Skycrest Neighbors

Apr-May: Keene Road is Hot Topic

Jul 03, 2000

KEENE ROAD MEETING,APRIL 13, 2000 @ 1:00 P.M.,Courthouse at 315 Court Street, Fifth Floor
AGENDA: To listen to a County Staff presentation to Commissioner Karen Seel and our neighborhood representatives on the proposed Keene Road Extension. Discuss the concerns of Skycrest residents as to the future impact of this proposed Keene Road Extension on the Skycrest neighborhood. Of greatest concern, is how the proposed extension?’s design will help to minimize the detrimental effects from dividing a neighborhood with a major roadway. We also wanted to know how the proposed plans will attempt to recreate the ?“public amenities?” that are being eliminated.
PRESENT AT MEETING:
Pinellas County Commissioner: Karen Seel
Pinellas County Staff James K. Collins, Division Engineer
Ivan J. Fernandez, Senior Engineer
Keith Wicks, Public Works
Paul Bellhorn, PW Engineering
Jan Herbst , PW Engineering
Skycrest Neighborhood Reps:
Heather Higgins, Betty Walsco, Sheryl Polese, Justine Ortega, & Ricardo Ortega

We will summarize as quickly as possible the issues and/or goals that County Staff and Commissioner Karen Seele agreed to help us attain after our approximate 1 1/2 hr. meeting.
First, it is an extremely large majority of neighbors in Skycrest that feel that it would be best if this road would not be extended through the middle of our neighborhood. On the other hand, we also realize the importance of completing this North-South Pinellas County roadway, one that is expected to help alleviate some of the US 19 traffic problems, and the merits of this could easily be debated. None the less, our concern as residents of Skycrest is that the design of this proposed road not result in one that permanently scars our neighborhood in a manner that will lead to the progressive decline of an area that has long been a safe and stable residential neighborhood in the City of Clearwater.
Of the six goals that we concluded the meeting on, the County Staff felt strongly that four were attainable and that some were already planned and in the works. The fifth and sixth ones that we list, were met with a some resistance from the County Staff.


1. Addressing the problems that the road will pose to all elementary age children that will remain to the West side of the proposed Keene Road Extension. This busy roadway will undoubtedly present new challenges to many students of Skycrest Elementary, and to all residents of the Skycrest neighborhood.

2. Ensuring that the road design that will have an abundance of landscaping to make sure that it is not an "eye sore" to our neighborhood as well as to those that are to use this road. We were told that the city of Clearwater is responsible for this, and that they have already designed proposed plans which go further than that which the county would require. We were told by County Staff that the county is paying Clearwater to handle this aspect of the road design. We asked Karen Seel if she could help us in requesting that the City of Clearwater provide our Skycrest Neighborhood representatives with a presentation of these proposed landscape plans, so that they may be presented to all interested neighbors.

3. Addressing the fact that the proposed extension, especially the proposed left and right turning lanes onto Cleveland Street, will bring additional traffic through our neighborhood. We were told last week by Ken Sides, City of Clearwater Traffic Engineering, that the ?“Traffic Calming Charrettes?” for our neighborhood are, at this point in time, scheduled for the end of this year or the beggining of the next.
The proposed Keene Extension is scheduled to begin construction in November of this year!
The County agreed that these studies should be conducted as soon as possible, prior to the completion of the proposed Keene Road Extension design plans. This would be nessesary to ensure that both the proposed Keene Road Extension and the traffic Calming features for the Skycrest Neighborhood will work in unison, therefore greatly reducing the possibility of having to come back and make costly changes later, as has been the case with the recent Clearwater Round-about project. Karen Seel stated that she would contact the City of Clearwater to see if the Traffic Calming Charretes could be scheduled earlier so as to have those plans realized prior to the completion of the proposed Keene Road design and plans.

4. We expressed the great loss that the Skycrest Neighbors that remain on the East side of this new ?“barrier?” roadway will experience...that is the loss of safe and easy access of our public recreation space at Crest Lake Park and the loss of Venus Lake Park. The first will no longer be a safe or comfortable place for residents and their children to visit and use, due to the high traffic 6-lane wide roadway that is presently proposed. The second, is being destroyed for the new required right-of-way for these same 6-lanes of hot, impermeable asphalt and concrete.
Therefore, we ask that a small park for residents and children, with picnic benches and a "tot-lot" (swings, merry-go-round, etc...) be designed, with resident input. This would be located adjacent to Cleveland Street and the reconfigured/relocated Venus Lake/retention pond. The County Staff felt that this could be provided with a little modification to the existing plans. We were told that this is an item that will likely have to be worked out with the city, because of something about the land now having to be "leased" back to the city so that they could maintain this as a park area. Again, Commissioner Seel said she would initialize the discussions with the City of Clearwater on this issue.

The following two items seem to be issues that may be more difficult to acquire, according to the comments made by the County Staff. These, will require additional work for the Counties and City, due to construction drawing design factors as well as enforcement issues. Moreover, it will require more work on our part, as county residents, if we are to convince the governing authorities of the importance of these remaining issues.

5. REDUCING the proposed 6 lanes of roadway to match and to be similar and consistent with the existing configuration of roadway that is to remain to the South and to the North of this extension. This roadway would result in 5 lanes; 4 lanes of traffic with a turning lane in the middle (including landscaped islands as part of the middle turning section).
County Staff expressed the need of the ?“outside?” turning lanes for ?“facilitating traffic flow?”. It could not be explained to us, though, how traffic could be improved consistently throughout if the areas to the North and South were to remain as they are today, without the existance of any outside tuning lanes. How is traffic to move ?“faster?” through this short stretch of roadway, between Gulf-to-Bay and Drew Street, than that of the remainder of the roadway? As there will be traffic ahead, in the existing roadway portion, how is traffic in the extension going to move through faster?
We are not opposed to maintaining the turning lanes at Gulf-to-Bay and Drew Street intersections, but the proposed outside turning lanes onto Cleveland Street make no sense. Is our single family neighborhood going to suddenly change to multi-family housing or some other zoning that would increase traffic into it? We hope not. Nor have we been informed of any proposed changes to the existing density of our neighborhood.
Ensuring that the number of lanes at the intersection of Cleveland Street be consistent with the rest of the existing Keene Road would help to maintain the ?“quality of life?” that our neighborhood offers us today. The following are three major factors that would contribute to this:
A. By physically not being as wide a road, this roadway will be less intrusive and more pedestrian friendly.
B. The 12 feet of road multiplied by the hundreds of feet in length that will be eliminated will reduce the size of the required RETENTION POND as well as provide an additional 12' of land that can be used to help attain an integrated park for our neighborhood.
C. The elimination of the outside turning lanes at the intersection of the Keene Road Extension and Cleveland Street will eliminate the single factor that will most encourage additional cut through traffic in the Skycrest neighborhood from Keene Road. This new traffic will not only affect homes and pedestrians along Cleveland Street, but will also "spill out" through the side Avenues, affecting all of those who live and play on the East and West sides of the proposed road extension on both the North and South Sides of Cleveland Street.

6. Industrial and Heavy Truck traffic will now become a problem for Keene Road, an existing roadway that is continuously lined with single family residences on each side. Today this road is primarily a private passenger automobile corridor. Once completed, this will become a major North-South county road. Unless designated as a ?“no thru-truck?” corridor, this road will also have a huge increase in commercial truck traffic.
The large commercila and industrial area to the south Keene Road (Starkey Road) will contribute greatly to this increase and will provide the residential areas along this corridor wuth much dust, noise, and pollution. The County Staff stated that at present the proposal is to allow the truck traffic to business hours only. It seems that maintaining whatever truck traffic patterns exist today would be most prudent. The large number of cars that will use this proposed roadway will help alleviate those other existing roadways that are in use today by trucks. Therefore, we ask that this road be designated as a ?“no truck?” county road. While we understand that this will never eliminate all truck traffic, it would drastically reduce the new truck traffic.

In Summary We hope that with the combined efforts of both Pinellas County and the City of Clearwater this proposed Keene Road Extension will be one that serves the entire county as well as one which minimizes the possible detrimental impacts to the Skycrest neighborhood, as well as to other existing neighborhoods.

We provide a few quotes by renowned Urban Planner and author Kevin Lynch. We feel that these directly and succinctly describe some of the issues that we are facing with this proposed Keene Road Extension.

>>"The purpose of the development depends on the situation and the values of the influential clients. But some of those who will be affected by the plans are absent, or uninformed, or voiceless."
>>"The rectangular grid, the most commonly used street pattern, has been criticized for visual monotony, for disregard of topography, for vulnerability to through traffic?…"
>>"The greater the flow, the greater the necessary definition, control, and specialization of the channel, with more elaborate terminals and interchanges. The network is more clearly separated from the region it serves, and is more difficult to live with."
>>"Distributors are continuous over long distances, allow high speeds, and may exclude all but vehicular traffic."

>>"Efficiency will also increase if one sorts out trucks, bicycles, children, strollers?…"

>>"We improve streets by widening the auto lanes, at the expense of pedestrians, trees, and other marginal nuisances."