OCALA, FL (352today.com) – Construction, improvements, upgrades, traffic control products, detours and the challenge of maintaining infrastructure are concerns the Marion County Office of the County Engineer knows all too well.
There are many projects in planning or process in the county, with a deep volume of more to follow.
One of those projects is the detour at SW 49th/40th Ave. and SW 66th St.
“I actually have a draft that I’m looking at with my team,” said Steven Cohoon, Marion County engineer. “We should be releasing the press release this week to talk about the road closures that are associated with the 40th and 49th extension project, but we’re also going to play into the SW 66th St. bridge closure. We’re going to be converting SW 66th St., the east-west. It’s a precursor to what’s coming.”
The press release states that the Marion County Office of the County Engineer, in coordination with its contractor, will begin intersection improvement work at SW 49th Ave Rd and SW 66th St beginning Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. The work will be performed in two phases. Phase 1 is expected to be completed within 60 days, weather permitting. Crews and equipment will be on site 24 hours, 7 days a week. The purpose of this project is to reconstruct the intersection as part of the SW 49th Improvement Project.
The first phase, concerning north-south traffic, where some commuters are crossing 66th and other motorists that are going over to SR 200–the area between SW 38th Ave. and SW 49th–is going to be closed, said Cohoon.
“This is a small section of roadway between [SW 38th Ave. and SW 49th],” said Cohoon. “We’re going to put a closure just to the west of SW 38th and just to the east of SW 49th Ave. It lets that contractor get in there and build this four-lane section. The taper down into 49th is actually still going to be a two-lane. They’re also building a temporary road right now, so going east on SW 66th St. you will only be able to go south on SW 49th, and everyone that’s on SW 49th north, will only be able to go west. We’re building a 90-degree curve, if you will, temporarily, that way everything east of this intersection can be worked on.”
Connecting the corridor
People will still be able to use the 66th St. bridge for about two months. The county is looking at the first week of March, said Cohoon.
“We’ll have all of February, all of March, but I think the contractor can do it a little bit before the end of March, but 66th St. over I-75 will still be open in the one lane over the next two months,” said Cohoon.
This first phase of the intersection improvement will quickly move into Phase 2, where they’ll open up a temporary north-south movement on 40th and 49th, to get people going north and south again.
“You will not be able to go east and west on 66th St.,” said Cohoon. “So, we’ll close it down just west of the intersection, so they can build out the rest of that, at the same time, we’ll tell DOT that we’re ready. The ball’s in their court, and we’ll allow DOT to close 66th St. over 1-75. That will allow and provide that free-flow movement north and south two-lane, with the four-lane coming shortly after.”
However, before all that happens, while Phase 1 is going on, the county’s contractor is going to be extending the westbound left turn lane on SW 43rd St. Rd. at the SW 40th Ave. intersection.
“I believe they just got the permit approval from the City of Ocala, and we’re going to extend that turn lane all the way back to the flyover allowing more stacking to occur,” said Cohoon. “We have been coordinating with the City of Ocala, who we have a great partnership with, trying to get that done.”
Coordination and cooperation
The area presents a series of challenges, including volume and capacity, but the county is working toward finding solutions to improve the infrastructure for motorists. The intersection at SW 42nd St. and SW 27th Ave., in its present state in the eastbound direction, the left turn tends to stack up, even with its significant length, still gets out in the eastbound through lanes, said Cohoon.
“We will be milling this out, adding dual lefts, and another signal, and they will be able to stack both of those lanes up,” said Cohoon. “They’ll flush out for the northbound movement. Similarly, in the westbound direction, we’re going to extend the left turn lane. We talked about putting in dual turn lanes as well, but one of the components right now is that you have to have enough area to merge, a dual left. So your receiving lanes have to be two, if you’re dumping two. Right now, we don’t have two receiving lanes. But for the merge movement, I don’t know if we have enough distance there, and we have the four-lane that is programmed for SW 27th.”
A significant amount of planning led up to the current state, said Cohoon. Over the years, there were a lot of things that happened with the alignments of the corridor, and it was assumed that the extension would be east of where it is now and would run just parallel with I-75, so it’s undergone a series of changes as a result of different developer agreements, and changes in plans at the city and the county level, with the alignment having been moved back to the west, and with those changes, the project went a little bit longer than expected and it needed to.
“When I got here, we were spitballing, trying to figure out how we expedite getting this project out,” said Cohoon. “So, we did some things that were a little bit unusual for the county, I wouldn’t say for the state as a whole; we decided to pivot and go with a design build project. We paused our design and moved right into a design build project with the plans that we had which were really good, almost complete, but it just allowed us to shave three to four months off of the process by removing some of the procurement red tape and we could just get it over the finish line, so that’s what we decided to do, in conjunction with and concurrent to getting the rest of our right-of-way acquisition.”
Timing and protocol
Nothing happens overnight, and there is an evolution process for every project, that entails the county having to get all of its right-of-way acquisition, having to go through the court process, and if there are no “what if” scenarios, and they’ve done their due diligence, where they’ve gone and have everything they need, it’s several years in the making.
“Two years ago, we still had to two to three years ahead of us to get it to construction,” said Cohoon. “We pivoted and said, ‘let’s go to a design build. Let’s also call on some of the relationships we’ve built.’ We started working with property owners finding ways to negotiate with them. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn’t. We still had to go through the court process with some of it. We took some healthy risks I’ll say, and we got this project out on the street.”
The bridge strike last summer confirmed that the county more than likely made the correct decision to pivot, said Cohoon.
“We had a lot of things in place already. We had our contractor awarded already I believe before that bridge strike happened,” said Cohoon. “It was the affirmation that we made the right call because SW 66th, nobody could’ve known that the bridge was going to get hit to the degree that it got hit and shut that down to a single lane. It confirmed the decision we made moving forward buying property as we’re constructing, telling the contractor where they can work and where they can’t work. It’s a very unusual dynamic, but we built that relationship with that design build firm.”