Traffic concerns continue to dog the major residential and commercial development proposed for County Road 466 across from Spring Arbor Village.
Hammock Oaks would be built on the peaceful pastureland on County Road 466 and east of Cherry Lake Road.
The development would generate a total of 17,450 new daily trips of which 1,571 trips will occur during the “p.m.” peak hour, according to documents from the Town of Lady Lake. During the “p.m.” peak hour, 802 vehicles are forecasted to enter the development and 769 are projected to exit the site.
Opponents of the planned development stepped to the microphone at Monday night’s Lady Lake Commission meeting to outline their concerns.
Spring Arbor Village resident Karen Donnelly pointed to the developer’s pledge to bring in a Trader Joe’s, a store for which Villagers and other residents have been longing.
“We all want a Trader Joe’s, I just don’t want it in my back yard,” Donnelly said.
Donnelly’s neighbor in Spring Arbor Village, Gale Fort, is also worried about the traffic.
“The traffic right now is over the top,” Fort said.
Villager Carl Kusky, a loud, vocal critic of cut-through traffic already spilling over onto Chula Vista Avenue, said it could worsen an already bad situation.
“You have to mitigate the traffic on Chula Vista now. Not two years from now, not 10 years from now,” he said.
Commissioner Ruth Kussard said she has met with residents concerned about the development and was even stopped by a resident worried about the project as she was leaving her driveway for Monday’s meeting.
“We need to take seriously the concerns of our residents when it comes to their quality of life,” Kussard said.
However, Mayor Jim Richards pointed out that during the town’s visioning process in 2010, residents had expressed their views on planned residential and commercial development. He said the proposed development is in synch with the residents’ views expressed during that process six years ago.
“If there ever was a place to put a development, it would be here off a four-lane divided highway,” the mayor said.
He added that he, too, became a victim of progress, when he lost a retention pond in his backyard at his home on the Historic Side of The Villages when The Villages Regional Hospital put in a new parking lot.
“The ducks are gone,” the mayor lamented.
