NORWAY — The town might have a bridge spanning Pennesseewassee Stream from a municipal parking lot on Water Street to the Gingerbread House on Main Street ready as early as this summer.

Town Manager David Holt said he has placed an order for a prefabricated bridge and expects delivery and installation to be done this summer under the supervision of Rob Prue of Pine Tree Engineering.

The bridge is expected to improve access to the Matolcsy Art Center and the Gingerbread House, which was moved in June 2011 from its original site behind the Advertiser-Democrat Block at the corner of Pikes Hill and Main Street to its new home 950 feet up Main Street by Butters Park. A group of volunteers, the Friends of the Gingerbread House, banded together to save the landmark building which is now undergoing renovations and is expected to be used by the public in some capacity in the future.

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 wasn’t enough money so the project was held up.

In March, two anonymous donors gave the town as much of $10,000 to complete the purchase and installation of the footbridge.

Both donors asked to remain anonymous but one donor submitted a check for $5,000 and the second donor said he or she will will write a check for whatever else is necessary to complete the project, up to $5,000.

“(The project is) probably more complicated than what I originally anticipated but, through the generosity of the two donors, the project will get done, be safe and built to last for many years to come,” Holt said.

He said he had checked around to look for used prefabricated bridges but in the end decided a new bridge was the way to go.

“We needed a bridge that was certified by an engineer as safe and this prefab bridge comes that way,” Holt said of the new bridge. “Pine Tree Engineering will oversee the placing on the abutments and approaches.”

Holt said there were not many choices when he searched for a bridge.

“There were not a boatload of choices in the prefabs available in Maine,” said Holt, who called Dopp and Dopp Associates of N.H., the company that sold the town bridges in recent years. Holt said they had sold their pedestrian bridge division to another company and he was able to purchase one from that company.

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 wanted a footbridge across the stream to link the former Cummings dowel mill property to Main Street. That plan never came to fruition.

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