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Letter to the editor

Clearwater is smart to look before it leaps

Don't put the cart before the horse." It's an old adage, but still a relevant message today. Perhaps it was that message Clearwater officials had in mind last week when they voted to hire an expert to do a traffic study on the city's barrier islands. The City Council will soon consider whether to allow construction of more hotel rooms per acre on Clearwater Beach and Sand Key.

They decided they should first find out whether the streets in those two areas will support the increased traffic that more hotel rooms would bring.

In other words, put the horse in front of the cart.

Earlier this year, the Pinellas Planning Council and the Pinellas County Commission approved a plan that would permit more hotel rooms per acre in Pinellas. The new plan was a response to the loss of thousands of hotel rooms during the late, great Pinellas condominium boom and the associated threat to the county's vital tourism industry.

With the increased density, officials figure developers might be more interested in building hotel rooms. More density per acre might also encourage some developers to build much-needed mid-sized hotels because they would have a better chance of recovering their investment in costly beach land.

Under the new plan, each city gets to decide whether it wants to allow the higher density in its tourist districts. Clearwater officials definitely want more hotels, and are especially interested in creating incentives for mid-sized facilities, but they wondered how many new hotel rooms the existing roads on Clearwater Beach and Sand Key could support.

People who have visited Clearwater Beach during spring break or a holiday weekend might think the answer is obvious: none. But the fact is that during most of the year, driving around Clearwater Beach and Sand Key is not a problem. New bridges and the recent widening of Coronado Drive have provided more capacity, and the situation will be even better when the new S Gulfview Boulevard is completed as part of BeachWalk.

Yet Clearwater officials don't know how much more density would create a traffic tipping point, so Thursday they wisely voted to hire a consultant, DKS Associates, to study the road network that serves the beach communities. The consultant will examine how much capacity is currently being used on the beach and Sand Key, as well as the bridges between them and the mainland, and project the impacts if the maximum allowable number of rooms is built.

City Council members want to know the numbers, but they also figured it would be smart to have that traffic information in hand before approaching the state Department of Community Affairs to sign off on a density increase.

It would be wise for other cities to follow Clearwater's example of examining the potential strains on infrastructure before approving higher densities. While new hotel rooms are desperately needed along the Pinellas beaches, neither residents nor tourists will find chronically clogged roadways appealing.

[Last modified November 17, 2007, 21:11:49]