ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – The Florida Communities Trust’s governing board unanimously approved a request Wednesday to expand the Osceola County Parkway through part of Split Oak Forest, an area of protected conservation land spanning Orange and Osceola counties. 

The proposed development would impact 160 acres of the forest’s nearly 1,700 acres. The request, part of a larger plan to expand the Osceola Parkway, now goes to both counties for their final approval. 

Valerie Anderson, president of Friends of Split Oak, says the advocacy group plans to sue Orange County if it approves the proposal. That’s because back in 2020, about 86% of Orange County residents voted to pass an amendment to the county’s charter, protecting Split Oak Forest from future development. 

“It still has to come back to [the counties],” Anderson said. “The language in [Orange County's] charter amendment prevents the commissioners from taking any action to remove or reduce the Split Oak Forest protection … we will see if Orange County wants to violate its own charter.”

Supporters of the project say it’s crucial, “a critical regional transportation corridor” to accommodate Central Florida’s growing population. Anderson said it’s not development itself that she’s opposed to, but that places like Split Oak should be protected.

“I have no problem with people moving to Florida. I have no problem with development,” Anderson said. “I have a problem with the developers wanting public park land, [which] should be protected in perpetuity, for their own money-making purposes.”

Developers pushing to build in the forest claim they’ll make up for it by donating 1,550 acres of nearby land for conservation efforts. But Anderson says that proposal isn’t much of a compromise.

“It’s not very high-quality land, for one,” Anderson said of the 1,550 acres developers propose to donate. “It’s not been maintained the way Split Oak has been maintained for endangered species.”

But even beyond that, Anderson says, it’s difficult to trust the additional land would truly be protected long-term, given what’s unfolding with Split Oak right now.

“How is that [land] gonna be protected? Is that gonna be protected with the same protections Split Oak has? Because you’re just getting rid of them now,” Anderson said.

Anderson says although conservation lands have special protection, Florida’s administrative codes do allow for some land use exceptions. For example, it might be permissible to install a waterline beneath a park, Anderson says – something called a “linear facility” – as long as there’s minimal impact to the protected land.

But Anderson says some authorities are trying to abuse those exceptions for profit.

“The thing is, that language, ‘linear facilities’ is now being used to describe six-lane highways through conservation areas, not something you might think of as serving the public purpose,” Anderson said.

“It’s a little loophole that makes sense in small cases,” Anderson said. Now, though, she says: “It’s being completely expanded upon to do things that are not in the public interest, and are way more impactful to these sites than a linear facility was originally intended in the [Florida] statutes.”

At Wednesday’s public hearing in Tallahassee, dozens of dissenters from both sides of the political aisle spoke out against the proposed parkway expansion. Ultimately, Florida Communities Trust greenlit the proposal, paving the way for Osceola and Orange counties to make the final decision.