ARCADIA, Fla — If you’ve driven through downtown Arcadia lately, you’ve probably hit traffic - and you’ve definitely seen hundreds of orange cones surrounding miles of roadwork. It’s all part of a $9 million infrastructure overhaul from FDOT.
Fox 4's Austin Schargorodski went there to find out how this project is shaping up - and how people there are dealing with it.
Watch what people and business owners told Austin:
Crews were hard at work laying massive pipes into the ground. The city says this project, which started in September 2023, goes beyond surface level - replacing century-old water and sewer lines, redoing sidewalks, and relocating utility lines to make future repairs easier.
But for people who live nearby, like Mariela Juarez, the daily impact is hard to ignore. “The traffic is backed up from the school that’s down the road. So I come out and wait two, three, and sometimes even five minutes just to be able to cross over with all the semis and outgoing traffic,” Juarez said.
And for downtown businesses like Blossom’s Beauty & Boutique it’s not just a traffic headache - owner Corrine Dale says it’s a fight to stay afloat.
“I feel like it’s completely annihilated downtown. I’ve had my business for three years, and it was very consistent for the first two years. Then the construction started like six or seven months ago, and my sales have dropped 30 to 50%,” Dale said.
Dale says the biggest hit came when Oak Street closed, a main road through downtown that once brought steady foot traffic. Arcadia City Administrator Beth Carsten says she understands the frustration. But she says these growing pains are for the good of Arcadia’s future - to keep its aging infrastructure from collapsing.
“It does cause a lot of traffic backups and issues, but the result of it will be something that will carry the city for years and years,” said Carsten. This road is highly traveled from one end of the state to the other, and this is a very needed project.”
I asked Carsten what the timeline looks like for Oak Street to reopen. She reached out to FDOT and says a contractor told her they estimate it to be back up and running in about two weeks.
I took that news back to Dale, and she said she’s thrilled. “It’s going to help downtown so much! Seriously, thanks so much for coming to do a news report on us,” Dale said.
Carsten says the project is nearly halfway done and expected to be finished by October 2026.
