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New Signs Debuting Over Selmon Crosstown

Tribune File Photo (2008)

New directional signs for the Selmon Crosstown Expressway - unveiled last summer with help from football great Lee Roy Selmon - are being installed.

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By RICH SHOPES | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 24, 2009

TAMPA - The city's purple skyline is rising, finally.

The Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority is replacing the mishmash of directional signs for the Selmon Crosstown Expressway, including Gaspar the grinning pirate, seven months after introducing a colorful new logo.

After voting by focus groups, the authority settled on a sign showing a green and gold highway and purple skyline. The sign was unveiled last summer by football great Lee Roy Selmon, for whom the highway is named.

But getting rid of the old signs, which depicted a range of designs from a pirate to a Nike-like swoosh, hasn't proven easy for the authority, which needed to figure out the location of the 250 to 300 directional signs, some dating to the mid-1970s.

It also had to determine whether the poles and brackets holding the signs needed to be replaced because of code changes.

After a three- to four-month study, the authority bolted up its first new sign about a week ago on Falkenburg Road approaching the expressway's westbound entrance.

The remaining signs will start going up in a week or two, authority spokeswoman Sue Chrzan said.

"We're happy to see them going up … to brand the road and create a unified identity," she said.

A typical 2-by-3-foot sign runs about $170.

The authority hopes to replace all the signs over the next two years.

Reporter Rich Shopes can be reached at (813) 259-7633.

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