The Merchant of Venice

The metal-and-concrete camelback bridge designed by Ralph Modjeski has the truss superstructure atop four limestone piers that reach down to bedrock. A fairly standard design at the time, the bridge was built at a cost of about $4 million by the Illinois Terminal Railroad to carry freight cars and "interurban electric trains" right into downtown St. Louis. At the time of the bridge's opening, the city of Venice and the surrounding communities were booming with trade and industry — plate-glass companies, steel mills, meatpacking plants, lead works, railyards. The opening of the direct "McKinley lines" into St. Louis was greeted with much pomp. About 100,000 people attended the bridge's opening ceremonies on a cold November day. "There were many bonfires along the shore on either side of the river as the air was raw and cold," according to one newspaper account.

On the locomotives that trundled on the lines, the boxcars were loaded with cargo and the train cars carried the rich and the rest in style: "formal wicker seats and leather slipcovers, mahogany woodwork, even a brass, urn-shaped spittoon at the far end of the aisle," according to another published report.

Named after William Brown McKinley, the railroad magnate and head of Illinois Terminal (and not after the assassinated president), the bridge only carried trains on the two lines that ran inside the truss. In the 1930s, as the nation began its swift drive toward becoming an automobile-based society, the two outside lanes were added to accommodate cars and trucks.

And then the city of Venice made a fateful decision. In 1958, when railroad traffic had begun to diminish and the highways picked up the slack, Illinois Terminal wanted to sell the bridge and the city bought it, expecting that the toll income would prove profitable. The city used two bond series — $11.9 million and $11 million — to finance the purchase. The first series was paid off in 1988, but the city defaulted last fall on the second series and — after refinancing the debt at a higher interest rate for another 10 years — still owes $4.2 million of the original amount.

For the last 40 years, the toll bridge has been managed by what amounts to an independent city agency, with no funds flowing from the bridge into city coffers or vice versa. In short, the toll revenues ($2.2 million last year) go toward maintenance, repair and paying the 20-person bridge crew of tolltakers and repairmen, with not enough money to pay taxes and retire bonds. Contrary to 1958 expectations, the city makes no profit.

And now the delinquent-tax crisis, not to mention the prospect of the bridge's being sold at auction, has prompted a bi-state task force of transportation, political and business leaders to resolve the money and structural problems. At the task force's first meeting last week, no one proposed shutting down McKinley as an option. It was explicitly stated several times that the metropolitan area cannot afford to lose the McKinley Bridge, even though — at 13,000 vehicle crossings a day — it is the least traveled of the three automobile bridges connecting the Metro East to downtown St. Louis.

The most obvious solution is for one or both states to pay off the taxes and the remaining debt, take ownership of the bridge, repair it and operate it as a free bridge like all the rest.

But Mayor Echols, a diminutive and spry 62-year-old who has held his post for 20 years, isn't about to simply hand over ownership of the bridge. "This is a poor little black town, and the bridge is the only asset it has," says Echols. "I'm not going to be the mayor that gives the bridge away."

And so the mayor tries to link the fates of the 90-year-old bridge and the 200-year-old river town. The bridge crisis has garnered the attention of the region because the bridge is recognized by civic and business leaders as an essential part of the region's infrastructure and valuable to the area's economy. And it is generally agreed that the bridge needs — and must be provided — a multimillion-dollar shot in the arm.

No such consensus exists regarding the fate of the city of Venice.

And Echols cannot morph the political and business leaders' concern about the bridge into a concern about the city and its residents. Echols — who freely acknowledges that if the current decline in tax revenue continues, it may force the city to disincorporate in a few years — is hoping that the bridge may provide some hope for the city.

The way Echols sees it, if the civic and business leaders' solution is to pay off the debts, fix the bridge and take ownership away from Venice, there ought to be something in it for the city.