HUTCHINSON ISLAND
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all the way to Ocean Village, with the first section completed
in 2006. Work ended about Nov. 1 of last year, but assistant
Fort Pierce city engineer Tracy Telle said in January
that the contractor was still working on a “punch list” of
end-of-project items. The major work was completed in five
phases, with a lengthy delay in 2012 after a kind of sand
was discovered in the pathway of the road that behaved
“like tapioca pudding” according to one state Department
of Transportation official.
That delay seriously hurt Dave’s Diner on Seaway at Bayshore
Drive, with owner Brenda Roth worried that customers
who had fled would never come back. Now that the work
is finished, Roth says business is picking up again. “It really
does look nice,” she said. “And the new Hutchinson Island
Plaza hotel where the old Sandhurst was just down the
street seems to be doing very well.”
The reconstructed road includes two roundabouts, paved
bike lanes, sidewalks, landscaping and decorative low-power
amber streetlights angled to prevent sea turtle hatchlings
from crawling away from the ocean. The lights even have
stylized sunrises at the curved top to represent Fort Pierce,
the Sunrise City. Where the project stops, on Ocean Drive
just south of Ocean Village, a Department of Transportation
project picks up with paving of State Road A1A completed all
the way to Jensen Beach.
Paul’s bar and grill is already featuring live entertainment
and food, but he plans to rebuild the kitchen and make it bigger.
He is confident that customers will come. He’s waiting
for approval from the state Department of Environmental
Protection for an awning and a deck “because we are east
of the coastal construction line.” He is also in the process of >>
The wooden bench-seat swings for adults are often occupied at South Jetty
Park, as are the mosaic tile benches by Anita Prentice.
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