Wal-Mart and Old Kings Road Widening Update
Delay of another month in complicated agreement to widen Old Kings Road to four lanes.
Palm Coast, FL – May 20, 2008 – I first wrote over a year ago about the widening of Old Kings Road. You may have noticed that the work hasn’t started yet. The main reason for the delay is that much of the funding for the project is coming from the owners of property fronting Old Kings. It’s very complicated, requiring setting up a special taxing district containing only the effected properties and an agreement between the property owners as to the fair share of cost to be born by each. Palm Coast’s new Wal-Mart Supercenter is planned for one of the parcels. At today’s City Council meeting, the project was delayed by another month because one property owner would not come to agreement. This required a rewrite of the council resolutions authorizing the assessments and bonding.
This project ties in with the new Super Wal-Mart to be located on Old Kings. Old Kings is not only being widened. It’s also being rerouted for the portion south of the old Lehigh railroad tracks. The repositioning will allow the new Wal-Mart tract to be larger and will also give it more visibility from I95. Click here for a map showing both the repositioned Old Kings as well as the Wal-Mart parcel. (Note: The map was already upside down. Not my fault.)
Walmart in no hurry
The no show by Wal-Mart is probably due to the current economy that has stopped the housing developement that they had expected by now when they first studied the area. They probably won’t be held hostage to the cities desire to widden the roadway. The assesments can be increased after the work is done to recover the special assesments the city can’t get an agreement on. The rest of the area along Old Kings is almost at a halt so no one is going to be hurt by a few years delay, except maybe the town center that has developed slightly and would be a benefactor of the widened Old Kings road.