Ask anyone in North River Shores how they get downtown without a car, and the answer usually involves the Old Roosevelt Bridge. It's not a landmark most people photograph. It's the low, older span running parallel to the big elevated Roosevelt Bridge, carrying Dixie Highway over the St. Lucie River, and it's the route the North River Shores Property Owners Association itself points to when describing the neighborhood: a short bike ride across that bridge lands you at the shops and restaurants of downtown Stuart. For a lot of residents north of Indian Street, that crossing is as routine as the driveway.
This year, that routine gets interrupted, and not in the way most people assume.
Two Bridges, One Named Roosevelt, Only One That Matters Here
The confusion starts with the name. The tall, three-lane-each-direction span that carries U.S. 1 traffic is the Roosevelt Bridge, finished in 1996. Below and beside it sits the older, lower structure that FDOT still calls the Old Roosevelt Bridge, officially bridge number 890003, carrying Dixie Highway and County Road 707. It opened in 1934 as a bascule drawbridge and has been patched, repaired, and pressed into emergency service ever since, most memorably in June 2020 when inspectors found ruptured steel tendons and the city declared a local state of emergency.
The new high-span bridge handles the bulk of regional car traffic. The old one handles something else: the slower, local movement of bikes, walkers, anglers, and boats passing underneath on their way toward the North Fork of the St. Lucie. That's the bridge NRSPOA references when it welcomes new residents. It's also the bridge FDOT presented a rehabilitation plan for to the Stuart City Commission, with project manager Lance Jones outlining an $11 million scope of work: replacing sidewalk plates, repairing welds and the fender system, upgrading electrical and mechanical controls, and applying a three-coat inorganic zinc paint job meant to extend the span's service life. As the project engineer put it during the presentation, the measures together are meant to keep the bridge functional for years to come.
Design work was expected to wrap in early 2026, with construction running from 2026 into 2028. That puts North Stuart squarely inside the work window right now.
The Closure That Isn't the One People Picture
Most residents hear "bridge closure" and picture a traffic jam. That's not quite what's coming.
FDOT described the work in two phases. Phase one is the shorter, more disruptive one for drivers: a full closure of two to three months to knock out the high-speed work, mainly painting and filling the grid deck, with traffic detoured onto U.S. 1. If you drive Dixie Highway daily, that phase is the one to plan around, since it takes the road out entirely for a stretch measured in months, not days.
Phase two is the one that actually matters more for the bike-to-downtown routine NRSPOA advertises. Estimated at about two months, it covers sidewalk replacement and pier work, the exact elements a walker or cyclist uses to cross. FDOT's own materials note that fishing access from the bridge may be intermittently interrupted during this stretch as well, which matters on a span that's long doubled as a casual fishing spot over the river. So the closure that hits drivers hardest and the closure that hits cyclists, walkers, and anglers hardest aren't the same weeks. Plan around whichever one actually touches how you use the bridge, not the generic idea of "the bridge is closed."
One detail worth holding onto: FDOT said boat traffic will not be blocked during either phase. Whatever else changes, the water stays open.
The Bridge Already Has a Yearly Rhythm
This isn't the first time Dixie Highway has gone dark over this stretch of river, and that history is useful context for sizing up what's coming.
Every January, the Old Roosevelt Bridge closes for the Stuart Boat Show, the largest boat show on the Treasure Coast. In January 2026, that meant the roadway from SW Albany Avenue to NW Poinsettia Street shut down starting at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday and stayed closed until the following Monday, a closure measured in days that residents have come to expect as part of the calendar. The FDOT rehab closures are a different animal entirely, stretching into months rather than a single week, but the existence of a known annual closure means North Stuart residents already have a mental model for detouring around this bridge. The rehab just extends that detour season considerably longer than usual.
It's also not the bridge's first brush with serious repair work. When cracks and corroded steel tendons forced the 2020 closure, the disruption was severe enough that tolls were waived on Florida's Turnpike between Stuart and Port St. Lucie to absorb the detour traffic, and Congressman Brian Mast noted at the time that more than 120,000 cars a day relied on the crossing in some form. That crisis closed both the new high-span bridge and the old one simultaneously and lasted months on the southbound span alone. The current rehabilitation is planned, scheduled, and phased rather than an emergency response, which is the difference between a road project and a crisis. But it's proof this particular river crossing has a track record of taking real chunks of time to fix properly.
What FDOT Told the Commission About Managing the Disruption
During the September presentation to the Stuart City Commission, FDOT representatives said the contractor would coordinate major events and limit closures during peak event hours, and that police and fire-rescue agencies would be looped in ahead of scheduled closures. Commissioners specifically pressed FDOT on bicycle accommodations and closure timing, a sign that the sidewalk and pier work in phase two was already on local officials' radar as the piece that affects daily foot and bike traffic rather than just cars.
FDOT also held public outreach around the plan, with a virtual meeting and an in-person session at the Flagler in Stuart, along with a project website and QR code for residents wanting closure specifics as they firm up. For anyone in North River Shores, Cocoanut Park, or North River Forest who uses that bridge regularly, that project page is the most reliable place to track actual phase start dates as FDOT finalizes them, rather than guessing based on the original 2026 to 2028 window.
What This Actually Changes Day to Day
For drivers on Dixie Highway, the practical takeaway is the phase one closure: a two to three month stretch where the road is simply gone and U.S. 1 becomes the detour. That's disruptive but at least predictable, the same kind of full shutdown residents have weathered before during the annual Boat Show closures, just longer.
For anyone using the bridge the way NRSPOA describes it, as the short bike connection to downtown, or as a place to drop a fishing line over the river, the phase two window is the one to watch. Sidewalk plates coming up and pier work underway means that specific use of the bridge goes away for roughly two months, independent of whether the road itself is passable to cars at that point.
Neither phase touches the water. Boats keep moving under the span throughout construction, so anyone launching from the private ramp at Nosaw Park and heading out toward the St. Lucie River shouldn't see the rehab work change that part of the routine at all.
The rehab is ultimately about durability, not disruption for its own sake. A bridge built in 1934 and patched through a near-collapse in 2020 is getting welds repaired, controls upgraded, and a protective coating applied so it keeps functioning as the connector it's been for the neighborhood since North River Shores was first platted in the 1950s. The construction window just means the next two years are the ones to actually check the project page before assuming the old routine still holds.
If you're weighing what a stretch of North Stuart living actually feels like week to week, from the bridge you bike across to the water you launch from, My Florida Insider can walk you through the parts of this corridor that don't show up on a map.
