Interchange plan will hurt their businesses, owners say
They fear the loss of a left-turn lane will discourage drivers.
PALM BEACH GARDENS — Traffic engineers picked the cheapest and least impactful plan to ease the bottleneck at Northlake Boulevard and I-95, but at least two business owners are still worried.
Kevin Dalton owns the Shell station east of the interchange at Northlake Boulevard and Roan Lane. He said at least 40 percent of his traffic comes from drivers on eastbound Northlake turning left into his station — a turn that will be eliminated in the interchange redesign.
Dalton seriously doubts those drivers will continue to the McDonald’s up the street, make a U-turn and come back to fill up, he said at a Florida Department of Transportation meeting Tuesday at the Marriott.
The median will be closed and the eastbound left-turn and traffic signal on Northlake at Roan Lane will be removed, according to an FDOT handout.
A representative of Crunch Fitness said, “There will be a huge economic impact for us as a business.”
But Palm Beach Gardens Mayor Maria Marino thanked FDOT engineers for changing their plans when the City Council urged them to reduce the amount of land they’d have to take from businesses along Northlake.
“We didn’t want you to put our businesses out of business,” Marino said. “You went back to the drawing board and really listened to what we had to say and didn’t design something so massive and so intrusive to our homeowners.”
Unlike the other two options engineers considered, the preferred plan won’t require any businesses to move.
Early on, they had considered a diverging diamond interchange that would have forced out the Crunch Fitness, Shell gas station and Mobile gas station.
A diverging diamond configuration would have cost about $90 million, including design costs, and eliminated opposing left turns at the interchange.
The preferred plan calls for adding a lane in each direction on Northlake Boulevard, wid-
ening both I-95 exit ramps from four to six lanes and adding an auxiliary lane on each side of the I-95 mainline. Engineers plan to add bike lanes and improve sidewalks and lighting, too.
The $52 million project is meant to keep traffic moving and avoid backups onto I-95 at the exits. With 400 crashes at the interchange in five years, transportation officials also hope the work will improve safety.
The money will be available in July 2021, with construction expected to start in 2022 and take three to four years to finish, Project Manager Scott Thurman said.
The changes will force residents of three houses on Birmingham Drive to move. A fourth home also may be affected, according to FDOT. State officials won’t start contacting the homeowners until that phase of design starts, Thurman said.
None of those homeowners spoke at the FDOT hearing Tuesday.
An appraiser will inspect the properties. Residents who move out before they learn the benefits they’re entitled to may lose them, FDOT said.