Boulevard staking signals pre-construction
The initial indication for the long-planned restoration of Fort Myers Beach’s main road can be physically seen, now that Lee County officials have placed flags and markings on a mile portion of the island.
The staking activity marks the official start of the Estero Boulevard Improvements Project.
Staking of the first segment of the project -beginning at Crescent Street and ending one mile south at approximately Lovers Lane- has been completed. This procedure enables certain companies to adjust their utilities and those property owners who are adjacent to the affected boulevard area to see where County officials have laid claim to ownership along the boulevard.
Officials are asking everyone to leave the markings alone. The stakings will be used to review the utility adjustments. Phelan said the markings are only a first look and may be altered slightly prior to construction.
“This process is so that our utility partners can go out and take a look at where the right-of-way is,” said Lee County Department of Transportation’s Rob Phelan, the project manager, at the recent Town Public Safety Committee meeting. “FPL is relocating there poles to the right-of-way and some of the other (utility businesses) use that right-of-way dimension as a guide to place their facilities.
Most of the encroachments in the first segment were said to involve landscape features in the ROW.
“We will also use those markings to meet with property owners to discuss encroachments that are into the right-of-way or modifications that they can do to their properties to better coincide with the ultimate design for the segment,” Phelan said.
The kick-off efforts for the Estero Boulevard Improvements Project is the initial stage of a long-term program that will replace or relocate underground utilities, build a new roadway and provide bicycle and pedestrian facilities along the entire length of Estero Boulevard. Construction of that first mile segment is scheduled to begin after Easter 2015.
The first segment’s 50-foot limited ROW has been planned to include 10-foot travel lanes in each direction and marked with bicycle “sharrows” for shared use by bicyclists and motorists, an 11-foot center turn lane and 9-foot wide sidewalks on both sides of the road. This is the first of five planned segments.
Boulevard improvements will also include trolley stops, drainage improvements on Estero Boulevard and connection to Town drainage projects as well as the relocation of existing utilities including FPL power poles, telephone and cable lines, sewer force mains and water lines. Plans also include accommodating a natural gas line for the entire length and both sides of the boulevard – not just the Gulf side as previously reported and planned.
Lining crosswalks at each beach access may not happen, however. Sidewalks on the Gulf side of the boulevard will help people get to their beachside destinations.
“There is concern that people want to cross at each beach access, but if we had a crosswalk location where everybody wanted to cross, we would have a lot of white stripes all up and down Estero Boulevard,” said Phelan. “Right now there is no really good place for people to walk from one crosswalk to another. When we are done with the project, we will have sidewalks on both sides.”
Lee County Commissioner Larry Kiker was quick to wit when he stated that property is not being taken away, but rather County is taking property back.
“I think we expect and anticipate that there are going to be some people that are not particularly happy, but this is not going to be any different than North Estero Boulevard,” he said. “What we found out after a couple of years is that it wasn’t such a bad thing after all. In fact, those folks are going to be our salespeople.”
County officials have been meeting with affected property owners.
“We are gathering all the information and asking all the questions that we can as well as educating people where we can,” Kiker said. “Once this thing gets going, it will be my desire to move the project along as fast as we can.”
To get detailed information, go to the project website at www.reFRESHFMBeach.com and click on Estero Boulevard.
The Lee County Board of County Commissioners is expected to announce more information regarding a protest about the selection of the construction manager as well as the scope of pre-construction services for the project at its Jan. 6 meeting.
“While the growing pains may be challenging from time to time, the end result for all will be well worth it,” said Beach Mayor Anita Cereceda about the extent of the long-term project.
New safety brochure closer to production
Safety Committee members worked on revisions of the safety brochure at their meeting. Discussions involved making another set of edits to the previous brochure, including emphasis on the slogan “Be Seen On FMB.” Bicycle habits were also discussed. It was pointed out that people should ride with the flow of traffic and not against it. One statistic showed that riding against the flow of traffic leads to a risk of getting hit on average 3.5 times more than riding with traffic.