The Merchant of Venice

The meeting made it clear that the solution would have to be a financial as well as a political one. And Echols was well aware of this. Right after the meeting, he seemed a bit cheerful and defiant.

In an office that was in Venice's heyday a gambling joint, Tom Fields sits at a long wooden table with a lamp, in a room large enough to serve as the bridge office both for administrators and for maintenance crews. As for how the bridge fund got into such a mess, Fields calmly explains it: The decline in bridge traffic over the years has essentially reduced its income, while at the same time repair and maintenance costs have increased. When the Interstate 270 bridge was built, "it sucked traffic right out of here, because it was a free bridge," Fields says. "Then the Poplar Street Bridge came in, and things started to get wobbly for everybody. It eventually closed the Chain of Rocks Bridge and did severe damage to the MLK Bridge."

Then came the flood of '93, when the McKinley had to be closed for 10 days. The "unintended consequence" of that closing was that 1,000-2,000 of the daily McKinley commuters never returned to use the bridge. Then the MetroLink station, with its park-and-ride lot in East St. Louis, opened, siphoning off some more commuters.

The bridge also took a financial hit in 1988, when the Illinois Terminal Railroad stopped paying the bridge $250,000 a year — money it had agreed to pay for 40 years as part of the bridge sale and lease agreement in 1958. Even though the trains stopped running on the McKinley Bridge in 1978, the railroad lived up to its obligation until 1998.

Meanwhile, the bridge wasn't getting any younger. "We started to see a severe deterioration in the condition of the bridge, and it kept getting worse and worse, and as the condition of the bridge worsened, you chased traffic away," Fields says. "And people were just voting with their steering wheel and steering away from us. That began the nosedive in traffic. And up to then we were current with our (debt) obligations — after that, we never caught up."

His figures show that last year, the bridge had 4.2 million crossings and about the same in '97, bringing in about $2.25 million in total revenue each year. This year, Fields estimates, the bridge will have about 3.9 million crossings and less than $1.9 million in revenue. Almost all of that money is needed to pay the 20-person crew of tolltakers and maintenance and administrative employees and to pay for a $40,000-a-month contract with the J. Alberici Co. for the heavier steel repair jobs.

As for retiring the bonds, when the bridge, as a city agency, defaulted last fall on the second $11 million bond series, Fields helped negotiate a 10-year deal at 6 percent interest — triple the 2 percent rate that was in place — and is hopeful that if the $12 million rehab is done, the bridge can retire its debts by 2008.

"We should be paying about $1 million a year, but we haven't been able to do any more than a maximum of $200,000," says Fields.

And what could the bondholders do if the bridge couldn't make the payments? "One thing they have the right to do is to take over operations," he says. "They could leverage the city out and take control and run it themselves. They don't want to do that. Their position is not all that strong. They could end up with a mile of concrete and steel. And I don't think there's $4 million of scrap metal out there."

Down the road from Fields' office, Echols sits at his desk inside City Hall. On the building across the street hang four beer signs — Bud, Old Style, Stag and Busch — advertising the beers no longer available in the building. On the other side of the street hangs a badly written sign advertising a demolition company's office and phone number. Across the block, an abandoned gas station and a shuttered drive-in theater can be seen. A small post office and the one lonely business — Bob's Red Fox grocery — seem to be the only places with any activity at the town's major intersection.

Echols cannot help but talk about the town as much as he talks about the bridge. His concern is the town, but everyone else's concern is the bridge. He understands that the real challenge will come when they find the money to solve the immediate crisis and will face the question of bridge ownership. Asked whether he would favor the city handing over the bridge to the state in exchange for paying off the bondholders and the tax debt, he talks about the city's "equity" interest. He makes the best case he can — that his city deserves something for owning and operating the bridge for 40 years, and that the bridge, even as it stands, has some value.

"The bridge is worth something," he says. "Now, they can talk all they want about how ragged it is and this and that and the other — hey, we spent $40,000 a month to keep it safe. If it costs $500 million-$750 million to put a new one up, don't tell me this one's not worth but 2 or 3 or 4 million bucks. I don't wanna hear that. I'm not going to listen to that. It won't be a decision made solely by Mayor Echols, but my recommendation to the voters will be what I just said."

Echols wants to preserve both the bridge and his city. Trouble is, the region's political leaders see the McKinley Bridge as absolutely essential to moving traffic and so will find the millions of dollars needed to prop it up. It will be a lot tougher to find the concern — or the money — to sustain Venice.