The current City Commission has launched a new quest for the city to find a way to solve a traffic problem they created.

On Monday May 23, 2022, our Winter Springs City Commission voted to allow some final exceptions for the 132-unit Hickory Grove townhomes neighborhood.

Talking about potential traffic impacts from the townhome development, developer Dwight Saathoff said that wait times just south of the development at Tuskawilla Road and State Road 434 were already past what they should be.

“Anything above 80 seconds [of wait time] is considered a failure,” Saathoff said. “We’re at about 90 seconds.”

So, the development in Winter Springs continues and in addition to the additional traffic and safety hazards brought on by increased traffic, we also lose a bunch of trees.

Amazingly our City Commission voted 5-0 to the “bulldozing of more than 1,000 trees just north of Blumberg Park in the Winter Springs Town Center. One of the four exceptions granted Monday night was to allow the developer to cut down 11 of the 14 large specimen oak trees on the property.” Our commission once again voted to approve a development that will increase traffic and take down a bunch of trees at the same time.

“This is one that no one in our city likes to do but it goes with the territory,” Mayor Kevin McCann said. The development will pay a fee for cutting down the trees and will replace some of them, McCann said.

I want to hear from you. Do you think all this development will increase traffic in our town? Was cutting these trees down justified?

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