Footbridge connecting OCC buildings will span Newport’s Mariners’ Mile by mid-2019

Mariners’ Mile in Newport Beach is about two years from having a footbridge spanning its middle.

The enclosed public bridge, a project of the Coast Community College District, will connect the Orange Coast College School of Sailing & Seamanship at 1801 W. Coast Hwy. with a new headquarters for the college’s professional mariner program across the road and give pedestrians an additional crossing option.

The timing of the bridge, the expansion of OCC’s presence on West Coast Highway and the city’s revitalization plans for Mariners’ Mile is coincidental, said Brad Avery, director of the School of Sailing & Seamanship and a Newport Beach city councilman.

He said the new home for the career education program will put more mariners in Mariners’ Mile, historically a nerve center for boating services, and give the 1.3-mile stretch of highway a distinct gateway.

The bridge will break up a central half-mile stretch where there are no crosswalks on the busy thoroughfare. It will be about a third of a mile east of the traffic light at Tustin Avenue and about a quarter-mile west of the Balboa Bay Club.

The bridge and education building will be a single construction project that is expected to be finished by mid-2019.

The professional mariner program, which trains students to be crew members on commercial and private vessels, will be in a 10,000-square-foot building above a parking lot and flush with the bridge, making for an integrated maritime campus. The mariner program currently holds most of its classes at the sailing center, which also hosts community and youth programs.

The bridge will be 120 feet long and 12 feet wide. The bottom of its deck will be about 20 feet above the road, with a 10-foot clearance between the deck and the curved, weathered copper roof, according to a project description submitted to the California Coastal Commission. The span will be a column-less steel truss structure with woven steel mesh cladding.

Elevators and stairs will connect the bridge deck to the street level. The elevators will be available during regular business hours; the stairs 24 hours a day. The elevator shafts at both ends will be the highest points of the structure, reaching 35 feet.

The college started planning the bridge around 2001 and long had its eye on the land across the street from the sailing center, Avery said. But it couldn’t afford it at the time. Instead, the Orange County Sanitation District bought the land to build a pump station.

But the sanitation district needed only one of the six lots and agreed to sell the college district the others when it was finished with its project. The college district bought the land last year for $1.8 million, Avery said.

hillary.davis@latimes.com

Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD