A $390 million project to build a toll road connecting Interstate-4 and the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway in Tampa is underway. Gov. Charlie Crist and Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos attended a groundbreaking ceremony Friday. The I-4/ Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Connector project received $105 million in stimulus funding.
Read more: I-4/Crosstown Connector breaks ground – Tampa Bay Business Journal:
Consruction on the new connector between the Crosstown Expressway and I4 is underway. I have fielded a number of calls from investors asking if this has created any investment opportunities. Sure. There are always opportunites, but I am not sure the Connector creates opportunities as much as the reason for which the Connector is being built.
Allow me to explain. Ybor City is a walking tourist, retail and entertainment “historic” district. As the Port of Tampa has continued to expand, so too has traffic through the district. Because the 39th Street I4 ramp was removed for the recent I4 rennovation, traffic trying to get to I4 has no where to go but up 22nd Avenue, right by the Historic Columbia Restaurant. Suffice to say, you have to be a brave heart to stand on 22nd Street for any reason, as 40 foot container trucks and tanks of molten sulpher roll up towards the Interstate at breakneck speeds. No, 22nd Street currently is not a hospitable environment.
With the Connector in place, truck traffic from the Port of Tampa will through-way on the Crosstown to reach I4 and totally avoid Ybor. Now this is great for quality of life in Ybor. 22nd street will, however, remain very busy, as the entrance ramp at 22nd Street and I4 will remain intact. I am not sure much will change in Ybor, except pedestrians on 22nd Street will no long feel as if they are standing at the epicenter of a nuclear blast.
What is changing, however, is the Port of Tampa. Since the Port Authority has added a container port, traffic has quickly reached 100,000 containers per year. With recent improvements complete, Tampa will be able to handle up to 1,000,000 containers per year, competing with Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Tampa will remain a port of less than 50 feet in depth, so it will not be able to take the super-sized containers ships that major ports such as Perth Amboy and Riverside currently service, but it will be a very competitive, regional port. Currently, it is estimated that 500,000 containers reach a final destination somewhere on the I4 corridor. There is no reason to believe that Port Manatee and the Port of Tampa will not be the final sea destinations of most of that traffic. Adding to the positive vibes, the widening of the Panama Canal is due to be completed sometime between 2014 and 2015, making the transport of goods to and from Eastern markets directly to Tampa a real option (actually there is a direct China route out of Tampa now).
Having personally witnessed the explosion of trade in Miami in the early 90’s, I can tell you the addition of warehouse space in the area was staggering. Will Tampa experience that type of business development in trade? I am not sure, but even if we received a portion of the trade that is being projected, the development and growth environment will be robust and will create plenty of economic opportunities for a community thirsting for some type of activity to augment its depressed real estate, construction and related industries. I would expect the warehouse and industrial environment in and around US 41 will look very different (and more substantial) ten years from now than what it is today.
