St. Pete Grand Prix<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe pipe beneath Central Avenue drains stormwater from downtown into the Bay. Prayman said the reason there\u2019s no access point is because the road was built in the 1920s.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce we realized we didn\u2019t have access, we wanted to put an access point,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we could get in there and dewater the pipe, clean the pipe, and now we can inspect the pipe to see if there\u2019s any dislocated joints, broken pipe sections.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project began last month, and a new manhole access point could be seen behind some construction fencing in the area. Prayman said he anticipates the stormwater pipe will be relined, with some sections possibly replaced if needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was proactive work because it is an outfall for the city,\u201d Prayman said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want anything to happen to that pipe, that outfall, because if anything happens to that outfall, we\u2019re going to see flooding further upstream of that system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once the work is complete, the city plans to use special asphalt to repave three roads that make up the upper racetrack for the St. Pete Grand Prix. Prayman said he expects the project to wrap up next month, giving the asphalt 120 days to cure before the next race begins.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the racetrack itself is a major economic stimulus, not only for the city but for the community as a whole,\u201d Prayman said. \u201cIt brings a lot of revenue back to the businesses and also revenue back to the city that goes back into projects.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, the Grand Prix has historically generated about $60 million in total economic impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 St. Petersburg Public Works has begun a $610,000 project to create an access point…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[274,558,80654,2968,115,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,729,835],"class_list":["post-428401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-firestone-grand-prix-of-st-petersburg","tag-josh-rojas","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-traffic","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}