Rush hour traffic in South DeLand
Within less than a year, if all goes according to plan, DeLandites will have a new way to get to Interstate 4 and points south, and there may be less traffic on other major roads nearby.
With no objection, the Volusia County Council on Jan. 17 ratified a contract for construction of Blue Lake Avenue southward to connect with State Road 472.
“It’s an important connection for Victoria Park,” County Engineer Tadd Kasbeer told the County Council. “It provides a third access point to take pressure off the MLK [Martin Luther King Jr.] Boulevard and Orange Camp [Road].”
The council awarded the road-construction contract to P&S Paving Inc. of Daytona Beach, to build the two-lane segment of Blue Lake Avenue between Orange Camp Road and S.R. 472. The extension of South Blue Lake Avenue is 1,910 feet, a little more than one-third of a mile.
Of the seven companies that bid, P&S Paving had the lowest price, which was just under $2.765 million.
The county is using road-impact fees to pay the bulk of the cost of the project, set at almost $2.34 million. The remainder comes from a proportionate-share payment of $428,553 from The Kolter Group, which is developing much of Victoria Park.
The contract calls for the extension to be completed within 270 days from the county’s issuance of a notice to proceed. The link between Orange Camp Road and S.R. 472 may be finished in the fall.
The contract notes Volusia County has already secured from the Florida Department of Transportation a driveway-connection permit for the extension of Blue Lake Avenue to S.R. 472, and the county has obtained a stormwater permit from the St. Johns River Water Management District.
The contract also requires the contractor to “utilize the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify system to verify the employment eligibility and work authorization of all new employees hired by the Contractor on or after the effective date of this Contract and thereafter during the term of this Contract, including Subcontractors.”
In addition, the contractor “must certify that the company is not participating in a boycott of Israel.” Further, the agreement requires the company to “certify” that it is not doing business in Sudan, Cuba or Syria, and that it is not on the “Scrutinized Companies with Activities in the Iran Petroleum Energy Sector List.”
Mister Everson,
This article is wrong, just like your November article.
Orange Camp Road is 1-1/4 mile from 472. This project you describe will NOT connect the two. It will just create a small (1/3 mile) part of that connection, at the 472 end.
For Victoria Hills, the 1/3 mile project will be good, because it will connect that subdivision to 472.
But travelers on Blue Lake Road, which runs several miles on the east side of Deland, will not be able to get to 472 via this extension, unless it runs the full 1 and 1/4 mile, south from where Blue Lake Road now ends at Orange Camp.
Please contact the authorities that you contacted for these two articles, and get the WHOLE story. By this I mean get answers to these questions:
Is there a plan to truly extend Blue Lake Road FULLY south from where it now ends at Orange Camp?
If so, what is the timeline?
The road extension is just providing an exit for a subdivision that should have been part of the plan when the subdivision was built. This road extension will do little to offer relief for most of us. And on top of that it will greatly benefit the property owners who the County purchased the land from for $980,000 to put this road through on. I would have thought a better a deal could have been made considering how the access that will be created will increase the value of the property. Sure has been a lot of hullabaloo over building an exit to a subdivision. This should have gone all the way to Orange Camp.