Lee County begins construction projects as it anticipates more residents

Lee County projects nearly 300,000 additional people will move to here by 2040. Sydney Nies has lived in the county all her life. She can not accept such a drastic increase in the population.

“That’s honestly insane,” Nies said. “That’s really big numbers to think about only because I feel like there is a lot of people here in this area.”

Nies said she deals with traffic buildups all over. She is not alone, which is why the county is moving forward with projects like the realignment of Summerlin and Cypress Lake Dr. to support more drivers.

“We actually found out through our observation cameras that these lanes are only used half the time to half to what we could use them for,” Brian Hamman said, the Lee County commissioner. “We’re going to actually take these to turn lanes and realign them so that one of them becomes a straight line on Summerlin. That’s where the majority of the traffic is going straight on Summerlin.

Construction is slated to begin in January. This will be the second traffic project the county has approved for that month. The other project is down the road at Summerlin and Winkler.

“Summerlin Road and Cypress Lake Drive,” Sabrina Katz said, WINK News traffic anchor. “If your southbound driver you can always hop on US 41 or even westbound go ahead and use College Parkway.”

But navigation becomes more complicated for Summerlin and Winkler.

“Now this is also a very busy intersection,” Katz said. “You can go ahead and hop on McGregor to Pine Ridge, which will get you back to Summerlin. “We also know that this is very heavily use but it does give you some options.”

Crews will not shut down lanes during the day for construction, Commissioner Hamman said.

As for Nies, she is thankful the county is getting ahead of the curve.

“It would be a good thing considering the growth of people,” Nies said. “If you would start that project, let’s say we started it in a few years when we have those people, it’s just going to back it up even worse.”