A new roundabout south of Bonnet Springs Park is three months ahead of schedule, but inaccurate information from utility companies about where their lines were located added more than $151,000 to the cost of the project.
Lakeland Engineering Director Ryan Lazenby told city commissioners on Monday that crews working on the new Five Points Roundabout discovered lines owned by Lumen, TECO Energy and Frontier Communication in the construction zone — even though all three companies had reviewed the plans and signed letters saying there was “no conflict” with their utilities.
The unexpected utility lines forced engineers to do a “significant redesign,” he said. But despite those challenges, the single-lane roundabout is nearly complete.
Lazenby said there are brick pavers on the island and Lakeland Electric just installed the lights. The final layer of pavement is due to be added in about a week and the city’s Parks & Recreation department will start installing landscaping within the next week or two.
Construction began on Oct. 23. Although the contractor, Gibbs and Register Inc., has until July to finish, the project will be “substantially complete in the next two or three weeks, and probably ‘final accepted’ by the end of April,” he said. “So we’re three months ahead of schedule. This contractor has been a gem to work with.”
The roundabout links four roads: Bonnet Springs Boulevard (formerly Sloan Avenue), Lemon Street and both sides of West Main Street. A fifth road, West Lake Beulah Drive, was once part of the intersection, but officials closed it off and converted it to a cul-de-sac several years ago.
City commissioners voted 5-0 to approve a change order in the amount of $179,444 — including $151,429 for the utility conflicts, $12,153 for a drain pipe elevation error and $15,862 for adjustments in the quantity of materials. Mayor Bill Mutz and Commissioner Chad McLeod were absent.
The changes increased the total project cost by 8% from $2,207,556 to 2,387,000.
City Manager Shawn Sherrouse said in the short term, the city can cover the overrun with $160,000 from the transportation fund’s unappropriated surplus. But he added, “The city will seek reimbursement from the appropriate utility agency owners.”
No good options for ‘long-haul’ Internet service line
The lion’s share of the added expense was from a 6-inch steel pipe owned by Lumen on the north side of the roundabout, Lazenby said.
The company had told Lakeland officials that the conduit — a 20,000-foot-long pipe with no access points — was located on CSX-owned land. But in reality, “it’s in our right of way without a permit,” Lazenby said. “When we called them to relocate it, they said it would be multi millions of dollars and six months before they could come out there.”
Lazenby said city staff told the company, “Well, then we might cut it.” And the company responded, “Well, if you do, it’s what we call our long-haul service— it serves all the city of Tampa, all the city of Orlando and all the way to Daytona Beach.”
Faced with the untenable options of delaying the project by six months, cutting Internet service to much of Central Florida, or reconfiguring the roundabout, project engineers chose the latter.
“We completely redesigned the eastern approach on West Main Street,” Lazenby said. The changes included dramatically increasing the size of a barrier wall that abuts the CSX Railroad, cantilevering the footers and adding three or four drainage structures.
Lazenby said Lumen’s share of the added construction costs is $132,939.
“I’ve put them on notice that we’re going to seek reimbursement,” Lazenby said. “Ultimately, if they just outright refuse, we would have to take legal action. But right now, they seem open to it. They understand that, hey, they don’t have a record of a permit … this would have cost us much more if we would have had to come out here and relocate.”
Infrastructure that pre-dates digital records and mapping
City commissioners asked how three companies could have been unaware of the exact location of their utility lines.
Lazenby said it’s not as surprising as one might think. He explained that Lumen purchased the pipeline in question from jet fuel supplier Kinder Morgan and repurposed it for Internet service lines.
“I don’t want to blame the utility companies. This infrastructure is old in this area,” he said. “I mean, we had an impact with some Frontier stuff. It was installed in 1952. They didn’t know what it was or where it was. It was before GIS. It was before ‘as-built’ records. They did the best they could.”
The Five Points roundabout project is a collaboration of several city agencies which contributed the original funding as follows:
- $1,156,555 from the Community Redevelopment Agency
- $669,031 from the Transportation Fund (including $74,900 for contingencies)
- $370,000 from the Public Works Lakes and Stormwater Division
- $86,570 from the Department of Water Utilities
City planners hope the roundabout will eliminate the problem of traffic backing up onto George Jenkins Boulevard.
Lazenby said the city’s most recent counts show that about 10,000 vehicles pass through the intersection each day and the roundabout will be able to handle 25,000. “So we’re good to go for a long time and this will really be an improvement,” he said.
Having addressed the issue of vehicular traffic, the next challenge will be reconfiguring the railroad underpass at Sloan Avenue to provide a safer route for bicyclists and pedestrians.
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Any idea on when it will reopen?
The latest I’ve heard from the city is it will open in mid-May.