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Cover Story - Developing the Heartland
Final Frontier
Growth is coming to Florida's heartland. Who gets to say where it goes and how?
That's the goal of the statewide "New Corridors" initiative being developed by the state Department of Transportation.
"New Corridors" aims to pull together citizens, business leaders and other stakeholders around Florida to identify the future transportation corridors essential to the state's growth, then figure out ways to build them, ideally with the help of businesses and land owners as envisioned in the heartland plans.
Stutler insists the heartland plans haven't advanced as far as it may seem. The Turnpike Enterprise enters into feasibility studies all the time, he says, but that doesn't mean the highways are going to be built. "We cannot commence projects that are not financially feasible," he says. "We are not allowed to do it, and we won't do it."
Stutler says the DOT wants to identify a half-dozen key transportation corridors, then let regions figure out the kind of transportation arteries that should go in them. "I'm hopeful that we can set the framework for the long term, and then there will be a great growth-management conversation after that," he says.
Not doing so would be a shame, say those involved in Florida's now 20-year-long efforts to manage growth. "The only experiences nationally that seem to make sense for Florida are those that brought stakeholders in on the front end before any decisions were made," says Bob Rhodes, an attorney with the Jacksonville office of Foley & Lardner who was the first administrator of Florida's growth management program. "This area is indeed the last frontier -- and Florida for once has the opportunity to get ahead."
Paving the Way
 Orlando attorney Charles Gray drew part of the route for a north-south toll road that he, former state lawmaker Rick Dantzler and state Sen. J.D. Alexander are pushing to get built. Mike Willingham, executive director of the Sebring Airport Authority, and Manatee County Commissioner Joe McClash lobbied for key points in the east-west road plan.
The proposed roads, still in feasibility studies, could be moved anywhere within a six-mile swath based on environmental or other concerns. |
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The Market Cools -- For Now
In the 1930s, a Florida citrus pioneer named Latimer Maxcy turned his attention to beef cattle and began to buy up vast tracts of prairie around the Kissimmee River in east-central Florida for what eventually became a 100,000-acre ranch covering parts of Osceola, Okeechobee and Indian River counties.
Maxcy died in 1972, but family members continue to run Latt Maxcy Corp. as a ranching, citrus and banking conglomerate. Over the years, they've sold some tracts of the ranch to diversify holdings, including to the state for environmental restoration. Some former Maxcy lands are now flooded to aid restoration of the Kissimmee River; others now make up the Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park.
But last year, when Latt Maxcy Corp. put 27,400 acres up for a closed-bid sale with no specific asking price, state environmental officials who saw the land as a crucial buy for Florida didn't come close to the $137 million plunked down by Delray Beach developer Anthony V. Pugliese III. "This is the most speculative real estate market I've ever seen," says Mark Glisson, head of land acquisition at the Department of Environmental Protection. "We are impotent to offset the temptation of the speculator."
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MARKET HIGHS: South Florida developer Anthony Pugliese may have bought near the height of the real estate market, paying $137 million for more than 27,000 acres in Yeehaw Junction in 2005. The DEP wanted to buy the land, but in the end, Latt Maxcy sold to the highest bidder, company CFO Hood Craddock says. |
Latt Maxcy Corp. may have sold at just the right time. More recently, the wild speculation that reigned in the heartland counties from 2003 to 2005 has cooled. Phil Holden, a real estate appraiser with West Palm Beach-based SF Holden, says for nearly two years, prices on heartland tracts of between 5,000 acres and 20,000 acres were rising 3% a month. Many of those deals were flips. Now, he says, some major deals completed last fall are not closing. "There are still transactions happening, but the speculators seem to be out, so it comes down to people who have a longer term vision for the land," Holden says.
Pugliese is considering using the state's new Rural Lands Stewardship program to build a town called Destiny in what is now one of the most famously rural junctures in Florida -- tiny Yeehaw Junction in Osceola County.
The program gives developers increased density in some areas in exchange for preserving large tracts in others. The cattle outpost is just 40 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean; Pugliese envisions 40,000 homes and a town with everything from university research facilities to a hospital.
Dean Saunders of Coldwell Banker Commercial Saunders Real Estate, who sold Latt Maxcy's parcel, calls the heartland market "stabilized," with speculators out, but with agricultural land prices still moving up. Property appraisers in the heartland counties reported agriculture-zoned land selling for $7,000 to $12,000 an acre up from as little as $3,500. Saunders says many ranchers and farmers have such a strong conservation ethic that they will use the Rural Lands Stewardship program and other market incentives to ensure development doesn't ruin the area's quality of life. "But I think we need to be smarter about land-use planning and all of our planning," Saunders says. "We have a lot of ranchettes being developed because of minimum densities in these areas. This will contribute to just what we don't want -- sprawl."
Not everyone thinks the heartland is in a major transition from crops to rooftops. "I don't see it for a long time," says Holden. "Florida has historically had land rushes, and lots platted, and then it takes a very, very long time before anyone moves in. How many wives do you know who want to live on a 20-acre tract in the middle of nowhere?"
