Orange County does a U-turn on toll road through Split Oak
Perhaps prodded by voters, Orange County commissioners stepped back Tuesday from their earlier endorsement of the Central Florida Expressway’s plan to put a toll road through Split Oak Forest, a 1,700-acre preserve south of Orlando.
The board decided, 6-1, to flip its official position ahead of the Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission’s meeting Dec. 5 in Orlando, when the state panel is scheduled to discuss lifting a conservation easement to allow the road.
It’s unclear what impact the revised county position will have now, but at the very least it deepens the controversy over the commission’s original support for the toll road route, a stand rejected by county electors three years ago.
Defenders of the forest were delighted with the board’s unexpected reversal and hopeful it may lead the road-building agency to steer away from plans to build a 1.3-mile stretch of the Osceola County Parkway through the public preserve straddling Orange and Osceola counties.
“I’m not naïve enough to say this stops the road because there’s so much power and influence who really want this alignment,” said Valerie Anderson, a founder of Friends of Split Oak Forest, which had lobbied Orange County to change its stance. “But it’s a good thing and, frankly, something that should have happened long before now.”
Putting the road through a southern wedge of Split Oak is favored by Tavistock Development Co., builder of Orlando’s Lake Nona community, and Suburban Land Reserve, part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints corporate family, Florida’s biggest private landowner, with holdings that include Deseret Ranches in Central Florida.
Located about 25 miles southeast of Orlando, the Split Oak Forest Wildlife and Environmental Area was bought in 1994 by a coalition of Orange and Osceola counties and state agencies to protect the land from developers.
The acres were owned by developer Maury Carter and boasted habitats for a wide range of threatened species, including black bears, gopher tortoises, scrub jays and sandhill cranes. The purchase price was $8.6 million.
Orange County commissioners voted, 5-2, in Dec. 2019 to support the expressway authority’s preferred route.
Eleven months later, 86% of Orange County voters who participated in the November 2020 general election cast ballots in favor of a charter amendment aimed at preventing commissioners from altering rules protecting the forest.
Though prompted by the board’s 2019 decision, the charter referendum was constructed not to reverse its stance but rather to prevent future commissions from altering rules that were intended to protect the preserve from development.
The landslide margin was cited Tuesday by commissioner Emily Bonilla, an opponent of the road, who persuaded colleagues to reconsider their support, saying, “no elected official will ever get 86% of the vote.”
Bonilla and commissioner Maribel Gomez Cordero both voted against the road going through Split Oak Forest, the same stance they took in December 2019. Mayor Jerry Demings and commissioner Mayra Uribe flipped their support from yes to no.
Commissioner Christine Moore reaffirmed her support for the route.
Commissioners Nicole Wilson and Mike Scott, who voted against the route, were not on the board in 2019.
Wilson said she wasn’t certain how the fish and wildlife commission would regard the board’s new position.
But she said the message should be clear to anyone wanting to use the forest as a short cut: “Go around.”
CFX spokesperson Brian Hutchings declined comment, texting “we are still working to unpack what it means.”
Osceola County leaders, who sued unsuccessfully in 2020 hoping to stop Orange County voters from considering the Split Oak charter amendment, said they were unaware the Orange County board had planned a discussion of the issue.
Osceola County spokesperson Mark Pino described the parkway extension as “a strategic piece” of a regional beltway that has been in planning stages for more than two decades to connect State Road 417 near Lake Nona to Interstate 4.
The alignment “has no impacts to Split Oak Forest in Orange County and minimizes the impacts in Osceola County to just 60 acres,” he said in an email. “Without the project, the area will see 1,550 acres less in conservation lands and 2 million square feet more development with less transportation options.”
Orange voters approve charter changes for clean water, Split Oak
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated how long the plan has been going to connect State Road 417 near Lake Nona to Interstate 4.
