Things To Do In SW Florida

With shovels full of dirt held by passionate city leaders, dignitaries and developers, plus light bites from Central Florida businesses, the City of DeBary broke ground on its new Main Street Wednesday morning.

First incorporated as a city in 1993, DeBary has experienced uneven growth, causing leaders to think proactively about how to forge a sustainable future with a high quality of life for residents and visitors. The result is a transit-oriented development (TOD) district comprising a high-density downtown with apartments, townhomes and retail space on 52 acres, plus new parks nearby.

“We had this area here that was going to be a liability because we had varying lot sizes and configurations. We were destined for a lot of inconsistent development that DeBary residents wouldn’t be happy with,” said City Manager Carmen Rosamonda of the area just north of the SunRail station. “We decided to take a proactive approach, turning a liability into an asset our community is so dearly lacking, a downtown.” read more

Residents in rural east Orange County celebrated Wednesday the dramatic early morning defeat of the latest mega-development proposing to build hundreds of homes on a former cattle ranch in the environmentally sensitive Econ River basin.

Many, wearing their red “Stop Urban Sprawl” t-shirts from previous fights, endured a marathon Orange County commission meeting Tuesday to cheer the 4-3 vote against requesting a land-use change from state authorities. But some were convinced they haven’t seen the last such proposal for the area.

Developers were asking the board for “transmittal” of their plan, a mandatory step in Florida’s process to make large-scale land-use changes and, in this case, to turn the ranchlands into Sustanee, as the developer had dubbed the project of nearly 1,800 homes.

Commissioner Emily Bonilla, whose east Orange district includes the former Rybolt ranch on which Sustanee would sit as well as the rural homesteads opposed to the project, spent more than an hour of a debate that lasted until 1 a.m. citing land-use rules and her legal basis for voting no. read more