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County is replacing three docks

Wooden docks at Philippe Park, John Chestnut Sr. Park and A.L. Anderson Park will be replaced with sturdy aluminum.

Pinellas County is working to replace floating docks at three north county parks, including one that was destroyed by Hurricane Dennis.

The wooden docks at Philippe Park, John Chestnut Sr. Park and A.L. Anderson Park serve boaters in mid and north Pinellas and are badly in need of repair, said Joe Lupardus, operations manager for parks and recreation.

They are being demolished and replaced with aluminum, a sturdier material that should fare better in hurricanes.

"They were old, and they were beat up, weathered and needed to be replaced," said Paul Cozzi, director of parks and recreation. "We had been spending a lot of time redecking them, making repairs to them."

The docks run parallel to a concrete ramp and are used to tie up boats.

Repairs to them are expected to cost about $348,000. The county received a $64,000 grant from the Florida Boating Improvement Program for repairs at Philippe Park in Safety Harbor. The rest will come from capital improvement funds.

The repair work started with the two docks at John Chestnut Sr. Park in East Lake last month. Those docks will reopen in two weeks.

Lupardus said crews are scheduled to start demolishing one of the docks at A.L. Anderson Park in Tarpon Springs this week and will work on the second dock once the first is finished. The work should be completed by Sept. 21.

"We tried to work around the boaters the best we could," said Cozzi.

Philippe Park only has a one-lane boat ramp, so the entire ramp will be closed from Sept. 23 to Oct. 11 while crews replace the dock, which was destroyed by Hurricane Dennis in July.

"Hurricane Dennis damaged it so much, it had to be removed," said Lupardus. The pilings, which held the dock above the water, are still there.

Cozzi promised that the new docks at each park will make a world of difference to boaters.

Next year, he hopes to replace docks at Lake Seminole Park, War Veterans Memorial Park and the Park Boulevard Boat Ramp Park.

"I think what boaters are going to see is a much sturdier facility, a larger facility that should make it easier for boaters to come and go," he said. "And hopefully, when we have these storms we won't have the same type of problems that we had at Philippe."