Final Frontier

'Ahead of the process'

As the Turnpike Enterprise began work on a feasibility study for the east-west toll road in 2005, it came under intense new lobbying by business interests at the north end of the heartland. A group of rural landowners centered in Polk County formed a non-profit corporation called the Heartland Economic, Agricultural and Rural Task Force (HEART). The corporation's bylaws say its purpose is to promote economic development, support responsible growth and protect sensitive environmental areas in the heartland. But essentially, it was formed to lobby for the north-south toll road.

The corporation's officers are all lawyers, lobbyists or political consultants, including image expert Renee Dabbs of Tampa. Property owners and businesses along the proposed route put up the seed money for the corporation. Perhaps their savviest move was to hire Gray, founder and still chairman of the 196-lawyer GrayRobinson firm in Orlando. Gray, a transportation and land-use lawyer, has been helping to decide where central Florida's highways go ever since he served as chairman of Florida's Turnpike in 1964 and 1965.

Gray was head of the Turnpike when Walt Disney famously flew over central Florida and saw thousands of acres of swampland with proximity to two major highways: The turnpike and I-4. Gray served as a liaison between Disney and Gov. Haydon Burns. And he pushed his agency to build an interchange between I-4 and the turnpike even after highway officials insisted such an interchange was not financially feasible.

Forty years later, internal documents show, Gray managed to do an end-run around the Turnpike Enterprise. By calling DOT Secretary Denver Stutler, Gray secured a commitment for early funding for a Project Development and Environment (PD&E) study on the Heartland Parkway. The PD&E part of the road-building process is supposed to begin only after the DOT finishes an initial feasibility study for a highway.

In an e-mail to a DOT colleague who'd raised concerns about the Turnpike touting a highway that hadn't yet met the financial feasibility requirements, Turnpike planning manager Fox wrote that "Both Mr. Ely and I have told Charles Gray (individually and at different times) that we did not support his efforts to obtain funding for a PD&E for the Heartland Parkway until after the planning study was completed and the project could be funded through the normal process. However, Mr. Gray indicated that the PD&E needed to be initiated in the fall and he subsequently secured a commitment for PD&E funds through Central Office" (in Tallahasssee).

Gray makes no apologies for appealing to Stutler to make the PD&E funding available this fall if the feasibility study pans out. Development pressure on the northern end of the proposed toll road is so intense, particularly since CSX announced its new hub, that local leaders predict land for the highway will no longer be available six months from now.

"The problem here is timing -- timing is sometimes not consistent with process," Gray says. "Development is closing off the opportunity for this road to connect meaningfully to I-4, and if that connection cannot be made, this project may never happen.
"I thoroughly agree with the process, but sometimes you have to get a little ahead of the process."

Organizing growth?
Heartland landowners, including many longtime cattle ranchers and citrus growers, are willing to donate considerable acreage for well-planned growth initiatives such as highway corridors and conservation easements in exchange for increased density or development rights elsewhere. "The growth is coming whether we want it or not, and the road can organize the growth," says Dantzler, a Winter Haven lawyer. "If we do nothing, it's going to be bad. I see this as an opportunity for it not to be bad."

Getting ahead of growth, of course, is exactly the notion state leaders have pushed in recent years -- trying to focus growth management regionally and get counties to plan together on huge developments such as Babcock Ranch, which straddles Charlotte and Lee counties, and Ave Maria in western Collier County. Both are seen as models of rural stewardship in preserving tens of thousands of acres of wild lands as they permit denser development in their urban cores.

But many wonder how highways -- almost certainly the most important growth-management decision in developing the state's final frontier -- could be drawn in the 21st century the same way they were throughout the 20th, with power brokers determining routes without any input from citizens, planners, environmentalists or even regulators in fellow state agencies.

Mark Glisson, who heads up land acquisition for the state Department of Environmental Protection, was distraught that the intersection of the two proposed roads crosses so close to the Lake Wales Ridge. The 2.3-million-year-old scrub ecosystem is the oldest natural system in Florida, left from the time when most of the state was covered by the sea. The sandy hilltops along the ridge are home to some of the rarest plants and animals in the United States; lands along and adjacent to the ridge remain some of the highest priorities on the state's land-preservation wish list.

CASHING IN: Longtime ranchers are moving out of state, says Lakeland Realtor Dean Saunders, who brokers deals for large agricultural tracts. "The opportunity costs are so high in some cases, they're asking themselves why they should be ranching land that costs $20,000 an acre."

Meanwhile, a flurry of letters and e-mails to the DOT this spring questioned the routes, including several regarding the Air Force bombing range in Avon Park. The east-west route, wrote Pam Dana, the governor's director of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development, was close enough to the range to be dangerous and would erode military activities and training in the area.

Even employees within the Turnpike Enterprise were uncomfortable with some aspects of the two proposed roads. The northern heartland region may, as Gray argues, be growing fast enough to justify a new highway. But in the economically depressed southern part of the region, a new highway would be a stimulus to growth rather than a response -- putting transportation officials in a difficult position. "One of the Turnpike's biggest PR issues in previous studies has been countering the assertions that our projects will trigger rampant growth," wrote William T. Olsen, the Turnpike Enterprise's travel-forecasting manager, in an e-mail to turnpike planning managers. "I believe the department's position to-date has steadfastly denied those claims."

In the e-mail, Olsen warned his colleagues not to rely on deHaven-Smith's population numbers as they did the feasibility study for the east-west route. The University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research had forecast that the population of the economically depressed counties would increase by 70,000. DeHaven-Smith boosted that number to 690,000 -- if a new highway were built. The Turnpike Enterprise, Olsen wrote, "would never be able to justify the use of such projections for our economic feasibility test."

Fox says projected population growth and truck and car traffic more than justify the highways from the standpoint of moving people and goods, one of the DOT's essential goals. But that doesn't mean the roads will be financially feasible for the Turnpike Enterprise, which has to show that its roads will pay for themselves through toll revenue in 22 years. The state is unlikely to build anything but a toll road -- it doesn't have enough money to fix and expand current highways, much less build huge new ones. If either heartland road gets built, it likely will require a creative mix of public and private financing, with landowners donating some of the right of way, perhaps with developers building their own exits or interchanges.

Supporters of the highways say their essential concern is to get growth right this time: To plan major highway corridors and other infrastructure so that "when you pour the growth in, it's in an orderly fashion rather than splashing everywhere," says Willingham of the Sebring Airport Authority.

Tags: Politics & Law, Central, Southeast, Southwest, Government/Politics & Law