- April 25, 2024
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The project on Granada Boulevard has residents divided, some supportive, others skeptical.
BY MATT MENCARINI | STAFF WRITER
There are mixed emotions about a construction project residents will be living with for the next several months.
Granada Boulevard is currently in the second month of a nine-month project to install medians and resurface the road, among other aesthetic improvements, and some residents are finding frustrations with the rough road and added traffic.
“Change is tough for a lot of people,” Clay Beazley said, “so it’ll be hard.”
It’s an “interesting project,” he says, but he’s also concerned that traffic during peak hours, specifically near Hull’s Seafood, will be bad, even after the work is finished.
So for the time being, Beazley avoids the area altogether. When he needs to cross the bridge, eastbound, he takes Dix Avenue or another side street down to Beach Street, before crossing over.
Some other residents are finding the crosswalks, yet to be resurfaced and a few inches higher than the road, to be an annoyance.
Others are concerned about construction work and eventually the medians potentially limiting traffic flow during evacuations or for emergency vehicles.
“I wasn’t in favor of them doing the work,” Nannine Dahlen said. “Now that they’re doing the work, I think it’s a good idea.”
She said she thought the project was unnecessary, but now sees it as a step in the right direction for downtown. She would even like to see more beautification projects, specifically on vacant lots near Granada.
All things considered, Dahlen says she has liked the work the city has done downtown area the past five or six years.
Jeff Boyle, former City Commissioner and current CANDO chairman, said he’s skeptical the work will be positive for the city, but he hopes he’s wrong.
“At every step of the way, I always felt it was a few people driving (the project),” Boyle said. “I think 90% of the people using the bridge don’t know what’s going to happen. I hope I’m wrong.”
Boyle sees Granada Boulevard as the city’s main traffic artery, and adding the medians in an effort to slow down traffic and make downtown more pedestrian friendly, he said, may actually hurt businesses along West Granada Boulevard.
“People are going to avoid that area,” he said. “It’s going to be a constant bottleneck. I predict, some nights, you’ll have traffic backed up all the way to (Interstate) 95.”
