WINDERMERE, Fla. — The town of Windermere will continue efforts to get funding for a big road project despite Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoing an allocation for the work last month in the state budget.
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Business owner Stephanie Desaulniers said she has seen an increase in traffic over the years that is now clogging roads in the area.
“Traffic can be frustrating at times,” said Desaulniers, who owns the Dixie Cream Café off Main Street.
Town Manager Robert Smith said that while more traffic would usually mean more customers for area businesses, in Windermere that’s not the case.
“We did a study in 2014,” Smith said. “75% of the traffic that you see here is not originating, and then their destination is not the town of Windermere.”
The boom in growth in west Orange County, especially Horizon West, has meant more traffic funneling through Windermere’s Main Street — which is one of the only north-south roadways in the area with access to Conroy Windermere Road and the metro-Orlando area.
“Unfortunately, because we’re so small — we’re only 2.2 square miles — and that we are the choke point, we’re having to bear all this cost to our taxpayers to pay for the sins of the other people,” Smith said.
The town does have a plan to alleviate the stop-and-go conditions: To the north, a roundabout is planned at Windermere Road and Main Street/Maguire Road. To the south, another roundabout is proposed at Main Street and Chase Road.
Smith said that will keep traffic moving, albeit slowly, to the center of town at Main Street and Sixth Avenue.
“Once those two projects are completed, it’ll probably make this roundabout (at Main Street and Sixth Avenue) worse,” he said. “Because you’re relieving two choke points. I mean, you’re pretty much opening up the dam of cars to come into this one central point.”
That’s why the town wants to widen the current roundabout at Main Street and Sixth Avenue, making it two lanes to get more traffic in, and then out, of town.
With a more than $3 million price tag, Smith said Windermere needs to rely on other sources of funding, including the state, to make the project happen.
A request for $784,000 dollars for design of the project was initially included in the state’s most recent budget, but it was vetoed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“I was disappointed that that was vetoed as far as the design for Sixth Avenue,” Smith said. “But we’re going to keep trying.”
Smith said town officials will continue working with lawmakers and lobbyists to help the town manage the impact from growth in surrounding areas.
Despite the plan to widen the roundabout at Main Street and Sixth Avenue, Smith said Main Street itself will remain a two-way street to maintain the area’s small-town charm.