You’re driving a little too first when you’re late to first period on pebble and shell strewn Deer Drive. To your horror, the car in front of you kicks up a shell that lands right on your hood.

Besides dirty cars, the construction right outside of campus is causing some inconveniences for students, faculty, and parents. People are late for school and some of the construction simply adds to a sense of overall confusion.

“It’s a pain because I wash my car over the weekend and it gets all dirty. All the bumps in the road give me a headache,” says Junior Taber Chadwick.

People are driving too fast and it’s dangerous, a cop would have a field day,” says Foremen Scott Clark.

But what is life like on the road itself? Who are the men and women working every day in the heat and the mud to get that new road built? Take one look at the work site. The mud is so thick out there you can’t walk easily without your shoes getting caked in dirt.

Foreman Scott Clark says that the working conditions are “miserable.” Despite this, Clark says he’s been at the job with this company for 35 years. He says he is living a good life.

Why all this headache and misery? The road needs to be constructed to accommodate the new community being built called Waterside. Waterside is projected to have twelve new neighborhoods and 5,144 new homes.

“Roads need to be widened so the residents can leave the area,” says Director of Facilities Dan Dennehy.

Furthermore, highway 75, one of the only major routes connecting the north to the south of Florida, is already congested. Add to that, a large mall and new housing construction, and the traffic increased to chaotic level.

ODA used to be not very well known because it was tucked away away on Deer Drive. That is going to change. Schroeder Manatee Ranch is connecting Deer Drive to Lakewood Ranch Boulevard and extending Lakewood Ranch Boulevard to Fruitville Road to offer more ways to herd the ever-increasing number of vehicles.

How will this impact the ODA community? For starters the traffic outside the school and on University Parkway will be drastically higher.

Soon Deer Drive will be a busy road and ODA will no longer be an unknown campus.