Split Oak Forest chosen for toll road extension
Environmentalists continue to oppose Osceola Parkway addition
With Split Oak Forest chosen Thursday to be part of an expressway extension, environmentalists opposing the toll road are regrouping to take their fight to county and state officials.
“We are going to Tallahassee,” said Valerie Anderson, a cofounder of Friends of Split Oak and staunch opponent of extending the Osceola Parkway across the southern tip of the protected forest, which straddles east Orange and north Osceola counties.
After nearly four hours of hearing sharply divided views, the Central Florida Expressway Authority agreed unanimously to build the parkway, at an estimated cost of nearly $790 million, across Split Oak Forest.
The toll road would extend from State Road 417 at Orlando International Airport along a winding route nearly 9 miles east, bisecting Split Oak along the way, to an area slated for massive development in coming years.
In doing so, the toll-road agency also agreed to a larger deal in which private developers would donate 1,550 acres of forest, wetlands and former agricultural lands as compensation for paving 60 acres of the 1,800-acre Split Oak Forest and leaving 100 acres of forest severed from the rest.
Immediately following the expressway authority’s unanimous agreement to cross Split Oak Forest, the director of the toll-road agency addressed the need to fund restoration and management of the donated 1,550 acres.
“I think it’s our responsibility to make sure that a management plan is funded,” said Laura Kelley, executive director of the expressway authority. “We can’t make any commitments now because we don’t know what that looks like yet.”
The development partners are Tavistock Development Co. and Suburban Land Reserve, a member with Deseret Ranches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints corporate family.
Kelley said her expectation was that the expressway authority, Tavistock and Suburban Land Reserve would agree to share in restoration and management costs.
Charles Lee, Audubon Florida advocacy director, estimated that restoration and management work could cost $5 million or more. Lee had taken a lead in promoting the advantages of accepting 1,550 acres as compensation for the loss of 160 acres of Split Oak Forest.
The 1,550 acres are to be added to a larger complex of protected lands that includes Split Oak Forest.
The expressway authority’s other choice, building the parkway just south of Split Oak and not getting the donated 1,550 acres, would have been disastrous, Lee said, because the east side of Split Oak Forest would have been “submerged in a wall of development.”
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