Editor's Note: Seeing city crews working between Mapoles street and U.S. Highway 90 this week raised some residents' concerns. You asked what was going on — here's the answer.
Email us if you have a question you want answered.
CRESTVIEW — The sight of a Public Works crew working on the block-long length of Mapoles Street between U.S. Highway 90 and Hickory Avenue has raised some residents' suspicions.
Workers were closing off the block to prevent access to U.S. 90 at the Florida Department of Transportation's request. The work coincided with a project to remove soil contaminated by a gas station that once stood on the location.
The DOT claimed the street posed a hazard for drivers trying to turn onto the highway, Public Works Director Wayne Steele said. The affected block passes between First Baptist Church and the Burger King.
"The church is concerned about the elderly folks in motor vehicles who try to exit at that intersection," Steele said in an August 2014 News Bulletin report. "You have two city streets that try to merge onto Highway 90 at basically the same point. It's very dangerous; you can't see."
Last year, the city offered to vacate the street to the church and restaurant. However, nothing can be built on the strip of roadway because Public Works requires unrestricted access to buried utilities beneath it.
"Both parties responded saying they had no need for the property," Steele stated in an email.
This week, some residents, unaware of the circumstances, thought city workers were performing a service for the church or the fast food restaurant when they were seen paving the block-long section of Mapoles Street.
An anonymous resident, who contacted the News Bulletin's sister, the Northwest Florida Daily News, said the work smacked of "good ol' boy politics" because "lots of prominent people go to that church."
But that was not the case at all, Steele said.
"The r.o.w. (right of way) was not abandoned," he stated. "We just changed that small section of Mapoles to a dead-end street."
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection will reimburse the cost of resurfacing the street.
Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: YOU ASKED: State to reimburse Mapoles resurfacing cost