St. Pete Standard

St. Petersburg, FL – Mayor Kenneth T. Welch and U.S Representative Kathy Castor held a joint press conference this Tuesday, Oct. 31 at Campbell Park to highlight a grant the City of St. Petersburg recently submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The City is requesting $1.2 million from the Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods (RCN) Community Planning Grant Program for planning for the Reconnecting the Historic Gas Plant District Project to help improve safety, access, mobility, air quality, and economic opportunities in South St. Pete, including the Historic Gas Plant District, a predominantly African American community.

The Reconnecting the Historic Gas Plant District Project aims to remediate the impacts of the construction of I-175 in the late 1970s that uprooted many families of the historic African American neighborhoods in South St. Pete, including the Gas Plant District. Approximately 4,000 individuals were forced to relocate, and 2,700 African American families and businesses were displaced. The totality of the project’s expected outcomes will benefit disadvantaged communities.

Today, South St. Pete adjacent neighborhoods are cut off by the walled limited-access highway and several one-way streets, including 8th Street and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Street which have access ramps to I-175. The transportation facilities have created persistent barriers to community connectivity, mobility, local access, economic development as well as environmental harms and burdens to adjacent South St. Pete communities and neighborhoods.

The Reconnecting the Historic Gas Plant District Project aims to address barriers and burdens posed by the transportation facilities.

• Safety: High speeds resulting in crash hotspots at conflict points and a high number of bicycle and pedestrian crashes with severe and fatal injuries
• Access & Mobility: Minimal bike lanes, no curb extensions, and lack of ADA-compliant ramps on 8th Street and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Street, north-south access to Downtown St. Pete across I-175 is limited to only a few streets, increasing vehicular traffic, safety issues, trip length for all roadway users, and reduced walkability
• Environmental: Adjacent neighborhoods identified as disadvantaged communities with disproportionate pollution burdens and poor air quality, including high diesel particulate matter exposure
• Economic: Adjacent neighborhoods have poor connectivity to employment and business districts in the city; residents have lower median household incomes compared to the city overall

The project is informed by the 2022 Downtown Mobility Study, Dr. MLK, Jr. Street Corridor One Way Pairs Study (2000), and the Downtown St. Petersburg One-Way Conversion Study (2001). Grant funding will support an 18-month community-informed planning project for the two-way conversion and lane reallocation of 8th Street and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Street to improve access, safety, mobility, and connectivity as well as address the environmental and economic burdens impacting surrounding neighborhoods.

Specific project activities include:

• Development and implementation of a community participation plan to ensure meaningful engagement of hard-to-reach communities throughout the project

• Planning and preliminary engineering, including concept design, for two-way street conversion and lane reallocation of 8th Street and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Street to include improved pedestrian and bike facilities as well as opportunities for creative place-making and green infrastructure, such as bioswales, curb extensions, and street trees

• Performing an equity assessment to evaluate how the two-way conversion and lane reallocation will create proportional impacts and remove transportation-related disparities for communities

In addition to addressing injustices of the past and disparities of the present, this project will support the planned equitable redevelopment of South St. Pete, particularly the Historic Gas Plant District, by reconnecting this community that was divided by the interstate, to downtown and other areas of the city. More about the Historic Gas Plant District Redevelopment can be found at www.stpete.org/GasPlant.

Original source can be found here.