By DALE WHITE
If current development trends continue unabated through 2060, Florida's population will double, most of its wildlife habitats will become fragmented or paved over and the state's agribusiness will be largely out of business.
That scenario comes from studies released Wednesday by 1,000 Friends of Florida, a 20-year-old advocacy group that speaks out on growth, housing and environmental issues.
"It's a pretty frightening look at the future," said Tim Jackson, an Orlando planning consultant and the organization's vice president.
Several corporate sponsors with real estate and development connections -- as well as a prominent land conservation foundation -- paid for the research by the University of Florida and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Yet 1,000 Friends emphasized that they were not allowed to edit or censor the findings.
Those findings depict a Florida that keeps growing as it has in recent years until its population has doubled to 36 million.
On the Southwest coast, most counties from Tampa Bay to the Everglades would be entirely built out -- causing a population spillover that urbanizes the central peninsula from Ocala to Sebring and from St. Petersburg to Daytona Beach.
Manatee County could be built out decades earlier, by 2040.
Only Sarasota County -- if it retains its urban growth boundary and persuades developers to build villages of clustered housing instead of large-lot suburbs east of Interstate 75 -- could still have some sizable tracts of rural land, much of which is already in public ownership, the research suggests.
The east coast, however, will have long become densely packed, from Jacksonville to the Keys -- also causing a migration into what is now Florida's rural interior.
The Panhandle and the Big Bend area would be the only region that would have retained any significant amount of open space.
Charles Pattison, the association's executive director, emphasized that the forecast is based on worst-case population projections and sprawl patterns. Yet he called it "a wake-up call for every Florida resident, business and elected official."
Sarasota County Commissioner Jon Thaxton disagrees with the premise that, if current trends continue, Sarasota would be the only southwest coastal county not to reach build-out by 2060. Even if its controversial plan promoting rural villages is followed to the letter, he noted, the county predicts build-out by 2050.
Even so, the computer-generated maps that cast aerial views of urban sprawl consuming most of the peninsula should grab the public's attention, Thaxton said. "If those don't rattle your cage, you're numb."
"It's like a glacier moving across Florida," said Bill Earl of Sarasota County Citizens for Sensible Growth.
Yet Florida's home building industry immediately responded with skepticism.
The forecasts are based on record-breaking building patterns during the recent real estate boom, said Edie Ousley, public affairs director for the Florida Home Builders Association.
That market has slowed down considerably
She wants the builders association to talk with 1,000 Friends to better understand how researchers came up with the forecast and what could be the true consequences of its recommendations -- especially those that call for more state oversight.
"I do think it's obvious that the overall tone is increased land-use regulations," Ousley said. "That will be a disaster for affordable housing. Whenever you restrict the availability of developable land, there's a rapid increase in land prices."
Over-regulation, high fees and zoning restrictions are what send developers who don't want to build million-dollar homes out of the coastal cities and into Florida's rural interior to find affordable land, Ousley said. The 1,000 Friends report does not address those factors, she noted.
Pattison and others in 1,000 Friends said that its projections don't have to come true, if Florida starts taking aggressive steps now to not merely rein in suburban sprawl.
In the months ahead, 1,000 Friends will press state and local lawmakers to consider a new approach to growth management.
"We can't start too soon," Jackson said
Florida has growth management laws and policies, but it "doesn't have a vision plan, a 50-year plan," Jackson said.
Cities and counties write state-required comprehensive land-use plans based on 10- to 20-year projections, Jackson said.
"As long as you sprawl at your edges and don't leapfrog (over undeveloped tracts), you're consistent with state policy."
That "incremental" approach has led to the gradual loss of rural lands and the spread of low-density suburbs farther and farther from communities' urban cores, one development at a time, Jackson said.
"That's what needs to change."
The organization hopes the report will kick-start a statewide discussion in the public and private sectors.
It wants to motivate state lawmakers to start working on a plan that details where more development should be allowed and, in exchange, imposes land conservation requirements on those developers.
That plan must coincide with what a myriad of agencies do -- such as transportation departments working on long-range proposals for new highways that could expose more rural areas to development pressures, Jackson said.
The group also wants the state to expand Florida Forever, a $300 million-a-year program launched in 1999 to acquire and preserve environmentally sensitive wilderness. It wants that funding increased and the criteria broadened to allow the purchase of open space and farm land.
Erin Isaac, media spokeswoman for Gov.-elect Charlie Crist, said Crist and his staff had yet to read 1,000 Friends' report and react to it.
Yet environmental groups and elected officials who have long contended that Florida is ill prepared for explosive growth considered the study compelling.
"What this report paints is a nightmare scenario," said Dan Lobeck of Control Growth Now. "It's certainly an eye-opener."
Yet Lobeck doubts that state lawmakers, many of whose campaigns are tied to the building and real estate industries, will take any meaningful action.
"If 1,000 Friends is looking to the state for action, it's looking in the wrong place. We're not going to get anything restrictive from the Legislature any time soon."
The organization's findings are based on research by the University of Florida's GeoPlan Center, a laboratory that specializes in computer-generated geographic information systems, and the Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development.
The St. Joe Co., a developer and Florida's largest private landowner; A. Duda and Sons, one of the state's largest agribusinesses; Fishkind Associates, an economic research firm; the Nature Conservancy; the WilsonMiller planning and engineering firm; Jackson's planning firm and others picked up the $50,000 tab for the research.
To Learn More About Our Programs, Please Click Here to Contact Us
You must have javascript enabled.
