MnDOT: Work has Begun on St. Croix River Crossing

Work on the St. Croix Crossing has begun, MnDOT announced Monday, with crews building a construction staging area on the Minnesota banks of the St. Croix River.

The current work includes:

• Building dock walls to support equipment access for construction of bridge foundations
• Installing steel sheet panels to provide docking facilities for barges

Work scheduled for early May:

• Clearing property adjacent to Highway 95 in Oak Park Heights

Noticeably missing from MnDOT’s list of current work, and work scheduled for early May, is the road work on Highway 36.

Last week, C.S. McCrossan filed a federal lawsuit against the MnDOT alleging that the department and its commissioner illegally rejected its bid to construct the approach work for the St. Croix River Crossing.

The federal lawsuit alleges that MnDOT improperly applied federal rules with respect to hiring disadvantaged business enterprises (DBE).

• Click here to view the complaint (attached as a PDF to this post)

C.S. McCrossan is seeking an “immediate injunction to halt further work while the courts determine if the department acted properly in awarding the bid to a company with a lower technical score and price tag that was $6 million greater than the McCrossan bid.

That issue is expected to be addressed by a federal judge in the next couple of weeks.