Two decades of planning, collaboration and construction came to a head Friday morning as Okaloosa County officials cut the ribbon on the $212 million Southwest Crestview Bypass, opening a new 3.5-mile, four-lane corridor designed to reshape how motorists move through north Okaloosa County.

• Despite a rainy morning, a large crowd gathered on the newly completed bridge near the corner of U.S. Highway 90 and Enzor Road for a ceremony that doubled as both a celebration and a history lesson, as speaker after speaker recounted the long road to getting the project done.

Jason Autrey, Okaloosa County’s deputy county administrator of development services, has been involved with the bypass since its earliest days. He told the crowd the first official action on the project came in 2007, when the Board of County Commissioners passed Resolution 07-105, though he noted conversations about the bypass had been happening even before that.

“Building a road is easy,” Autrey said. “All you have to do is get two local governments to agree on one roadway alignment, one state highway agency to agree to build an interchange, one granting agency to come up with $64.1 million, a team of engineers and planners that dedicate hours to design and permitting of this project on a compressed schedule, a contractor to build their single widest bridge they’ve ever built in the history of their project, and for the citizens to agree to a half-cent sales tax to fund this project.”

• “I don’t know why it doesn’t happen more often,” he added.

Autrey pointed to a 2016 meeting as a turning point for the project, when leaders from Okaloosa County, the City of Crestview, the Florida Department of Transportation and Triumph Gulf Coast sat down together to map out a path forward. Among those at the table were then-FDOT District Engineer Jared Perdue, now the state’s transportation secretary; then-Triumph Gulf Coast Board Chairman Don Gaetz; then-County Commissioner Graham Fountain; and Crestview Mayor JB Whitten.

The citizens of Okaloosa County played a critical role as well, Autrey said. When voters approved the half-cent infrastructure surtax in November 2016, it set the rest of the project’s funding in motion, including a $64.1 million grant from Triumph Gulf Coast.

Design was completed in 2020, and construction began that same year — just as the COVID-19 pandemic arrived.

“Today, we stand here at the finish line, and it’s kind of funny,” Autrey said. “The finish line for what we’re doing from the designers and the engineers and the contractor is the starting line for our community.”

The bypass opened to motorists at noon with access from Antioch Road on the west, State Road 85 on the east and U.S. Highway 90 from the north. The project includes 2.5 miles of east-west roadway connecting Antioch Road to S.R. 85 — named Valiant Way on the western side and Fallen Heroes Way on the eastern side — along with sidewalks and a 10-foot-wide multi-use path. The bridge behind the podium where officials spoke stretches 1,713 feet, roughly a third of a mile.

• Autrey said the project required 833,499 cubic yards of dirt excavation and 23,649 tons of asphalt, with Anderson Columbia serving as the contractor.

The bypass also provides access to the newly built Pineview School, a K-8 school slated to open in August.

“When this is open, it’s going to be the safest school we have in the way that you access it for our kids and for our parents and our teachers,” Autrey said.

Sen. Don Gaetz, who chaired the Triumph Gulf Coast Board when the bypass funding was awarded, urged the crowd not to view the opening as a finish line.

• “This is not an ending,” Gaetz said. “This is the beginning of an extensive set of improvements to move traffic around and through the Crestview area.”

Gaetz also reminded the crowd of a promise tied to the Triumph funding: that the bypass would help create 1,300 new high-wage industrial, military-related and manufacturing jobs in Okaloosa County.

“All of us who are involved in making sure that we get a little bit of economic development, we have to really pick up the shovel, because the county commission and the city and economic development folks have a long, hard road ahead to make sure those 1,300 jobs are there, that they’re sustained, and that they grow,” Gaetz said.

Charles Rigdon, a member of the Triumph Gulf Coast Board, said that job goal had already been met.

“I’m pleased to announce that that ambitious goal was met very early on in this project,” Rigdon said.

Rigdon called the bypass Triumph’s third-largest award ever granted and described it as “the most important innovative infrastructure project ever undertaken in Okaloosa County on behalf of the citizens and the region.” Triumph Gulf Coast administers a $1.5 billion fund created by the Florida Legislature in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to aid the eight Northwest Florida coastal counties most affected.

State Rep. Nathan Boyles, a former Okaloosa County commissioner who was involved in the project’s early stages, recalled being told by a public works staffer after his election in 2012 that the bypass would never be built.

• “Projects like that were just too big, they were too ambitious, the money wasn’t there, the partnership wasn’t there,” Boyles said. “But a lot of folks came together, worked real hard, and found a way to do it differently, and that has now become the benchmark standard.”

Boyles said FDOT is now pointing other counties to Okaloosa as a model. He told the crowd that a Santa Rosa County commissioner recently shared that FDOT advised them to “go over to Okaloosa County and learn how they did it” as they work to address traffic problems on Highway 90 in Milton.

He also took a lighthearted jab at the project’s name, noting the bypass connects communities rather than bypassing them — and that “southwest” is only one of four quadrants.

“There are four quadrants,” Boyles said. “And so this is only a quarter of what is yet to come.”

Okaloosa County Board Chairman Trey Goodwin called the bypass a “quality of life project” and thanked the community for its patience.

• “Welcome to your new road,” Goodwin said. “It’s not a county road. It’s not a state road. In essence, it’s a community road, because that’s who it’s gonna serve.”

Goodwin said the project required collaboration between the private sector, state government, county government, city government and economic development teams — groups that didn’t always agree at the outset but worked through their differences.

“We didn’t agree on everything right out of the gate. That’s not how government should work,” Goodwin said. “What we did is we got together, we deliberated, collaborated, and then figured out how in the heck are we gonna pay for this thing.”

Crestview Mayor JB Whitten recounted how the project’s funding came together piece by piece. FDOT committed up to $100 million to build an interchange, the county contributed about $26 million, and the city put in roughly $10 million — leaving a $64 million gap that Triumph Gulf Coast ultimately filled.

But Whitten said none of it would have happened without the half-cent infrastructure surtax, which allowed the city and county to front their portions of the funding.

• “This project would not be happening today if it weren’t for that surtax,” Whitten said, adding that the surtax is now up for renewal. “This is an example of what it can do. This is one example. It’s happening throughout the whole county.”

The completion of the bypass coincides with FDOT’s interchange project with Interstate 10 at P.J. Adams Parkway. Once completed, it will connect to the bypass and provide direct interstate access.

Motorists lined up after the ceremony to be among the first to drive the new road.