Site Location Snafu Puts Clearwater’s RAISE Grant Funding at Risk

Wires were crossed between the city manager and the city council in Clearwater, Florida, though the city is now back on track with a plan that won $20 million in grant funding from the federal government in August.

Jon Jennings, city manager of Clearwater, Florida, pulled support for a planned downtown transit center, even after the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded $20 million in RAISE grant funding to the project.

A few days later, however, the Clearwater City Council cleared up the controversy, by “confirming its support for the transit center to be built at the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Court Street and overruling Jennings’ plan to bring housing and mixed uses to the site instead,” reports Tracey McManus for the Tampa Bay Times.

Clearwater City Manager last year told Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority CEO Brad Miller to pick another location for the planned transit center, but now “Negotiations will restart for a land swap, where the transit authority will acquire the city property while Clearwater will get the site of the transit authority’s current bus terminal on Park Street.”

More details on the controversy and the preceding decisions that led to the confusion can be read at the source article below.