Many Osceola County residents distinguish and characterize Kissimmee’s tourism corridor with a single color. For the past two decades, West 192 has been splashed with purple fixtures, street lights, bus shelters, sidewalks and fences. However, West 192 Development Authority plans to purge purple and replace the streetscape with a more modern and simpler look.
West 192 Development Authority board voted on June 6, 2019 to allocate $2.1 million of its $5.6 million budget to swap out Kissimmee’s longstanding purple decorative streetlights of the tourism corridor in exchange for a streetscape lined with simple black LED light fixtures and poles, designed to bring lower utility bills, withstand strong hurricane-force storms, and that will require less maintenance than the current lights.
These funds for the project are not generated by Osceola County residents, but rather payed for by commercial businesses, such as the West 192 Municipal Service Benefit Unit and the Tax Incremental Financing program.
According to Executive Director Christina Morris, the purple streetlights needed to be repainted every two years. This has been a cosmetic issue for West 192 for years, so instead of paying the cost of frequent repainting, the board has voted to completely replace the 20-year-old-plus fixtures.
As an item to be presented in July’s meeting for the Board of County Commissioners, replacing streetlights for the 11-mile stretch from Hoagland to the Four Corners area, which also includes the new Margaritaville Resort, will be the largest capital expenditure in the 2020 proposed budget. If the plan gets approved, then the installation black modern LED streetlights is expected to begin in 2021.
