‘Once that land is gone, it’s gone’
Eatonville mayor, residents: OCPS land deal, developer’s plans disrespect Black town’s legacy
In an impassioned speech Tuesday night, Eatonville Mayor Angie Gardner called on her fellow town council members to vote against a proposal that would have cleared the path for a massive 100-acre development in the historic Black town.
Gardner, others on the council and longtime residents all shared their fears that such a development could forever change the town, putting its legacy in jeopardy.
She leaned on history to make her point as she rattled through a list of Black settlements and municipalities that, like Eatonville, were founded after the Civil War. The others, however, had long since become just a memory, their futures either taken by force or erased by violent attacks, migration and development.
For her, saying no to the development bound by Kennedy Boulevard, Wymore Road and Interstate 4 was not just about a single project. It carried the weight of Eatonville’s entire past and future.
“Eatonville is here because of an agreement, because they wanted you here,” Gardner told the crowd of residents Tuesday night. “You didn’t just settle in Eatonville for nothing. There was a system that put you here. There was a system that drove I-4 down the middle of your community.”
So much had already been taken from the residents, including the 100-acre plot of land in question, she said.
It once housed the Robert F. Hungerford Normal and Industrial School, a private school built to educate Black children at a time when public schools were still legally segregated. But in the 1950s, after a lengthy court battle, a Florida Supreme Court decision granted the land and the school to the Board of Public Instruction of Orange County, Florida, which later became Orange County Public Schools.
OCPS still owns the land today and stands to make $10 million if developers proceed with the purchase set to close on March 31 despite their loss at town council on Tuesday.
Gardner said she has attempted to meet with School Board Chair Teresa Jacobs for several months to discuss the future of the land but her requests have been ignored. The Orlando Sentinel also asked to meet with Jacobs but her office repeatedly declined. A spokesperson refused to explain why she would not grant an interview.
“OCPS has disrespected this town council, they have disrespected this town and they have disrespected this mayor,” Gardner said.
Still, she made a pledge to protect the land as long as she can.
“Once that land is gone, it’s gone,” she said. “Let’s just save us . ... We’re keeping our little cut-out.”
Court ruling made private school public
At the heart of the controversy over the land is the question of how OCPS came to own the property decades ago and what requirements were laid out in that deal. Some of that history is detailed in a 1952 state Supreme Court opinion that transformed the Robert F. Hungerford Normal and Industrial School into a Black public school operated by OCPS.
Since the late 1800s, the Hungerford school operated in Eatonville, owned by a public trust and supported by donations, and had “possessed of considerable endowment funds,” the opinion said.
But as OCPS — then the Board of Public Instruction — began to expand its footprint of public schools for Black children, Hungerford fell into its sights and the Supreme Court decided to grant ownership of the school and 300 acres of Eatonville land to the district. Since then, Hungerford Elementary School was built on the land and other pieces were sold off, leaving the 100 acres left to be developed.
“When the trust was created in 1899 there was a real need for a private boarding school for Negroes,” Justice John E. Matthews wrote. “Since that time conditions have radically changed in Florida and throughout the South.”
Matthews felt that despite school segregation, a private Black boarding school was not needed in Eatonville. He wrote that better Black educational options were available, there was no longer enough funding to properly operate the school and there were not enough Black students interested in “a high-class boarding school” to keep the facility private.
Additionally, he wrote, state spending on public schools had risen dramatically so the school would be better off if it was operated by OCPS.
With that decision, OCPS became the owner. One heir to those who initially established the trust objected to the sale, the opinion said. But Matthews did not share the details of that objection.
As part of the deal, the land would have to be used for educational purposes. But in a series of decisions starting as early as the 1970s, the educational use requirement was eroded. The Hungerford school would eventually close and be demolished, leaving the land vacant.
This history is why Gardner and others in Eatonville say they want OCPS to consider giving the land to the town so residents can decide for themselves how it should be used to benefit the town as the original land trust intended.
“I truly believe there is a conversation that needs to be had,” Gardner said. “No, [the land] does not belong to the town but it was there for the town.”
So far, OCPS officials have given no indication that they plan to explore that option.
“Please note that there are no additional steps to be taken by the district, we remain under contract with a closing date scheduled for the end of March,” OCPS spokesperson Michael Ollendorff said in an email.
‘This is the history, us Black people’
The development planned for the land is a mix of retail, a grocery store and 350 apartments, single-family homes and townhomes. Along with other projects underway or proposed, Eatonville stands to create enough new housing to welcome as many as 2,000 new residents into the town, nearly doubling the population in less than a decade.
And in a town where the average income is less than $30,000 annually, that means most residents would not be able to afford to live in the new housing units and would likely have less of a voice in town matters once wealthier new residents who don’t have a personal connection to Eatonville’s history move in.
Joyce Irby was among nearly a dozen Eatonville residents who spoke during Tuesday’s meeting. Nearly all of them were against the project, including a member of the planning board that initially approved it but now had questions about whether developers would honor verbal promises that were not written into the contact, like free wireless internet on the development property.
“I don’t think the developers are the devil,” Irby said. “I think they are trying to come up with things that may be amenable to the people here but the basic issue is the feeling that our rights are always stripped away from us.”
Otis Mitchell, a 63-yearold lifelong Eatonville resident, called the planned development disrespectful. He said when he looks at the renderings and listens to the lawyer for developer Sovereign Land Co. share details about the project, he sees the potential for people he grew up with in Eatonville to eventually be priced out of their town and displaced.
During the meeting, he asked other Eatonville residents to stand so developers could see that they were showing up to fight for the town’s land and legacy.
“This is the history, us Black people,” he said. “When they stood up talking about what they’re trying to do for Eatonville, it took everything I had not to go off. Nothing I seen up there any of my friends that grew up here are going to be able to afford . ... For y’all to come and put all this stuff up here and think that we as Black people are going to be able to stay here, shame on yourself.”