10/03/2026
Expressway authority files claim to Orange County conservation land (Central Florida Public Media)
https://www.cfpublic.org/environment/2026-03-09/expressway-authority-files-claim-orange-county-conservation-land
"An artist’s rendering shows what a portion of State Road 534 through Split Oak Forest will look like, once complete. The planned route includes three spots where the road will be elevated in bridge form above the forest’s existing trails, allowing for wildlife and hikers to cross.
The Central Florida Expressway Authority has filed an eminent domain claim against Orange County, in pursuit of access to about 24 acres of county-owned conservation land the agency says is necessary to build its toll road planned through Split Oak Forest. A hearing is set for early June.
The agency’s governing board voted 7-3 last summer to declare about 44 acres of Orange County land as necessary for building State Road 534, including 24.3 acres of environmentally-sensitive land. Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and Commissioner Christine Moore, plus Brevard County Commissioner Katie Delaney, voted against the declaration.
CFX seeks to own outright just under three acres of the total, 24.3 acres of environmentally-sensitive land. That 2.83-acre parcel is located within Eagles Roost, a protected Green PLACE property located in south-central Orange County.
Eagles Roost is home to the Back to Nature wildlife refuge, which wouldn’t be affected by the CFX acquisition, according to Orange County.
Most of the remaining roughly 21 acres of land fall within a 19.8-acre parcel in the planned development of Eagle Creek. CFX owns that parcel of land, but it's covered by an existing conservation easement, which the agency seeks for Orange County to release.
The eminent domain claim marks the latest development in the long, winding and often bumpy process of developing the toll road: one piece of a larger project CFX says is critical for improving transportation in the region.
Split Oak Forest is a nearly 1,700-acre nature preserve in Orange and Osceola counties, set aside for perpetual conservation in the 1990s.
The Split Oak Forest context
Approved plans for SR 534 call for just over a mile of the road to cut through the south end of Split Oak Forest, a nearly 1,700-acre nature preserve in Orange and Osceola counties that was set aside back in the 1990s for “perpetual conservation.”
The road is set to intersect a portion of the forest in Osceola County. It’s a route that’s already been hotly contested for years, due to Split Oak’s layers of existing conservation protections from state and local agencies.
Originally, though, the road was planned to more drastically affect Split Oak Forest, according to plans approved in 2017 by the now-defunct Osceola County Expressway Authority. Those plans would’ve had SR 534 coursing diagonally through the forest in both Orange and Osceola counties.
“It was with this proposed alignment where the term ‘splitting Split Oak’ was born,” said CFX Chief of Infrastructure Glenn Pressimone, speaking at the CFX governing board’s Feb. 12 meeting.
Once CFX took over, Pressimone said, “stakeholders were clear: reduce impacts to Split Oak as much as possible.”
Initially, an Orange County spokeswoman said commissioners were indeed informed, back in 2019, that Eagles Roost was part of CFX’s “preferred alignment” for its planned toll road. But the following week, the spokeswoman walked back that assertion, sharing a statement that reads in part:
“The discussion (in 2019) centered almost entirely on Split Oak Forest. Eagles Roost was never mentioned, nor was there any indication that the preferred alignment would require land previously acquired for Eagles Roost.”
Orange County District 5 Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad made a winning motion on Jan. 13 for Orange County to challenge CFX's attempt to take conservation land through eminent domain. Earlier in the meeting, District 6 Commissioner Michael Scott made a failed motion for the county to negotiate with CFX instead.
Earlier this year, CFX sent Orange County a written offer of $2.3 million for all 24.3 acres of land in which the agency has interest.
That offer was an initial, required step in the eminent domain or “taking of land” process, through which governments and other authorities can use to acquire land deemed necessary for a public purpose. In this case and many others, that public purpose is a road.
On Jan. 13, Orange County commissioners voted 3-4 against entering pre-suit negotiations with CFX. Commissioners also voted 4-3 to challenge CFX’s eminent domain claim in court. At that Jan. 13 commission meeting, Senior Assistant County Attorney Debra Babb-Nutcher said the county’s odds of defeating an eminent domain claim are very low. “We won't win, because we are an inferior entity (to CFX).”
Those public statements frustrated several county commissioners, including Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad."
