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OCTOBER 4 - 17, 2011
SR 874 project blamed for intersection accident rise
BY RICHARD YAGER
“W
window.” That is the frightening view of Doug Kostowski and the staff of Travel People whose office in the Killian Professional Village overlooks the intersection of SW 104th Street and 107th Avenue, where Kostowski claims 81 accidents have occurred in seven weeks as a result of SR 874 interchange construction. Displaying a four-page police record to prove his point, Kostowski accuses the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority (MDX) of creating a safety hazard with a faulty design instead of improving traffic flows on the 104th Street bridge over the newly redesigned Don Shula Expressway. “Highway engineers have created a monster with impossible turn lanes and improper signage, forcing U-turns and split-second decisions that can cause accidents,” Kostowski wrote in a letter published by the Miami Herald on Aug. 16, after four lanes of westbound traffic opened on the bridge.
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It’s scary: Spooktober returning to Zoo Miami
e never know when a car may come through the
ACCIDENTS, page 6
BY LAUREN VANDENBERG
Calling attention to the increase in accidents at the intersection of SW 107th Avenue and 104th Street are (l-r) Carlos Garcia, Miller Myers and Doug Kostowski.
Runwa y extension to open at Kendall-Tamiami Airport BY RICHARD YAGER
A
www.westkendallbusiness.com
1,000-foot runway extension at Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport is due to open by midOctober after its final surfacing, due to be applied by Oct. 6. The $4.3 million South Runway project paralleling SW 136th Street falls 1,250 feet short of the original extension plan designed to permit cross-country flights by corporate jets that take off and land at Kendall-Tamiami. “The new extension will allow existing corporate jets safer and better use of the existing runway, even though that extension is not of sufficient length to
provide fuel capacity for cross-country flights,” said Norman A. Hegedus, interim manager of the airport and acting manager for Homestead Regional Airport. “We expected to have it open during September but rainy weather kept forcing us to postpone the final surface treatment,” Hegedus explained. The project got underway in January of this year. VFR (Visual Flight Rules) will start once the runway project is completed, Hegedus said, noting that
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RUNWAY, page 6
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njoy a host of Halloween festivities during Spooktober at Zoo Miami. If you dare, enter Dr. Wilde’s Creepy House, a full-scale haunted house at Dr. Wilde’s World, Oct. 1531. If dressing up and partying is your thing, show up on Oct. 22 for the third annual adults-only costume party, The Monster Masquerade, benefiting the Zoological Society of Florida (ZSF). If you love food trucks and haunted houses, tell your teens, and join in for Teen Fright Night with Food Trucks on Oct. 27. The entire family can enjoy also Halloween at the zoo at night during the second Spooky Zoo Nights, October 28 and 29, and during the daytime at the annual Zoo Boo, Oct. 29 and 30. Dr. Wilde’s Creepy House, a 7,000-square-foot haunted house, is guaranteed to send chills up and down your spine when it debuts on
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SPOOKTOBER, page 6