Bob Buckhorn is optimistic that the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) can come to find a “middle ground” with concerned Tampa residents as the state agency begins the process of adding express toll lanes to I-275 in Tampa.
The plan, known as the Tampa Bay Express, would in total add express toll lanes to I-75 from north of Bruce B. Downs Blvd. to south of SR 674; On I-275 from south of Bearss Avenue to Gandy Blvd.; and on I-4 from the downtown Tampa interchange to the Polk Parkway. The starter project is estimated at $3.3 Billion dollars and primarily deals with I‐275 plus the downtown interchange.
Concerned citizens from neighborhoods like Tampa Heights, Seminole Heights, V.M. Ybor, Ybor City and West Tampa have teamed up in opposition to the TBX since FDOT’s plans began forming earlier this year. They’ve articulated the fears that all of the progress done in some of those neighborhoods over the past decade or so will all be for naught if FDOT uses eminent domain to make way for the expanded highway.
“I think there’s a way we can find agreement to allow the project to go forward,” the mayor said on Wednesday morning after attending an event that would provide homes to homeless military veterans in Hillsborough County. “I mean, the FDOT that we’re dealing with today is not the FDOT of 20 years ago. I mean, they are open to these opportunities. They recognize that it’s going to have an impact on the community. They realize that Tampa has changed drastically since that plan was created, and so they’ve got to be able to mitigate that, and they can’t put up a barrier that’s going to divide the city. So I think there’s a way to find that middle ground, but I’m thankful that they’re able to reach out to the neighborhood and have that discussion.”
Buckhorn has been relatively mum on the proposal since the project became more viable in recent months.
Not so the Tampa City Council, who, acting as the Community Redevelopment Agency, contacted the Federal Highway Administration earlier this summer and asked the department to “defund” the federal government portion of the plan if it ultimately hurt the neighborhoods of Tampa Heights and Riverside Heights (However, two of the three members of the Council who serve on the MPO — Harry Cohen and Lisa Montelione — did vote to put the TBX into the Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Transit Improvement Project last August. The third member of the council, Guido Maniscalco, was the only MPO member to oppose it).
Mayor Buckhorn says he is very familiar with the criticisms made by members of the local neighborhoods, and says they are “legitimate.”
“I dealt with DOT back in the late 80s when they did the original Hillsborough widening, so it’s a different DOT. The challenge is, we’ve got infrastructure needs. We’ve got an interstate that needs to be expanded, we’ve got to balance the competing needs of the neighborhood that has really come alive over the last 10-15 years,” Buckhorn said, emphasizing that he doesn’t want to see the project affect the positive development that has happened over the past eight years or so.
“Downtown’s a very different place. We don’t want to interrupt that, and we don’t want to do anything that would adversely affect that, whether it’s Water Works Park, whether it’s Julian B. Lane Park, whether it’s Seminole Heights or Tampa Heights. but I think there’s a way that could be accomplished,” the mayor added.
Michelle Cookson, a leader with the grass roots group Sunshine Citizens who have banded together to oppose the TBX, responded to the mayor’s remarks.
“It is encouraging to hear that Mayor Buckhorn realizes FDOT ‘can’t put up a barrier that’s going to divide the city,'” Cookson wrote in an email. “As an advocacy group that fights for comprehensive transportation, smarter growth and positive economic development for our area, we would very much like Mayor Buckhorn to meet with the neighborhood coalition and to review our research, data and our points regarding TBX. As a group we are also interested in hearing about how he feels about Lisa Montelione‘s efforts in the MPO to ask probing questions of FDOT, and the CRA’s role as well. Overall, we would like him to sit down with his constituents as we are stakeholders too.”
