Development often comes with some inconvenience, and the closure of Southwest Community Boulevard for construction is the latest example.
“The gist of it is, Community Boulevard is going to be closed at (Southwest) Stockton Place, the east entrance of (TownPark at Tradition),” Heath Stocton, transportation engineer at the city, said. “The road’s going to be closed from there to (Southwest Discovery Way).”
There are no exceptions to the road closure.
“It’s going to be a full closure,” Stocton said. “No cars, no bicycles, no pedestrians, none of that. There’s going to be a lot of construction in there and open holes.”
The closure will last through to spring. “It should be open by the first of March,” Stocton said.
Southbound traffic on Community is being diverted eastward on Tradition Parkway to Village Parkway Drive. “Follow the posted detours,” Stocton said. “They should be well marked.”
Colt Schwerdt, the city’s regulatory manager, said GL Homes is doing the roadwork.
“They are going to be modifying the intersection and extending Community Boulevard south,” he said. “It’s roughly 3,000 feet (a little more than half a mile) they’re going to be extending it.”
“This is the first of the development for Riverland,” Schwerdt said. “It’s a new residential community. This is just the first phase of a pretty big community they’re going to be developing.”
Schwerdt said that the road closure will probably affect few. “The traffic count is low out there,” he said.
So low that the St. Lucie Transportation Planning Organization doesn’t include that road segment in its “Fall 2016 Traffic Counts and Level of Service Report.” On the northern side, Community has an annual average daily traffic count of 3,967 trips between Tradition Parkway and Northwest Westcliffe Lane. The last year the count was done was 2014.
Village Parkway has an annual average daily traffic count of 6,633 trips between Tradition Parkway and Southwest Becker Road in the report.
The road’s level of service is rated as a “C” It’s infrequent for a road to get a B rating. Getting an A is pretty much unheard of.
“There will be some work to the intersection (of Community and Discovery) itself, but most of the work will be south of the intersection,” Schwerdt said. “They have 322 lots planed and that’s for single housing.”
Stocton said Community is used by some driving to and from SW Becker Road to work or shop, and by group-ride and solitary cyclists.
“We ask for patience as we’re doing construction,” he said.
He doesn’t expect the work to disrupt anyone living in Tradition. He said it’ll all be done during daylight hours.
“The nearest home is about a half mile away,” Stocton said.
