Found Highway

A mammoth road-widening project, stretching coast-to-coast from Lee County to Palm Beach County, promises to transform the State Road 80 corridor and the lives within it.

S.R. 80 is a mishmash right now, going rather quickly from a busy, six-lane thoroughfare in Fort Myers to a sleepy two-lane rural road in eastern Lee County. The road is then two lanes most of the way through Hendry County until it reaches U.S. 27 near Clewiston. From there it becomes a four-lane highway into West Palm Beach, where major improvements are underway at the eastern end.

But when more than $360 million is spent and nearly a decade of work is completed, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) will have converted the highway into a major east-west alternative to Interstate 75's Alligator Alley, carrying people and goods between the coasts. A completion date isn't certain, but the finished project will be the only four-lane highway bisecting the state between I-75 and I-4, and will reap the rewards and pains of that distinction.

"This corridor is really important to all of us," says Joanne May, spokesperson for FDOT's District 1, which covers Southwest Florida. Among state roads, she adds, "It is our heaviest east-west transportation corridor, with the highest traffic demands."

Alligator Alley, now the primary east-west route, runs from central Collier County to central Broward County and is inefficient for traveling and moving goods from Fort Myers to West Palm Beach and points north on the east coast.

S.R. 80 crosses the state, but from just east of Fort Myers Shores all the way to nearly Lake Okeechobee, it is only two lanes. That is not a route that truckers care to travel, or that road planners ideally want them to travel, but it is used more heavily all the time.

"We have to have more of a network. We need transportation options," says Lee County Commissioner John Albion, whose district includes S.R. 80 in northeastern Lee. "The east coast-west coast is just a natural." He sees the S.R. 80 improvements as handling the ongoing demand from growth. "It is simple growth management."

FDOT is also planning to widen two other east-west corridors: S.R. 70 from Bradenton east to Fort Pierce and S.R. 60 from Vero Beach west to Tampa. Along with the revamped S.R. 80, these avenues will help move not just passenger cars but the freight trucks that are integral to so many Florida businesses. The entire system promises to be bigger, better, more efficient and safer, according to Barbara Kelleher, spokesperson for FDOT's District 4 office in Fort Lauderdale, which covers Palm Beach County.

Economic Straightaway

Widening S.R. 80 into a main thoroughfare will transform the economy and lifestyles of those in the corridor.

"That will help us a lot," says Nancy Long, manager of Don's Steakhouse in LaBelle. "That would give us a lot more business."

The small, rural Hendry County town has seen little of the growth and wealth of its western neighbors in Lee and Charlotte counties. LaBelle is an Old Florida town, with plenty of low-income folks. Aging homes on small curbless streets are quaint and modest. Pickup trucks here are actually used for work, and they look it-unlike the shiny trucks and SUVs that dominate the urban communities.

But this rural flavor will probably change. In fact, it might already be changing.

Statistics tell the story: According to FDOT figures, the total number of vehicles on S.R. 80 east of S.R. 78A-just across the Lee County line-was 9,800 in 1999, and climbed to 11,300 in 2003. In LaBelle, the number of vehicles using S.R 80, the main thoroughfare through the Hendry County government seat, was 11,900 in 1999. That rose to 15,500 in 2003.

With traffic counts all along the highway growing as much as 30 percent over just four years and destined to grow even more, officials have made improvements to S.R. 80 a priority.

"It's one of the very few routes across the state down here," says Kelleher. "Once it's widened to four lanes, it will be better for trucks as well as passenger cars. It will be a faster, safer roadway."

Road Work Ahead

Some maps already show the highway as four lanes from Fort Myers to LaBelle. That is not the case, but it will be within months. From east of Alva to LaBelle, the divided highway is complete, moving traffic smoothly past a tremendous amount of storm-water retention work evident along the route. The six-mile stretch from Hickey Creek east to the Hendry County line, a $15-million project, is scheduled for completion this summer, creating a divided highway all the way from Fort Myers to LaBelle.

Then there is one last, large section from LaBelle east to U.S. 27 in the heart of the state. That stretch is dominated by citrus groves, some cattle lands, swampy areas and precious few people. Development is scarce, other than the tiny communities of Goodno and Whidden Corner, until Clewiston.

The design phase of this stretch will begin in 2006, and right-of-way acquisition is set to begin in 2008. Construction is more than five years out, and the estimated cost for that section is $194 million. A completion date is undetermined.

On the eastern end of the corridor, S.R. 80 is four lanes beginning roughly at the Hendry County-Palm Beach County line. The farther into the West Palm Beach metropolitan area the road reaches, the more development lines it.

FDOT is in the midst of a $143-million widening from four to six lanes and, nearer to Interstate 95, from four lanes to eight lanes. The five-stage plan, scheduled to be finished by 2009, includes "grade separations"-four overpasses built over local, heavily traveled north-south roads, such as

S.R. 7 and Military Trail, limiting access much as an interstate does with exit and entrance ramps. That is in anticipation of the increased traffic the road will be carrying across the state, particularly from the Fort Myers area, as well as increased local traffic due to the westward expansion of the West Palm Beach area.

No Stopping Development

Improvements to S.R. 80 will speed the eastward migration of development from Lee and Collier.

"Moving inland will become more of an option," Albion says. "The widening will make the ability to move into Hendry more attractive."

Realtor Frank D'Alessandro sees the same thing, pointing out that when Alligator Alley was finished, people in Broward and Dade counties sold and bought more for less in Southwest Florida. He expects similar results from the S.R. 80 project.

"This ties into Palm Beach, which is a very wealthy community," he says. "We're going to see the same exodus from the East Coast again."

He already is working with developers from Palm Beach to buy and develop land in eastern Lee and western Hendry counties, and says there has been some interest in southwestern Glades County as well. Land prices are already showing the pressure, doubling and tripling in parts of the corridor, while available large tracts are diminishing rapidly.

Recognizing the corridor's potential, The Bonita Bay Group has preliminary plans to build there. The Bonita Springs-based company bought 4,700 acres in LaBelle from the Bob Paul family. In their partnership with Bonita Bay, the family donated 500 additional acres at the site for community use, which could include a college campus. "We think there's going to be a lot of residential development there," says Mitch Hutchcraft, Bonita Bay's regional vice president for Hendry County. "That's a driver for business [that will provide] economic development and a job base."

The design calls for a "Main Street" concept of mixed-use residential and commercial development, with components of Celebration, the planned community near Orlando, Hutchcraft says. The site will feature public lakes, walking trails and public areas such as parks. When the 30-year project is done, it will hold up to 15,000 homes, designed in Old Florida, Victorian and other traditional regional architecture, as opposed to strictly Mediterranean, Hutchcraft says. The idea is to make it compatible with the rural atmosphere and housing. And another Bonita Bay plan is underway to develop 187 acres in the vicinity, along the Caloosahatchee River, he says. Bonita Bay already has Verandah, a 1,456-acre community off of S.R. 80 on the Orange River.

The road project could impact Alva first. The small town has not felt the heat of Lee County's eastward march of development, but it will someday. And S.R. 80's widening could make that day arrive soon. Alva Country Diner, enduring the long construction project past its front doors, has barely noticed the disruption.

"We're the only restaurant in Alva," says Kerry Palmore, the establishment's manager. "If we get any busier, we won't be able to handle it."

Of course, as S.R. 80 helps pull more development and population eastward, the Alva Country Diner will not remain the only restaurant. Growth will bring competition, and all that will change some of the historic character of Alva-something that many Florida communities have already experienced, for better and for worse.

But Alva is just one dot in a long corridor on the cusp of change, where life will never be quite the same.