Thanks for this great post, Monte. I agree with your overall assessment that the new bridge will be a boon for downtown Stillwater. The new bridge will undoubtedly lead to more sprawl more quickly on both sides of the river, but that was going to happen with or without the bridge. I'm pretty firmly in the camp that the bridge probably isn't worth what we're paying for it, though there's no question in my mind that downtown stillwater without the traffic and the historic bridge turned over to bike/ped use will be a major boon.

An unanswered question for me: if removing the traffic and creating the ped space is what will make Stillwater great, a lot of those benefits could have been reaped by simply closing the historic bridge without building a new one. I know that's a doomsday scenario for folks who place a lot of faith in traffic projections.