NORWAY – Two donors have given the town up to $10,000 to purchase and install a footbridge over Pennesseewassee Stream. The bridge will link the Water Street municipal parking lot to the Gingerbread House on Main Street.

Town Manager David Holt said both donors wished to remain anonymous. One donor has given a check for $5,000 and the second donor will write a check for whatever else is necessary to complete the project, up to $5,000.

Residents agreed at the 2012 annual town meeting to spend $20,000 from the Community and Economic Development reserve for the bridge, but Holt said it turned out not to be enough money, so the project was held up.

“The project will cost more like $30,000,” he said.

Holt said the bridge will be preconstructed and assembled on site. It is possible a crane will be needed to set it. If engineers say it is safe, he said it is likely the bridge will use the same footings as a previous bridge near the new site of the Gingerbread House on upper Main Street.

“It needs to be precertified to hold a certain amount of weight and be structurally safe,” he said.

“It may seem frivolous to some but it would make the parking lot usable for others,” he said. The lot is near Butters Park, directly across Pennesseewassee Stream from the Gingerbread House and the Matolcsy Art Center.

The Water Street parking lot has been used for years by neighborhood residents.

The Board of Selectmen began last summer to wean residents from parking their boats and commercial vehicles in the small municipal parking lot on Water Street after a resident who lives off Sodom Road called to ask if he could park his boat there.

In 2003, voters passed an ordinance regulating municipal parking lots, including the Water Street lot. Under the ordinance, no one is allowed to park a vehicle in a public lot for more than the the posted time, which is generally 48 hours.

Interest in the lot heightened after talk of a pedestrian bridge connecting the lot and the Gingerbread House and Matolcsy Art Center and funding for the plan was approved.

This is not the first time a footbridge has been proposed downtown to cross the Pennesseewassee Stream. Under a proposed master plan in 2004, residents called for a footbridge to link the former Cummings dowel mill property to Main Street. That plan never came to fruition.

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