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Lutz-Lake Fern Road Overhaul Outlined

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By ELIZABETH LEE BROWN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 12, 2007

Updated: 09/10/2007 06:33 pm

LUTZ - The first signs of an upcoming $56 million overhaul of Lutz-Lake Fern Road will be visible as early as January with the construction of a new high school and a Suncoast Parkway interchange.

Once those two projects kick off, Hillsborough County will begin expanding the road from two to four lanes. Residents should expect to live in a construction zone for the next four years.

Planners from the county, the school district and the Florida Turnpike Enterprise gave an overview of the multi-faceted roadway widening project Thursday to about 150 people at Martinez Middle School.

Project Manager Edd Arnold, of the county's public works department, said the Lutz-Lake Fern Road widening will be split into two phases.
Phase one expands the road to four lanes from 1,000 feet west of the Suncoast Parkway to the new school entrance. That driveway will have a traffic signal and serve three schools - McKitrick Elementary, Martinez Middle and the new 2,500-student high school.

The roadway widening and the ramps will be finished before the new school opens in August 2009.

The second phase, which will widen Lutz-Lake Fern Road from the school to North Dale Mabry Highway, will begin in mid-2009 and be finished by September 2012, Arnold said.

'We don't want it to take three years, but we've allowed ourselves some time,' he said.

Alison Stettner, the turnpike's regional planning administrator, said the contract to design and build the ramps will be awarded by January and construction will begin in early 2008.

The interchange opening will be a no-toll facility with traffic signals at each ramp, she said.

Engineers have designed the loop ramps on the north side of Lutz-Lake Fern Road, saving the 25 parking spaces at the Suncoast Trail trailhead where an extension of the Upper Tampa Bay Trail will connect.

Construction of the two-story high school will take about 18 months and begin in January, said Dave Borisenko, the district's planning facilities manager.

The school, which will relieve crowding at Sickles and Gaither high schools, is expected to generate 4,200 vehicles each day. The new entrance will be west of McKitrick Elementary.

Borisenko said school start times will be staggered in 45-minute intervals beginning at 7:15 a.m.

'It's not going to be just a mass of traffic all showing up at once,' he said. 'It's going to be a half-hour of intense traffic each day.'

Phase two of the widening project includes expanding the road from two to four lanes from the school to Sunlake Boulevard, and adding a center turn lane to make the segment between Sunlake and North Dale Mabry Highway three lanes.

Arnold said the 4-mile project will have seven traffic signals - with two new lights at the parkway, one at the school and one at Heritage Harbor.

The majority of the new road, with 12-foot-wide outside lanes and 11-foot-wide inside lanes, will fit within the existing 100-foot right-of-way corridor.

The county will need to buy nine ponds for storm water drainage, and one has been acquired, Arnold said.

The roadway also will have 4-foot-wide bikes lanes, a 5-foot-wide sidewalk on each side, a 22-foot-wide raised median and median cuts and turn lanes at the main intersections.

On the eastern end, the new road will swing south, and the existing road will turn into a 16-foot-wide, 1,500-foot-long frontage road for residents west of Sunlake Boulevard.

The frontage road means the county will need to purchase property on the south side, Arnold said.

The project also extends 1,000 feet east of North Dale Mabry Highway so the intersection and turn lanes are aligned with the expanded roadway.

Lutz-Lake Fern Road carries between 7,400 and 16,700 vehicles each day, according to 2006 county traffic counts. The road is projected to carry between 25,400 and 31,500 vehicles per day in 2035.

Reporter Elizabeth Lee Brown can be reached at (813) 865-1502 or ebrown@tampatrib.com.

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