A community group that represented the harshest critics of the Central Florida Expressway Authority (CFX)’s plan to build an elevated expressway down the middle of Cypress Parkway in Poinciana is starting to warm to the idea.
Members of Southport Connector Alternate Routes (SCAR) say they have met with CFX to discuss how the plan could better go forward.
The Southport Connector is a connection between the Poinciana Parkway, already open and just expanded to four lanes, to another proposed toll road that would link Florida’s Turnpike to where Pleasant Hill Road curves to the southwest and becomes Cypress Parkway. It’s all part of a planned interconnected network that would form a de facto beltway around Osceola County to move a potential population of 800,000 county residents around growing residential and commercial areas.
CFX officials also plan to connect the northern end of Poinciana Parkway to County Road 532, and eventually Interstate 4 at the State Road 429 interchange.
But the connection through “downtown Poinciana” has caused the greatest outcry. Residents said the raised road would have created “The Great Wall of Poinciana” and businesses said they’d lose their parking lots and have to move due to right-of-way acquisitions. The SCAR group even filed a Title VI Civil Rights complaint with the Federal Highway Administration’s Environmental Justice board, saying the road would bi-sect a community that is primarily minority. The complaint was later denied.
But Solivita resident and SCAR member Lita Epstein, who helped draft that complaint, said the group has met with CFX to discuss the next steps for the road’s Project Development and Engineering (PD&E) study. She said CFX has heard SCAR’s concerns and developed some of them into the updated study. The major ones involve adding a third lane to the Cypress Parkway surface road and using bridges instead of the wall design where possible.
“CFX responded to Poinciana’s concerns by adding a third local lane to Cypress Parkway and significant improvements to intersections,” Epstein said. They’ve also agreed to do a community impact assessment, as well as sound and pollution studies to measure the impact on Poinciana residences. This is a big improvement and makes the plans more responsive to the needs of the community.”
She said studies done show about 4,000 cars of the 40,000 or so expected to drive in the modified corridor would be on the expressway.
“Everyone else would be on the local lanes. The neighborhood traffic wouldn’t use the toll road,” Epstein said.
As part of the talks with SCAR, CFX said it will also perform sound studies to determine current sound levels and plan for sound walls in sections where the Connector will be at ground level. Intersections along Cypress Parkway, such as at Doverplum Avenue, Marigold Avenue and Old Pleasant Hill Road, will also be improved and widened.
CFX officials have reiterated that the plans are still in the conceptual phase and subject to further changes, as it gets more feedback from residents and businesses in the community. Program managers say they expect to transmit the PD&E to the CFX Board of Directors in late 2025, with the design phase to take up to two years and construction to take at least two more.
Drivers likely won’t travel the new lanes until roughly 2030.
More on the project can be found at www.MovePoinciana.com.
