Road will smooth out, slim down

When the dust clears, bumps will be banished and a portion of the Clearwater-Largo Road corridor will drop from four to two lanes.

By CHRISTINA K. COSDON

© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 3, 2001

LARGO -- One of the busiest, bumpiest thoroughfares in west Largo and Clearwater -- the Clearwater-Largo Road/Fort Harrison Avenue corridor -- finally will get a facelift.

And the southern part of that roadway will see a "drastic" change: It will go from four lanes to two.

The new look for that segment is part of Largo's plan to encourage businesses along the road to spruce up their properties and for more upscale businesses to move in. The area is a main focus of the city's redevelopment efforts.

Largo recently completed another redevelopment project -- widening and streetscaping busy West Bay Drive through downtown. The resurfaced and reworked stretch of Clearwater-Largo Road will tie in to that project at West Bay Drive.

The work on the Clearwater-Largo Road/Fort Harrison corridor will cost $4.2-million. It's a Florida Department of Transportation project and is part of DOT's plan to move the Alt. U.S. 19 designation off that roadway. The new Alt. 19 route will follow Seminole Boulevard/Missouri Avenue north to Court Street in Clearwater and then turn west to follow Myrtle Avenue.

"Work on the transfer is going well," said DOT spokeswoman Marian Pscion. "Before we do it, the cities (Largo and Clearwater) have asked us to do the resurfacing projects."

And as that work goes forward, the stretch from West Bay Drive to Stremma Road (just south of the Eighth Avenue NW intersection) will be converted to two lanes -- one lane in each direction, with a center turn lane.

Eventually, Largo plans the remaining sections of the roadway in its city limits, from Stremma Road to Ponce de Leon Drive, to be two lanes.

"We're not doing the entire corridor now because it would have delayed the project and we didn't want to do that," said Ric Goss, Largo's community development director.

"Our intent is to take back the entire road and convert it to two lanes divided with medians and landscaping, on-street parking and pedestrian cross-overs," Goss said. "Our idea is to make this a pedestrian corridor."

The change from four to two lanes will be "drastic," Goss said, and the roadwork will cause some inconvenience. "But everything that's being done out there is moving toward what the city and the businesses are envisioning."

Bids for the project, a 3.6-mile section of the narrow, cracked and hole-pitted state road, will be accepted in March 2002, Ms. Pscion said. "Work should start in the summer."

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