The North Causeway Bridge Is Open. The Wait Just Moved.

For as long as anyone on North Hutchinson Island can remember, getting to the mainland meant building a buffer into your drive. Not because of traffic. Because of the drawbridge. The D.H. "Banty" Saunders Bridge lifted for boat traffic on its own schedule, and your schedule bent around it.

That bridge is gone now, or at least gone from the driving lane. On May 15, 2026, the Florida Department of Transportation opened the new S.R. A1A North Causeway Bridge, a fixed span connecting the island to U.S. 1 in mainland Fort Pierce, and the headline everywhere was some version of "no more waiting." The old span will never lift for a boat again, and for the people who've spent years timing beach runs around drawbridge openings, that's real relief.

But if you actually drive the corridor today, nearly three months after opening day, you'll notice something the headlines skipped: this project isn't finished. The wait didn't disappear. It moved from the middle of your drive to the edges of it, into the sidewalks, bike lanes, and shoreline access that are still fenced off. Understanding what's actually done, and what's still eighteen months out, matters more than the ribbon-cutting did.

What Changed on May 15

The new bridge is a 1.2-mile fixed span with 85 feet of vertical clearance, tall enough that large boats pass underneath without stopping traffic above, and one 12-foot lane running in each direction. Treasure Coast Construction Engineer Chad Rucks called it more than a decade in the making, noting that initial design work started back in 2015, with construction underway since 2023. Sources differ slightly on the final price tag: FDOT put it at $115.9 million in one release, while a separate report cited a project cost north of $117 million. Either way, it's the kind of number that only means something once you've sat through the delay it was built to fix.

Longtime residents describe that delay in minutes, not abstractions. Erika Strowbridge, who has lived in Fort Pierce her whole life, told a local news crew that getting to the beach used to mean waiting out roughly fifteen minutes of drawbridge time, round trip. Multiply that by every grocery run, every dinner reservation on the mainland, every school pickup, and you start to see why this bridge shows up in conversation on the island more than most infrastructure projects do.

Local restaurants noticed the old friction too. Thomas Loaicono, executive chef at Skipper Cove, told a reporter covering the opening that the new connection should increase business simply by removing the guesswork around drive times. A predictable commute changes how often people make the trip for a casual dinner instead of just the special occasions.

What's Still Fenced Off

Here's the part that gets left out of the "bridge is open" story: several pieces of the project weren't ready on opening day and still aren't.

FDOT has been direct about this. At the opening, officials confirmed that some pedestrian and bicycle features, along with the observation deck, would remain temporarily closed while construction continues. If you drive across, the wait is gone. If you were hoping to walk or bike the new span, or spend an evening on the observation deck watching boats pass under the higher clearance, you're on the same timeline as everyone else, which runs through late 2027.

That's also when the new connections to the East Coast Greenway are supposed to finish tying together, along with additional footpaths and access roads near the Florida East Coast Railroad and Old Dixie Highway. For an island where casual boating and beach walking are part of daily life rather than a weekend event, that's the piece worth watching, not the part that already opened.

The Old Bridge Isn't Finished Either

The Saunders drawbridge didn't disappear the moment the new span opened. It's still standing, closed to foot and car traffic, waiting for its own final chapter. FDOT plans to begin demolition in late 2027, and the debris won't just go to a landfill. According to county records cited by Vero News, the old bridge's material will be relocated to an artificial coral reef roughly four miles northeast of the Fort Pierce Inlet.

Not everyone is thrilled about the changeover regardless. Longtime fishing families have their own attachment to the old span, and reactions to its eventual removal have been mixed. A local resident identified in news coverage only as Stuckey put the environmental upside plainly, noting that the retired bridge will keep serving a purpose by creating structure that benefits fish and other sea life long after its driving days are done. For anyone who fishes or dives off the island, that's worth marking on a calendar for 2028 and beyond, once the new reef has had time to settle.

What the In-Between Looks Like Right Now

None of this changes the actual reasons people love the loop that defines life here. Sharky's has long been billed by regional tourism guides as the island's only restaurant, known for its subs and pizza. Pepper Park Beach is still the easy choice for an afternoon with a kayak launch into the lagoon. Fort Pierce Inlet State Park still delivers 340 acres split between ocean beach and calmer inlet water, with hiking trails through Jack Island Preserve about a mile north. Wildcat Cove is still where you take the dog for a wetland walk when the beach feels too crowded.

What's different is the rhythm of getting between those spots and the mainland. The drive is faster and more predictable. The walk or bike ride is not yet complete. If your routine depends on the car, you're already living in the finished version of this project. If it depends on the sidewalk or the bike lane, you're living in the middle of it, and that middle runs for roughly another year and a half.

That gap matters for how you plan the next few seasons on the island. A dinner trip to the mainland on a Friday night is now a known quantity instead of a gamble. A sunset walk out to the new observation deck is not on the table yet. Knowing which is which saves you the small frustration of showing up somewhere that isn't open.

The Timeline Worth Remembering

The number that matters isn't May 15, 2026. It's late 2027. That's when FDOT expects the full project, bike lanes, sidewalks, observation deck, and the demolition of the old Saunders span, to actually wrap. Everything between now and then is a partially finished corridor that happens to already carry cars faster than it did for the last several decades.

If you've lived here through the construction years, you already know how to read a project timeline with some skepticism. This one has been honest about its own gaps so far, which is more than most infrastructure stories manage. Worth watching as the next milestones land.

North Hutchinson Island doesn't change often, and when it does, the people who've called it home for years tend to notice the details that outside coverage misses. Vero Premier Properties keeps a close eye on changes like this one because they shape daily life here as much as any listing does. If a friend or neighbor has been asking what it's really like to live on the island these days, or you're curious how a project like this tends to ripple through a place over time, we're always glad to talk it through.