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Residents and Osceola County planning staff go over potential future land use changes, which include new land zoned for industrial use, at a community meeting Feb. 22 at Tohopekaliga High School. PHOTO/KEN JACKSON -
County Commissioner Ricky Booth goes over residents’ concerns who live in the rural enclave along Boggy Creek at the community meeting. PHOTO/KEN JACKSON
Drivers who use Boggy Creek Road and Simpson Road to access Kissimmee and Buenaventura Lakes likely don’t know that they’re driving by areas that have been residential, and undisturbed, for decades.
They are neighborhoods in the Boggy Creek rural enclave, set back off the main highways. Homes sit on the banks of the creek and the northeast shore of East Lake Tohopekaliga. Hurricane Ian’s flooding rains sent those waters into the neighborhood — two feet up into some of their living rooms — impacting those residents.
But the latest threat to their homes isn’t from Mother Nature — it’s from Osceola County.
The busting-at-theseams county is looking for areas for new business and commercial growth, and is eyeing the nearby enclave. The county is currently widening Simpson Road to four lanes, from Boggy Creek to Osceola Parkway, on the north side of that area. And Orange County is currently widening Boggy Creek north into Orange County toward State Road 417. So the area, which saw a new apartment complex just go up at the intersection of the two, is already a dusty construction hub.
The county held a town hall meeting at Tohopekaliga High School last week to present ideas for where land could be re-zoned and used for new homes, businesses and industrial uses. County officials say any plans are in their earliest stages, and there’s plenty of time to find new benchmarks — and get residents’ feedback.
Most of that feedback is simple: Don’t change a thing. “We’ve lived undisturbed for over 30 years and we want to keep it that way,” said Great Oaks Boulevard resident Joy Suldo. “It’s a little piece of heaven that we want to pass on to our families.”
At the meeting, residents were given a map with the county’s ideas, and the other side featured a blank map were they could mark where they’d be comfortable with the zoning changes occurring. It also had a list of industrial uses — such as concrete plants, communication towers, educational facilities, parks, warehouses and storage and enclosed light manufacturing — and they were to mark the ones they approved of.
By the end of the night, the majority of the sheets turned in approved of few to none, and to make no zoning changes.
The residents have an ally in their county commissioner, Ricky Booth, who has lived in Osceola County his whole life.
“I stand with the residents; I’m for no change,” he said. “It’s an environmentally sensitive area with generational residents.
“I applaud staff for looking for lands for industrial and commercial uses, those are bases we need to expand in Osceola County. But, it was my understanding that we’d be looking for that on the outskirts of the Urban Growth Boundary.”
The boundary is just that — a line that marks the edge of where residential growth, and the business growth that comes with it — Booth said he’s open to having commercial land along road frontages. But two of the three study area alternatives call for industrial-zoned land several blocks in from both Simpson Road and Boggy Creek Road.
“Ultimately, we need these things going forward — the right ways. But there are strong residents who live there and I stand with them.”
Cori Carpenter, a planning and design director for the county’s Community Development division, said this process is still at the “drawing board” stage — a very early point in what will likely be a 1618 month process.
“There will be protections in place at the adoption. We’re not planning to transmit (a plan) until June 2024,” Carpenter said. “We’re talking to people, and our true goal of the meeting is to get feedback, it wasn’t to push anything to anybody. It was to understand what our starting point is.
“We are planning for a number of more meetings. We intend to take the community’s feedback as best we can to meet the intent of what we’re tasked to do, and for the community.”
But Suldo said, if the resident’s true input is taken, then there likely isn’t a great compromise for both sides.
“Why us? Because we’re close to the airport?” she asked.
