BY BUDDY NEVINS
The late condo boss Amadeo “Trinchi” Trinchitella is turning over in his grave.
The $7 billion transportation plan from Gov. Ron DeSantis this week will finally kickstart the long-awaited limited access road between Interstate 95 and the Sawgrass Expressway. It is formally called the SW 10th Street Connector.
Trinchitella used a great deal of his vast political clout in the 1980s and 1990s to keep that road from being built.
The reason?
The road would run along Century Village of Deerfield Beach’s southern border. The Village is where Trinchi held sway over perhaps 9,000 Democratic voters. Voters feared the traffic and noise that any road expansion would bring.
Like any good leader, Trinchi listened to his constituents, the retirees living in Century Village.
His official title was head of the Recreation Committee of the Condominium Owners of Century Village East. Trinchi shaped that innocuous-sounding volunteer job into a politically powerful perch.
He ended up controlling everything from the condo’s clubhouse where politicians met voters to the buses carrying them to the polls.
Trinchi was a gruff Marine veteran of World War II and a former tavern owner from Yonkers. He may have been unvarnished and all elbows, but he prided himself on providing Century Village residents a voice.
A big voice.
With all those potential voters in his pocket, That Big Voice was heard as far away as the White House.
It was not all words. Words don’t mean anything in politics unless you have the votes to back them up.
Just a mention of that road project would send Trinchi into a frenzy of organizing.
Trinchi would hire buses to carry residents to meetings called to discuss the road. He would engineer a flood of complaining phone calls and letters to politicians.
Politicians may not do much. But they can count. Especially votes.
Thousands of votes cast by thousands of voters in Century Village, who were against the road.
So year after year the SW 10th Street Connector was never built.
Trinchi died in 2005. Still the road languished.
Broward continued to grow. The limited access connection between I-95 and the Sawgrass Expressway was needed more with each passing year.
But the road remained nothing more than blueprints.
Perhaps Broward’s legislators and senators, lonely Democrats in a Republican state Capitol, didn’t have enough pull to get that road built.
Enter DeSantis.
I know. I know. The governor is Darth Vader to many in Broward.
But DeSantis did include the long-awaited road on his Moving Florida Forward plan to expedite transportation projects over the next four years. The governor put his considerable influence in Tallahassee behind the road.
It was the only project in Broward County on the plan.
The Department of Transportation describes the road like this:
“The SW 10th Street Connector Project will provide two roadways along SW 10th Street in Deerfield Beach, Florida. One roadway, the SW 10th Street connector lanes, will improve regional connectivity by connecting the Sawgrass Expressway with I-95. The other roadway, local SW 10th Street, will become a “Complete Street” that will incorporate a shared-use path and provide connectivity to all existing local properties and the local roadway network. The two roadways will work together to alleviate traffic congestion in the area, improve operations and safety, and improve emergency evacuation operations. The SW 10th Street Connector Project also includes improvements for I-95 at the SW 10th Street and Hillsboro Boulevard interchanges, and completion of 95 Express within the project limits.”
Not one word about the impact on Century Village.
Trinchi would have a conniption.
But Trinchi is just a memory. His former Century Village neighbors have moved to that condo in the sky.
And DeSantis wasn’t even born in 1976 when Trinchi moved into Century Village.
This article originally appeared here and was republished with permission.
