The Story Bridge has stood the test of time but as it approaches its 80th year in 2020, Brisbane City Council has initiated a 5-year, major restoration to continue to help residents get home quickly and safely.
With an aim to prolong the life of the 79-year-old bridge connecting Fortitude Valley to Kangaroo Point, BCC is planning to blast bare, paint and restore it.
Planning for the Story Bridge restoration began in February 2019, wherein the Council will discuss stripping old paint, cleaning it and giving it a 105,000-square-metre face lift.
Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said the restoration will require more than 33,000 litres of paint. The Story Bridge’s steely-grey colour will be retained but they will scrape and blast off the old paint and then completely repaint the bridge the same colour.
Cr Quirk said it was vital that the Council continued to maintain the Story Bridge to ensure it continued to stand as an iconic figure on Brisbane’s skyline.
“Works are expected to commence after Riverfire and will be carried out in stages over a five-year period to ensure the Story Bridge can continue to be used by traffic and feature in some of our city’s favourite festivities,” Cr Quirk said.
The Story Bridge will not close during the paint job but some lanes will be closed during some stages.
Story Bridge History
The bridge’s construction, which lasted for more than five years, began in May 1935. The design for the bridge was based heavily on that of the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Montreal, completed in 1930. John Bradfield, the appointed consulting engineer to the Bureau of Industry, recommended a steel cantilever bridge.
Back then, 400 people were employed to build the bridge at the height of the construction, making it one of Queensland’s main employment-generating projects during the 1930s Depression.
The bridge was named after John Douglas Story, a senior and influential public servant who had advocated strongly for the bridge’s construction.
