Flagler County government learned today that the $12.3 million pedestrian bridge over State Road 100, once derided for its glare and still gleaming with punchlines, was among the dozens of projects receiving a National Recognition Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) in the 2024 Engineering Excellence Awards competition.
The National Recognition Award is the lowest level of awards in the competition, ranking more in the line of honorable mentions. Over 40 projects got such mentions in last year’s awards, including four in Florida alone. There was one Grand Conceptor Award, which recognizes the year’s best overall engineering accomplishment. That went to Michael Maltzan Architecture for the $588 million Sixth Street Viaduct.
There were eight Grand Awards, the next-highest level of recognition, including the wave-like Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge over the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., and a massive port terminal in North Charleston, S.C.
Next in the awards category were the 16 Honor Awards, and finally came the 40-some recognitions. At the gala itself, the recognitions are acknowledged in a 15-minute “tribune” before the actual dinner, when the top awards are announced. The Grand Awards and Honors Awards recipients are listed on the council’s awards gala webpage. Recipients of the Recognition Award are not.
When the council hosts its 2024 gala a in Washington next May 15, the recognition will go to Kisinger Campo and Associates, the engineering company that designed the bridge for the county.
“Kisinger, Campo, and Associates did an excellent job designing a unique, one-of-a-kind structure that would enhance the State Road 100 corridor leading to Flagler Beach,” Flagler County Engineering Department Project Manager Amy Stroger was quoted as saying in a county release issued today. “The inspiration for the design was drawn from the A-frame shape of the Flagler Beach Pier.”
The release somewhat inaccurately, or at least incompletely, stated that Stoger oversaw the project. In fact, the project was overseen by Faith al-Khatib, the former county engineer who’d worked at the county nearly two decades–since April 2005–until her tenure unceremoniously ended late last year after she’d been on family leave and an internal investigation that stretched over the second half of the year termed her a “bully” who did not “play well with others.”
“This should be called Faith Bridge,” County Commissioner Dave Sullivan said at the bridge’s dedication in September, describing the bridge as al-Khatib’s “baby.” The county release ignored her contribution.
Kisinger Campo and Associates had not. In June 2020, immediately after the design firm had completed the design of what it referred to as the Trail Overpass Bridge, as it was then called, H. Simon Hagedoom wrote the county administrator at the time that the design was conducted in conjunction with the county engineering department. “In particular I had the pleasure of working with Faith Alkhatib, Flagler County Engineer, and assisting her were Amy Stroger and Richard Gordon. I wanted to let you know they have been one of the best clients that my Team and I have had the opportunity to work with in my 25-year career.”
The bridge crosses 100 between Colbert Lane and Old Kings Road. It added more than two miles of trails to serve as a connection for the trail system that crisscrosses Flagler County, but for now its south terminus lives up to the Bridge-to-Nowhere moniker, as the trail curves back to 100. Plans are for the trail eventually to extend into the lush greens of Bulow. Still, its new reach into Graham Swamp provides pedestrians and bicyclists a rather unique experience in close communion with nature, while the bridge itself is a safe way to cross a four-lane thoroughfare that has claimed its share of lives, cyclists and pedestrians among them, in the most dangerous state for pedestrians.
The Northeast Florida Regional Council in December 2023 announced that the Flagler Greenways Pedestrian Bridge was the recipient of its Annual Regional Awards for Excellence in the category of Transportation. Later that same month, it was one of seven “top tier” projects that took the Grand Award at the Florida equivalent of the Florida Engineering Excellence Awards, thus making it eligible for the the national ACEC competition.
As she has for innumerable other projects, especially for beach restoration, Al-Khatib secured state Department of Transportation money to pay for the bridge, limiting county expenses significantly.
“This is amazing,” Stroger said in the release. “Every project is important, and excellence is always our goal.” She was referring to the county’s engineering department. “We are humbled and honored by this recognition.”
“This is a wonderful project that adds so many benefits to our community,” said County Administrator Heidi Petito. “What an honor it is to be recognized nationally for this project. Everyone who worked on this project did a great job.”
