Editor, The Beacon:
This is what I told the County Council in January, but after talking to the man at the store at Kepler Road and State Road 44, I realized that it was too late to change the County’s position. He also said they were going to change the intersection to a roundabout. Haven’t we had enough accidents on the MLK/Orange Camp Road roundabout?
“DeLand has changed a lot, maybe too much in the last 30 years, which is when I moved here. My husband was offered a position teaching at Stetson. Martin Luther King [Beltway] didn’t exist. Developments like Victoria Gardens didn’t exist. The area was a home for bears, birds, deer, and a Boy Scout camp.
“The Kepler-New York intersection is already congested during rush hours. Sometimes you have to wait two stoplight cycles before you get to the intersection. It’s so bad I’ve started taking Blue Lake to Beresford or Taylor to Clara to go Downtown. A while ago, you hoped to expand Beresford over to 44 or I-4. Trees were removed, but the road site is a lake. Nothing is happening there. Are you planning to build a bridge? I don’t think it would end the congestion on 44. It would just move it closer to I-4.
“You’re already allowed three new apartment buildings around the Ace Hardware building. DeLand is not and should not be a town with tall buildings. What tall buildings do we have? The City Hall, County Council, the Hilton, and some senior living centers. You will make DeLand ugly if you add tall buildings on the entry road from I-4.
“Adding any building, much less buildings for 450 people, will really make the intersection worse. Who is going to live there? More Northern two-car families? Illegal immigrants?
“You may think you will profit with more tax money. Instead, you may be lucky to break even as police, fire, ambulances will need more money. Tow trucks will block the intersection. You will have to provide water to new buildings. Please do not make DeLand more congested.”
Ruth Ann Fay
DeLand
Fla. Native, I’ve seen what happens when u do this. South FL. Now deland. Don’t give up your old day jobs, your out of here next time around
Modern roundabouts are proven safer than signal intersections with less daily delay as well. Delay is what causes congestion.
Just to be clear, the roundabout is a State project. With that said, our County and City leaders can influence what the State does. Our bigger fight should have occurred many years ago when the City of DeLand’s leaders started their push to expand out and away from the City’s core in order to increase the City’s tax base. I agree with the County Council approving the commercial portion of the project at Kepler and Hwy 44, the closer services are to the people the better for all of us. If you want to force change you must show up in large numbers over and over again at City and County meetings and you MUST stopped electing the same pro-growth people over and over. Bob Apgar, former mayor of DeLand, was extremely pro-growth and you would even think he worked for the developers. Bob Apgar was elected time and time again serving for nearly 34 years on DeLand’s City Commission. I would bet so many who complain endlessly today about the growth and traffic here voted for Bob Apgar again and again and all of those pro-growth people on the City Council and County Council got there some how, WHO VOTED FOR THEM? And even better, I love hearing from people who moved here within the last ten years as they complain about the unpleasant impacts that come with growth that they helped cause. Interesting some people want to complain about 100 housing units going in with the commercial development at Kepler and Hwy 44 when the much bigger problem is the 2500 + homes that are in the works for that area and all that have been built before them. And I don’t recall anyone other than me going before the County Council and pushing back against the County accepting $50,000,000.00 MILLION from the federal government that will go to a developer to be used to build 1,000 low income/section 8 style housing units, only Council Members Danny Robins and Don Dempsey voted against. Shame on us?