The Order Lighthouse Point Is Replacing Its Bridges In, And The Worst One Isn't First

In April 2021, a Florida Department of Transportation inspection gave the Alamanda Bridge on NE 24th Avenue a health index score in the 70s, comfortably rated adequate. A year later, a piece of concrete fell off the span and exposed a beam that had corroded from the inside. Nobody had seen it coming from the outside. That single event, more than any petition or commission meeting, is why Lighthouse Point residents still bring up bridges the way people in other towns bring up school zones or property taxes.

If you live here, you already know this is a city built on water. What you may not know is that the ten small spans connecting your street to the mainland aren't maintained on a first-come, first-served basis. They're ranked, scored, and argued over, and the ranking doesn't always match what a health index number would predict. Understanding that ranking tells you something no glossy neighborhood guide will: which bridge is actually next, and why the worst one on paper isn't it.

A City Built On Water, Held Together By Concrete From The 1950s

Lighthouse Point's canals were cut in the 1950s and 60s to create waterfront lots, and the bridges that cross them were built around the same time to match. That means the city's bridge inventory is aging on the same clock as the rest of its original infrastructure, all at once, with no staggered replacement schedule built in from the start. The NE 28th Street Bridge, the span currently furthest along in the replacement pipeline, was built in 1955. It's a three-span structure that serves as the sole point of access to a residential island of 25 lots along NE 31st Court. There is no alternate route. If that bridge closes, those 25 households lose their only way in or out by car.

That single fact explains why bridge decisions in Lighthouse Point generate more public turnout than most municipal agenda items. This isn't abstract capital planning. It's the difference between a five-minute drive home and a boat being the only way to get groceries.

The Scores Behind The Argument

When the city commissioned Kimley-Horn and Associates to inspect seven city-owned bridges in 2022, funded through the American Rescue Plan Act, part of the goal was to get a second opinion after the Alamanda incident. Health index scores came back uneven across the city's waterways. Alamanda, despite the corroded beam that had already been discovered, still rated in the 70s. Several others scored far lower.

Read those numbers next to each other and the obvious question is why Alamanda, the healthiest bridge on the list, was the one the city commission spent 2021 debating whether to demolish and replace with a culvert, while Heron and Cap Knight Bayou, both scoring worse, weren't part of that conversation at all. The answer has less to do with structural urgency and more to do with funding timing. Broward County had already approved $913,588 in transportation surtax money specifically earmarked for an Alamanda Bridge project. That money existed and had a deadline attached to it. The lower-scoring bridges didn't have a funding source lined up yet, so they weren't up for a vote.

That's the mechanism worth understanding if you live near one of these crossings. A bridge doesn't move up the list because it's falling apart. It moves up because a grant, a surtax allocation, or a state appropriation happens to land on it first.

The Culvert That Almost Happened

The Alamanda fight is worth knowing in detail because it's the reason the city now has a more deliberate process at all. In 2021, facing the cost of a full bridge replacement, the city considered swapping Alamanda for a culvert, essentially a large pipe the water would pass through instead of a span vehicles would drive over. City Engineer Cary Winningham laid out the tradeoff plainly at the time: a culvert would cost less and could likely be built without closing the island's only access road, while a full bridge replacement would require shutting that access down for 12 to 18 months.

Residents who live along the Alamanda waterway pushed back hard. Their concern wasn't just aesthetics. A culvert narrows the water passage, and on canals that run east to west, the prevailing wind pushes floating debris, grass clippings, palm fronds, the occasional dead fish, straight into that narrowed opening. Residents argued it would turn their canal into a collection point for trash that currently flows through and out.

The pushback worked. At the August 2021 commission meeting, Mayor Glenn Troast announced the city was dropping the culvert concept entirely.

"There never will be [a culvert], as long as I am mayor."

Instead of a culvert, the city issued a request for qualifications to hire a bridge engineering consultant, one whose job wasn't just to evaluate Alamanda but to assess the entire inventory. That request is the direct ancestor of the ranked master plan the city is now working from.

Where NE 28th Street Fits In The Line

The NE 28th Street Bridge is currently listed as priority number three on the city's Bridge Replacement Master Plan. Its design and permitting phase began in May 2026 and is fully funded, with the phase itself targeted for completion by December 2026, meaning the plans and permits, not the finished bridge, should be locked in by year's end. Actual construction would follow later.

The funding split is worth noting because it shows how these projects actually get paid for in a small city that can't cover major infrastructure alone: $530,000 from state appropriations, $187,500 from Broward County surtax funds, and $154,780 from the city's own budget. Three separate government layers, three separate approval processes, all needing to line up before a 70-year-old bridge gets torn out and rebuilt.

If you live on or near NE 31st Court, this is the project to watch over the next year. If you don't, it's still a useful preview of what's coming for the next bridge on the list, and the one after that.

What This Actually Means Day To Day

None of this is abstract if a bridge near you needs work. A few things worth knowing if you live in Lighthouse Point:

• Every city-owned bridge has its own number and its own waterway name (Alamanda, Egret, Coral Key, Pelican, Tern, Heron, Cap Knight Bayou, North Grand Canal, and the NE 28th Street span among them). If you want to know where your street's crossing sits in the replacement queue, that bridge number is what to ask the city about, not just the street name.
• Design and permitting phases can run a year or more before any construction crew shows up. The NE 28th Street project has been in that phase since May 2026, and residents on that block have had months of lead time before anything visibly changes.
• Full bridge replacements can mean 12 to 18 months of restricted access for the streets they serve, based on the timeline city engineering staff cited during the Alamanda debate. That's a long runway to plan around if it's your street.
• If you boat through any of the smaller canals, water flow and debris patterns can shift when a bridge undergoes repair work, particularly on the east-west canals where wind already pushes floating debris toward the narrowest points.

The bridges are easy to take for granted until one of them is the reason your commute changes or your dock access gets rerouted for a season. Lighthouse Point earned its nickname honestly. Ten small spans quietly decide a lot more about daily life here than most residents think about until a commission meeting brings it back up.

If you're weighing a move within Lighthouse Point, curious what a specific canal-front property's bridge access looks like, or just want to talk through what's happening in the neighborhood, reach out to Klaus Gonche. A quick conversation is easy to set up, and it costs you nothing to ask.