ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Another section of the Wekiva Parkway is just months away from opening up to drivers. The new section connecting Kelly Park Road all the way down to State Road 429 will open in June.
“It's going to be a different roadway from what Central Florida has seen before,” said Mary Brooks, with the Wekiva Parkway Project.
The Wekiva Parkway, which is also State Road 429, will connect to State Road 417. The project will travel through Orange to Lake to Seminole Counties to protect natural resources surrounding the Wekiva River.
The section Channel 9 traveled Friday will not have any manned toll booths, and the overhead toll collection points will blend in with the surrounding area.
Watch: Behind the scenes look of construction of the Wekiva Parkway
It will cost drivers roughly $1.40 to drive the new section, but if drivers have EPass or Sunpass, they’ll get a more than 40 percent discount.
“That color scheme with the deep browns and the tans will be applied to these columns and throughout the parkway,” Brooks said. “They were like, if we have to build this type of a road in the natural, rustic areas, then we want something that fits in."
The Central Florida Expressway shot drone video of the parkway and the amount of land needed to create the 25-mile beltway around Central Florida.
Watch drone video of the project below:
"There is good and bad to everything,” said business owner Ken Grimm.
Grimm told Channel 9’s Racquel Asa that he knows first-hand how much land was need for the project; three acres of his land of his nursery was taken for the project.
“Access to that parkway is saving us a lot of time,” Grimm said.
Cox Media Group
