Squeezed out

Seemingly a lifetime ago, the City of Kissimmee hired Renaissance, a consulting group from Orlando, to develop a vision or strategy for 192/Vine St. through the city. The city commission adopted the final vision report, oh, about two years ago. One of the major sections of the vision was an educational district on the east side of the city, anchored by Valencia Community College and mixed use properties to serve students there.

Well, either no one told Osceola County, or the county commission wasn’t impressed by the plan or its progress. The Orlando Sentinel reports that the county commission has appointed a nine-person advisory committee to embark on two years of meetings to study ways to improve a 5-mile stretch of 192 from Michigan Avenue to the St. Cloud canal. Says the Sentinel “The goal is to create a plan to improve the area that includes Valencia Community College, Osceola Heritage Park and an interchange for Florida’s Turnpike.”

We suspect that one of the highly possible outcomes of this advisory committee might be to adopt another district similar to the 192 BeautiVacation corridor, perhaps leveraging the same support system and staff.

The City of Kissimmee needs to get the 192/Vine project into gear. If the city’s stretch of road is to be bookended on both sides by road districts with improved amenities, while the city’s stretch continues to look like 1960’s public works projects, we can only imagine what the additional negative impact on that area will be.

Or, perhaps the city should embrace the idea of regionalism and join this group, increasing the project focus from the end of the current BeautiVacation project all the way out to the turnpike.