HomeMy WebLinkAboutPine Avenue-1995 Land planners move to
ease Pine Avenue tension
BY TIMOTHY ALLEN CONKLIN
STAFF REPORTER OF THE Or/soo Vo,c£
In an effort to assuage the fears Proposed: 'friendly amendment'
of Pine Avenue residents concerned
with potential mall traffic,the Oviedo
Land Planning Agency has made a Oviedo residents," the newsletter SR 434,but also south and then west
friendly amendment to the city's com- reads. "If traffic is detrimental to our before crossing SR 426 as a connec-
prehensive plan, recommending that community, it is equally detrimental tor road parallel to Winter Springs
the Oviedo City Council consider ex- to our neighbors in Oviedo. We fully Boulevard.
tending Lake Jessup Avenue concur- support their efforts, and their right "The downside is that NW
ready with Pine Avenue. to prevent traffic congestion from be- Oviedo becomes a less desirable place
If the city council were to accept coming a permanent, irreversible, to live," O'Connell wrote in the
the recommendation,the extension of blight on their neighborhoods"
Pine Avenue would be delayed until Well, maybe not fully. "We are memo,"but can Oviedo created this
monies could be found to fund the supporting mess, they can use mall revenues [o
extension of both roads. "Based on ca et hetpe them in their O'Ctnnell, solve he
existing revenue sources,the earliest a member of the THA Board of Di- When asked about the memo,
likelihood of an extension (of Pine rectors,said in a telephone interview O'Connell said, "That was offered own
Avenue) is five rears," said Oviedo Monday."To say that we are support- John Fe ing before which I went into ne-
city planner David Moon last week. ing their efforts to stop the extension John ions. I idn't he went wts do-
"If(both roads) have to be simulta- of Pine Avenue would be a misstate- able gotiations. I didn't know if it was do-
"If
neously extended,that's going todrive nest." able or but thought it
up the initial cost, so then you'll see In fact, O'Connell, in a memo- worth looking at." •
an additional time frame before both randum to Winter Springs commis- Ferring added that he wrote the
are extended. memo not as a member of the THA,
sinner John Ferring dated March 8 "but as a resident of the area. It was
Moon Mated,however, to say and obtained by the Voice last week, simply a private correspondence I had
that it would take that long for the suggested the extension of Pine Ay- with Commissioner Ferring."
extension projects to begin. "That's enue as a possible solution to mall A public hearing on the proposed
not to say that the city couldn't ac- traffic problems.
cave additional revenues over the next O'Connell included with the current with theJexttensionnof,Pin-
few years that could move that up," memo a rough sketch,which had Pine current with the extension at th of Oviedo
he said."(The city)council has taken Avenue extending not only north to Avenue,Cuncil be held at the Oviedo
the position that they want to see it City Council's May IS meeting.
done earlier."
Evelyn Cloninger,who has been
at the fbrefront of the Pine Avenue
anti-mall traffic protests,said that the
proposal does little to quell the fears
of Pine Avenue residents."We do not
object to them adding Lake Jessup,"
she said,"but I think this is them try- ✓�
ing to appease the residents of Pine r 0 S y
Avenue,which it does not."
Meanwhile, the Tuscawilla
Homeowners Association, in its lat-
est"Tuscattilla Today"newsletter,has
come out in support of the efforts of
Cloninger and company.
"We are united in protest with