Tohopekaliga Road area residents review proposed road improvements with county transportation staff and project consultants Thursday night in St. Cloud. (Photo/Terry Lloyd)
About 10 families currently live on a quiet “rural” stretch of Lake Tohopekaliga Road, west of the Florida Turnpike off of Kissimmee Park Road in the St. Cloud area.
Soon, they will have thousands of neighbors as two large housing developments get underway, bracketing both sides of the road.
The Whaley Platt Development will be located to the west, comprising 2,800 housing units on 750 acres. The construction for the development has already been permitted. The Bella Terra development, to the east, will build 2,000 units on 680 acres. A Bella Tara Community Development District (CDD) is already in place to provide infrastructure, including internal roads, utilities, and amenities, for the development.
With development imminent, Osceola County, is in the midst of a Project Development and Environment Study (PD&E) to convert the current two-lane Lake Tohopekaliga Road into a four-lane urban road. Two public hearings, one virtual and one in-person, were held last week to reveal the results of the PD&E study to residents.
The project will run from Kissimmee Park Road south for approximately 1.25 miles to accommodate the new development. The new road section will have four travel lanes with a center median and sidewalks on both sides of the road. Since some housing units will face the road, on-street parking will be provided except in the vicinity of existing residences. An additional 7 to 15 feet of right-of-way property will be required from landowners along the road. Three traffic signals are proposed, one at the intersection of Kissimmee Park Road and Lake Tohopekaliga Road, and two more where new roads through the future developments will intersect Lake Tohopekaliga Road. County transportation officials stated that private development is contributing to the current PD&E study as well as the future design and construction costs of the project.
“We are concerned that even with all of the development, there is still only one way in or out of our area,” said Kurt Weretka, who was at the meeting with his wife, Sheri, and lives on five acres on Lake Tohopekaliga Road.
On several occasions, the couple has been unable to either leave the area or return home due to accident-related road closures on Clay Whaley Road near the current Florida’s Turnpike interchange, and expressed concern that those circumstances will only increase with nearly 5,000 new residences being developed.
Janine Wooten, who also lives on Lake Tohopekaliga Road, expressed some of the same concerns and also echoed the feelings expressed by many residents of the rapidly disappearing rural atmosphere of eastern Osceola County.
“We’re right by the lake, and so many old trees and all the wildlife will be gone,” said Wooten.
Comments on the project can be submitted until March 19 via the project website, or by email or phone to the project manager, Laura Campos. For more information on the County’s Lake Tohopekaliga Road project, and to provide comments, see https://bit. ly/4d8s6Ft.
