Two 3-story high steel towers were lifted from a barge up and placed inside the southern pier of the South Park bridge on Friday, May 3. This marked the beginning of the installation of structural steel on the bridge according to King County.

These towers will support the entire southern draw span. In a press release they said, "think of the draw span as a huge teeter-totter with the over-river truss section on one end and the inside-pier counterweight on the other. The counterweight end of the draw span will be assembled piece by piece over the next couple months. The other end of the teeter-totter – the span over the river - is already assembled and waiting for its day later this summer to be lifted into place and connected to the counterweight."

As an alert to neighbors the county said that construction crews will continue to work through the night. Night work was originally scheduled to be short-term. However, in order to maintain the project schedule, the contractor has added a shift from 4 a.m. to 1 a.m., Monday through Saturday, which will continue for the foreseeable future. The South Park Bridge is still expected to open spring 2014.

They added some quick details about working at night – the contractor will minimize use of heavy equipment after 7 p.m. and will not continue past 10 p.m. Nighttime work will also be monitored to ensure our crews and activities stay within the required noise limits.