At its Monday meeting, the Osceola County board of commissioners approved preliminary subdivision plans for the eight phases of a development expected to bring thousands of new homes to the Kissimmee Park Road area.
Site plans were approved for Edgewater West Phases 1-8. Officially, it includes plotting for 3,678 lots over 1,052 acres north of Kissimmee Park Road, south of Clay Whaley Road, east of Lake Tohopekaliga and south of Cross Prairie Parkway.
Cross Prairie, which comes out of the Kindred and Tohoqua communities, is scheduled to be extended farther south, to connect with a new Florida’s Turnpike interchange at Nolte Road. The Florida Department of Transportation said last year the new interchange is expected to be completed in 2028, and two other Turnpike interchanges south of that are in future plans.
The City of St. Cloud voted in 2022 to eventually annex the land from Osceola County, amend the land use and re-zone it. It is slated as a mixed-use development of commercial, office, civic space, hotels, and single- and multi-family residences. The city and county have been working together on plans for this property going back to 2008, when a Development of Regional Impact was formed. That expired in 2017, but St. Cloud’s annexation gives the city the ability to impact how the development moves forward, and collect impact fees to pay for services like utilities and first responders that serve the development.
County Commission Chair Cheryl Grieb’s district 4 includes the Edgewater land along Clay Whaley and Kissimmee Park Roads, where the current Turnpike interchange for the south end of St. Cloud is located, and where traffic generally stacks up at morning and evening drive times. Grieb said Monday’s action is the first in a line of steps.
“This has been in the works, working with St. Cloud, for a long time,” she said. “We’re still a long way off (from development), and we’re looking to see if more commercial development can be included.”
BTI Partners, the South Florida-based developer behind Edgewater, said in 2022 that the first phase of the community would launch with 1,125 homes, and said on its website that it would be “developing the residential component for the next 5-7 years.”
Its plans include securing additional land for a new K-8 school, and a 50-acre site for a future high school.
When asked if the new Nolte interchange and Cross Prairie extension would be completed at the time new rooftops spring up in Edgewater, Grieb said, “That’s a possibility.”
