Marco OKs Collier Blvd. center turn lane

Marco Island businesses rallied to win a battle this week with city officials over whether to retain the island’s tropical ambience or provide better traffic access to offices, restaurants and other shops along North Collier Boulevard.

The City Council sided Monday night with about 20 businesses that had signed a petition to ask for a modification to the North Collier Boulevard phase of the two-year road improvement project.

The council voted 4-2 to remove a planned 625-foot stretch of a new landscaped median and replace it with a center turn lane. Cars traveling in either direction can use it for left turns.

Lost in the fracas was the proposed marked and caution-lighted pedestrian crosswalk between Seaview and Amazon courts. The majority approved the center turn lane option, but eliminated the crosswalk because they said no one would use it.

Council members Chuck Kiester, Glenn Tucker, Mike Minozzi and Ted Forcht approved the center turn lane because businesses want it and because they believe it will improve traffic flow.

“During (peak) season when all of that traffic is trying to cross to those businesses, it’s not very safe,” Kiester said. “Stacking up (left) turn lanes won’t provide good traffic circulation.”

Council Chairwoman Terri DiSciullo and member Bill Trotter opposed changing the plans. DiSciullo fought hard with a vocal foray about preserving the island’s tropical ambience, and both she and Trotter said the median makes crossings safer for pedestrians.

“I think having more asphalt encourages drivers to drive faster,” DiSciullo said. “The median in the middle provides somewhat of a calming effect. If you tear all of that landscaping out of there, it will look like a big city. We’re trying to avoid that.”

Joseph Oliverio, owner of Joey’s Pizza and Pasta House at 257 N. Collier Blvd., led the charge for the petitioners at Monday night’s council meeting.

Oliverio said he’s from Chicago and hadn’t seen the use of a center turn lane until the city recently added one on Elkcam Circle near the post office.

“I just saw it working on Elkcam and Bald Eagle (Drive), and I said, ‘Hey, this will work on Collier,’” Oliverio said.

Bill Morris, an attorney at William G. Morris Law Offices at 247 N. Collier Blvd., said the median is an unnecessary barrier to business customers.

“I’ve been in my current location for 23 years,” Morris said. “I give people directions to my office all the time, and they still can’t find my office. If you put in a big median with landscaping, people will not be able to see the businesses they’re trying to get to.”

The road project began last year and took a slight bump from Hurricane Wilma, causing the South Collier phase to finish in May, a few months late. The North Collier phases got under way in May and will be completed by November 2007.

Construction will progress during off-season months only.

Motorists heading for the island’s resort hotels on the beach side of South Collier or the business shops across the street now enjoy widened, repaved lanes and added left turn lanes, and the entire roadway is punctuated by tropical landscaping in the median. Attractive street lanterns finish off a drive worthy of any in neighboring Naples.

The solid median has been a feature of Collier Boulevard — the island’s main, four-lane thoroughfare from the Judge S.S. Jolley Bridge to Caxambas Park — for decades.

The city approved final design for the Collier improvement project last year after numerous public meetings and City Hall discussions that involved many of the same business owners who won a change in what was thought to be final development plans.

On April 9, the door cracked open just a little bit for possible changes during a council capital improvements plan workshop at the Hilton Beach Resort on South Collier.

A resident asked why the North Collier phase hadn’t included a crosswalk for pedestrians between Seaview and Amazon courts.

City Public Works Director Rony Joel went to work on possible designs, but noted at Monday’s council meeting that new crosswalks in front of the Marriott Resort and Hilton are hardly used — and even avoided by pedestrians.

“People come out of the Hilton and instead of walking 20 feet to get to the crosswalk, they just walk directly across the street,” Joel said. “We’ve got to retrain our people how to use crosswalks.”