Developers of Sustanee, a proposed 1,800-home subdivision on hundreds of acres of a cattle ranch in rural east Orange County, won a key court battle last week to push their hotly disputed project ahead, and then withdrew an alternate effort to boost the development under Florida\u2019s new \u201cagricultural enclave\u201d law.<\/p>\n
Both the court case, resolved for now by an Orange County circuit judge\u2019s edict, and the landowners\u2019 widely-noticed, now-shelved petition to declare their property an enclave with special development rights were aimed at resurrecting a project decried as urban sprawl by vexed neighbors and repeatedly rejected by county commissioners.<\/p>\n
The twin paths \u2014 each based on recently adopted and developer-backed Florida laws \u2014 reflect the concerted efforts of state legislators and the DeSantis administration to push landowners\u2019 property rights over local environmental restrictions, including some approved in Central Florida by voters. While Sustanee principals would not comment on the agricultural enclave effort, county insiders said the landowners appear to believe the court victory will give them the avenue they sought.<\/p>\n
Sustanee, which has sought approval over the years under different names, including the phonetically similar Sustany and Lake Pickett North, has consistently faced opposition from community residents worried about traffic congestion, environmental degradation and suburban growth that could clash with their rural lifestyles.<\/p>\n
But Judge Brian Sandor ruled the Orange County Commission\u2019s decision in June 2025 to remove Sustanee from the Lake Pickett Study Area, a special development category in the county\u2019s land-use blueprint, had the wrongful effect of imposing \u201cmore restrictive and burdensome\u201d regulations on the project\u2019s 1,317 acres.<\/p>\n
Such regulations are forbidden by Senate Bill 180, a disaster relief bill that passed the legislature in 2025 and has been controversially interpreted to apply to developments far from areas of hurricane damage.<\/p>\n
The county\u2019s decision restricted development on the Sustanee acreage to no more than one home per 10 acres\u00a0 \u2014 reducing to 131 the maximum number of homes that could be built.<\/p>\n
Under the Lake Pickett Study Area rules, the judge pointed out in his 17-page opinion, Sustanee\u2019s principals, including Rolling R Ranch and land-ranch owner Mary Rybolt Lamar, had the right to seek to develop the property with more than 2,600 homes even at the lowest allowable density of two per acre.<\/p>\n
The judge\u2019s ruling restored that right.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy clients are very pleased by the court\u2019s ruling,\u201d Sustanee lawyer S. Brent Spain said in an email to the Orlando Sentinel, which also noted the judge\u2019s findings validate their position that the county commission vote had violated state law and may entitle his clients to be reimbursed for their attorney fees by Orange County.<\/p>\n
Spain had warned commissioners ahead of their vote in the summer of 2025 that his clients would likely sue.<\/p>\n
Defying legal threat, Orange stands by its growth controls<\/a><\/p>\n While the court challenge was pending, Sustanee\u2019s developers separately petitioned Orange County<\/a> to certify its acres to be fast-tracked under state Senate Bill 686<\/a>. That 2026 law establishes development rights for \u201cagricultural enclaves,\u201d property defined as a pocket of rural land largely bordered by existing growth.<\/p>\n County commissioners were expected to take up the issue Tuesday.<\/p>\n But late last week, the county\u2019s planning division received a letter from Baker & Hostetler, another law firm representing Sustanee\u2019s developers, withdrawing their request to designate the cattle ranch and other associated properties as an agricultural enclave. It read, \u201cPlease note that the Applicant reserves all rights to submit a new or modified application at a later date for an Agricultural Enclave Designation for some or all of the subject property described in the July 1 Application.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the state law imposed strict deadlines and limited governments\u2019 ability to deny certification requests, Orange County had pushed back on the enclave request.<\/p>\n Alberto Vargas of its planning division provided Sustanee applicants with a written report finding the size of their proposed enclave would exceed the 1,280-acre statutory maximum. He noted the group tried to stay under that threshold, trimming its request to 1,258 acres by eliminating parts of parcels with utility easements, but said that strategy is not allowed by law.<\/p>\n In a written response, Greg D. Lee, an attorney with Baker & Hostetler, challenged Vargas\u2019 finding.<\/p>\n \u201cThe requirement that an entire tax parcel must be used in calculating the total acreage, even when not all of such parcel is included in an application, is not present in the Florida Statutes,\u201d he wrote, citing the law\u2019s definition of \u201cparcel of land\u201d and pointing out the county could not\u00a0 deviate from the definition.<\/p>\n Lee insisted last week the refigured Sustanee properties should be certified as an agricultural enclave, but nonetheless later withdrew the application.<\/p>\n District 5 Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad, who formerly led the not-for-profit group Save Orange County, which opposed Sustanee and other urban-style development east of the Econ River, shrugged off the various strategies the cattle ranch developers have pursued to win approval for the mega-development.<\/p>\n \u201cThey still haven\u2019t addressed any of the community\u2019s issues,\u201d she said. \u201cSorry, it\u2019s still urban sprawl. It\u2019s still an environmental catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n shudak@orlandosentinel.com<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Developers of Sustanee, a proposed 1,800-home subdivision on hundreds of acres of a cattle ranch in rural east…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1563,28,114,266,115,1335,139,141,140,109],"class_list":["post-378310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-environment","tag-florida","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}