Changes coming to Orange City road

Part of a well-traveled road in Orange City will be widened and improved, but how quickly depends on the pace of development.

Plans call for four-laning Veterans Memorial Parkway from Parc Hill Apartments north to East Graves Avenue. 

Although all of the road is within the city limits of Orange City, Veterans Memorial Parkway is a county thoroughfare that serves as part of a beltway, or alternative to U.S. Highway 17-92, the principal north-south roadway in West Volusia. 

There are now three phases of the widening, County Engineer Tadd Kasbeer said:

• First, the portion from Parc Hill north to Halifax Health Hospice, a distance of about 500 feet
• Second, about a half-mile from Hospice to East Rhode Island Avenue, with a price tag of about $3 million
• Third, from Rhode Island Avenue to Graves Avenue, whose four-laning will cost approximately $7.4 million

“We’re going to try to pay for this from money from developers,” Kasbeer said.

Kasbeer said some money for the widening may come from impact fees to be paid for Liberty Station, a new subdivision of 100 single-family homes and 70 town houses to be built at the southeast corner of Veterans Memorial Parkway and Graves Avenue.

“The collection of the money is going to drive the construction,” he said. “It may take a year or two.”

Kasbeer said other funding may be available from local-option gasoline taxes. Volusia County imposes a total of 12 cents in local taxes — the maximum allowed under state law — on each gallon of gasoline sold by retailers.

Kasbeer would not rule out seeking funding, perhaps under proportionate-share agreements, in connection with the development of Portland Industrial Park in Deltona. Portland Industrial Park, whose prime tenant is now Amazon with a 1.4-million square-foot warehouse and trucking complex, is to be expanded with another 3 million square feet of warehouse or industrial space. Traffic, including freight-laden trucks, coming into and leaving Deltona will likely use Veterans Memorial Parkway and other crossing roadways in the years ahead.

Kasbeer, in fact, is already looking toward the future.

“I would like to take Veterans Memorial Parkway up to [State Road] 472,” he concluded.

That will likely have to wait, however.