Keystone Road, Pinellas Avenue work costs rise as planned project requirements get more complicated.
By CANDACE RONDEAUX
Published February 21, 2004
TARPON SPRINGS - Plans for construction on two major city roadways could get pricey, city officials say.
The combined cost to the city to widen Keystone Road and to make improvements along part of Pinellas Avenue could balloon to $2.5-million, City Manager Ellen Posivach said this week.
Three years after the Pinellas County Commission approved a plan to transform Keystone Road from a two-lane street to a four-lane roadway, county planners recently told the city it will have to kick in money of its own.
City officials estimate it will cost about $1.5-million to move a 2,000-foot-long section of water lines to the south side of Keystone. That's in addition to the $1-million estimate to reconstruct a section of Pinellas Avenue.
County engineers informed the city two weeks ago that the preliminary design plan for the widening calls for city-owned water lines beneath Keystone to be moved, said county public works project manager Joe DeMoss.
DeMoss said county planners met with city officials to discuss the Keystone Road project in February 2001. But city officials said they were surprised when the county recently informed them of the need to move the water lines.
"It's a big cost," said city public services administrator Paul Smith. "We were under the impression that they (the water lines) could stay."
In the meantime, along approximately a 1-mile stretch of Pinellas Avenue N, a 2-foot-thick layer of wood chips beneath the street's surface, once used to fill a marsh, is rotting and causing the street to sink, city officials said. Those repairs are part of a proposed Florida Department of Transportation project to improve traffic flow in downtown Tarpon Springs.
In July 2003, city officials announced the state's plan to begin resurfacing a 3-mile stretch of Pinellas Avenue and several blocks on Tarpon Avenue. That project is slated to begin in 2005.
The Keystone Road plan calls for the street to be widened between U.S. 19 and East Lake Road. It includes extending the Pinellas Trail from its northern terminus at U.S. 19, along the north side of Keystone Road, and connecting with a 4-mile unconnected strip of trail on East Lake Road that extends south to John Chesnut Sr. County Park.
DeMoss estimated that inflation and fluctuations in property prices could push the cost of the Keystone Road project up to $22.7-million. The county will have to purchase nearly 20 parcels of land along the roadway before the project can get under way, he said.
Final design plans for construction on Keystone Road could be complete within the next 18 months. The county hopes to begin construction in 2006 and complete the project in 2008, DeMoss said.
