ORLANDO, Fla. — Developers wanted to rezone more than 200 acres of environmentally sensitive land in the Shingle Creek Basin, but Orange County commissioners said no.

What You Need To Know

  •  Orange County commissioners rejected moving forward with the Tuscana Planned Development project

  •  Developers wanted to build more than 1,200 hotel rooms and 4,800 housing units within the Shingle Creek Basin

  •  District 5 Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad said environmental protection and public safety concerns led county commissioners to vote no

They unanimously rejected a proposed project, called Tuscana Planned Development, that would have rezoned the 227 acre property from Farmland Rural District to Planned Development.

The land falls within District 1, north of State Road 417, south of Central Florida Parkway, and east of International Drive.

According to the request, the proposed development would have included 653,400 square feet of commercial uses, 1,291 hotel rooms, and 4,814 multi-family dwelling units.

District 5 Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad said commissioners want to grow Orange County in a smart and sustainable way, and citing public safety concerns, she said building somewhere with flooding implications is not the way to go.

“That development did not represent a trade-off that I was willing to make to sacrifice or to risk people’s homes and their quality of life and flooding for a developer,” said Semrad.

Semrad told Spectrum News 13 the county received about 1,000 emails against the project and fewer than 100 in support of it.

“The people that were reaching out to us were our Orange County constituents, where, as the people who were reaching out in support of the project, many of them didn’t live in Orange County,” said Semrad. “Many of them didn’t live in the state of Florida, and some of them didn’t even live in the country.”

Matthew Grocholske, a member of the environmental group Protect Shingle Creek, was among those who addressed county commissioners during their meeting Wednesday.

“We’ve seen the County Commission definitely side with the environment in multiple cases now this year, so I felt amazing because this is just another step for actual environmental protection here,” said Grocholske.

Grocholske said he understands growth, but believes it is terrible that developers want to develop environmental areas like Shingle Creek, which is part of the headwaters to the Everglades.

“Here in Orange County, we definitely recognize the fact that we need to build more housing and build more hotels, but it cannot be in environmentally sensitive lands such as this,” he said.

During the meeting, county commissioners say they were threatened with a lawsuit from the applicant’s team if Semrad and Commissioner Nicole Wilson participated in the vote.

Semrad says this is because a District 5 employee, who once worked in District 1, signed a petition to protect the basin before working for the county.

However, they say they felt there was no conflict of interest after speaking with their county attorney and did not recuse themselves from the vote.