Pinellas Park businesses say U.S. 19 fixes killing them
“In an industrial area marked by small manufacturing plants and artisans’ shops operating side-by-side in corrugated iron warehouses, business people set themselves up along U.S. 19 hoping to draw the eyes of passing motorists.
An auto repair shop. Another that sells hub caps.
But when the state Department of Transportation began building overpasses at nearby busy intersections to improve traffic flow, these entrepreneurs saw prospective customers who once passed their front doors disappear, rising onto the elevated highway.
Now some of those businesses stand to be obliterated.
A few months after Gov. Rick Scott announced he was freeing up $337 million for the Gateway Express, a project that will elevate whole stretches of road, not only at intersections, the DOT has begun filing lawsuits to take the businesses’ land away from them.
The land is needed because DOT essentially is erecting an elevated toll-road linking I-275 to U.S. 19. There also is a planned link from I-275 to the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport.”
Thompson, Stephen. St. Petersburg Tribune 18 May 2014.