformatory, in order to cross the Eramosa River.
“Limited information is available on this structure. The trestle is an early, and now rare, type of railway bridge in that it is constructed entirely of timber,” states a 2013 University of Waterloo-prepared report on bridges within the Grand River Watershed.
The bridge is on the city’s municipal heritage registry, listed under the reformatory’s address of 785 York Rd.
