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The plan to expand nature's path

The newest segment of the Upper Tampa Bay Trail features more amenities, such as permanent restrooms and more parking space.

By BILL COATS
Published September 1, 2006

KEYSTONE - On weekend mornings, the parking lot begins filling at dawn. Cyclists from Clearwater. Roller-bladers from Carrollwood. Triathletes from St. Petersburg. Tricyclists, and their parents, from Lutz. The paved spaces rapidly fill up, and a dozen vehicles or more spill over to a grassy roadside, next to the NO PARKING sign.

All these people are converging at the beginning of the state's Suncoast Trail at Lutz-Lake Fern Road and the Suncoast Parkway.

But their parking lot is likely to disappear in a few years. If Hillsborough County times things well, trail users will get a new, improved lot down the road, plus a 3½-mile trail extension toward the southwest.

The project is the next link of the Upper Tampa Bay Trail, even though it will initially connect to the Suncoast, not the current seven-mile section of the Upper Tampa Bay.

The new trail segment will have two features rarely found on the Suncoast: permanent restrooms and recreation out of sight of any road. It will wind for nearly two miles through the edge of the Brooker Creek Headwaters Nature Preserve.

At each end, the county plans a trail head with parking and restrooms. One is planned on Gunn Highway, immediately southeast of the Keystone Recreation Center. The other will be on the south side of Lutz-Lake Fern Road, just east of the Montreux neighborhood.

Richard Sanders, project manager in the Hillsborough County Public Works Department, said it should have 80 spaces, five times the parking of the current trail head.

To link that facility to the Suncoast, a trail will be built along more than a mile of Lutz-Lake Fern Road, much of it on boardwalks across roadside swamps. Sanders estimated the boardwalks will cost four to five times what an asphalt trail would cost.

"We've got to be parallel to the road, and unfortunately, the wetlands come right up to the road," he said.

The trail will cross Lutz-Lake Fern Road immediately west of Cheval's Nimes' Court. Sanders said a traffic light will be placed there, programmed to stay green for motorists except when a trail user activates it to cross the road.

"Ultimately, what we'd like to see in the future is an overpass," he said. One snag: a pedestrian overpass nowadays costs $2½-million.

First in line

Sanders and other county officials are operating under an uncertain time crunch.

State transportation officials would like to bury the current trail head under an interchange connecting Lutz-Lake Fern motorists to the Suncoast Parkway. Money isn't available, but a mechanism to allow Florida Turnpike officials to borrow it was almost enacted in Tallahassee in the spring.

If that happens, the interchange could be added within three years.

Some trail parking could be relocated to the western end of the turnpike property. "But it would be only a fraction of the spaces that are there now," said Joanne Hurley, spokeswoman for Florida's Turnpike Enterprise, the agency that manages Florida's toll expressways.

Meanwhile, Hillsborough County has been gradually expanding the Upper Tampa Bay Trail north and south of Citrus Park, with plans to connect it to the Suncoast. Together, they will form a 57-mile trail.

"I've been working on this thing for well over 10 years," Sanders said. "It's always been the thought to connect the two."

Currently, the Upper Tampa Bay Trail runs from Old Memorial Highway in Town 'N Country to Peterson Road Park in Odessa. With an eye toward the Suncoast's upcoming parking problem, Hillsborough County chose the Upper Tampa Bay Trail's northernmost segment as the next to build, Sanders said.

To begin construction by 2010, the county needs to own land soon.

Most of the trail will pass through the 1,200-acre Brooker Creek Headwaters Nature Preserve, jointly owned by the county and the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

But land along the roads is largely privately owned. The county bought its trail-head land on Lutz-Lake Fern Roaf two years ago. But it still lacks the strips of property along the road leading to the Suncoast, and plans later this month to file condemnation suits against three property owners.

Assistant County Attorney Ken Pope said those should lead to the land changing hands in exchange for appraised value within two months.

"As long as we have our ducks lined up, the judge will give us the benefit of the doubt," Pope said.

Afterward, any property owners' requests for higher compensation would be addressed in the court cases, he said.

Once the county has the land, it's first in line for state and federal funds to design and build the trail, according to Charner Reese, the county's top trail planner.

Design and construction are pegged at $5.8-million.

Bobcats, butterflies

Once built, the newest trail link will bring a stark change of scenery to users accustomed to riding through parks, neighborhoods and beside expressways.

Where the future trail runs through the Brooker Creek Headwaters Nature Preserve, the experience will feel less like the Suncoast or Upper Tampa Bay trails, and more like riding on New Tampa's Flatwoods Trail, or on Pasco County's Starkey Trail. Riders and skaters will be surrounded by scrub, pine flat woods, forests or swamp.

Hillsborough County's park ranger, Richard Ross, has lived on the property since 1992. He estimates that 60 percent of the preserve is swamp.

Sanders warns about summer rains. "There are probably going to be times where there's water up there, and they'll probably have to close it," he said.

The combination of swamp and flat woods nurtures a full array of wildlife, Ross said. The preserve is home to alligators, bobcats, wild turkeys, butterflies, coral snakes and everything in between.

"People have been hunting in here for 40 years," he said. "You still catch them sneaking in here."

Bill Coats can be reached at coats@sptimes.com or 813 269-5309.

[Last modified August 31, 2006, 09:58:38]