More than 20 years ago, Jack Facette moved to a five-acre country home in St. Cloud because of the need for space and privacy for his milking business. If you look at the members of this herd, you can see why – they have fangs.
In 2008, he created state-of-the-art facilities of 140 snakes, mostly coral snakes, stacking nine heights, housed them in grey plastic cubies. The 75-year-old Facente extracts the poison and sells it to create an anti-vivenom to treat snake glow victims.
“Who wants hundreds of venomous snakes next to you?” asked Facent. “That’s the biggest reason I came in the middle of here, so I don’t have to deal with all of that.”
However, two planned road projects threaten to overturn his business and the lifestyles of many neighbors.
This project – one is a 15-20-mile toll road by the Central Florida Highways Authority known as the Northeast Connector, and the other is a roughly six-mile road by Osceola County, known as the Sunbridge Parkway Extension, aiming to connect key boulevards in the area, repeatedly named by Florida’s fastest cultivation and state-owned enterprise data.
The population of St. Cloud has exploded in recent years. Census data for 2023 revealed that more than 66,400 residents were called city homes, an increase of nearly 13% over three years from the 2020 estimate. Osceola County grew at a similar rate over the same time frame, reaching 440,000.
As balloon populations grow, residents are increasing at the heart of projects in the countryside Bay Lake Ranch area, causing residents to feel pain. The neighborhood was founded on many of its many over 10 acres about 30 years ago. The community is full of large, unruly trees and overgrown plantings that residents can see by coyotes, bobcats and even the once Panther.
They are worried that asset values will drop if the highway crosses the backyard and are worried about the environmental impact on nearby Lake Conlin and Lake X.
“They are trying to place it right behind our neighborhood where the reserve is, and it affects a lot of wildlife,” said Alexandra Cardona, a resident of the Bay Lake ranch. “Many of us have moved here for peace and quiet. Our yard is at least one acre, so we pay higher property taxes because it has a higher impact.”
Residents held a meeting with the CFX and the county, attended by about 150 people, and nearly 800 petitions signed against the road project, but they are against the clock.
In 2017, CFX began researching the same area of the Northeast Connector Expressway, but suspended the project over community opposition. Now, the agency says it must act fast before the area is built in subdivisions to provide its sole connection to the eastern side of the county with Florida’s turnpike.
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“Because of development, it’s happening at a very fast pace (in Osceola County), so if you don’t do it now, it may not be available in the future, and if that’s the case, it’s going to be exponentially expensive to go the right path.”
Developers Dr. Horton and Tavistock hope to build thousands of homes in the area.
This is far from the first battle of Osceora’s rural lifestyle against urban growth, and CFX is prevalent.
In May, the road agency acquired the right to build a controversial toll road in parts of the once protected Split Oak Forest. And in November, they moved forward against opposition to the South Port Connector Expressway, a 15-mile, advanced six-lane toll road planned through Poinciana.
However, continued resistance from the community will make CFX’s epic vision connect all of Osseora. The Southport Connector Expressway links to the Northeast Connector Expressway and provides the county’s only Southern Highway loop.
Additionally, the law firm contacts FACENTE and other residents to detail how Northeast Connector requires the government to use its prominent domain to seize a portion of its property.
Last month, Facente received a letter from Harris Harris Bauerle Lopez’s Winter Park Law Office, stating that his home could be in danger.
Kurt Baual, a lawyer for a company specializing in prominent domains, said many companies advertise their services when property owners are likely to lose some or all of the land. However, he admitted that such a case is still years away.
Hatchings is premature to determine whether a prominent domain process will be involved in a project, paying the owner while encouraging sales.
“We have approved alignments and if we advance into the design, we have approved alignments and we don’t know what impact we can have on possible properties within the very large Northeast Connector Research Corridor until we get more accurate,” he said in an email. “Finally, if the property is affected, we will contact the owner by formal letter.”
The Northeast Connector Expressway is scheduled to travel from the Turnpike to the US on Northeast 192, State Road 534, North. CFX will look at the new routes of the project based on its 2017 survey.
The favourite corridor of Osceola County’s new roads uses Botanical Avenue, Old Melbourne Highway and Lake Conlin Road to connect US 192 to Nova Road and meet Sunbridge Parkway at the intersection of Nova.
Maria Claudia Durango, Roads Autreach consultant at Osceola, said in an email that the four-lane split highway has pedestrian and cycling paths, moving into the planned development and environment phase.
Durango said that although preferred routes require more detailed analysis, it will be announced later this year at the hearing with an unbuilt alternative detailing what traffic would look like without the Sunbridge Parkway Extension.
CFX will hold a public meeting on the project from 5:30 to 7:30pm on March 6th, and a virtual meeting from 6 to 7:30pm on March 12th at 3601 Arthur J Gallagher Blvd.
The county will hold a public meeting on Sunbridge Parkway extensions at the Auditorium high school on Tuesdays from 6 to 8pm.
Many plans and decisions remain, but Facente is unsettling.
A 2017 study on Northeast Connectors has led to five proposed corridors. One of them went through his backyard.
“If they chose one of those passes, yes, I’m worried,” Facente said. “I probably have to consider stopping my business because I limit where I go to sell and move.
“To be honest, at 75, I don’t want to move again. I thought I would die here.”
