The Seminole County Planning and Zoning Commission on Wednesday recommended rejecting a developer’s request to remove about 67 acres of land from the county’s established East Rural Area.
Advancing the request would’ve been a step toward allowing more dense development of the site just north of Oviedo’s city limits, where a popular strawberry-picking farm used to operate. The land sits just a few miles from the 700-acre Black Hammock Wilderness Area, near Lake Jesup.
The removal request
The request came from Chris Dorworth, a developer who served in Florida’s House of Representatives from 2007 to 2012. Dorworth has previously tried, unsuccessfully, to remove other swaths of land from the county’s East Rural Area.
That area, also known simply as the Rural Area, consists of some 67,000 acres of land largely designated for rural use, according to county planning staff. A voter-approved rural boundary separates it from the county’s urbanized areas…