S.R. 429 interchange idea draws opposition
Conservationists and Apopka City Council members spoke out this week against the idea of adding another permanent interchange on the Wekiva Parkway, the billion-dollar elevated toll road designed to protect wildlife and environmentally sensitive lands.
There are no plans for another interchange between Kelly Park Road in Orange County and State Road 46 in Lake County, a stretch of about 20 miles, but some former elected officials are pushing the possibility of converting temporary entrance and exit ramps at Mount Plymouth Road into a permanent interchange.
Orange County Commissioner Bryan Nelson, whose district includes properties near the temporary ramps, wants to kick around the idea during the commission’s
meeting Nov. 14.
“It’s for discussion only,” Nelson said, adding he won’t ask commissioners for a resolution in favor of the idea.
But his request quickly spawned opposition from Florida Audubon.
“Even if it’s only an idea, it’s a bad one,” Charles Lee, the environmental group’s director of advocacy, said Thursday. “We at Audubon are very concerned with the late-coming, last-minute drive to pry open the Wekiva Act and try to insert this new interchange.
“It will delay the construction of the entire road if it were to go forward, and it would also defeat many of the environmental purposes that were achieved in the Wekiva Protection Act that was passed in 2004,” he said.
The idea of another interchange also didn’t sit well with leaders in Apopka, which has spent years crafting a development plan for land around the Kelly Park Road exchange.
“Another interchange on the Wekiva Parkway, in my opinion, violates the public trust,” Mayor Joe Kilsheimer said. “It violates what we’ve been telling people we would do for more than a decade.”
Nelson’s commission predecessor, Fred Brummer, and former Lake County Commissioner Catherine Hanson support the idea.
Keeping the access open “will be a positive” for residents of Mount Plymouth, an unincorporated community of about 4,000 residents that is perhaps best known for a historic hotel whose guests included singer Kate Smith, iconic baseball slugger Babe Ruth and Chicagoland gangster Al Capone.
It would provide them easier and safer access to the parkway, a 25-mile highway that completes a tolled loop around Metro Orlando. The loop includes state roads 429 and 417 and is expected to spawn development near interchanges.
“To me, it just makes sense to keep it open,” Hanson said of the temporary interchange at Mount Plymouth Road, also known as County Road 435.
Lake County Commissioner Leslie Campione suggested the Lake Commission ought to pass a resolution supporting the Mount Plymouth Road connection to the parkway.
Without on/off access there, traffic will wind through residential neighborhoods in Mount Plymouth to get to the S.R. 46 interchange or the Kelly Park Road interchange.
“It will drastically increase the volume of daily and peak hour traffic and negatively impact that quaint, quiet area of northeast Lake County,” Campione said in a text.
While environmental groups worry that development will follow the interchange and endanger the delicate Wekiva area, Brummer said protections are built into the legislation to suppress development. He said those who argue otherwise are “either uninformed or their making this up … It can’t happen.”
But Seminole County Commissioner Lee Constantine, chosen by thenGov. Jeb Bush to lead the Wekiva River Basin Commission, vowed to fight any effort to amend the defining legislation to add another interchange along the parkway.
“Unfortunately, now that the project is in full swing, some people cannot leave well enough alone and are trying to change the agreement for financial gain,” Constantine said.