MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference Friday morning at the FDOT Manatee Operations Center near Bradenton.
The governor announced the disbursement of $18 million in supply chain grants to five recipients, largely to pay for new aggregate terminals for FDOT projects — facilities meant to store and handle construction materials — as well as the groundbreaking of the Fruitville Interchange on Interstate 75 in Sarasota County.
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The disbursements are as follows, per the governor’s office:
- Florida Gulf & Atlantic Railroad - $3.7 million
- To design and construct a new aggregate terminal in Lake City to accommodate 200,000 additional tons of aggregate annually and 48 rail cars.
- Capital Asphalt - $1.5 million
- To design and construct a new aggregate terminal in Tallahassee to accommodate 80,000 additional tons of aggregate annually.
- CSX - $3.9 million
- To design and construct a new aggregate terminal in Plant City to accommodate 20 acres of storage capacity and 250,000 additional tons of aggregate annually.
- Port of Tampa Bay - $6.2 million
- To construct the Berth 218 aggregate terminal and additional 500,000 tons of limerock annually.
- JAXPORT - $2.6 million
- To begin the project development and environment phase to increase rail capacity and accommodate 15 acres of yard storage and an additional 240,000 tons of aggregate annually.
“These awards will total a cumulative $100 million to be invested, of course, over five years, but we’re doing this right now,” DeSantis said. “(...) You want to see projects get done, you want to see things move, gotta have the materials to be able to do it. So I appreciate the legislature investing in this. It’s not something that is necessarily going to be immediately top of mind; I mean, if you’re sitting in traffic, you’re not thinking about aggregate materials, right? But it’s something that goes in, so we’re excited about that,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis was joined by FDOT Secretary Jared Perdue.
Watch the news conference again in the video player below or by clicking here.
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