Parkway to 486, as it was drawn up

It’s Wednesday so let’s talk about the Suncoast Parkway.

​I attended a Florida Department of Transportation groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday morning for the next leg of the parkway from S.R. 44 to C.R. 486.

The event was off C.R. 486 near Pine Ridge, where the next interchange will be when this section is completed by late 2026.

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It was a nice event with county commissioners, a few folks from the City of Crystal River, Rep. Ralph Massullo, FDOT higher-ups and various others. Several photos were taken of people in business dress wearing hard hats moving scoops of dirt with gold-painted shovels. (Here's my Florida Politics story about it.)

The speakers used buzzwords like “regional connectivity” to describe the parkway project. Everyone seemed convinced this extension to 486 is a great idea.

If only it were planned that way.

Unlike the rest of the Suncoast Parkway project that’s spanned over three decades, no one sat at a drawing board and stenciled in the C.R. 486 interchange. Everyone knew the Citrus County parkway exits: Cardinal Street, S.R. 44 and C.R. 495. Those were the only exits discussed and those were the only ones studied.

Some people are of the mistaken impression that the C.R. 486 interchange was planned all along. I heard a Citrus County politician say she’s “waited 20 years” for the state to start construction on the segment to C.R. 486. That’s…unlikely. The state only added 486 to the mix in 2017 and it didn’t do that until the county asked. 

I’ve gone down this road (ha!) before and not going to rehash it all. The Suncoast Parkway path to construction in Citrus County is a loaded metaphor: twists, turns, bumps, potholes and, finally, a smooth ride.

Let’s return to 2016. At that time, the state had no clue what to do with the parkway. Politicians wanted to create a network of toll roads in Florida and saw the parkway as a starting point.

Meanwhile, the county saw two problems: The parkway ends at 44 and 491 is still two lanes. Lots of traffic moving in and out of the Central Ridge and no place to put it. Uh oh.

Rather than make widening 491 the top priority, the county instead asked the state to build us a 3-mile toll road.

Initial reaction from FDOT was less than enthusiastic. “Yeah, we’ll see,” they said, rolling their bureaucratic eyes.

“It’s not looking financially feasible at this point,” one FDOT person told commissioners.

Well, one thing I’ve learned is politicians decide what’s “financially feasible.” Wilton Simpson, then our powerful state senator, put his weight behind the county’s ask and the FDOT’s money problems with the 486 extension went away.

And now here we are at an FDOT groundbreaking talking about “regional connectivity.” As if this was all done on purpose.

So where does that leave us? Incredibly, in a pretty good place.

Let’s be blunt. The C.R. 486 interchange is a $103 million gift to Citrus County. There are ZERO studies to support this interchange. There were ZERO conversations on the county commission about the long-range effects of adding this exit onto C.R. 486.

Yet, Commissioner Jeff Kinnard said something Tuesday that I can’t dispute. Kinnard is convinced that much of the intense commercial activity taking place on C.R. 486 — especially the Shoppes of Black Diamond that will house Target and its friends — wouldn’t be happening on such a scale if there weren’t a parkway exit opening up down the road.

Had the parkway stopped at S.R. 44 and continued with an overpass at 486 instead of an interchange, would all that commercial growth be taking place?

Nope.

“None of this commercial development happens if that interchange isn’t there,” he told me.

So it’s possible, maybe even likely, that a decision with no forethought beyond the moment ends up being the county’s most progressive move during the entire Suncoast Parkway era.

That’s OK. Citrus County could use a little luck.

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