Construction Update #125 – Southern Parkway Opening
 

Southern Parkway is opening out of necessity, so I have a look at the new route. There’s another TAN (Then-And-Now) segment, this time of the Village of DeLuna. I also do a flyover of Middleton, Eastport, Coleman Ridge, the Villages of Lake Denham and Wellpoint, Southern Oaks bridge, and the new Dunkin Donuts and 7-11 at Magnolia Plaza

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https://youtu.be/-TfH8U42uAU

As always, great! One question, the rerouting of 470. I believe you said they are closing 470 this month. Is Central parkway going to handle all the traffic, trucks and cars going thru Middleton and out to 301?

Will northbound turnpike jam up have vehicles using the 470 exit going via Meggisson road? Looks like a shortcut on the map

Another great video Don!! The changes you have implemented in your videos are very helpful.

Any idea of what is happening with the UF Hospital planned for 470/Turnpike? It seems like the plans have been put on the back burner and funding is not available.

After they open the Southern Oaks Bridge that goes across the Turnpike, where will people be able to drive?

I had thought they would finish McNeall Drive so people could easily reach Marsh Bend Trail after crossing the bridge. That would make it easier for people living in St. Catherine or Citrus Grove to drive golf carts to Magnolia Plaza.

Based on what I saw in your video, they are ignoring McNeall Drive but they are doing a lot with Bexley Trail, so now it looks like people crossing the bridge will be able to drive down Bexley Trail and reach Central Parkway. That seems strange because I think most of us do not care what happens south of Central parkway.

Strange
 

Intent, focus on intent man. The schools are the top priority for the fall school year opening. Of course Central Parkway comes first, why wouldn’t it? In addition, all the Villages offices have to be opened up at Eastport/Middleton. Your convenience trek to Magnolia is back burner stuff right now.

Work IS in progress on McNeil Dr. As was just stated, the focus is on getting the schools open and Central Ave is a very huge part of that. It won't be much longer on McNeil, they are very focused on that area now. Don't forget, they need inventory to sell to keep this train moving. By this time next year everyone will be singing a different tune...

The hospital topic has been very quiet the last few months. I know that there have been some upper-level management changes at UF but don't know if that is having an impact.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that designing and building a hospital is a very long and involved process. I was the project manager for my company and we were the systems integration and HVAC contractor for the building of the Shands Cardiovascular Neuroscience hospital that opened just over 5 years ago (I retired shortly thereafter). The hospital took 4 years to be designed and approved by everyone, I came on the job full time 6 months after groundbreaking and went to Gainesville 5 days a week for over 3 years to help build it. A hospital is one of the most complicated buildings in the world to build, until you've been on the inside of the process, you can't possibly imagine all that goes into building one. It is a very long and involved process, building a greenfield project of this size will take even longer. If they broke ground today, I wouldn't expect them to see a patient for at least 6 years. Hard to say where things are in the design phase. Bottom line is that this will be a HUGE project and will take a long time from start to finish. The first step of course is to get started, and that's the big mystery for now.

No, FDOT would route detour traffic to the route that would a) handle the highest traffic volume, 2) minimize usage of residential streets/secondary roadways, and 3) routes traffic back to the primary roadway as quickly and efficiently as possible. Meggison meets none of these criteria. 470/Central Parkway to 301 and then possibly 44 to I75 will be the primary detour route if needed.

That is correct, I should not be a problem as Central Parkway is 4 lanes and the existing CR470 is only a 2-lane road.

Another very informative and professionally produced video Don. Amazing you produce these on your own.

Love the maps you use, they look like a lot of work to make them and there's always information not seen elsewhere.

Curious what sources do they come from and how you generate them?

Thanks, they do require a lot of work. The flying is the fun part and takes about a day to do, research takes quite a bit of time too to find the information and sort out the useful stuff and some of the hidden information in the documents. The editing is the killer, for every minute of video you see, I have about an hour of editing invested.

The maps have been a huge plus, Bill Vaynes in Monarch Grove does all the cartography work and allows me to use the maps and provides me with frequent updates. His accuracy is amazing, I have no idea how many hours of work he puts in but it’s a lot.

Yes, 470 is just a 2-lane road, but the people who live near Sumterville and Bushnell are used to driving 60 mph along that road going to and from Leesburg. They may not like going thru Central Park roundabouts at 20 mph.

Anyway, it won't affect us. Ever since they opened Fenney six years ago, we have enjoyed walking and biking thru the developing areas. We have no interest in Middleton, but we are curious what will happed as Eastport and the surrounding neighborhoods are built. With the new Southern Oaks Bridge leading to Bexley Trail, maybe we can ride our bikes down there on a Sunday and look around, just like we plan to do today on a ride thru Lake Denhan and Dabney.