Why you're going to love being inspected by U.S. customs

If you have the misfortune to be invited into the spanking-new U.S. Customs facility at the International Bridge, be sure to take a close look at the big inspection desk there.

The 75-foot-long main desk is built with wood debris from the Independence, the first steamship ever to sail on Lake Superior.

The Independence sank on November 22, 1853 after her boiler blew up about one mile north of the Soo.

Four lives were lost and one crewman is reported to have survived after being blown two or three hundred feet in the air.

The one-of-a-kind curved desk was built for US$55,000 by Chicago sculptor Terrence Karpowicz, commissioned under the U.S. Government Services Administration's Art in Architecture program.

The 65 people who work for U.S. Customs at the bridge moved into the new building last week, and it's an unusual structure, for sure.

View architectural renderings

The US$12.6 million Port of Entry structure is three storeys high, rare for a border crossing station.

Its sloping roof is covered with vegetation, matching the nearby hill adjoining the Lake Superior State University campus.

The new building is nine times the size of what was there before.

It's designed by Ross Barney + Jankowski Inc., the same Chicago architecture firm responsible for the new federal building in Oklahoma City.

It even has its own shooting range inside, to make sure that local Homeland Security agents shoot arrow-straight should you be foolish enough to mess with them.

Today's edition of the Soo Evening News reports that work started last week on three new inspection booths located in what will be the central part of U.S. Customs plaza.

A temporary building there that's been used by agents for the past two years will be removed to clear the way for traffic lanes.

There will be a separate inspection lane for buses.

As the current construction proceeds, the newspaper reports, vehicles are being diverted through a truck lane "located on a slight dip in the roadway under a tube-like extension attached to the main building."

To read the Evening News update, please click here.