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30th Street Will Be The Connection

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By SUSAN M. GREEN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 5, 2007

RUSKIN - For years, 30th Street Southeast has been a two-lane shortcut of little more than a mile through tomato fields, stretching north from the College Avenue spot where Sun City Center drifts into Ruskin to connect to 19th Avenue.

The farm fields have disappeared, replaced by construction crews. Last week, orange warning signs moved in and are likely to be a fixture for a while as 30th Street prepares to be transformed into a four-lane road that will connect with a newly extended Shell Point Road.

Hillsborough County officials have approved permits to allow intermittent lane closures on 30th Street through April to accommodate installation of water and sewer lines and construction of two stormwater ponds. A spokesman for Tampa-based developer Ryan Companies USA said the road may need to be closed at to move dirt from one side to the other.

"There will be a lot of dirt" from construction of a 16-acre pond, said Gary Bauler, vice president of development for Ryan.

Meanwhile, on Shell Point east of Lennard High School, crews from Ripa & Associates have started building a roadbed that will extend the thoroughfare east to meet 30th.

"There's going to be a lot of changes there," Bauler said.

The road improvements are all part of South Shore Corporate Park, a 1,000-acre-plus office, warehouse and residential project deemed a development of regional impact by Hillsborough County officials. Ryan is contracting for the improvements to 30th Street to accompany construction of a 90,000-square-foot office complex and 400,000 square feet of warehouse space.
Initial improvements include extending water and sewer lines from College Avenue and construction of the 16-acre stormwater pond and a second pond of less than 2 acres, Bauler said.

Sometime next year, 30th Street is expected to be realigned and widened to a four-lane road with room to grow from its new intersection with Shell Point to College Avenue.

"Right now, it's a straight-as-an-arrow, narrow, two-lane road," Bauler said. "It will be designed as a four-lane road to build to a six-lane."

He said Ryan does not anticipate closing 30th Street during the widening and realigning project. Motorists will use the existing pavement as the new road is built, he said.

The street has become more heavily traveled in recent years with the opening of Hillsborough County's South Shore Regional Service Center. It also provides a secondary entrance to Sun Point Plaza.

Bauler estimated the cost of the 30th Street improvements at about $14 million of a total $32 million in road work that Ryan will be doing in the vicinity to accommodate its office and warehouse center. Most of the improvements will be internal roads, he said.

Other projects in the South Shore DRI include Lennard High, which opened in August 2006, and the Hawk's Point subdivision and Hillsborough Community College campus, now under construction.

Officials with Ripa & Associates, which is building the Shell Point extension, could not be reached Thursday.

Reporter Susan M. Green can be reached at (813) 865-1566 or sgreen@tampatrib.com.

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