The highly anticipated Rock Island Bridge project, located in the West Bottoms near the Hy-Vee Arena, is set to open the first weekend of April after years of delays.
Originally built in 1905, the bridge once served as a railroad and cattle crossing but went out of service in the 1970s. Despite its age and many years sitting unused, the structure was designed to last and is capable of carrying up to 3 million pounds of live animals at one time, according to Mike Zeller, CEO of development company Flying Truss.
When living in Prague, Munich and Taipei, Zeller saw how other cities reinvented older structures for modern use, but his inspiration for this particular bridge came much later, during a canoe trip back in the States.
Zeller rowed by the then-abandoned Rock Island Bridge, which hangs over the Kansas River, and joked that someone should put a restaurant on it called “Chicken on a Bridge.”
“For a long time, I didn't think I was the guy to do it,” Zeller told KCUR’s Up to Date. “And maybe it's a midlife crisis as I always wanted to do something fun and big.”
In 2018, Flying Truss secured a lease on the bridge and started construction five years later. Zeller said they are finally ready and will hold an open-house style event on the first weekend in April.
The renovated bridge connects the Lawrence Levee Trail on both sides of the state line, and links to the Greenline trail coming out of downtown Kansas City. Besides just a way to get to the other side, the building will be the first entertainment district 60 feet above the water.
“We started this thing not really knowing everything we needed to know, because we’re just making up something that has never existed before," Zeller said.
The bridge's lower level parts around the River House restaurant, which currently has two tenants: Andrew Miller, entrepreneur behind Arthur Bryant's Barbeque and Guy Snacks, and Bradley and Brittany Gilmore, the chef and owners of Lula’s Southern Cookhouse. That restaurant will open April 1.
One side of the bridge will remain open and freely accessible for riverside viewing and traffic flow for pedestrians, while the other provides a seating area for diners. On the upper level is 55 feet of bar space and a venue for private events.
“No one's really taken it to this level, brought utilities out, built more land with cantilevers, going double decker and doing land things on a bridge,” Zeller said. “It was hard for us, because we went first and we didn't have any money to begin with, but I think others are going to do it now, because [bridges] are just free land.”
After the bridge’s initial opening, Zeller hopes the space will host a steady lineup of events, including farmers markers, concerts, art fairs, craft beer festivals and even spontaneous fun like “a guy walking around singing opera.”
- Mike Zeller, CEO of Flying Truss LLC
