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Park Street to get 'innovative' lights, maybe Kohl's

Two synchronized lights will let drivers enter and exit a proposed shopping center near Target and Sears without tying up traffic along Park Street.

By ANNE LINDBERG
Published June 18, 2006

SEMINOLE - A county board has agreed to let a developer put two new traffic lights on Park Street, a move designed in part to ensure that a Kohl's department store will locate there.

But the main purpose of the two lights, which were called "intriguing and innovative," was to allow vehicles to make left turns in and out of the proposed shopping center without tying up traffic along Park. It was that aspect of the system that will help ensure that Kohl's settles on Park just north of the Sears building. The lighting also pleased owners of businesses in a strip shopping center just across the street.

One of the two lights will be on Park at 49th Avenue N, where the northern entrance to the new shopping plaza will be. The other will be about 350 feet south, at the other entrance.

Although separated, the lights will be treated as one intersection and synchronized by one computer, said Steve Tindale of Tindale-Oliver and Associates of Tampa, which designed the system.

The southernmost light will allow shoppers to turn left from the center onto Park. At the same time, shoppers who want to go into the center will be allowed to turn left off Park at the northern light. Tindale showed the effect on traffic using computer animation with swiftly flowing traffic.

The design, he said, takes into account Pinellas County's plans to widen Park from four to six lanes starting in 2008.

The design is a "really creative ... innovative" one that will minimize the traffic impact of the new shopping center on an already busy road, Tindale said.

"This is a significant project," he said. "I think it could be used as a prototype in the future."

The lights, he said, will help "entice" Kohl's and others to the project, which is on the west side of the 4900 block of Park.

Members of the Metropolitan Planning Organization said they were concerned that limiting access to Park from the neighborhood would send drivers through the strip center's parking lot in an effort to evade the lack of a left turn from 49th onto Park.

But Mike Finnegan of Spoto's Restaurant, in that center, said business owners in the center are happy with the proposal. A few people may try to drive through the parking lot, especially in the morning, he said, but the important thing is to make it easy for customers to get into the existing center.

"I'm more concerned about traffic not getting in," Finnegan said.

MPO member Bill Mischler, mayor of Pinellas Park, said he was concerned about the effect on 46th Avenue, just south of the two lights. He wondered what would happen in a few years if the traffic there got bad.

But in the end, Mischler and other MPO members decided they would deal with 46th when and if it ever became a problem. And they thought the new lights might actually relieve some traffic problems at 46th and at the Target south of the new development.

Mischler moved to approve the new lights with the provision that they be turned on up to 30 days before the stores open so drivers can get used to them before traffic into the new center gets too heavy. His motion was unanimously approved.

Anne Lindberg can be reached at alindberg@sptimes.com or 893-8450.

[Last modified June 18, 2006, 07:39:54]