The city is taking comments on the long-planned four-lane expressway, but some are alarmed at what it will do to their quiet life in New Tampa.
By MICHAEL VAN SICKLER
Published May 16, 2003
TAMPA PALMS - Jim Brinkley moved into his Tampa Palms home two months ago with the understanding that the four-lane expressway wouldn't be built for years.
He joined about 100 residents Tuesday night at Freedom High School who wondered what the so-called east-west road would look like if it stretched from New Tampa Boulevard and Interstate 275 - and within yards of his back patio.
"I like to sit out there and enjoy how quiet it is," Brinkley said. "If they build this, it's going to be too loud. We were told not to worry about the road because it was at least 15 years away."
Brinkley and others in New Tampa are surprised by how fast this road is nearing construction. And while growing numbers appear to be accepting its inevitability as an antedote to gridlock, some still lament the disruption it will bring.
For the next 10 days, city officials will collect comments from those affected by the road, including their preferences for a design. These comments will find their way into a cost analysis report. By the end of the year, the City Council could vote to spend $56-million to $120-million for the road.
Instead of 15 years, the road could begin construction by 2006.
"We have to look at future needs," said Mahdi Mansour, the city's supervisor of transportation planning. "We have major congestion. This road will be utilized by everyone and will help relieve the traffic."
Mansour and URS, the consultant hired by the city to study the road, displayed eight designs Tuesday night. The most expensive version would include a 10,000-foot-long section elevated above the swampland between New Tampa and I-275. But that would cost about $126-million, Mansour said, nearly double of what the road would cost if none of it were elevated.
Groups such as the Sierra Club and the Hillsborough River Greenways Task Force favor the bridge design because it wouldn't disrupt the wildlife, which they say includes deer, bobcat, otters, armadillos, possum, sandhill cranes and wood storks.
"You can't pave over paradise," said Gina Miller, the project coordinator for the Greenways task force. "But we know we will have to meet the city halfway on this. We can come to a compromise."
It's not complaints from environmental groups that pose the greatest threat for the road, which officials say will see about 22,000 vehicles a day.
That's because in more than 20 years of campaigns to build the road, homeowners, not environmentalists, have been the ones to defeat it.
In the late 1980s, Lutz residents rose up to strike down the proposed road that would have veered into their turf. The highway's status was bumpy throughout the 1990s thanks to West Meadowns residents, who said the road would bisect their community with an impassable freeway.
But last year the road appeared to secure broad support when a Citizens Advisory Committee recommended the Corridor B route despite objections in West Meadows.
Even more significant was that all four major candidates running for mayor this year supported the road, including the eventual victor, Pam Iorio, who in the 1980s had opposed the Lutz version as a county commissioner.
So the question now seemed a matter of when, not if, the road would be built.
For Don Nevins of Cross Creek, who has fought for the road for years, now isn't soon enough.
"We want it built as quickly as possible," Nevins said. "Before future development makes it even more difficult to build."
Even some West Meadows residents, such as Shawn Ryan, crave a shorter drive to I-275.
"I moved in 11/2 years ago because I thought this road was coming," Ryan said. "I'm anxious to see progress."
Others still oppose the road, and they want more of a say.
Longtime road critic Marshall Adams made a special effort Tuesday to hand-deliver to city officials a petition with 378 names of West Meadows residents protesting the road.
"A four-lane feeder road carrying this many vehicles through a residential area is a disgrace," Adams said.
Mansour said the objections of West Meadows residents will be considered, and that no road design has yet been decided. An option not to build the road at all will still be considered, he said.
Homeowner Mitch O'Hara, who lives in the Tampa Palms neighborhood of White Hall, said he didn't realize until recently just how much this road would affect his property. "There's a lot of growing resentment in my neighborhood about this road," he said.
Such sentiment frustrates City Council member Shawn Harrison, who has been credited with getting the road this far along.
"We sent everyone letters a year ago telling them about this road," Harrison said. "If they're just now finding out about this, that's not our fault."
