New poles in mid sidewalk irritate Clearwater officials

CLEARWATER — It's one of the City Council's pet peeves: Putting trees, posts, benches and trash bins in the sidewalk where pedestrians are trying to walk. They hate that.

So imagine their surprise when they saw a row of 22 brand new light poles running right down the middle of a new sidewalk on S Gulfview Boulevard in the tourist district on south Clearwater Beach.

"I was a little bit shocked," said Mayor Frank Hibbard.

"I'm really frustrated that this has happened again," said Councilman George Cretekos. "We're sticking light poles smack dab in the middle of a sidewalk."

Council members grilled city staffers about the poles at a meeting Monday. They're so irritated by this, they want to make sure it never happens again.

But it won't be that easy; it turns out that this is more complicated than officials would like.

The decorative light poles are part of the ongoing $1.1 million reconstruction of S Gulfview between Hamden Drive and the Sand Key Bridge.

The city's construction manager, Perry Lopez, and its engineering director, Mike Quillen, explained that Progress Energy decided where to put the poles based on where the utility's power line is located underneath the sidewalk.

They said the power company and the city didn't have much leeway because of an unexpectedly large number of underground utility lines they found jammed into that area — water, sewer and gas, as well as Bright House, Knology and Verizon.

"When you get out there and stick that bucket in the ground, sometimes you discover there are lines there no one knew about," Lopez said.

The only alternatives would have been to relocate some of the underground lines, or to seek permission to put the light poles on hotels' private property next to the sidewalk. But that would have slowed down the project and made it more expensive.

Council members wanted to know: How much more expensive? But the answer wasn't clear.

Cretekos, for one, wasn't satisfied with the explanation. He mentioned several recent road projects in nearby cities, such as the reconstruction of Gandy Boulevard in Tampa, where "you don't have these problems. It's only in Clearwater."

Looking ahead, the City Council told staffers to avoid similar problems when they rebuild the sidewalk on the north side of Gulfview and when they add a new sidewalk to Hamden Drive. The council also wants to know in advance how much it will cost to avoid such problems on future projects.

Mike Brassfield can be reached at brassfield@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4160.