A direct walk and bike path connecting Storrs Street, or even Main Street, to the trails on the east bank of the Merrimack River. A deck over the riverbank with room for picnics, benches and food trucks. A slatted, undulating wood architecture creating a “gateway to the mountains” that arches over the interstate. 

Engineers debuted designs and cost estimates for what a downtown bridge park could look like this week, the culmination of a feasibility study commissioned by the city in 2023. They included bridges starting either from the north part of Storrs Street or from further south, with or without a deck area overlooking the river. A bridge alone would carry a roughly estimated price tag of between $60 million and $75 million, and one that included an open deck space was priced out at around $90 million to $115 million.

But don’t expect it to happen anytime soon.

The city is not looking to spend tax dollars on this project in the near future, said Beth Fenstermacher, director of special projects and strategic initiatives. The designs and findings of this study could move forward with some sizeable outside money, or be picked up and revisited at a later time.

“The city is not going put this in the CIP tomorrow, and we’re not in a really good environment, to get huge, huge federal grants,” said Greg Bakos, an engineer behind the study. “But it still is something that could be saved for the future and reexamined.”

The idea for a footbridge connecting downtown and the river has been envisioned by the city since at least the 1990s. With the state’s interstate widening project on the horizon and Concord’s hopes of a revitalized Storrs Street, the city funded a study for architects and engineers to see if such a project would even be doable, what it might look like and what it could cost.

With input from the public, engineers narrowed their study to three potential concepts: a bridge, a bridge with a deck park, or a “Big Dig”-style submersion of the highway near Exit 14 to create open greenspace. The latter was a “nonstarter” for the state Department of Transportation, according to Bakos.

Each of the other two options would span across the river and connect to the Merrimack River Greenway Trail on the eastern bank of the river and touch downtown somewhere along Storrs Street. For both, two locations were eyed: one further North, curving in behind the Bank of America, and one more South, with its on-ramp touching down behind the New Hampshire Liquor Commission office building.

Residents at a presentation Tuesday offered pros and cons to each location: The northern spot is closer to the heart of downtown, and even carries a possiblity that it could be extended up to meet Main Street, as the current Storrs Street parking garage does. The southern spot is farther from the Loudon Road bridge and has a more gradual slope upwards, making it slightly more accessible.

A bridge at the northern location would be slightly shorter — 0.4 miles in total length and 400 feet of river crossing compared to 0.6 miles total and 430 feet across the river at the southern location — which could make it around 20% less expensive, Bakos said after the meeting.

Aesthetically, the study suggested vertical wooden slatting with clear barriers along the sides of the bridge, allowing for a design that was interesting to the eye but relatively simple in structure.

The deck, if pursued, would be a little less than a half square mile, or roughly the size of Eagle Square, and hang over the river rather than span over the interstate as originally discussed, Bakos said. Putting it over the river will make it quieter — highway noise is a broad concern for this project — and provide better views of the water and city.

If ever implemented, the pedestrian walkway would offer greenspace views over the river, walk, run and bike connectivity to a growing local trail network, a foot-traffic connection across the river that doesn’t involve crossing interstate on and off ramps or busy Loudon road, and could be a tourism draw.

In a totally separate project, the city plans to rehabilitate the Loudon Road bridge next year. That endeavor — funded more than half by federal dollars — adds a 14-foot wide path for foot and bike traffic.

The results of this study will be presented to City Council in a future meeting.

Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com. You can subscribe to her Concord newsletter The City Beat at concordmonitor.com.