In the most recent ruling on the matter, State Administrative Law Judge Charles Stampelos acknowledged that many Nocatee residents will work in Jacksonville, 30 miles away. But he allowed the town to proceed, saying its self-contained mix of homes, offices, schools, churches, stores and parks will do more to discourage sprawl than fuel it.
Across Florida, so-called "new urbanist" plans -- from Nocatee to St. Joe Co.'s communities in the Panhandle to Sarasota County's proposal to allow "villages" in ranch lands east of Interstate 75 -- are creating a quandary for their advocates: The developments feature the type of planning and design features that help build real communities. But the new towns are often so far from other urban areas that they're sure to act as magnets for sprawl in between.
"It is the classic dilemma," says Marie York, associate director of the Catanese Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions at Florida Atlantic University. "Many of Florida's new towns are exactly what we're striving for. The worry is about what comes in next door."
No single development highlights the dilemma better than the former Triple E Ranch in southern Osceola County, which is slated to become a town called Harmony.
The 11,000-acre community between Orlando and Melbourne touts environmental stewardship as its centerpiece, and regulators, wildlife experts and others say it's more than a marketing pitch. Harmony's developers are leaving 70% of the land untouched. The town's golf course, homes and commercial buildings are all going up on pasture lands already cleared when the property was a ranch.
The rest of the acreage -- with two 500-acre lakes, granddaddy oak trees and forested wetlands -- looks like a wildlife refuge. The developers plan to keep it that way. "We think this is the way to do right by the environment and make money at the same time," Jim Lentz says.
Lentz, a former investment banker in Orlando, is managing partner of Birchwood Acres LLLP, which owns the Harmony site off U.S. 192. He is married to Martha Eastman Lentz, a former executive director of the Orlando Humane Society.
In 1996, Martha Lentz founded a think tank, the Harmony Institute, that studies and promotes the human health benefits of interacting with animals and nature. The Lentzes say they never intended to get into the development business themselves when they went searching for a partner to build the institute, its research facility and a model community in which to carry out its ideals. But Martha Lentz says at least a dozen central Florida developers who wanted to partner with the institute weren't willing to make what they viewed as financially risky conservation promises.
Eventually, the Lentzes found a fit in Itasca, Ill.-based Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., the world's fourth-largest insurance broker. CEO J. Patrick Gallagher Jr. says he was looking for a bold way to enter community development in Florida. He bought into the Lentzes' idea that preservation would result in long-term financial reward. Gallagher agreed to finance Martha Lentz's idea for a model sustainable community and nature preserve -- if Jim Lentz would agree to manage the $1-billion project.
Six years later, model homes are under construction in Harmony in the new urbanist style of Florida towns such as Celebration, Seaside and Abacoa -- with compact, walkable neighborhoods and mixed-use town centers. But Harmony's preservation features, built into the project by way of a conservation land trust, go far beyond those of the other new towns.
No development will be allowed on the two natural, sand-bottom lakes, which is highly unusual for a central Florida community with a waterfront, says Marc Ady, supervisor of environmental permitting for the South Florida Water Management District's Orlando office.
Meanwhile, the developers are keeping impacts far below what the project's original permits allow, says Bob Wright, the director of planning and environmental services for Osceola County. And rather than relying on the county to meet its school needs, Harmony had a charter K-8 school under way before the first home was built and donated the land across U.S. 192 that will house the county's newest high school.
"I would call them unusual developers," says Wright. "They are rehabilitating pasture land, and their plan does not remove one tree. I would call it highly unusual."
Outrage
But for all of Harmony's ecological and new urbanist virtues, environmentalists are aghast at what they see as a Trojan Horse for sprawl. First, they lament the impact of 18,000 new residents and their cars on what is now two-lane farm country and an important recharge area for the Econlockhatchee River. They're even more worried that Harmony, a 45-minute drive to either Orlando or Melbourne, will fuel development in the rural lands in between.
Charles Lee, senior vice president of Audubon of Florida, says that Harmony, by leapfrogging miles of pasture land and bringing services such as schools to rural Osceola County, is laying the groundwork for more out-of-control growth. "Mark me down in the skeptical column," Lee says. "The best kind of development for Florida's environment is urban infill -- not sprawl."
As a model, Lee points to the Baldwin Park community project under way on a 1,100-acre former naval base in urban Orlando -- one of the largest in-city redevelopment ventures in the nation. "It's apparent to me that Baldwin Park is in greater 'harmony' with the environment building inward than this community is out on the fringe," Lee says.
York, outgoing president of the American Planning Association's Florida chapter, says it's up to the Osceola County Commission to prevent sprawl from filling in the gap between Harmony and surrounding urban areas. "What the nearby development looks like is going to be under the control of the local government," she says. "They need to have the political courage to say, 'This is what we want.' It will take visionary leadership to build upon Harmony as an asset."
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, dean of the College of Architecture at the University of Miami and a founder of the new urbanism movement, says it takes more: Without bold regional and state planning for preservation and transportation, new towns like Harmony or Nocatee are little better than traditional subdivisions. New urbanism "isn't a fad that can work in isolation," she says. "It's a principle."
Of all the counties struggling with these issues, only Sarasota, which is developing a plan for growth east of I-75, seems to be a step ahead of developers, says Janet Bowman, the legal director of 1,000 Friends of Florida. Franklin and Gulf, on the other hand, are scrambling to update land-use plans in reaction to St. Joe's new towns. "It's admirable that Sarasota County is having this discussion before Arvida or Lennar came knocking," Bowman says.
Wright, the Osceola County planning director, says he intends to ask commissioners to launch a corridor study of the U.S. 192 area between St. Cloud and Harmony so that further development is "not piecemeal." Eventually, he envisions a combination of neighborhoods, groceries, restaurants and medical offices that will set southeastern Osceola apart from the tourist-clogged sprawl associated with Kissimmee.
The one thing that seems sure not to happen in the strip between St. Cloud and Harmony is the large-scale preservation environmentalists would like to see. With Osceola projected to grow faster than any other county in central Florida over the next five years, the question is how growth will proceed -- not whether.
University of Florida professor Pierce Jones, with the Florida Energy Extension Service, has been working with the Lentzes for three years on a plan that will make Harmony the largest development in Florida to achieve Energy Star compliance, a rating that means homes are 30% more efficient than most.
Jones grew up in Melbourne and traveled on U.S. 192 when its bridges were made of wood. "The thing people don't understand is that Harmony is doing many, many things it simply doesn't have to do," he says. "They are going to preserve lakes and land and energy for all of us; they are going to make money doing it; and they are going to inspire other developers to do it. Rather than beat on them, I think we should join them."