GlobeSt.com UPDATE: Beltway Developer Making End Run, Opponents Argue

ORLANDO-The Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority plans to go ahead alone on a $100 million road-widening job on State Road 46A, a crucial link to the half-completed beltway that now ends in Apopka, FL, 17 miles northwest of Downtown Orlando.

In doing so, the transportation agency is ignoring pleas from neighboring Lake County environmentalists fearing a wave of new commercial development in the Wekiva River Protection Area that overlaps into Lake, Orange and Seminole counties. State law bars commercial development at this location which must remain rural.

Bowing to protests from landowners and residents, Lake County commissioners told the authority last week it wasn’t interested in going further with the road-building plan.