- May 19, 2024
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The next phase of the Old Kings Road South expansion project is headed into a $4 million design phase.
In its May 7 meeting, the Palm Coast City Council approved a grant agreement with the Florida Department of Transportation to help fund the projects design, but the FDOT grant will only cover $500,000. Stormwater and Engineering Director Carl Cote said the needed $3.5 million in funding will come from multiple sources, including the Old Kings Road Special Assessment District and transportation impact fees.
The design plans will be for Phase 2 of the Old Kings Road South widening. Phase 2 begins at Palm Coast Parkway and ends at the Town Center Boulevard and Old Kings Road intersection, where Interstate 95 passes over Town Center Boulevard. The project will also include a short strip of Town Center Boulevard, up to its T-intersection with Royal Palms Parkway.
“All I can say is it's about time,” Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin said. “This … certainly has to be the oldest single passageway, pathway and now a road, in the history of our whole area.
The Old Kings Road widening project has been ongoing for around 15 years, completed in small phases. Most recently, the first phase of the Old Kings Road North widening was completed in 2021, stretching 0.3 miles north from Palm Coast Parkway to Kings Way and 0.3 miles south from Palm Coast Parkway to Utility Drive.
The expansive project is expensive, and Palm Coast has, over the years, routinely filed state legislative funding requests for it. In June 2023, Palm Coast received $18.3 million for Phase 2 of the Old Kings Road North widening project, and the $500,000 for a traffic study along the southern section of the road.
While the new state budget still needs to be approved by Gov. Ron DeSantis, Palm Coast is tentatively set to receive almost $150 million in state funds this year — none of which was approved for either leg of the Old Kings Road widening project.
The Old Kings Road South expansion will widen the road from a two-lane to a four-lane road, requiring moving utilities, sidewalks and stormwater conveyance as it is built out.
Cote said Phase 1 of the Old Kings Road South project stretched from the Town Center Boulevard intersection to State Road 100. The entirety of Phase 2 is the remaining 3.5-mile section of Old Kings Road up to Palm Coast Parkway.
Phase 2 will likely need to be built in smaller phases, Cote said, because of the large scope of required work. Phase 2A is the 0.8-mile stretch of Old Kings Road from the Town Center Boulevard-Royal Palms Parkway intersection to Old Kings Road South and New Water Oak Drive, according to meeting documents.
The design will analyze the intersections in the route, update designs, update permits and provide higher-level plans for the first phase of the construction, Cote said. The work will also include putting together roughly 60% of plans for the following construction phase, in order to help secure additional permitting.
It will be over a year-long process that involves surveys, environmental work and permitting through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Cote said.
The project will also include analyzing to the stormwater conveyance system capacity along that stretch of Old Kings Road, including under I-95, he said.
“That [under I-95] is one of our pinch-points in our system that was identified in our stormwater master plan,” Cote said.
When the grant agreement is finalized, Cote said, the next step will be for staff to return with a scope and fee agreement for a consultant to complete the design. Staff is already in the process of negotiating a scope-and-fee agreement and could return with one for council’s approval as early as June, he said.
