ROGER LALONDE / Staff

The entryway to Marco Island will be more welcoming once a grant for beautifying the median leading to the Judge S.S. Jolley Bridge is put in use. Collier County Commissioners have authorized the use of a $448,100 state grant to spruce up the present barren entryway. Work will likely begin in April, 2009.

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MARCO ISLAND — Driving home should make a person smile.

But for residents making the drive south to Marco Island, it’s more likely to elicit a grimace.

“As you go (southwest) on Collier Boulevard, you go by some landscaped medians by complexes, and all of a sudden there are none and it looks a little drab,” said Syd Mellinger, the chair of Marco Island’s Beautification Committee.

Not for much longer, thanks to a state grant soon to be allocated toward landscaping Collier Boulevard just north of the bridge.

At the Sept. 9 Board of County Commissioners meeting, the commission officially authorized the use of the $448,100 state grant to spruce up the approach to the island starting at the south end of McIlvane Bay Bridge, just before Capri Boulevard, extending about a mile.

“It’s great that we’re getting this from the county since we’ve been discussing this for quite awhile,” said Marco Island City Council Chair Bill Trotter.

He has been carrying on the fight begun by former City Council Chair Mike Minozzi, who pushed the county to clean up the island’s approach during most of his eight years as a councilor. Residents have long expressed frustration over the feeling of being a “donor” community, contributing disproportionately toward the county’s tax dollars but getting less back for projects like the Collier Boulevard landscaping, which falls outside the city limits.

“The people who are coming to the hotels on vacation, people who are coming to support the island whether it’s through shopping or to go to the restaurants expect to see it,” Trotter said. “It contributes to the upscale image of the island.”

Currently, the four-lane road leading to Marco Island is marked by a plain grass median and grass shoulders that taper toward thick mangroves and brackish water that rises and falls with the tide. The landscape is stark, save for a couple of stretches of median maintained by the Fiddler’s Creek and Hammock Bay communities.

The new approach, roughly one mile long, will be graced by a range of plants: Live oak, Jamaica caper, Gumbo-limbo and royal palm trees, along with bird of paradise plants, silver saw palmettos and thornless bougainvillea.

“Once you get to the bridge and you’re going over the bridge, it’s just a beautiful sight to take in the island, and it’s a sight that you simply don’t forget,” City Councilman Chuck Kiester said. “But all of that approach to it is not what it could be. Once it’s beautified it will make it that much better.”

The county will have to put the project out to bid by contractors before work can begin. Connie Deane, Collier County transportation services community liaison, said the county would likely begin that process in the winter, with work starting sometime around April to avoid conflicting with the increased traffic brought by high season.