SEBRING PARKWAY: Project Required Long-Term Planning, Cooperation

SEBRING - Construction crews began work on Phase Two of the Sebring Parkway in July, doing mostly off-road work near Sebring High School.

On Jan. 2, those construction crews will start the serious road building work, causing the complete shut-down of Eucalyptus Street, between Center and Grapefruit streets, for at least four and possibly as many as six months.

This section of the parkway will replace the current two-lane Eucalyptus Street with a five-lane roadway with turning lanes.

Phase Two of the parkway also will convert the current Highlands Avenue into a five-lane roadway, running all the way to U.S. 27.

Ramon Gavarrete, the Highlands County Engineer who has been in charge of the Parkway Project since May of 1996, said two questions about the parkway always come up.

First: Why does the parkway, in the rural section that has a 55-mph speed limit, have a 90-degree, right-angle turn, forcing drivers approaching it to slow down to 15 mph?

Second: What exactly is the Sebring Parkway, and where exactly will all of the four phases go to?

Gavarrete says the answer to the second question is answered by explaining the answer to the first question. So does Elius F. Nortelus, the county engineer's top engineering assistant.

"Everywhere I go (for a speaking engagement), everybody always asks the same question, 'Why is there that crazy, sharp, right-angle turn on the parkway?'" Gavarrete said.

"Well," he continued, "right now it looks like a right-angle turn, but that's not what it really is. What it really is, is the hub of a wheel, and there will be four parts of the parkway, when it's finished, going out from that hub."

Nortelus, the highway engineer who designed Sebring Parkway back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said the 90-degree, right-angle turn will become a four-way intersection, with a four-way traffic light, when the entire parkway project is completed.

Gavarrete said the parkway is essentially a connected, four-part, wheel-shaped roadway system. The 90-degree, right-angle turn is the hub of the wheel and the four parkway phases create the four spokes of the wheel.

Phase One, already completed, runs from U.S. 27 at Wal-Mart south to the 90-degree, right-angle turn and then on to the beginning of Eucalyptus Street at Ridgewood Drive.

Phase Two, under construction now, will continue Phase One, replacing both Eucalyptus Street and Highlands Avenue, converting both into five-lane roadways, ending where Highlands Avenue now ends at U.S. 27.

Phase Three, Gavarrete said, will connect Phases One and Two of the Parkway to Avon Park. It will run from the 90-degree, right-angle turn north to the entrance of South Florida Community College.

The fourth and final phase of the Parkway will be the shortest, Nortelus said. He is a native of Haiti who left the Highlands County Engineer's office in the 1990s after designing Sebring Parkway, worked as a highway engineer for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation in Cambridge, and then came back to Highlands County as assistant county engineer.

"Phase Four will go only about one mile, and it will connect (from the 90-degree, right-angle turn) to Arbuckle Creek Road," Nortelus said.

Gavarrete said purchasing land for the right of way of Sebring Parkway Phase Four will be much easier than for the first three phases, since all of the Phase Four land is owned by one person, Joe L. Davis.

"Cities and counties across the whole state of Florida are watching the Sebring Parkway very closely," Gavarrete said.

Why?

"Because," he answered, "to do this project, we have had cooperation - great cooperation - between the county, the city (of Sebring) and the school system. And that is rare in this state. That is something that does not happen very often anywhere in Florida."

Without that cooperation, Gavarrete added, the parkway probably would never have gotten off the ground, and would now have only the slimmest chance for completion.

"The city is helping the county pay for this project," he explained. "And the school board has been giving us right-of-way."

In about two years, Gavarrete said, "There's going to be a five-lane roadway - and make sure you call it a 'roadway,' not a 'highway' - going right past Sebring Middle School."