Former state lawmaker Chris Dorworth’s River Cross Land Co. has filed for bankruptcy, after spending roughly $1 million in a failed bid to erect a controversial mega development within Seminole County’s rural boundary.

According to the Chapter 7 filing on April 22, the company, an LLC, has liabilities estimated to range between $500,000 and $1 million, and estimated assets of up to $50,000.

The filings in Florida’s middle district of U.S. Bankruptcy Court provide few other details. However, in a text message to the Sentinel on Friday, Dorworth said Seminole County is River Cross’ only creditor.

For more than a year, Seminole leaders have pursued $432,000 that River Cross is under court order to pay the county, an amount representing its legal fees defending itself from the development firm.

But two days after the bankruptcy filing, U.S. District Judge Anne Conway ordered a temporary halt in the fee recovery proceedings until the bankruptcy case is resolved. Seminole’s attorney Kate Latorre did not respond to an email asking for comment on Friday.

In the court filing, Dorworth is listed as the firm’s sole managing member, and its address is on Whitstable Court, his former home in the gated Heathrow community.

The company’s bank records a few months ago showed a balance of just $306, and Dorworth said last year that he has “no plans” to deposit more funds into his firm’s account to pay Seminole.

In his Friday text, Dorworth called the county’s efforts to recoup the legal fees from a “long defunct LLC” as “political grandstanding and a waste of taxpayer money.”

The development controversy started in early 2018, when Dorworth through River Cross Land Co. filed an application with Seminole to build 600 single-family homes, 270 townhomes, 500 apartment units and 1.5 million square feet of commercial and professional space on 669 acres in the county’s rural boundary area just east of the environmentally-sensitive Econlockhatchee River.

Seminole commissioners rejected the project at an August 2018 meeting attended by hundreds of people in opposition. Dorworth then sued the county, arguing Seminole’s rural boundary violated the Fair Housing Act. That federal lawsuit was thrown out in June 2021 by Conway, who called Dorworth’s claims “unreasonable” and “groundless.”

Court records show that Dorworth committed nearly $1 million to the project. He signed a contract to purchase the pristine land, known as the High Oaks Ranch, from longtime owners the Clayton family for $35.3 million.

According to deposition transcripts, Dorworth first put down a $300,000 deposit and then put up several more non-refundable deposits totaling $480,000. Dorworth said in his text that the contract with the Claytons has now lapsed.

Dorworth previously told the Sentinel that River Cross had no other investors or lenders. He called the High Oaks Ranch property “the last great remaining piece of land” in Seminole.

Seminole’s rural boundary, approved by voters in 2004, covers about a third of the county and lies mostly east of the Econlockhatchee River, Lake Jesup and Oviedo. Development densities are limited to a minimum of one home per five acres.

To carve a piece of property out of the rural boundary for more intense development requires support from at least three county commissioners.

mcomas@orlandosentinel.com