"The city decided to close and demolish the bridge as it was badly in need of major repairs."
Deja vu! Finding funding to repair the city's main (bascule) bridges has become something of an albatross hanging over the city as of late. See also: Lafayette Street Bridge, East Channel.
As it stands, either Liberty Bridge or Independence are facing an option of tearing it down and not replacing it. (Highly unlikely that it happens to both, not unless cost became an even bigger catastrophe.) Neither is necessarily a guarantee as yet; each is individually more at the "it's on the table as a real option" stage.
On a more positive note, the west channel of the formerly-linked Cass Avenue-Hotchkiss Road stretch is being looked at for re-purposing.
Plans are currently to construct a pedestrian bridge somewhere in the west channel to link Bay County's Riverwalk/Rail Trail (which includes a loop throughout the city and a trail that goes all the way out to Bay City State Recreation Area) with a recently-paved Bay-Zilwaukee trail that currently starts at the east end of Hotchkiss on the west side of the river.
https://www.traillink.com/trail/bay-county-riverwalkrailtrai...
These, in turn, are intended to be a part of a network of trails that links Bay, Saginaw, and Midland Counties.
(On the east side of the river, the west end of Cass Avenue now serves as a boat launch, which had a major overhaul done sometime in the past 10-15 years.)