In a last-ditch effort to stop the sale of 100 acres of land in Eatonville, residents have banded together to try to convince the town government to reject a plan to develop the area.
Orange County Public Schools has owned the plot at Wymore Road and Kennedy Boulevard near Interstate 4 since the early 1950s when a court decision transferred the land to the school board to transform the then-private Robert F. Hungerford Normal and Industrial School into a public school for Black students.
The school board has already entered the final closing stages to sell the property for $14 million. If the sale is not stopped, Winter Park-based real estate developer Sovereign Land Co. will own it by March.
“We have one chance to get it right,” Eatonville Mayor Angie Gardner said of the project. “Once that land is gone, it’s gone.”
Sovereign’s development plan would bring about 350 new housing units — a mix of apartments, townhouses and single-family homes — to Eatonville. In addition, it would add acres of retail, restaurants and a grocery store to the small town.
While many residents say they want to see the land developed, they are worried that such a massive project could have dire consequences.
They fear the new housing will be priced too high for most current residents to afford and that new people who don’t know or appreciate the town’s history will erase its legacy as the nation’s first Black-incorporated municipality. Also, as property values rise due to growth, they fear that even people living in parts of the town untouched by the development will eventually be priced out of the area, either by rising property taxes or rising rents.
“The concerns we have heard are understandable given the proud history and culture that is present in the Town of Eatonville,” said Derek Bruce, attorney for Sovereign Land Co. “However, we have – and will continue to – work very hard to ensure the project that comes out of the ground is one that honors the Town’s heritage and its people.”
But it may be impossible for the development company to appease the group of Eatonville residents who are adamantly against the project.
At a community meeting on Tuesday, a group of more than 50 residents came to discuss their opposition.
“The objective of these meetings first and foremost is to get our land back,” said Julian Johnson, who grew up in Eatonville and returned after graduating from Bethune-Cookman University.
Johnson said the ideal outcome would be for Sovereign to drop out of the project and OCPS to cancel the sale and give the land back to Eatonville residents, a plan that OCPS has given no indication it intends to follow.
“OCPS currently has a contract for sale of the property…” school board spokesperson Lauren Roth said in an email statement. “The closing on that property is scheduled for March 31, 2023. As the district is in the middle of that process, we do not have any other comment on this matter pending the closing.”
Decades-old land deal draws questions
Though town residents want OCPS to give the land back so they can decide its future, Roth said the school district worked with the town to put out a request for development proposals so Eatonville could specify what kind of development it wanted to see. The town is also in line to receive $4 million of the proceeds.
She said district officials now have no control over the direction of the project and are just “middlemen” handling the administrative details of the sale.
But the deal has prompted some residents to question of how the school district obtained the land in the first place.
Johnson said he spent months trying to track down sale records from the 1950s that might show how much, if anything, the school board paid and his search turned up empty. Roth refused to answer Orlando Sentinel questions about how the land was obtained or for how much.
More than 70 years ago, the battle over the property went all the way to the state Supreme Court, according to articles from the time.
In a March 1952 article, an opinion written by Supreme Court Justice John E. Matthews upheld an Orange County Circuit Court decision granting OCPS the land because Matthews felt that public school facilities for Black students had improved throughout the South so much that private Black schools were no longer needed.
Months later, OCPS gained control of the school and more than 300 acres of land in Eatonville. Hungerford Elementary School was soon built on the land.
In the following decades, OCPS sold off the land in pieces. The 100 acres that could become Sovereign’s new development is all that remains.
“Giving the land back is not going to cost OCPS any money because they made money off the other 200 or so acres that they’ve sold and that money over time has generated revenue for them,” Gardner said. “So is it feasible? Is it doable for OCPS to give the land back? Absolutely.”
Gardner, who voted against the plan when it went before the Town Council for its first reading, said she has attempted to engage the school district in conversations about the property but OCPS Board Chair Teresa Jacobs has so far been unwilling to entertain the idea of giving the land back, which Gardner felt “disrespected” the town.
Roth declined to comment on whether OCPS would consider donating the land back to the town.
N.Y. Nathiri, founder of the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts and executive director of the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, said OCPS’ role is larger than district officials want to admit and they may not understand what’s at stake if they ignore the cries of the community.
“No, they don’t see it,” she said. “Because if they saw it, they would not want to see themselves in this position.”
She added that’s no excuse for signing off on a sale that could devastate the small Black town’s culture and displace its residents.
Johnson was even more direct.
“Orange County Public Schools, honestly, they are the enemy here,” he said.
Council vote delayed
Before Sovereign’s plan can be approved, the developer must go before the Town Council again.
That was scheduled to happen on Dec. 6 but after Tuesday’s community meeting, Gardner decided to postpone the vote until January so that hurricane damage to a facility large enough to fit all the townspeople who want to observe the meeting and comment on the project can be repaired.
Gardner said the debate over the land sale and the project has captured the attention of so many that even residents she has never seen at government meetings have been turning up to hear more.
“I have never seen our citizens be as engaged as they are becoming right now,” Gardner said. “It is a wonderful thing. And I want them to continue that engagement… because if it affects their town, they should always be engaged.”
A new date for the town council to vote on the project has not yet been set but it is expected to happen in January.
Councilman Marlin Daniels voted in favor of the project when it was first brought before the council. He said he is waiting to hear more from the developers before he decides how he will vote next time. However, he agreed with residents who thought a December vote would have been rushed.
He said understands residents’ concerns but believes there it’s possible to see growth without losing the soul of the town. It will be up to Eatonville residents and its government to protect their culture, he said.
“I would love for the historic town of Eatonville to keep its historic value of being the oldest Black municipality in America,” Daniels said. “I would also like to have mixed-use (projects). We need to have those commercial businesses there and that infrastructure in place to help our people. Right now, our people don’t have those necessities of life in our own community. Eatonville back in the day was self sustained.”
And he wants to see the city be self-sustaining again, so residents won’t have to travel to Orlando, Maitland or Winter Park to meet basic needs.
Gardner said she hasn’t decided how she will vote and she will be “open minded” and listen to developers next time they are before the council. But she wants to see development that is more integrated into the town, and not a project that will create “a city within a city” and make it easy for new residents to only support the new businesses a project like this will bring.
Until the sale is finalized in March, Gardner said she wants to see OCPS make a genuine effort to engage with the town over the land dispute.
“Our people are worth resolving this issue for,” Gardner said. “I really want OCPS to make a true effort to acknowledge that unresolved issue, to say something respectfully to address the issue. As long as their pen keeps the land with OCPS, then they have a lot of say so in this. Their role is not administrative. It’s historical.”
dstennett@orlandosentinel.com
