The future of Seaside’s San Pablo pedestrian bridge is clouded by climbing costs.

The short story is, the Seaside City Council has already committed to spending more than $500,000 for the design of a bridge to replace the pedestrian bridge over San Pablo Avenue, connecting Lincoln-Cunningham Park and Manzanita-Stuart Park. The existing bridge has been closed since early 2023.

But whether or not that design ever gets used – or the bridge reopened – is an open question, and may come down to how much more money the council is willing to spend on it.

Built in 1960, the San Pablo Pedestrian Bridge is one of a kind in the city, a whimsical piece of park infrastructure. In 2021, Alex Miller, now a city councilmember and then the chair of the Neighborhood Improvement Commission, proposed the idea of painting a mural on the bridge, which was looking the worse for wear. When that project moved to the front of the line, city officials had the bridge inspected in December 2022. (Because the pedestrian bridge doesn’t carry vehicles, it’s not annually inspected by Caltrans.) The engineers found that wooden beams supporting the bridge were at risk of “imminent failure,” and the bridge was subsequently closed.

When Seaside City Council was first presented with the issue in April 2023, the city’s contract engineers laid out three options: Repair the bridge for an estimated $340,000; replace just its superstructure for $565,000 (including $115,000 for design); or replace the whole bridge and its abutments and surrounding walking ways to make them ADA compliant at a cost of $2.45 million (including $500,000 for design). Mayor Ian Oglesby said to look at the latter two options when the council proceeded to make its budget.

In December 2023, Seaside City Council approved a contract not to exceed $556,000 with Whitson Engineers for option 3, to design the bridge demolition and replacement.

On Sept. 4, Public Works Director Thomas Korman, who started the job in November 2024, updated the council on the bridge’s progress, and the news isn’t good. The city was not awarded a $2.7 million state grant it was seeking for the project, and $700,000 of federal grant money it thought could be used toward the bridge cannot be. Meanwhile, the $3 million the city had requested through U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, has been whittled down to $850,000, and remains pending.

The bridge, meanwhile, is still standing, but is only good for looking at.