Des Moines’ newest downtown bridge and roadway to the East Village should be open by Thanksgiving, a city official said last week.

Given that there have been two major floods in the past three years, this phase of the Southeast Connector project completion is “a little bit later than scheduled,” said Deputy City Engineer Pam Cooksey.

The road and bridge construction, which cost just under $23 million, extends Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway east from Southwest Second Street to Southeast Ninth Street. MLK will be further extended to Southeast 14th Street and eventually to U.S. Highway 65 in future phases.

As an architectural flourish, structural steel “pedestrian entrance plazas” designed by RDG Planning & Design have been built at each end of the bridge, using additional funds authorized by the City Council.

Cooksey said that crews also plan to have a portion of the Southeast Sixth Street renovation completed by Thanksgiving. Because of the extreme wet weather this year “we ended up splitting that project into two pieces,” she said. The portion of Southeast Sixth from the Southeast Connector south to Maury Street will be completed this year, and the section north of the Southeast Connector will be completed next year, she said. The construction cost for that entire project is approximately $1.75 million.