A nearly 100-year-old bridge that turns sideways to let boats pass is now at the center of a decision that will determine whether it survives at all.

Sarasota County held its third public workshop this month on the future of the Blackburn Point Bridge, a swing-span structure connecting Osprey across Little Sarasota Bay. The bridge, one of fewer than a dozen of its kind left in Florida, rotates rather than lifts to let tall boats through — a design residents say has become a defining feature of the community.

The bridge will turn 100 years old in December. It was originally built to last 50 years, meaning the county has already gotten double its intended service life, according to county transportation engineer James Stock.

County officials say the structure no longer meets current safety standards. Stock said the bridge has developed large holes that have been patched repeatedly, but the repairs themselves are now failing.

“It’s at a point where it’s just really not cost-effective or even safe to just leave the bridge as it is,” Stock said.

He noted the bridge was designed for a different era of traffic. In 1926, he said, only about a third of Florida residents owned a vehicle, and the typical car was a Model T — far lighter than vehicles on the road today. Florida’s legal load limit is now 80,000 pounds.

The bridge’s vertical and horizontal clearances are currently about half of what the U.S. Coast Guard recommends for waterway safety. County officials say that shortfall complicates their options: the Coast Guard has indicated it may not approve permits for a major rehabilitation unless the channel is widened, raising questions about whether repair work alone would even be allowed.

The county is weighing several paths forward, including restoring the existing bridge, building a new swing-span bridge, or constructing a drawbridge. Renovating the current bridge is estimated to cost $31 million — and even then, officials estimate it would have only about 10 years of service life remaining. Roughly half of the proposed replacement options would preserve the swing-span design.

No funding source has yet been identified for any option. The county says the project remains unfunded as it evaluates financing.

Preservation advocates, including Janet Steves of the Sarasota Alliance for Historical Preservation, urged the county to bring in a specialist in historic bridge preservation before making a final call. Steves pointed to a similar effort roughly 25 years ago that successfully steered the county toward restoring the bridge rather than demolishing it.

“We are really hoping that we can do what we did 25 years ago, because she’s an old lady and we successfully advocated for restoration versus demolition,” Steves said.

The Sarasota County Board of Commissioners is expected to decide the bridge’s fate at its November meeting.

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