Just as the Oviedo City Council is set to hold a public hearing to add increased protections to Seminole County’s rural boundary, a new proposal could lead to a fight over the future of the boundary lines themselves.
The 67-acre Pappy’s Patch property, a former U-pick strawberries family farm in Oviedo, is yet again being eyed for eventual development by local developer Chris Dorworth, who has targeted the land in the past. If he succeeds, it would require the lines of the rural boundary to be altered, a move that has long worried local politicians and activists and has led to multiple ballot measures and charter amendments to make it more difficult to do so.
The project would be for 136 single-family detached homes — no duplexes, townhomes or apartments. And 25% of the property would be open space.
“The applicant files this petition with no illusions about the likely outcome,” Dorworth wrote in an application to Seminole County’s Planning and Development Division on July 3. “The board’s members have publicly and individually pre-committed to deny every rural boundary withdrawal application; the applicant accepts that a denial is the probable result, and one purpose of this petition is to preserve the formal record on which subsequent proceedings will rest.”…