Becky Burke was the first to learn about the Central Florida Highways Bureau’s plans to build a roadway in the middle of the late 19th century home when he saw a series of maps pinned to the board at a public meeting last April.
“I walked, looked at these boards and thought, ‘Wow, wait a minute, it’s going through my dining room,'” she said this week.
Adam Shafran, who lives across the dirt Bloom Lane from Burke’s property in a rural pocket in Seminole County, across the dirt Bloom Lane, learned from a friend that the roads can sweep his home and exotic fruit tree nursery.
“I lost a lot of sleep,” Shafran said. “I’m upset. I’m worried. I have a vision of bulldozers and trees being cut down.”
Like many nearby residents, Burke and Shafran don’t want to leave the massive amount of quiet wooded area just north of the lake where they lived for decades.
But they know that if the toll road agency known as the CFX is going on a long-standing plan to build a two-lane connector road between State Route 417 and Orlando Sanford International Airport, they have few options.
Regional transit officials and local governments say the new highway, which has a $200 million interim budget, about two miles long, will help reduce the rise in crowds in one of Seminole County’s fast-growing areas. Such projects usually have human costs from a living perspective as construction progresses, but authorities say it is the price of progress.
Sanford Mayor Artwoodruff pointed out that more than a mile of traffic regularly backs up during rush hours around the intersection of Mary Boulevard Lake and Ronald Reagan Boulevard, as well as the SR 417 off-ramp.
“That intersection will feel the greatest benefits from the new path,” he said.
CFX in 2023 proposed four routes for the connector load after nearly a decade of planning. This allowed a northbound driver to travel northeast on the main road near Lake JESUP Toll Plaza at SR 417, then north, heading directly to Red Cleveland Boulevard, to the airport facility north of Lake Mary Boulevard. Drivers traveling south on the SR 417 will not be able to access the toll road directly.
Currently, agents narrow their listings down to one route. Run directly through Burke and Shafran houses, as well as several other homes near Pineway and Melonville Avenue.
CFX officials and consultants will announce their latest plans at a public meeting held at the Sanford Civic Center from 5:30pm on July 17th. The agency’s management committee, made up of elected officials from the Central Florida area, will review the project at its public meeting in October.
“It’s up to the board to accept it and decide to reject it or shelve it,” said CFX spokesman Brian Hatchings.
The process of acquiring a property can take months or years. Under Florida’s prominent domain law, property owners must be provided with fair compensation, including their post-valuation business. The owner may appeal in court and indemnify him for attorney’s fees.
Still, for residents along the proposed route, including the Burke and Shafran, it is waiting to see if their homes will be bulldozed and if they will be compensated quite a bit.
Built in the late 1800s, Burke’s two-storey home was in the family of her husband, who had died since the 1940s. About 22 years ago, the couple moved nearly two miles to their current location on 10 acres after the developers wanted the surrounding land for the residential plot.
“We poured our hearts into it,” Burke, 64, said of renovating the house with her husband, who passed away last August.
Burke recently hired an attorney to address a potential acquisition of CFX.
“There’s more than the price,” she said. “There’s an emotional confusion that’s underway. …I wonder. Where are you going?”
Adam Shafran, 44, understands the need for new roads where all his homes are being built in the area. However, he is worried that his fortune will be accurately valued, including the rare fruit trees that he has grown from seeds and spent much of his life selling around the world.
“I have more innovative varieties than anywhere else in the country,” he said. He roamed the 3.5-acre property and picked up rare fruits from his trees, including Kambuka, Jabotikaba and Lemon Drop Mangosteen.
“But I don’t think the appraiser understands what I have here,” Shafran said. “This place is like a gold mine to me. This is my retirement. I can’t move these.”
He also raises chickens, which is very attached to burying them after they die. He is worried that bulldozers and heavy machinery will “disturb their graves.”
But in highlighting the need for new roads, CFX officials say that by 2050, the Seminole population is expected to grow by 21% to more than 585,000 residents. Orlando Sanford International Airport’s passenger count is expected to nearly double, with Lake Mary Boulevard being expected to have 44% more vehicles.
As of this year, the cost of the new road hover is estimated at around $200 million. This includes $18.3 million in property acquisitions and $172 million in construction.
To fund the project, CFX issues bonds that are repaid with tolls.
The Seminole commissioner wrote to the agency in 2023, urging them to move the project faster before more growth occurs, making it nearly impossible to acquire the property.
Woodruff said that despite the loss of the home, the currently proposed route appears to be the best route.
“It was so long that it would have been easier to go through it when there wasn’t as much traffic demand as today,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’ve been waiting until now… but I hope this is the best route.”
Original issue: June 26, 2025 10:55am EDT
