I read with great interest an article today in The Ledger that trumpeted a seemingly historic partnership between the Polk County and a Winter Haven developer to extend Power Line Road from its terminus at South Boulevard to U.S. 17-92 on Davenport’s north side somewhere around Bargain Barn Road.
As a former radio commentator used to put it, here’s the rest of the story.
The deal was approved last year to reimburse a trio of corporations to extend the road. What was not mentioned at the meeting was that these three corporations were creatures of the Cassidy Group. which owns some landlocked property along the route that the construction of the road extension would make more developable.
In addition to getting paid to build a road to access its property, the Cassidy folks also got road impact fee credits for building a road even though they were being repaid for making the improvement. That’s how things are done in Polk County.
The road extension is going to wipe out the Lewis Matthews ballfields, but officials said there was money coming to relocate the ballfield complex somewhere or other.
Local officials asked the Florida Legislature for $4 million to do that, which legislators approved and Florida Tax Watch put on its recently issued “turkey” list.
The future funding and timing of the relocation project will depend on whether Gov. Ron DeSantis approves or vetoes the expenditure.
Davenport officials hailed the project as a way to reduce through traffic on U.S. 17-92, which has no doubt increased significantly because of population increase, which is ballyhooed in other venues.
It is really unclear how much of that traffic is coming from Power Line Road or Poinciana, which already has an outlet north of Davenport.
The oddest claim by the geography-impaired is that this road, coupled with an unfunded nine-figure plan to extend Power Line southwesterly toward Scenic Highway, will magically reduce traffic congestion on U.S. 27.
Traffic on U.S. 27 has become increasingly congested because of the same growth that congests every other road in the region.
But it is congested because of through traffic and local traffic traveling to destinations along U.’S. 27 or Interstate 4 or beyond.
But what people need to understand is that 50 years ago, when I first arrived to work here, there were only two traffic lights along the entire length of U.S. 27 in Polk County. That’s because there was little development and the dominant land uses along the highway were ranches and citrus groves. Today subdivisions and strip malls predominate.
The idea that there is some magical way to ease the congestion in one place by building another road elsewhere is delusional.
I mean, the claim that some motorists will leave U.S. 27 on a long detour route along the eastern outskirts of Haines City and Davenport to reach U.S. 17-92 and then head north to Ernie Caldwell Boulevard or Ronald Reagan Parkway to make their way back to U.S. 27 strains credibility.
Instead, what this road project is about and what projects such as this have always been about, which is to open more land to development. Additionally, the scenario appears to be an alternative what is an increasingly diminished chance that the eastern leg of the Central Polk Parkway, which was put on the shelf several years ago after the numbers didn’t justify a toll road, will ever be built.
The problem is that a route was once comprised mostly of farmland and forests is now comprised of a sea of rooftops as a result of annexations by Haines City, Davenport and Lake Hamilton.
Turnpike Enterprise officials have tentatively scheduled some public meetings later this year to discuss the project, but it looks more and more that whatever road system is built may be subsidized and maintained by taxpayers rather than tolls.