CLEARWATER - Construction crews are continuing to make progress on 126 boat slips that the city is building beneath the western end of the Memorial Causeway bridge near downtown's Coachman Park. • Misener Marine Construction is first building a series of floating docks just south of the bridge. Those should be finished by the end of this month, said Ed Chesney, Clearwater's environmental manager.

Then crews work on the docks just north of the bridge. Work to upgrade a nearby parking lot, sidewalks, lighting and landscaping should be complete by May. Clearwater voters narrowly approved the $12.8 million marina project in 2007, and it all should be done by summer.

Workers this week also started removing the "turnstile," an 85,000-pound block of concrete submerged just below the surface of Clearwater Harbor off the Seminole Boat Ramp.

It's considered a boating hazard. It is what's left of the base of a turnstile that was in the middle of the old Seminole Bridge, which was built in 1917 and is long gone.

The turnstile rotated a span of the rickety wooden bridge to allow boats to pass.

"By next week, that hazard will be gone," Chesney said.

Mike Brassfield can be reached at brassfield@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4160.