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Turning I-4 Into Job Magnet Requires Focus And Caution

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 21, 2008

County commissioners were right earlier this year to ask how best to wake up the sleepy I-4 corridor.

Done right, a development plan could lure top-quality jobs without much disrupting the country lifestyle cherished by longtime residents.

But the many questions facing the study group, which includes staff from Hillsborough County, the city-county planning commission, Tampa, Plant City and Temple Terrace - won't be easily answered.

The 26-mile stretch of interstate lies in the heart of the Florida High Tech Corridor, but it looks like a slice of old Florida, complete with orange groves and gardens, RV and tractor lots, dead-end private roads, mom-and-pop hotels, and a good many vacant parcels for sale.

It is a region of wells and septic tanks; big, shady lawns; and a two-lane country highway, U.S. 92, which seems an unlikely address for high-tech research firms.

At the Tampa end of the corridor is a gigantic Confederate flag, and on the east is the Showgirls strip club near the Polk County line. In the middle is a roadside attraction called Dinosaur World.

But there are many more auspicious features. Acting as bookends are two small but modern airports - Vandenberg and Lakeland - each capable of handling business jets, and in the middle is the Plant City Airport.

A 24-hour Starbucks on Interstate 4 proves the highway traffic never stops.

Off the highway, life moves more slowly. Development in the communities of Mango, Seffner, Thonotosassa and Dover has come without focus and without big commercial centers. The region lacks a good street grid and there is no financial plan to build one. I-4, even without dense development in eastern Hillsborough, is nearing its rush-hour capacity.

As it stands, the two-mile-wide corridor won't be the first choice for investors looking for a site for biomedical research or computer engineering.

Yet the potential is enormous. Nearby are USF, the Tampa commercial center, and booming Lakeland. To the north is the wild and unspoiled Hillsborough River basin. Plant City is refurbishing its charming downtown, and the steady stream of traffic on I-4 will make sure big changes get noticed.

The larger region includes the Cape Canaveral spaceport; the University of Florida and University of Central Florida, which together with USF have nearly 140,000 students. In Central Florida are 200 companies specializing in life sciences and medical technologies employing 9,100 people; 3,700 information-technology companies employing 33,000; and 220 microelectronics and nanotechnology-related businesses employing nearly 20,000.

With the right supporting infrastructure, I-4 in Hillsborough could get in on some of the action. And not everything needs changing. Development could be focused in a few intersections instead of throughout the whole corridor, an approach that would be less likely to overwhelm infrastructure and resources.

Right now no one is sure where the area is going or should go, but there are many possibilities. One would be to capitalize on the region's deep agricultural roots, and its many farms and nurseries, to create a center for agricultural research.

By next year the panel will know a lot more about what will work and won't, what residents, developers and environmentalists think about it all, what the price might be.

One ambitious goal suggested for the I-4 Economic Development Corridor Study goes something like this: Create a beautiful landscape that will appeal to the best employers who would be helped along by streamlined permitting. They would provide great jobs to local university graduates, who would buy upscale homes and live happily ever after.

Even if the study group begins an economic revival that falls short of that utopian storyline, it still can consider its work a major success.

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