LAND O’ LAKES — At a March 24 County Commission meeting, residents spoke out against variations of a road extension project, instead urging to install one option over two others on the project.
The proposed project is the Rangeland Parkway Extension — a four-lane roadway that would start at a current roundabout at Cattle Gap Drive in Odessa and run 3.4 miles to a roundabout at Bexley Village Drive and Bud Bexley Parkway in Land O’ Lakes. It is known as Preferred Alternative A.
Following a lengthy community input study that lasted more than six months in 2025 and included two public workshops, the preferred project would include road construction, sidewalk and bike lanes that would connect to the Orange Belt Trail, a traffic signal and a new Suncoast Parkway bridge overpass. The study results overwhelmingly objected to putting a new interchange in where that Suncoast overpass would be installed.
After several comments from citizens, there was an initial vote, proposed by Commissioner Kathryn Starkey, to move forward with a Preferred Alternative A study, but that failed to pass 3-2. However, the board approved continuing the issue and project after more information is gathered to a later meeting.
That motion passed 3-2 in favor to continue.
According to plans, the new roadway would go south of the proposed Kiran C. Patel Pasco High School (and create a new roundabout there to enter the school) and hug two residential communities. The extension would impact 19 parcels of land. It wouldn’t require any relocations but would require about 66 acres of right of way for the roadway, pond sites and floodplain sites.
Preliminary cost of this project is $145.1 million.
At the March 24 meeting, a dozen or so residents and locals were in attendance and spoke to the board, bringing with them blue yard signs stating “Keep Bexley Beautiful” and to “Sign the Petition for Option A” along with a QR code. The petition is on Change.org and as of April 2 had more than 2,100 signatures.
On the petitions, it urges “Let’s unite as an HOA, CDD, and overall community and oppose the excessive expansion of Rangeland Blvd in any fashion that includes a traffic light and as such support Option A.”
One speaker, Nancy Pettit, put the sign in front of the podium before addressing the commissioners and said “Bexley, from Day 1, has been in favor of Option A” and asked about a dozen Bexley residents to stand and display their signs.
Pettit also noted that the commissioners were “flooded with about 220 emails” on the issue before a handful of other concerned citizens, either from Bexley or on the other side of the Parkway expressed their desire for Option A and “absolutely no new interchange on the Suncoast.”
Public comments and input spilled into the afternoon portion of the March 24 meeting.