Last night I had the opportunity to attend the Community Meeting for the 296 apartments proposed just to the east of the 408 on Hwy 50. They are on the corner of Bonneville Road and Hwy 50. I was not in favor of the apartments.
The apartments look very nice and the concept is good. They are higher end apartments catering to professionals and will not be student housing. The developer is the same group who put in the apartments on the north side of Hwy 50 to the west of Woodbury next to the Publix. I think they are called EOS apartments.
But with that said, I am not in favor of these apartments given our current traffic woes here in East Orange County. The timeline to complete these apartments if approved is the end of 2017 which is right about the same time as the 6 laning of Hwy 50 will be complete. We already know that even 6 laning Hwy 50 is only a temporary fix and the hope is the 408 will be extended but there is no guarantee of that happening as the study is in process now and won’t be completed for another year.
The traffic from these apartments will only add to the existing bottleneck. Traffic in the morning will try to find alternative way to go east and some will end up on Lake Pickett to Tanner and onto the already over-burdened McCulloch Road as it is the only other east-west roadway. Until we have a solid plan on how traffic on McCulloch is going to be reduced, it would be very negligent to approve this apartment complex.
In addition to this the parcel of land is actually 20 acres and these apartments will occupy only 10 of the 20. This could be the reason the application is under 10 acres as that is considered small scale and has less hurdles to jump over. So what happens down the road to the other 10 acres. Perhaps another 300 unit apartment complex or commercial which will add more congestion. I don’t see how the landowner will leave 10 acres undeveloped.
I sort of feel sorry for the landowners and developer of this property as they have a great idea and I am sure the apartments are great but with all our traffic problems this is just at the wrong time and place. This is like blocking the smallest part of an hour glass as these apartments will be at ground zero of all the problems on Hwy 50.
https://www.facebook.com/109352815808210/photos/a.188418747901616.46116.109352815808210/929377143805769/?type=3&theater
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