HOW THE WEST WAS WON

Let’s stipulate up front that Horizon West is big. It’s the largest master-planned development in Central Florida’s history and a project that will drive growth in Southwest Orange County for decades to come.

But let’s also stipulate that it won’t necessarily feel big to residents. That’s because it’s not so much one master-planned development as it is a cluster of separate, distinct but interconnected villages served by a Town Center. 

Although Horizon West’s individual components will be intimate and walkable, the overall scope is eye-popping. The area encompasses 23,000 acres and will ultimately be home to more than 60,000 people.

In acreage, that’s 10 times the size of Baldwin Park. In population, that’s three times the size of Winter Park. 

Central Florida has never seen anything like it, at least not on such a grand scale. In fact, few if any master-planned developments in the entire U.S. have been so meticulously planned, hotly debated and carefully scrutinized.

AN ICY ORIGIN

Horizon West exists thanks to the determination of a cadre of disenfranchised landowners, the vision of an innovative land-planning firm and the willingness of sometimes hidebound governmental agencies to accept an intriguing but untested approach to growth management.

And to a pair of devastating freezes, neither of which seemed like good news at the time.

Horizon West’s origins can be traced back to late 1992, when a group of property owners began meeting for breakfast to discuss what to do with their groves in the aftermath of ruinous weather, including a brutal Christmas Day freeze in 1989 that had decimated the local citrus industry. 

At first, the situation seemed frustratingly intractable. The county’s land-use plan called for the vast tracts upon which groves had once flourished to remain rural.

 Under the plan, which placed a large swath of Southwest Orange County outside the urban service area, housing would be limited to one unit every 5 or 10 acres. That meant the property, now unsuitable for agriculture, would also be unsuitable for development.

The odds were against the property owners, dozens upon dozens of them, who together held roughly 38,000 acres. Without water and sewer lines, the theory went, builders would be forced to find land within the urban service area’s boundaries, and sprawl would be minimized.

In fact, such restrictions were making sprawl worse. Developers were simply leapfrogging the rural expanses and building thousands of new homes in Lake County to the west and Osceola County to the south. Many buyers of those homes worked in Orange County.

Further vexing to the property owners was the fact that the designated rural area abutted Disney World to the south. With more than 52,000 jobs, Disney was, and remains, the largest single-site employer in the U.S. 

Still, the landowners knew that to get the designation changed, they’d have to propose something more comprehensive, more carefully thought out and more cutting edge than anything state and county officials had previously been presented.

Not-for-profit Horizon West Inc. was formed in 1993 with the mission of putting a development plan forward. The organization hired the land-planning firm of Miller, Sellen, Connor and Walsh (now VBH MillerSellen) to craft a concept that state and county officials would buy into.

THE PLAN EMERGES

Company President Jim Sellen, who was Orange County’s planning director in the late 1970s, knew that county officials would never agree to extend the urban service area for piecemeal projects. 

He also knew that the county had been pushing growth east, not west, because of the University of Central Florida and the Central Florida Research Park as well as Orlando International Airport.

Sellen agreed that the rural designation made no sense because of the land’s adjacency to major employers. Plus, the land was high and dry and well-suited geotechnically for growth.

“I encouraged the landowners to think beyond their individual parcels and present something unified,” says Sellen.

In devising a master plan for Horizon West, Sellen and his colleagues drew in part upon the pioneering work of Sir Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928), whose 1898 publication Garden Cities of To-Morrow described self-sufficient communities linked by road and rail. Those “garden cities” would surround a larger, central city. 

But the planners also looked at current trends in New Urbanism, Celebration being a prime local example. They also studied well-established communities such as Winter Park, which remained a model for smart planning a century after its founding.

“What we came up with was so simple that it was powerful,” adds Sellen. 

INTERCONNECTED VILLAGES

Horizon West, as it was originally envisioned, would contain six to eight Howard-style villages consisting of two to four neighborhoods. Schools and community parks would be within walking distance — a half-mile or less — of the homes, and the size of each neighborhood would be pegged to the capacity of its school. 

Each village would have its own Village Center with such essentials as a grocery store and a drug store. A major mixed-use Town Center with homes, shops, offices and public areas would serve all the villages.

Bicycle and pedestrian paths would line every street and connect Village Centers and neighborhoods to one another. Thousands of acres of greenspace would be preserved. 

“We looked at everything that made great communities,” says Sellen. “We created, basically, a city of short distances. It’s not one master-planned community, but several master-planned communities working off each other.”

County Commissioner Bob Freeman, whose district encompassed Horizon West, pushed hard for the project, in part because he knew that the prospect of large-scale development would expedite extension of S.R. 429. (Today the limited-access toll road, formally known as the Daniel Webster Western Beltway, runs from U.S. Highway 441 in Apopka south through Horizon West to I-4 near Disney.)

Commission Chairperson Linda Chapin was also supportive, and even pressed the county to pitch in money and staff time to help finalize the presentation. Dozens of community meetings were also held to get feedback.

The next task was to convince the state Department of Community Affairs, which had the authority to approve or reject changes to local land-use plans. (The agency is now called the Division of Community Development and is part of the Department of Economic Opportunity.) 

Charles Gauthier, then the DCA’s director of community planning, was initially skeptical but changed his mind after seeing what Sellen and company had cooked up.

“Our thought was, ‘Boy, now’s the time to get out ahead of this,’” Gauthier said in a 1998 interview with the Orlando Sentinel. “In 20 years of experience, this was the most sophisticated planning I’d seen.”

CREATIVE APPROACHES

To facilitate the project, the state and the county adopted an innovative, two-tiered approach that allowed Horizon West to bypass the cumbersome Development of Regional Impact review process. 

The Optional Sector Planning Program, a pilot to accommodate Horizon West and four other demonstration projects throughout the state, called for the creation of a conceptual buildout plan for the entire area. 

Once the sector plan was vetted and approved, it would be augmented by more targeted specific area plans for the individual villages and the Town Center.

Orange County approved the conceptual plan, entitled A Village Land Use Classification and Horizon West Study Report, in July 1995. In the years that followed, specific area plans have been submitted and approved as new phases have gotten underway.

Numbers tell the story. In 2012 there were 19 communities underway in Horizon West encompassing 12,077 homes. Today there are 45 communities, some complete and some underway, encompassing 22,628 homes. And the pace is quickening. 

HORSES AND GOLFERS

The appeal of Horizon West is further enhanced by two major amenities that abut it to the northeast and the southwest.

In 2010, ground was broken on Phase 1 of the Horizon West SportsPlex, which abuts the development to the north and the northeast. The 220-acre site, operated by Orange County Parks and Recreation, is now used for passive and equestrian use.

But County Commissioner S. Scott Boyd, whose district encompasses Horizon West, is hoping the expanse is developed into a multiuse center that features indoor and outdoor facilities for a variety of sports, including dozens of fields for baseball, softball, soccer and cricket.

Abutting Horizon West to the south is the Orange County National Golf Center and Lodge, which was opened in the 1990s and has now enabled Horizon West to offer golf as an amenity without having to build a golf course.

It’s just as well since Orange County National is a world-class complex consisting of two 18-hole courses — the Panther Lake and Crooked Cat courses — as well as a 9-hole course, a 42-acre practice facility, a 22-acre lighted putting green, an on-property lodge and a beautifully appointed clubhouse with a restaurant and meeting/event facilities.

HEALTHCARE AND EDUCATION

Southwest Orange has two premier hospitals, Health Central Hospital and Dr. Phillips Hospital, both operated by Orlando Health, as well as urgent-care centers operated by Health Central and Florida Hospital. Orlando Health also owns a parcel within the Horizon West Town Center, although plans for it have not been announced.

Adventist Health, which operates eight Florida Hospital campuses across Central Florida, is building a ninth campus across from Winter Garden Village, between Daniels Road and S.R. 535. Florida Hospital Winter Garden will feature a state-of-the-art emergency department staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The campus’s first phase, a three-story facility with more than 75,000 square feet, will also house a multispecialty physician clinic. Other highlights will include imaging equipment, lab facilities and an outpatient surgical center as well as rehabilitation and sports medicine.

In addition to an expanding healthcare scene, educational opportunities are more abundant than ever in Southwest Orange. The area is home to highly rated public and private elementary and secondary schools as well as Valencia College’s bustling 180-acre West Campus. Valencia, like Orlando Health, owns a parcel in the Horizon West Town Center for future expansion.

A REGION OF CONTRASTS 

Southwest Orange County has always been both rural and urban. It’s wealthy and middle-class. It’s defined by internationally known attractions and picture-postcard small towns. It’s forward looking and steeped in history. 

And, of course, it’s dotted by shimmering lakes — more than 200 of them — along with pristine natural areas where wildlife still thrives.

Today, Southwest Orange is also a regional shopping and dining mecca. For example, Central Florida’s famed “Restaurant Row” stretches along Sand Lake Road near the upscale Mall at Millenia with its world-class department stores — Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus — and premium boutiques.

Southwest Orange is also home to much of Walt Disney World, including the Magic Kingdom, Downtown Disney and Epcot as well as Disney’s resort properties and its four championship golf courses. 

Universal Orlando Resort and SeaWorld Orlando are also in Southwest Orange as are major shopping destinations such as the West Oaks Mall and Winter Garden Village at Fowler Groves. 

Southwest Orange encompasses three incorporated areas, Winter Garden, Windermere and Oakland (see the article about Winter Garden on page 26). Windermere proper is nestled on an isthmus between several lakes on the beautiful Butler Chain, which includes lakes Butler, Tibet, Down, Sheen, Louise and Chase as well as Pocket Lake, Lake Blanche, Wauseon Bay, Lake Isleworth and Little Fish Lake.

Few areas of Central Florida are more beautiful and unspoiled than the parks and preservation areas found in Southwest Orange.

The Tibet Butler Preserve, for example, contains more than four miles of interpretive hiking trails and elevated boardwalks radiating from the Vera Carter Environmental Center, which features wildlife exhibits and hosts a special environmental studies series for fifth graders. 

The Oakland Nature Preserve encompasses 128 acres of natural shoreline on Lake Apopka, Florida’s third-largest lake. The boardwalk to Lake Apopka is the centerpiece, offering dramatic views along the lakeshore. 

The preserve’s Green Trail is a loop off the boardwalk through a shady oak hammock, where you may see antelope or emus on an adjacent wildlife preserve. And its Uplands Trail is a network of short pathways through the sandhills that connect to the West Orange Trail.

EASY ACCESSIBILITY

Also key to the area’s appeal is its convenient transportation network. 

In addition to S.R. 429, which opened in 2005, local roads have been completed to make getting in and out of Horizon West a breeze. Most recently, New Independence Parkway was extended from the S.R. 429 interchange east for nearly a mile to Schoolhouse Pond Road, which leads to the community of Independence. A new four-lane north-south road, dubbed Hamlin Grove Trail, now runs parallel to S.R. 429 from New Independence Parkway to Summerlake Park Boulevard, which leads to the community of Summerlake.

The new roads have created a western gateway to Horizon West, making businesses around the interchange more accessible. But they’ve also slashed commute times for Horizon West residents who work in downtown Orlando or other parts of Central Florida.

In short, Horizon West, in addition to being a self-contained community rich with its own amenities, has the added advantage of a location squarely in the center of Central Florida’s most dynamic and exciting region.