A series of road and land improvements will give drivers more access to the Apopka city center proposed for the Martin’s Pond property, Mayor Joe Kilsheimer announced during his annual State of the City address Tuesday, December 12, at Highland Manor.
The mayor said the road improvements, approved by the Florida Department of Transportation will include a four-way traffic signal at McGee Avenue and U.S. Highway 441 so westbound drivers can more easily turn left into the city center.
Several land improvements at U.S. 441 and State Road 436 will be designed to ease westbound transition from the Sheeler Road intersections into downtown Apopka.
The road upgrades will be done simultaneously with the construction of the city center’s hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn, Kilsheimer said.
“Taken together, the hotel and the road improvements alone will represent a new capital investment of more than $23 million in downtown Apopka, the most in more than a decade,” he said. “That doesn’t even count the investment to be made in the other restaurants and retail establishments coming to city center.”
The State of the City address covered activities in the city so far this year and gave a preview of next year.
Calling the city center one of the pillars of Apopka’s development, Kilsheimer mentioned the April 2017 announcement by Taurus Southern Investments, the city center development partner, that it inked a preliminary agreement to construct the Hilton Garden Inn on the city center property. In June 2017, Dubsdread Catering signed on to remain as Highland Manor’s tenant.
The city center is a mixed-use development that will go up at the intersection of U.S. Highway 441 and SR 436. Kim McCann of Eleven 18 Architecture in Orlando will design the Hilton Garden Inn.
Two renderings of the Hilton Garden Inn were unveiled during the State of the City Address. A third and final rendering revealed was that of the proposed road improvements.
In addition to the city center, Kilsheimer named the new Florida Hospital Apopka and the Wekiva Parkway as two other pillars of Apopka’s development.
The $203-million, 120-bed Florida Hospital Apopka officially opened for business on Wednesday, December 13, when ambulances transported patients from the Park Avenue facility to the new site. The new hospital expanded its healthcare services and more than doubled its beds, compared to the former location’s 50 beds.
Wekiva Parkway’s first two legs, sections 1A and 1B, opened last July. Sections 2A, 2B and 2C are slated for a March 2018 opening. Those sections will extend the parkway to the edge of Mount Dora and provide a direct connection to SR 46.
A full completion of the Parkway, including the building of a new bridge over the Wekiva River, is scheduled for 2021.
“Think about that for a moment: A beltway around Central Florida’s metropolitan Orlando region, which has been nearly 30 years in the making, is now just three years away,” Kilsheimer said.
The full story appears on page 1A of the Friday, December 15, issue of The Apopka Chief.
