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Neighborhood notebook

Cockroach Bay gets 43-acre donation

By ANDREW MEACHAM
Published February 24, 2006

RUSKIN - Cockroach Bay just got a little bigger.

The County Commission last week accepted a donation of 43 acres west of U.S. 41 to the Environmental Lands Acquisition and Protection Program.

Ruskin resident Bill Casey, director of Lost River Preserve, a nonprofit corporation, donated the land. The county will spend up to $100,000 to put up fences, tear down a small structure at 1123 Canal St., and pay operating costs.

SEFFNER - County commissioners assigned 25 acres of county-owned land for a library and park to be located across from Lopez Elementary School at 200 Kingsway Road.

Architects will begin work on the library this year, and construction could start in 2008.

RIVERVIEW - Students at Riverview High School should be able to get to school with less gridlock, thanks to newly completed road widening on Boyette Road.

The rest of us will benefit, too.

County commissioners and residents last week celebrated the road's widening from U.S. 301 to Balm-Riverview Road from two lanes to six, the first of three improvement phases along Boyette Road costing $52-million.

The next two phases run from Balm-Riverview Road to Donneymoor Drive, concluding at Bell Shoals Road. Workers should finish expanding the road there from two lanes to four lanes by October 2009, said Scott Cottrell, an engineering director for the county's Department of Public Works.

RUSKIN - A new president could emerge soon for Hillsborough Community College's new South Shore campus.

College president Gwendolyn Stephenson will conclude interviews for the top three candidates by March 2, HCC spokesman John Huerta said.

The finalists are Debra Daniels, a vice president at Polk Community College; George Keith, vice chancellor of academics and student affairs at Oakfield Community College in Michigan; and Marshall McLeod, who directs institutional research at Pensacola Junior College.

All three candidates hold doctoral degrees.

Construction of a $9-million building on 60 acres of donated land north of College Avenue could end by fall 2007, Huerta said. Classes would begin January 2008.

[Last modified February 23, 2006, 12:38:08]