Opponents who feared traffic problems withdraw their objections to a driveway that will open onto Bruce B. Downs.
By BILL COATS
Published November 16, 2003
NEW TAMPA - A shopping center developer has resumed his quest for a driveway onto Bruce B. Downs Boulevard and this time has neutralized some of his strongest opponents.
Supervisors of the Tampa Palms Community Development District voted last week to rescind a letter they had sent to City Hall in March voicing "strenuous opposition" to the driveway.
"I think that position was taken rather hastily," Supervisor Bill Shimer said.
"I think there was a lot of knee-jerk out here," said Bill Edwards, president of the Tampa Palms Owners Association, which also had opposed the driveway.
Both groups now have decided to send new letters that neither oppose nor endorse the driveway.
The CDD supervisors asked that the city focus its expertise on the traffic challenges posed by the project. The owners association asked to work with the city staff to make the project a good one and praised the developer, Warren Kinsler, as "sensitive to the requirements of our community."
"We're getting a lot of good responses here," Kinsler said.
Kinsler is planning one of New Tampa's largest shopping centers, immediately north of the Lowe's on Bruce B. Downs. The project will be more than twice the size of the Lowe's, with more than a dozen stores.
Plans for the shopping center were approved at City Hall years ago. But they allow a driveway only along Commerce Palms Drive.
When Kinsler requested the Bruce B. Downs driveway a year ago, opponents invoked the specter of the boulevard becoming another Dale Mabry Highway, choked with commerce. Ultimately, his proposal was withdrawn.
Kinsler renewed it on Nov. 3 after showing a number of New Tampa civic leaders a computer simulation of problems that could occur without the Bruce B. Downs driveway.
"What you saw on the simulation was a backup going north and a backup going south," said Maggie Wilson, a consultant to the CDD.
The simulation shows the backups beginning as eastbound drivers line up on Commerce Palms, waiting to turn north into the center. That line of vehicles extends to Bruce B. Downs, triggering backups there.
"You saw that traffic clog up," Wilson said.
Kinsler said such bottlenecks could prompt shopping-center traffic to skirt Bruce B. Downs by taking a more easterly route through Tampa Palms on Compton Drive. That would take them past neighborhoods, a YMCA, Compton Park and Tampa Palms Elementary School.
"They'll find a way internally within Tampa Palms to scoot around," Kinsler said.
Edwards and others have worked to protect the Compton Drive institutions and recently persuaded the city to install speed humps near the park and school.
The computer simulation shows improvement with a driveway on Bruce B. Downs, Wilson said. "You saw an appreciable difference in the smooth movability of traffic into that mall."
Kinsler said he has negotiated leases for two-thirds of the space in the center, but all those are held up pending the city's decision on the entrances.
Kinsler said he's dealing with a book store, a women's store, an electronics store, small boutiques and "some high-end restaurants."
Kinsler's request for a rezoning is to go before the Tampa City Council in January. He plans to start construction soon thereafter and open stores by next fall.
City transportation officials had not reviewed Kinsler's application last week. But Calvin Thornton, the city's design review engineer supervisor, found a copy of the computer simulation waiting for him when he returned from his honeymoon.
