Could Private Financing Be Route Around Road Construction Delays?

By Naples Daily News Staff
Naples Daily News
June 4, 2007

The latest idea for widening the last stretch of four-lane U.S. 41 in Lee and Collier counties is a novel one.

It’s a little “out there.”

That’s why we like it.

The traditional way of handling big road projects — government takes a long time for plan and design work, followed by a long time buying right of way and an even longer time for construction — isn’t getting the job done.

Actually, it’s moving backward. Because each separate stage requires funding, and that funding is subject to the whims of politicians and the realities of budgets, the date for when asphalt meets the road keeps getting postponed. The latest estimate is for construction to start in the 2010-11 fiscal year, and that estimate was made before state funds started heading south.

The D’Jamoos Group, a Naples-based development company, offers this: Get private financing, including the developer itself, and hire a private contractor to build the road. The contractor would follow state specifications for the project and the private financiers would be repaid by the state when the funding cycle for the project finally rolls around.

It’s a bold idea, even more so than an earlier one of having the county lend construction money to the state and lining up business interests to pay the interest on the loan.

The Florida Department of Transportation is almost taken out of the loop except for providing the specs and, of course, eventually repaying the money.

To be sure, plenty of details remain to be worked out. Who would be overseeing the engineering issues that arise? What happens when the cost of the project suddenly skyrockets, as it always seems to do? What if the project runs behind schedule: Do the private companies start fining the contractor they hired?

D’Jamoos and other likely financiers obviously have vested interests because they want to build projects along or near the stretch of south Lee County road to be widened. That could be a good thing, though: The status quo is going nowhere fast.

The D’Jamoos Group aims to harness the power of capitalism and the lure of profits to unclog the traffic jam. © 2007 Naples Daily News and NDN Productions. Published in Naples, Florida, USA by the E.W. Scripps Co.