NEW ALBANY — Daniel Meyer’s Facebook post summed up the feelings of most commuters and business owners in regards to the reopening of the Sherman Minton Bridge.

“Thank God the bridge is finally open and everyone can finally get back to business as usual,” Meyer’s entry read, complete with a picture showing the view from the Sherman Minton.

For Meyer, owner of Metal Dynamics Limited in New Albany, business has been anything but typical since the bridge closed Sept. 9 due to a crack in the span.

From juggling employees’ schedules to reconfiguring logistics for transportation to vendors, Meyer described the past five months as “one big headache.”

He said restaurants seemed to get most of the attention as far as how their business was hampered by the bridge closure, but added that manufacturing and distribution operations also suffered greatly.

This was especially true for a business like Metal Dynamics, which primarily targets out-of-town customers.

Instead of tapping Louisville industries for steel and plastic, Meyer said he had to turn to the northwest and make bulk purchases from Chicago and Ohio.

“It cost us more in trucking and on all the deliveries because everybody has fuel surcharges on their products,” he said. “We had to pay more for it, plus they don’t like to deliver here unless they have a full truck load.”

But Meyer took pride in that Metal Dynamics survived not only a bridge closure, but also a down economy.



GETTING TO WORK ON TIME

While not an epic cost-saver, the lack of bumper-to-bumper traffic and detours for Mark Cassidy’s Monday morning commute provided a welcomed treat for his gas tank. While the bridge reopened Friday night, Monday was the first major traffic day for commuters, though the Presidents Day holiday kept some people off the roads.

Cassidy — who drives 21 miles from New Albany to his job as vice president of Central Farm Supply of KY in Louisville — said he averaged nearly 10 more miles per gallon Monday as compared to his fuel efficiency when the bridge was shut down. His work day commute had nearly doubled from 30 minutes to an hour one way, and Cassidy said it was surreal to drive across the Sherman Minton on Monday and get to work with no delay.

“It just felt like old times and it was so smooth,” Cassidy said. “I even drove slower to work so I could take it in.”

Thanks to the bridge closure, Greenville resident Alex Porter had plenty of opportunities to take in the scenery while driving to his job with Insight Media in the Louisville neighborhood of Lyndon.

Too much time if you ask Porter.

His once 30-minute commute one way turned into an hour drive, and on a bad day, that time usually doubled. Driving in near gridlock also didn’t help the situation, he said.

“It was really not so much the length of time as much as it was the stress of the drive,” Porter said.

Fretting about the drive started before he actually got on the road. Porter said he’ll never forget where he was when he found out the Sherman Minton had been shut down — tailgating with friends at a home University of Louisville football game.

“Luckily, I had a lot of beer on hand to deal with it,” Porter joked, though he said at the time the situation was far from funny.

It was a “massive relief” to learn the Sherman Minton would reopen in time for his Monday commute, Porter continued.

“I’ve never been so happy to cross a bridge before,” he said.



BUSINESS BOOST

Amanda Gibson was eager to re-open her shop, Dress and Dwell along Spring Street in New Albany, today after a busy weekend. She’d never experienced a day in business with a functioning Sherman Minton until Saturday, as her boutique opened a week after the bridge closed.

“We had a great and busy weekend,” she said.

But sales hardly slid with the Sherman Minton out of commission, Gibson added.

“I think it almost benefited our business because people wanted to stay local,” she said.

Yet Gibson didn’t shy away from stating she’d like to woo Louisville customers to New Albany now that the bridge is back open.

“I think it can only mean good things,” she said.

While most of New Albany lost its easiest means of accessing Louisville, it was hardly the only Southern Indiana community affected by the closure.

“Hopefully we’ll get back to normal traffic patterns,” said Jay Ellis, executive director of Jeffersonville Main Street Inc.

Commuters have avoided many downtown areas that his organization promotes in recent months.

“They’ve had five months to find alternate ways to spend their money and alternate ways to get around,” he said.

The task now becomes, on a limited budget, deciding how best to get the word out that the bridge is back open and there is much to offer in Southern Indiana.

The website Openbridgesindiana.com will be one means to that end, but Ellis said business leaders are also considering radio and newspaper spots. The newly open bridge even has a Facebook page now, which was put together by the Clark-Floyd County Tourism and Convention Bureau. As of Monday afternoon, 21 people like it.



TOUGH TIMES

Patrick Gregory, general manager of the Sheraton Louisville Riverside Hotel in Jeffersonville, said he saw a 25 to 30 percent drop in business during the time the bridge was closed.

Most of the hotel’s business was booked months in advance, so when it first closed there was very little in the way of a noticeable drop. However, by the time December, January and February rolled around, the impact was clear when compared to the prior year.

“The biggest concern most Indiana business had was consumers changing their buying habits,” Gregory said. “We chased [customers] away for six long months.”

With that in mind, it’s tough to say how many will come back, he said.

Heading into the fall, Gregory said he didn’t know what to expect when the bridge first closed because he had nothing to compare it to.

“They did beat worst-case scenario by a few weeks,” he said, alluding to original estimates for how long the span would be unavailable.

Louisville-based Hall Contracting earned a bonus of $1.3 million by completing repairs on the bridge ahead of a March 1 deadline, as the company was paid a base fee of $13.9 million for the work.

Allan Parnell, owner of Mr. “P” Express Inc., said during the bridge closure he saw the adverse impact on business in Kentuckiana. He added immediately after the bridge’s closure, the company took steps to maintain its routes and to make sure employees were getting to work, and to their destinations, on time.

Mr. “P” Express rented an apartment in Charlestown for several of their drivers, had trucks leaving at 6 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. and parked extra equipment on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River at UPS and General Electric.

“We did some things that we had to do to be as prudent as possible,” he said.

Parnell said the company employs about 20 city drivers who stay in the region but cross the bridges spanning the Ohio River frequently. He said the Sherman Minton’s closure cost the drivers about two hours each day.  With the costs in additional labor and fuel, Parnell estimated his company took a $275,000 hit during the bridge closure.

“The total impact of this is enormous,” he said.

Despite losing $275,000, the losses did not affect the company’s $5 million expansion completed in 2011. In addition, the company’s hit was tempered somewhat because the nonlocal drivers are paid by road miles, not hourly.



FOR BETTER OR WORSE

Could anything have been done differently to alleviate the traffic gridlock?

“Every time [transportation departments] tried to fix something, it got worse,” Meyer said in reference to the traffic delineators installed along certain routes, including Interstate 65 to usher exiting traffic into one lane ahead of a busy interchange.

“It may look good on a computer model, but in reality, it was horrible,” he said.

But Porter credited planners for making the best of a bad situation.

“It could have been worse. It was really frustrating, but I think all the officials involved did the best they could do,” he said.

Although the bridge has reopened, construction has not yet been completed, according to INDOT.

Subcontractors are finishing painting the new steel plates that have been installed and are removing work platforms attached to the bridge. During off-peak hours, one lane of eastbound I-64 will be temporarily closed on the lower deck of the bridge entering Louisville from New Albany, according to the Indiana Department of Transportation. The painting is expected to take 30 days, as weather permits.

Porter and Cassidy agreed their commuting experiences over the past five months has convinced them even more so of the need for additional bridges.

“It definitely proves that we need the [planned] east-end bridge, I think that would have taken so much pressure off of the Kennedy” Bridge, Cassidy said.

Porter added the situation humbled him in some regards.

“I’m never going to complain about a little bit of traffic again,” he said.

— Staff Writers David A. Mann and Braden Lammers contributed to this story