Dramatic New Bridge Prompts Redding to Search Its Soul, Values

The footbridge rising on the banks of the Sacramento River is not the rustic span one might expect in this former timber town. It is a soaring configuration of steel and glass that has stirred up questions of civic identity, power and money.

The creation of one of the world’s most innovative bridge builders, the structure will cost nearly $20 million and look unlike anything else in a part of the state known more for high temperatures than high design.

“People roll their eyes,” said Irv Schiffman, a rural planning specialist and political science professor at Chico State, down the Sacramento Valley. “Twenty million for a bridge over the Sacramento River?”

When Zurich-based Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava unveiled his futuristic design, some residents suggested a covered bridge would be more appropriate, or perhaps even a mule-drawn barge.

Instead, they’re getting a dramatic harp-shaped span, 720 feet long and 23 feet wide, that will link portions of a park complex in the heart of town.

Pedestrians will walk across a glass-paneled deck suspended from 14 steel cables hanging at an angle from a 218-foot-tall pylon. Hollow and open-ended, the steel-skinned pylon will function as an enormous sundial.

Bridge supports will be onshore, rather than in the water, so as not to interfere with the river’s salmon runs. Parts are being fabricated at a Vancouver, Wash., steelyard and trucked in 40-foot sections down the interstate in the middle of weekend nights.

“There’s a whole cadre of people who think it’s too modernistic for Redding,” said Lee Salter, president of the private foundation that is covering most of the bridge’s cost. “The second group of people want to spend our money the way they want to. Whether it’s the Calatrava bridge or something else.”

The debate over the unconventional span reflects the region’s conflicted feelings about the local McConnell Foundation, which has assets of $350 million, an elegant headquarters that looks more Napa than Sacramento Valley and clout that begets resentment.

It also reflects a debate about Redding--what this city of 80,000 people is and what it should become.

Boosters say the bridge and adjacent park-museum complex under construction are symbols of a town that is growing out of its image as an Interstate 5 pit stop.

When people mutter that the footbridge’s bold design doesn’t fit Redding, Kent Dagg, the head of a regional building trade association, answers, “Thank God. It’s OK to be better.”

New Direction for Foundation

The bridge and complex of botanical gardens, trails and a natural history museum--which McConnell is also helping to fund--are the most ambitious projects ever undertaken by the foundation.

Established in the 1960s by a local couple, Carl R. and Leah F. McConnell, the philanthropy has more typically paid for firetrucks and scholarships in Shasta and Siskiyou counties. Every year the nonprofit buys a steer or two at the 4-H fair and donates the meat to women’s and homeless shelters.

But after some soul searching, the five foundation directors--all of whom knew the McConnells--announced this year that the organization would no longer pay for government basics.

It made its first international grant, for social and economic projects in Nepal villages, and with the bridge and museum complex has extended its aspirations well beyond municipal bread-and-butter items.

“It’s really about cultural revolution or renaissance for Redding,” said John Mancasola, McConnell’s executive vice president and the one who pursued Calatrava after seeing his designs in a book.

Added Salter, “This is an art piece, not just a bridge. . . . If you look around this town there isn’t any architecture.”

To some that smacks of elitism--McConnell imposing its vision on this former rail and lumber center that is searching for a new identity.

But Redding could arguably use somebody’s vision. Although it boasts a new city hall and is planning an $11-million sports complex, downtown is a textbook example of botched redevelopment.

Turn-of-the-century buildings were demolished, replaced by a homely, stale-smelling mall that one local describes as “the place businesses go to die.”

The old Carnegie Library was torn down along with the old courthouse. It took an Oregon public radio station to rescue a landmark Art Deco theater from oblivion. Retail fled across the river to new malls.

“I have lived in this community for almost 20 years and have watched in dismay while small thinkers . . . have turned Redding into a jumble of generic mini-malls and tract house developments,” complained a letter to the local newspaper, the Record Searchlight.

The writer praised the footbridge as “a magnificent landmark that will put Redding on the map in a way nothing else has.”

The span is among the first American projects for Calatrava, an architect and engineer who has designed museums, train stations and dozens of bridges in Europe.

When foundation vice president Mancasola first mentioned Calatrava in engineering circles, he was told to forget it: Such a renowned architect would never be interested in a project in out-of-the-way Redding.

Architect Reminded of Spanish Terrain

But Mancasola called Calatrava’s office, and the Spaniard was intrigued enough to visit. Once here, he was struck by the terrain, which reminded him of Spain. “When I first visited, I was touched by the landscape and the lighting,” Calatrava told the City Council, according to an account in the Searchlight.

The cost of the bridge, museum and park complex has climbed several times, and now totals $84 million. The McConnell Foundation is paying half. The Redding Redevelopment Agency is chipping in $7 million, roughly $15 million is coming from state park bond funds and the rest is from other sources.

There are locals who grumble that the McConnells must be turning over in their graves at the bridge and the foundation’s elegant 25,000-square-foot headquarters of river rock, recycled timbers and Italian stone.

The building, which includes a number of community meeting rooms, is surrounded by 200 acres of carefully tended olive trees, orchards, ponds and native grasses. The grounds are crisscrossed by four miles of walking trails open to the public. All told, the headquarters on the edge of town cost about $30 million.

Though Leah McConnell died in 1995, before the compound was completed, Salter said it was her money, not the foundation’s, that paid for it and her desire to raise Redding’s architectural standards that guided its construction.

The McConnells’ wealth came from Farmers Insurance stock bought by Carl’s parents in 1928. The couple owned cattle ranches, television stations and even an ice follies. When Farmers Insurance was bought out in the late 1980s, Leah, by then a widow, made a fortune. Much of it passed on to the foundation.

The McConnells were unpretentious. Carl wore a string tie and khakis. They lived in the same Redding ranch house, with the same furniture, for years. They drove American cars.

But the couple had another, more sophisticated side. They had a San Francisco apartment filled with Persian rugs. Leah, in her earlier years, spiced up her simple cotton dresses with diamond jewelry. And when a local clinic was bombed by antiabortionists, Salter said, Leah anonymously donated money for the clinic’s fire insurance.

What would she think of the Calatrava bridge?

“Even if she didn’t like it personally, she wouldn’t have complained that it wasn’t the right thing for Redding,” Salter responded. “She didn’t impose herself or her thoughts or values on others.”