LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — Neighbors living at the border of Lake and Orange Counties say they are outraged. They say a construction project connecting Sawgrass Bay Road in Lake to Flemings Road in Orange is almost done.
But now, they have another problem.
Orange County has put up barriers, preventing vehicles from going through.
Now, even with the road paved and structured, they still cannot drive through, which ends up costing them a lot of time and money. “Take down these walls. Let us come through,” said Debbie Running, a Clermont resident. “It’s just sitting there; we can’t get through. In fact, we’ve gone backwards instead of making progress.
Residents have been vocal about their frustration with the blockage, so Channel 9 took their frustrations straight to the top.
“I was told by the county that construction should be starting and be done by no later than January 2026. Does that still stand?”, asked Channel 9′s Geovany Dias to Orange County’s Brian Sandler, Director of the Planning Transportation Division. “That’s in the original agreement. It’s not a part of the approved amendment. So, we’re still anticipating that July, start of 2025 the duration is anticipated to be 18 months.”
Sandler explains that the county has been aware of the project since 2017.
Although the road is very short, there’s a lot of paperwork that goes into building it. “If this is an 18-month project, and you were aware of this in 2017, it is 2025, and the project still has not started, why?” Dias asked. “The process that it took to get all the language for the original agreement to happen that that that happened in 2020, today is 2025, five years into our road production process. It usually takes eight if there’s no if there’s no interruptions. So, that’s where we’re at.”
In a statement, Lake County announced that its side of the project should be done by May 2025.
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