By JOSEPH FITZGERALD

MILLVILLE — Highway Surveyor John F. Dean wasn’t exaggerating when he first sounded the alarm about the deteriorating Central Street Bridge back in 1995.

“The holes in the bridge were so big I could stick my head through them,” Dean says in describing the bridge’s condition all those years ago.
The bridge, which spans the Blackstone River and connects more than a third of town residents to schools and police and fire stations, needed replacement and fast. “If this bridge collapses, then the whole town would be divided in half,” Dean told a reporter at the time. “The bridge is our only way over the river, but we can’t pay for it ourselves. It would put this town into bankruptcy.”
So began a nearly 13-year odyssey to replace the bridge. As of yesterday, work on the new span, which began in earnest in 2003, is essentially completed, including new traffic lights and a new road design. B&E Construction Corp., the company that won the MHD contract to rebuild the bridges, has delivered a new, two-lane span across Central Street, which actually opened to two-way traffic about two years ago.
 “The bridge is done,” Dean said Friday. “Other than a few minor things like landscaping and re-seeding lawns on properties that abut the bridge, the project is finished.”
Described by some locals as Millville’s version of the “Big Dig,” the state Massachusetts Highway Department project would turn out to be a major headache for town residents. Now, five years after the actual work began, traffic flows smoothly over the new span and the detours and other inconveniences that had become a part of life for so many for so long are a memory.
“I think the people are happy with it. They’re happy that it’s finally done,” says Dean.
Dean, 74, was the driving force to get the bridge on the state’s list for rehabilitation more than 15 years ago and the guy who probably knows more about the state bridge project than just about anybody else in town.
The $6 million project actually goes back to 1993 when Dean first started pleading with the state to address the need to rehabilitate the nearly 70-year-old span.
Before the project, there was a cluster of five small spans on Central Street that carried motorists over railroad tracks, an antiquated mill sluice and the Blackstone River before reaching an island, and then crossed the remainder of the Blackstone River and the Blackstone Canal. The spans were known by the locals as the Railroad Bridge, the Spillway Bridge, the Iron Grate Bridge, the Cement Bridge and the Canal Bridge.
The project proved to be a major headache as soon as it began. Despite promising to keep the road open, the MHD closed Central Street altogether for some three months shortly after the project began, virtually splitting the town in half. Motorists were forced to detour at least 15 minutes into either Uxbridge or Blackstone to get to the other side.
The project has also been blamed for killing off neighboring mom-and-pop stores, a spike in school transportation costs and waylaying public safety vehicles.
“The first public hearing we had with the state was in 1998,” Dean says. “From 1998 to 2003 it was a very slow period because of the time it took for all the engineering and surveying. But it was the five-year period from 2003 to 2007 that really disrupted people’s lives.” On top of that, the project took a year longer to complete because of flaws in the design.
If anyone’s life was more disrupted by the project than others, it was Diane “Nonnie” Berthelette, owner of Onnie’s and Nonnie’s, a Central Street deli and variety store that had been closed for more than a year after being literally driven out of business by the project.
Berthelette and her sister and business partner, Anna “Onnie” Laplume, re-opened the store last year, but whether they stay open remains to be seen. When interviewed last year, Berthelette said the plan was to eventually sell the business, adding that the trials and tribulations over the past few years have taken too much of a toll both emotionally and financially.
Onnie’s and Nonnie’s wasn’t the only business that was adversely affected by the project The owners of a service station on Route 122, just north of the construction zone, also complained that their receipts had been cut in half by the project, and a liquor store went out of business entirely after the state condemned the property by eminent domain.
Dean, the town’s longtime highway surveyor, was there the entire time trying to make the best of a bad situation and acting as the middle man between the town and the state. “I got to know a lot of the state guys and the guys involved with the project, but to be honest I’m glad to see them gone,” he said.
Last December, the town asked its residents to vote on a name for the new bridge. It didn’t surprise anyone that the name that received the most votes was the John F. Dean Bridge.
“It’s been quite a journey, but thankfully it’s over,’ says Dean. “We’ve got a new bridge the town can be proud of.”