County, CFX pass funding agreement for 417 connector to Sanford airport

A vote to push forward with the State Road 417 to Orlando Sanford International Airport connector road passed through the Seminole County Commission Tuesday afternoon and the Central Florida Expressway Authority board Thursday morning. The twin votes passed an interlocal funding agreement between the county and the Central Florida Expressway Authority. 

“This is an unbelievably important project,” Central Florida Expressway Authority Board Chairman C.J. Maier said Thursday morning. “This is accelerating a project that is direly needed in Seminole County.”

Now that two-lane connector road, which will span a more than two-mile gap between a proposed interchange and the airport, faces a series of deadlines and hurdles leading up to a final deadline of Dec. 31, 2038 to open to traffic. 

Frank Iopollo, former chairman of the Sanford Aviation Authority, on Oct. 9 of last year called the project “the single most important regional transportation project in the Seminole County area for the community, not just the airport.” 

“We anticipate some significant growth in the not too distant future,” he said, including an estimated 437% increase in freight traffic between 2017 and 2037.  

“The work that’s been done on this has been phenomenal,” Seminole County Commissioner Andria Herr, who also serves on the CFX board, said. “It’s very difficult to live, work and play when you can’t traverse the surface roads in your area.”

The project first saw discussion as early as 2006, but only began moving forward in earnest in 2022. Meanwhile the Central Florida Expressway Authority has moved forward with another project that greater Oviedo and Winter Springs residents may be familiar with: the widening of S.R. 417 between where it crosses into Seminole County near S.R. 426 and where it crosses Lake Jesup just north of S.R. 434. That bridge is expected to continue to be four lanes wide in the near future, and the expressway is expected to connect to the airport connector just north of where the bridge nears Sanford. 

The chosen path for the connector road, called Alternative 2A, was lauded by board members for being the least disruptive to the rapidly growing area’s residential developments. 

“The impact of 2A is minimal compared to what it would have been with the alignments,” Herr said.  

The first deadline the Sanford Airport connector project will need to hit is a Dec. 31, 2028 milestone where 60% of the design phase of the project is complete. At that point Seminole County will have spent two payments of $25 million each to continue to move the project forward to the design phase. The total estimated cost as of CFX’s October board meeting, when the board approved the project’s Alternative 2A route, is $200.4 million. 

But the project, as approved, still has a significant funding shortfall, with the project only having 24% of the funding needed to be viable. Glenn Pressimone, chief of infrastructure for the Central Florida Expressway Authority, said that the project should still move forward as the project’s partners look for additional funding partners as it moves forward through the design and construction phases. 

In voicing her approval of the project last year, Herr said that despite current funding challenges, now is the time to build it. 

“It’s difficult to build a road through any community, but now is the time to do it,” she said. “This will have the least impact, if you can imagine that, on residents in that area, if we do it now. If we don’t do this now I’m not sure you’ll ever be able to do it.”

Editor’s note: Thursday morning the CFX board voted unanmiously to approve the interlocal agreement as well.