City Hall plans to formally dedicate the R. Kelly Bryant Pedestrian Bridge, which spans the Durham Freeway just east of Alston Avenue, with a ceremony at 6 p.m. Sept. 16.

The dedicating will be done at the south bridge entrance, with food, music and ceremonies. Plans are to give the first 100 arrivals a free hot dog.

The bridge, distinguished by a blue LED light that arcs over the freeway, has been in place since March but the approaches to it remain under construction.

Those approaches are on Gillette Street, on the north, and Lakeland Street, on the south near Burton Elementary School. The bridge reconnects two sections of a neighborhood divided since the freeway right of way was cut in the late 1960s.

The state put up a pedestrian bridge a few years later, after neighborhood pressure, but as the residential areas on either end declined it became a haven for criminal goings-on. The city closed it in 1995.

In 2003 the state DOT and the city agreed to replace the pedestrian bridge with money left over from the original construction of the Durham Freeway. The city put up about $200,000 with the DOT and Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization covering the rest.

Last year, the City Council voted to name the new bridge after R. Kelly Bryant Jr., a charter member of the Durham Open Space and Trail Commission and a recognized authority on Durham's black history.