Seminole Boulevard to get facelift

With a $150,000 state grant that the city will match, Seminole will landscape medians and put up signs welcoming motorists.

By WILMA NORTON

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 30, 2000

SEMINOLE -- The city's push to make its major thoroughfares more attractive will expand to 2.5 miles of Seminole Boulevard.

Seminole has received a $150,000 grant from the state Department of Transportation to beautify all the medians on Seminole Boulevard between Orange Blossom Lane and 102nd Avenue. The city will match the grant.

The dozens of medians, a total of 1.5 acres of land, will get trees, shrubs and flowers. Signs at the north and south ends of the project will welcome motorists to Seminole.

The city plans to drill a deep well at each end of the project for irrigation.

The median beautification is a project that city officials, Chamber of Commerce members and Seminole residents have wanted for years.

The chamber formed a beautification committee at least 15 years ago, in part to talk about median improvement. The city put the project on its priority list during the first retreat with then-new City Manager Frank Edmunds five years ago.

"We've kept it on our list of priorities," Mayor Dottie Reeder said. "I think you will be able to tell when you hit the city limits. We want to make a difference when you arrive in the city of Seminole."

This is the second major median improvement the city has undertaken in the past year.

A joint city and Pinellas County project already is under way to add decorative foliage on Park Boulevard from the Intracoastal Waterway to Lake Seminole.

The city plans to spend about $275,000 to spruce up Park Boulevard from the Pinellas Trail to Lake Seminole, augmenting the work the county is doing from the Intracoastal to the lake.

Most of the plantings are in, but there is still some curb work to be done and welcome signs and palms to install.

In a related move, the city this week decided to spend $45,475 to buy a used 2,200-gallon tank truck to water the Park Boulevard landscaping and other city flora. The county denied a request for an irrigation system on Park Boulevard that would have drawn water from wells, and the county's reclaimed water lines do not yet reach the area.

The tank truck will be used to water the landscaping once a week using reclaimed water, general services director Mitch Bobowski said. He said he hopes to schedule the watering early in the morning, perhaps at 4 or 5 a.m., to cause as little disruption to traffic as possible.

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