A Florida Pioneer at Age 20

By Susan Blexrud

Two decades ago, some 38,000 acres of citrus groves, lakes, and wetlands in west Orange County, Florida, were targeted for development into a big project called Horizon West. It all began in 1993, when a group of property owners joined forces with Orange County to develop a master plan. The Walt Disney World Company soon came on board, and a journey ensued that ultimately led to Horizon West's approval as Florida's first sector plan.

Seven other sector plans have been approved to date across the state, but Horizon West stands out because it provided a village template that set the pattern for those that followed.

The various parties involved had their own reasons for joining in. Property owners suffered two devastating freezes (the last in 1989) that wiped out extensive citrus groves. The seven-year process of regrowth would have been arduous — and another freeze might come. Disney, in turn, supported expansion of the 429 Western Beltway, which would provide direct access to Disney parks in southwest Orange County.

And for Orange County, poised to build the beltway to relieve congestion on the I-4 corridor, a future based on a comprehensive approach to community building held much more appeal than a corridor of piecemeal planning by demand. Horizon West could have become a poster child for urban sprawl. Orange County's 10-acre zoning could have led to leapfrog development. And Disney employees, who had no nearby housing, schools, or commercial development, could have continued to be obliged to drive more than 20 miles to work.

The solution was an epiphany: walkable communities with five to seven housing units per acre. Getting to that solution took a while.

The basics

Orange County established an urban service area boundary in 1980 — something that the Florida growth management system still allows. Within this boundary, the county supported services such as police, fire, and infrastructure. Outside it, the county provided no such services. The enormous swath of agricultural land that comprised most of west Orange County was zoned for a minimum lot size of 10 acres. The only exceptions were a few historic rural settlements, like Windermere.

Once the urban service boundary was established, it discouraged any development besides agribusiness, while encouraging suburban sprawl into adjacent counties, where zoning was less stringent. During the 1990s, Lake County's population grew by nearly 40 percent, Osceola by 60 percent. Meanwhile, Orange County grew 32 percent.

What existed in west Orange County at that time was suburban sprawl. The landscape was peppered with orange groves, and agricultural areas were beginning to be rezoned to allow one-acre lots dependent on wells and septic tanks. This was expensive development, and land prices were escalating.

In this environment, a group of west Orange County property owners began meeting at a restaurant in Winter Garden in 1993. They needed a solution to the citrus freezes, lack of county services, and leapfrogging development. Somewhere between scrambled eggs and key lime pie, they came up with the concept for Horizon West, and the group incorporated.

Formalities

The mission of nonprofit Horizon West, Inc. was to put a development plan forward. Headed by Don Phillips, a grove owner and local businessman, the group raised $100,000 to hire Miller, Sellen, Connor & Walsh (now VHB MillerSellen) to craft a plan the county would accept. Jim Sellen, the principal of the firm, had been Orange County's planning director in the 1970s, and the group had confidence that he could work with the county.

"I knew going in that the property owners would need to work collaboratively and offer a solution that would benefit both them and the county," Sellen says. "I also knew that the county would never extend the urban service area for piecemeal projects."

The proposed Western Beltway created an opportunity. This limited access toll road would certainly spur development along its interchanges, but Sellen knew the county wouldn't want that development to take the form of strip malls and T-shirt shops.

The Walt Disney Company — parent of Walt Disney World — kicked in an additional $100,000, and the work began. Inspirations for Sellen's team included the early 20th century work of Sir Ebenezer Howard, new urbanism, Disney's Celebration project, and the city of Winter Park, Florida.

What they had to work with, though, was something else entirely. Orange County was "the wild West," says former county mayor Linda Chapin. She elaborates: "Horizon West provided us the opportunity to do cutting-edge planning. We finally understood that we needed mixed use development to create a true live-work-play environment."

Sellen adds: "With residents so far apart, you couldn't make schools accessible to the population. And this was before the Beltway," he says. "With the Beltway, you'd have even more sprawl as development clustered around the interchanges of the new road. . . . The only viable solution was to develop villages . . . served by a regional town center."

Grabbing the reins

The planning process began in 1993 with four community forums and numerous community meetings. More than 100 people attended the final forum in 1995. This group approved the village concept. The Lake Avalon Rural Settlement opted out of the development because residents there wanted to remain rural.

Following approval, key players were identified who could serve as a constituency, and as champions, to educate the community and the media on the need for a plan. Residents of the upscale community of Windermere in west Orange County were concerned that they would be surrounded by sprawl, until they understood the village concept. And initially the Orlando Sentinel opposed any growth.

This opposition put public officials in a difficult position. By approving Horizon West, they were setting a precedent for a type of project that had never been tried before: a large, fairly dense, mixed use, and walkable community in an area already known for suburban sprawl. Was it the right precedent?

"As county mayor, I was stuck in the middle, but I believe that the village plan was the best possible outcome for everyone," says Linda Chapin.

As approved, Horizon West would consist of five to eight villages of two to four neighborhoods each. Villages would consist of approximately 2,000 dwelling units, based on a formula of four dwelling units per acre. Community parks and schools would be within walking distance (a half-mile) of the homes, and neighborhood size would be tied to school capacity. Villages would have their own grocery-store-anchored commercial center, and one mixed use town center would serve all the villages. Bicycle and pedestrian trails would connect villages and neighborhoods, with plenty of green space in between.

Sellen also laid out an alternate plan of tourist hotels, scattered clusters of tract housing, and strip center shopping.

Orange County adopted the village concept in 1995 and entered into a public-private partnership with Horizon West, Inc. Disney also needed to be part of that partnership, according to Jim Karr, real estate broker, developer, and buyer at Land Plus, Inc. in Windermere. Karr was one of the founders of AWOL, the Association of West Orange Landowners, which initiated the county comprehensive plan amendment that ultimately accommodated Horizon West.

The sheer number of property owners created a challenge for Orange County. Unlike many other projects, Horizon West had to assemble land from hundreds of land owners. And for the county, that meant a multitude of reviews and approvals. Controversies about road building, utilities extension, and other issues slowed the process for several years. And there was no master developer to write the checks.

Another challenge at Horizon West was the topography. The 38,000-acre area was dotted with wetlands and lakes, which made a pure grid system tough to implement.

Florida's first sector plan

Jim Sellen was in charge of planning and design at Horizon West. He prepared its village land-use classification, which required that all property be developed into independent, self-sustaining villages through specific area plans. The village classification was approved by the Orange County Commission and adopted by the state of Florida in 1998 as the state's first sector plan. (The state of Florida defines a sector plan as the process in which one or more local governments engage in long-term planning for a large area, addressing regional issues through specific area plans.)

In Florida, a sector plan covers a minimum of 15,000 acres and incorporates big ideas "such as how we can use catalytic events to change our urban form from sprawl to more energy-efficient, compact development," Sellen says. Sector planning is one of the few techniques that remained after Florida overhauled its growth management system in 2011.

While Horizon West was the state's first approved sector plan, four other sector plans were approved before 2011: city of Bartow, Escambia County, Bay County, and Orange County. At 72,000 acres, the Bay County plan is the largest to date. Three other sector plans (Nassau, Hendry, and Osceola counties) have been approved since 2011.

Those involved say that the success of sector plans will ultimately depend on the ability of planners, business leaders, and regulators to create a system that makes economic as well as intellectual sense. It will also require political and community resolve to honor the plans over time.

Realizing the vision

Horizon West's first village, Lakeside Village, was approved in 1997, and the Village of Bridgewater followed in 1999. By 2002, 34 homes had been sold in Lakeside and 60 in Bridgewater. By 2006, more than 1,400 homes had been sold in these two neighborhoods.

About two-thirds of the households are families. Household income is higher than the Orange County average. More than 6,000 of the project's 28,000 housing units have been constructed to date, 63 percent of which are single-family. Twenty-eight percent are town homes, and nine percent are apartments or condominiums. An additional 9,500 housing units have been platted.

Chris Testerman, AICP, is currently Orange County's assistant administrator. He was formerly planning manager for Orange County and was involved in the planning, design, and implementation of Horizon West. Under Testerman's leadership, Orange County staff set up a template for what Horizon West would look like; interconnectivity was a goal. They adapted portions of the new urbanist code for Horizon West.

In order to secure land for infrastructure, the plan included an adequate public facility system, ensuring that road right-of-way, parks, and school sites would be donated early. The county APF ordinance gave developers credit for the value of the land donated, and anyone who donated land for public use received impact fee credits.

Orange County based land value on the date the Horizon West plan was adopted. The base value was $22,500 per acre plus an inflation factor.

Although building activity slowed during the economic downturn, the pace has quickened in the past two years. Trevor Hall Jr., Colliers International's director of land sales in Orlando, represented sellers in a 2012 Horizon West sale involving more than 40 property owners. He said the deal was his first nondiscounted, nondistressed sale of entitled land to a residential developer in four years, indicating that "the better submarkets are recovering."

Horizon West is expected to have 28,000 housing units at build- out, according to 2010 estimates from the Orange County Building Division and Planning Division. Almost 16,000 people call Horizon West home today.

Big picture

Horizon West consists of five mixed use, pedestrian-scaled villages (from 1,000 to 3,000 acres each). Each is surrounded by a greenbelt and supported by a town center. The heart of each neighborhood is the elementary school, and neighborhood size is linked to school capacity. Three middle schools have been approved for the five villages.

As required by Orange County, developers must contribute to schools, parks, and other public facilities. The town center features higher density residential, office, retail, and commercial space. Villages must adhere to architectural and design standards.

With schools as the neighborhood focal points, no development would be approved until the school site had been donated to Orange County. Densities were based on how far students would need to travel to school. The planners came up with two options: seven units per acre, allowing students to walk one-quarter mile, or five units per acre, which would require a half-mile walk. They chose the latter, which meant that about 60 percent of residences needed to be attached.

For villages, the metric was the number of units needed to support a grocery store. The planning team determined that two to four neighborhoods could support a grocery, which would become the anchor for the village center.

Finally, the town center would be located between Beltway interchanges and would be developed based on population and employment forecasts. The first piece of Horizon West's town center is currently being built.

Goals achieved, lessons learned

John "Chip" Webb, a principal in Tramell Webb Partners, Inc., is a developer at Horizon West. "I don't know any other way that could have allowed a nonurban service area to be master planned," he says. "From the standpoint of Horizon West residents, it's a livable community, and it's the best solution for Orange County because everyone knows the rules. We must have done something right, because it's the number one selling submarket in Central Florida."

"I think our requirement to have adequate public facilities in place as a prerequisite for development helped to ensure success," says Testerman. Sellen has a reservation, though. He thinks that planners should have looked harder for a front-end way to finance infrastructure. Lacking that solution, land owners fought for five years over how to pay for $52 million in roadwork.

"We should have insisted that before any village was approved a financial mechanism was put in place to address the cost of infrastructure," says Sellen. "The Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance ensured the land was available at a reasonable price, but the 'global agreements' to coordinate contributions for road and utility improvements caused months of delay while property owners haggled about the proportionate share arrangements. A financial mechanism like a tax increment financing district tied to a capital improvements plan would have been a more balanced and sustainable approach."

When the county approved Horizon West, the real estate market was hot, and the market dictated product. Testerman now says that a higher quality of design would have been preferable to the mass-built, tract-style housing now at Horizon West.

"In hindsight, more detail in the code could have required greater variations in housing facades, for instance," Testerman says. "We could have used more attention to architectural detail, but product was selling and some things were done too quickly to meet the demand."

Road and infrastructure construction have been slower than Jim Karr likes. "Orange County is allowing development credits now, but it would have helped if they'd committed to credits earlier," he says.

"One thing we couldn't have known when we initially dedicated the school sites was that the Orange County School Board would change their student requirement from 500 students to about 800," says Webb. "Because of this change, we dedicated more land than we needed for schools."

In hindsight, says Sellen, a project manager or project architect hired by Orange County should have been responsible for processing all of the development within Horizon West. "That solution would have assured that performance standards were applied more consistently and that the development process was more streamlined," he adds.

Moving forward

Horizon West was a big vision with a big outcome. Today, 15 percent of home sales in Central Florida's four-county market are attributed to Horizon West, according to Chip Webb.

Webb looks forward to the completion of the master trail system. "That's one of the keys to the livability of the neighborhoods. Other than that, we need to continue to build out, get the town center done, and bring the jobs in. We've got the live-play in place at Horizon West. We need more of the work."

Orange County is currently amending its code to streamline the review process and incorporate lessons learned from the development that has already occurred.

Karr would also like to see targeted economic development. "Horizon West is an acceptable commute to downtown Orlando, but we need jobs here in west Orange County," he says. "Once a few businesses locate here, more will flock to the area. I'd love to see a college or hospital locate here. Unfortunately, Horizon West doesn't have any super-large landowners who could donate big parcels."

Unlike east Orange County, where the University of Central Florida serves as an anchor, west Orange County has not become a major employment center. But with its strategic position along the Florida I-4 High Tech Corridor, Horizon West is poised to capitalize on new employment opportunities.

The Florida I-4 High Tech Corridor is a 23-county collaborative effort between the University of Central Florida, the University of South Florida, and the University of Florida to bring more high-tech business to the state. That's a significant harbinger of jobs to come, particularly in health and wellness, which is a natural for Horizon West's focus on livability.

Don Phillips, who spearheaded Horizon West at its very beginning, predicts that the private sector will fall into place. "Major employers will come here, but right now, they're waiting for a critical mass of rooftops," he says. "We've planned our work in Horizon West. Now we're working the plan."

Susan Blexrud is an author and communications consultant living in Asheville, North Carolina, and Orlando, Florida. She was formerly director of communications for the city of Orlando.

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