After eight months of work, the new Main Street Bridge is beginning to look like, well, a bridge.

On Wednesday morning, construction crews were busy pouring concrete in order to create a cap on the top of a pier on the east side of the bridge. The pier on the opposite side of the river is already capped.

“Everything is going really steady and at a quickened pace,” said MDOT Project Engineer Chris Jacobs, adding that they are still a couple weeks behind the original open-to-traffic date of Nov. 13.

“We might be a little later than that, but it will still be this year,” Jacobs said. “It might be more toward the end of November or beginning of December. That is where we are sitting.”

Workers have already built the abutment on the east side of the bridge and Jacobs said they would be preparing to build the abutment on the west side in the coming weeks.

One of the more visually appealing parts of the project, Jacobs said, is tentatively set to begin Aug. 1.

That is when workers will begin setting large beams that, when placed end-to-end, will span the entire river on top of the piers and abutments.

Jacobs said each beam is about 120-feet long, five-feet tall and four-feet wide.

It will take two cranes to set one beam. It will take three beams to connect one end of the bridge to the other, a distance of about 360 feet.

“There will be some big beams moving, so that will be really cool to watch,” he said.

Work to replace the 90-year-old bridge, which spans the St. Joseph River, began in October. The MDOT-led project is expected to cost the state approximately $10.6 million.