Posted on November 3, 2021
A luxury area of Naples is seeing hundreds of construction vehicles coming in and out. And they’re lugging thousands of tons of sand.
However, those truck trips in and out are said to have a large payoff down the road.
There are so many trucks coming in and out of one Naples neighborhood that there’s now a crossing guard on duty to keep people safe.
David Shorr lives nearby. “There’s so much traffic on this street already in a way we’re kind of used to it. A lot of construction traffic,” said Shorr.
The people who live, bike and walk near the 3rd Avenue North Beach Access Point at Naples Beach say this has been their reality for a little while. Detlef Mueller cycles in the neighborhood. “We’re riding our bikes here we encountered the trucks and of course it’s a nuisance,” Mueller said.
“It’s going to be a lot of traffic, we’ll be happy when it’s over,” Shorr said.
The bad part is that the construction may not be over for a while hopefully by Thanksgiving.
Collier County’s $5 million renourishment project got underway on Monday. The trucks will be hauling 105,000 tons of sand to Naples Beach from Lowdermilk Park to the Naples Pier.
Penny Taylor is a Collier County Commissioner. “This is not an easy thing to bear, to have big trucks rolling down the street, to have this activity at the beach,” Taylor said.
Commissioner Taylor says the truck will be out there Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. until the project is completed. “The end result, I hope and I pray, will be worth it,” said Taylor.
After Naples Beach is finished, Vanderbilt Beach is next on the list. Collier County hopes to start dumping fresh sand on Vanderbilt Beach by December.
According to city leaders in Collier County, two other areas of Collier County Beach are being renourished as part of the same contract are:
“A section of Vanderbilt Beach and a relatively small portion of Pelican Bay Beach. In total, the project will add 268,500 tons of sand to the beaches; 105,000 tons will go on the Naples Beach section. The sand is proposed to be trucked in from the Stewart Mine located north of the town of Immokalee. The 105,000 tons will require 4,773 trucks to enter Naples Beach from the 3rd Avenue North beach access point, which is the only vehicle access point to the beach between Naples Pier and Lowdermilk Park. The truck route to the beach from I-75 will be Golden Gate Parkway to US-41 to Banyan Boulevard to Gulf Shore Boulevard to 3rd Avenue North. Trucks exiting the city will go north on Gulf Shore Boulevard to 4th Avenue North to US-41 to Golden Gate Parkway to I-75. These routes have all been used in the past for previous truck haul projects. The county is estimating that the Naples Beach portion will be concluded at the end of November. This is timed with the end of the annual turtle nesting season on November 1st. The remainder of the project on the county beaches is expected to last through January 2022. Commissioner Taylor said they hope to be finished with the Naples portion by Thanksgiving and move onto Vanderbilt Beach in December. This project will be funded using taxpayer dollars. The Pelican Bay area is going to be funded through the Pelican Bay Services Division.”
