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Newberger Road will be widened and it's shoulders rebuilt. Crews will paint new stripes and pavement markers will be imbedded in the center line.
By BILL COATS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 15, 2002
LUTZ -- Newberger Road, which became notorious last year for its narrow curves and crumbling shoulders, is getting fixed starting next week.
A Palmetto company, Ajax Paving Industries, is scheduled to begin widening Newberger to 20 feet beginning Thursday. Two-lane Newberger averages 17 feet. The work is to be completed by Dec. 16, said Scott Cottrell, interim director of engineering in Hillsborough County's Public Works Department.
The project was rooted in a rezoning request last year for Wellington Manors, a 126-home development on Newberger. Hillsborough County commissioners praised developer Bob Gagne, but voted down his project because of Newberger's conditions.
Then Gagne invoked a little-known clause in county zoning law involving wetlands and was authorized to build virtually the same project without a rezoning. He broke ground last month.
Neighbors begged county commissioners in March to stop the project, while zoning officials warned them not to. Instead, commissioners ordered a study of Newberger, which led to this month's widening.
It tops a list of improvements adopted by the commission in March. Others are to follow the paving project, some quickly and some in the future.
"There are other things we intend to do," Cottrell said. "It's just not as far along."
Immediately after the widening, crews are to paint new stripes along the edges of the road and imbed raised pavement markers on the center lines.
Cottrell said engineers within weeks will start designing a new ditch and four-foot culvert at the corner of Newberger and Livingston Avenue, to replace an 18-inch culvert. That stretch of Livingston flooded during the El Nino rains of 1997 and 1998.
A second drainage project, soon to be designed, is aimed at the intersection of Newberger and Rhodes Wood Acres, which also flooded during El Nino.
As a "collector" road, Newberger is too busy to qualify for speed humps. But Michael McCarthy, the county's director of traffic services, said Newberger is third in line to be examined for a new catalog of "traffic calming" strategies, such as adding curves or narrow sections. The new calming program is still being unveiled in public hearings.
"It's in the top group that we'll do in the first year," McCarthy said.
The county ordered street lights for the Newberger-Livingston intersection, but that's a prolonged process with Tampa Electric Co. In the more distant future, the county expects to install a traffic light at the intersection, along with a left-turn lane onto Newberger for Livingston's northbound traffic. But that's unlikely to be approved until heavier traffic arrives on Newberger.
Bill Lyon, a Newberger resident, welcomed the news of improvements but worried that they're ill-timed, because the road is carrying so much construction traffic now.
Heavy trucks, too big to clear the tight curves, are crumbling the road's shoulders, Lyon said. He fears that will happen to the new shoulders too.
"That road will be all cracked and broken again," he said.
- Bill Coats can be reached at (813) 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com ">coats@sptimes.com .