Florida Megaprojects That Are Going To Transform the State (And What Each One Is Built On)

On May 28, 2026, a New Glenn rocket failed an engine test on Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, and before the end of summer Blue Origin was promising a second, bigger pad next door. We drive Florida north to south, from the 1.4 billion dollar Jaguars stadium in Jacksonville and the Starship pads on the Space Coast to the Everglades reservoir below Lake Okeechobee, the 866 million dollar Signature Bridge and a 1,049-foot tower on Biscayne Boulevard, and stop at what each one is built on: the Gator Bowl, Pioneer 10, the 1928 hurricane, Overtown. The drive, stop by stop: 0:00 · A rocket that never left the ground 1:14 · Jacksonville: the stadium on the Gator Bowl 3:56 · Cape Canaveral: the pad that blew up 6:30 · Starship on Saturn's second pad 8:46 · Pad 39A and the orange groves under it 11:40 · I-4 and Disney's secret land deal 13:44 · Tampa's airport on a 1928 airfield 15:51 · Water Street on dredged land 17:42 · The Everglades reservoir and the 1928 storm 21:12 · Miami Freedom Park on an ash dump 23:14 · Signature Bridge over Overtown 26:09 · The tallest tower in the South Where the numbers came from: • South Florida Water Management District — EAA Reservoir project page, 2026. https://sfwmd.gov/eaareservoir • NASA History Office — Moonport, SP-4204, 1978. https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History... • National Weather Service Miami — the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane. https://www.weather.gov/mfl/okeechobee • Segregation by Design — I-95 displacement in Overtown. https://www.segregationbydesign.com/miami/... Archive photos from Wikimedia Commons and the U.S. National Archives, with licensed authors credited in a comment below. The maps use satellite imagery from EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless, licensed CC BY 4.0, relief from Terrain Tiles, and county lines from the US Census.