Silver Spurs and Golden Land

If you want a glimpse of what Central Florida looked like in the 1930s, drive through portions of Osceola County, where the only traffic jams are caused by slow-moving farm equipment and where working cattle ranches and lush orange groves still flank dusty back roads.

But go soon, because it's not going to stay that way much longer. Osceola County is evolving from a rough-and-tumble assortment of isolated cowtowns to one vast boomtown.

In the past five years, the county's population has jumped by more than 30 percent, to 227,000. Its two main cities, Kissimmee and St. Cloud, located nine miles apart, are rapidly spreading toward one another. And new megacommunities are springing up in unincorporated areas, where huge tracts of buildable land are still available.

"It makes absolutely no sense for the farmers to keep farming, because the developers are so aggressive," says Henry Torres, assistant branch manager for Weichert Realtors in Kissimmee. "It's not going to be country in a few years."

New master-planned communities-towns, really, since most such projects encompass schools, shops and business parks-are increasingly popular in Osceola. The inspiration for many of them is Celebration, the Walt Disney Company's wildly successful experiment in New Urbanism located in the northwestern part of the county.

Established in 1994, Celebration was among the first projects to embrace a now widely accepted philosophy of development that seeks to capitalize on nostalgia while creating self-sustaining communities where residents can live, work and play.

Of course, part of Celebration's draw was, and still is, its proximity to Disney World. So, while some of Osceola's big developments are aimed at permanent residents for whom the Disney presence is incidental, others are oriented toward vacation-home buyers, many of whom hail from the Northeast, the Midwest and Europe.

Just six miles from Disney's gates, for example, The Ginn Company is developing the Reunion Resort & Club, a 2,300-acre gated community that offers both vacation stays in private villas and primary residences designed to look like gracious Southern homes.

Reunion boasts two golf courses, by Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson, while a third, by Jack Nicklaus, is scheduled to open in 2006. Also on site: a slew of other amenities, including a multimillion-dollar water park. Homes in Reunion range from the mid-$400s to seven figures, and sales have been phenomenal.

As you drive east through Osceola County on U.S. 192, tourism's grip gradually loosens, and the souvenir shops and fast-food restaurants give way to the suburban homes and small businesses of Kissimmee, once a cowtown and still home to one of the most popular rodeos in the Southeast.

Located on the northern shores of Lake Tohopekaliga-known locally as Lake Toho-Kissimmee is blessed with one of the most memorable, and most often mispronounced, names of any city in Florida. As locals know, it's "kiss-IMM-ee," not "KISS-imm-ee."

However you say it, the moniker remains something of a mystery. Local historians suggest it may be a variation on the name of a 17th-century Spanish mission called Atissimi.

In any case, demand for new homes is outstripping supply, although the pace has slowed a bit since last spring. "A few months ago, for twelve lots you'd have a waiting list of several hundred people," Torres says. "It's incredible what's happened here in the last year."

Through late 2005, for instance, 23 percent more existing homes were sold in Osceola than had been sold during the same period in 2004. In October alone, Osceola posted the region's biggest percentage increase in existing home sales-a whopping 52 percent. And new construction has shown comparable increases.

Kissimmee officials anticipated the boom. "In the last four or five years, we've adopted some new development standards," says Mike Steigerwald, the city's director of development services. "It ensures we get the type of growth we want."

The new standards generally encourage mixed-use, master-planned communities. Steigerwald notes that such communities tend to attract the kind of relocators the city covets: families with household incomes topping $100,000.

Kissimmee's quaint downtown area is likewise a hotbed of activity. In a nod toward 21st-century technology, it recently became a free wireless Internet zone.

"Having free Wi-Fi positions Kissimmee as a leading city for the application of new technology," said Kissimmee/Osceola County Chamber of Commerce President Mike Horner. "This will be a great economic development tool for Kissimmee."

And the $28 million City Center project, a nine-story building with condominiums, parking and retail stores, gets under way in March.

"We're also trying to encourage residential growth in the district," says Kissimmee Community Redevelopment Agency director Gail Hamilton. "It's a hand-in-hand proposition for us."

Attracting more people to live, shop and dine downtown will help the city afford upkeep on its plethora of historic buildings, including the circa-1844 Osceola Courthouse. It's the only such facility in Florida that's been in continuous use for more than 160 years, and was the site of a nationally televised town hall meeting hosted by CNN's Paula Zahn during the 2004 presidential election.

But locals, while generally welcoming community improvements, are wary of too much upheaval.

For example, the CRA recently proposed opening Kissimmee's Lakefront Park to condominium and retail development. That $125 million plan was scuttled after it met vocal resistance from locals, who cherish the sweeping green space alongside the glistening waters of Lake Toho.

Still, the city wants a plan that would integrate the 50-acre park with the city center, and developers are working on proposals that would hopefully be more palatable to residents.

"We certainly heard from the public about what they don't want," Hamilton says.

Still, what's been accomplished so far has been impressive. The downtown redevelopment effort began in 1992 and registered a big win in 1998 with completion of a major streetscape program. Local merchants are expecting the park project, in whatever form it ultimately takes, to attract even more people to the increasingly attractive city center, thus boosting business.

Kissimmee also has made redevelopment of the often-tacky U.S. 192 corridor a top priority. Unfortunately, the so-called "tourist strip" is what most visitors-and many locals-most associate with Kissimmee. The goal is to ease traffic snarls and attract new businesses.

"The corridor segregates the community; it cuts off the north from the south," Steigerwald says. He looks at the future of Kissimmee "not in terms of redevelopment, but in terms of reshaping the community itself."

Whatever Kissimmee becomes, officials say, they're determined to preserve its rich heritage. But its beginnings were anything but rich. In fact, a statewide financial crisis precipitated Kissimmee's rise to prominence.

In 1881, a young entrepreneur named Hamilton Disston saved Florida from bankruptcy when he contracted with the legislature to buy, then drain, 4 million acres of worthless Central Florida swampland.

Disston set up headquarters in Downtown Kissimmee and began dredging a river highway from Orlando to Okeechobee, opening up Florida's vast interior for development.

Soon the shores of Lake Tohopekaliga were transformed into a major port. Kissimmee entered the shipbuilding industry, and ranchers came from across the state to ship cattle to Cuba and elsewhere.

The biggest reminder of the city's cowboy days is the Silver Spurs Rodeo of Champions, which takes place in February and October in Osceola Heritage Park.

Founded in 1944, the rodeo, which is the largest east of the Mississippi River, attracts crowds from all over the United States to watch nationally ranked competitors try to outdo one another in events such as bronco and bull riding, calf roping and barrel racing.

The rodeo recently traded in its pre-World War II facilities for a multimillion-dollar indoor arena located in the city's new Osceola Heritage Park.

The nearby town of St. Cloud has an equally colorful past. Another former cowtown, St. Cloud also has the dubious distinction of having its bank robbed by John Dillinger in 1934.

Long hidden in the shadow of bigger, better-known Kissimmee, St. Cloud is now emerging as a forward-thinking community with an identity all its own. For example, city officials are redeveloping the downtown area with a Main Street project that local builder Judy Robertson of Robertson Homes says will result in "a new Winter Park."

Also, instead of leaving the city's growth entirely to developers, St. Cloud seized the initiative and created its own new community, Stevens Plantation.

"We were kind of tired of seeing piecemeal development, kind of like a patchwork quilt," says Dave Nearing, the city's director of planning and zoning. "We master-planned the whole thing, and then we marketed it and sold it."

Located just south of town on the 590-acre former Stevens Ranch, the community includes a corporate campus and retail centers. While production homes from the low $300s are still available, the four builders selected to offer custom homes, including Robertson Homes, have just about sold out.

East of St. Cloud another master-planned development, called Harmony, is also under way. This 11,000-acre, golf course community is designed to be compatible with Mother Nature, right down to the street lamps, which are engineered to produce as little light pollution as possible.

Town homes and single-family houses in Harmony range from the $200s and up, with million-dollar custom homes by select builders coming in the near future. There's a new high school on site, and an elementary school is coming.

Where will Osceola County's next boom area be? Everywhere, really, but the vacant forests and pastures surrounding 13-mile-long Lake Toho is certainly inviting. And a new interchange off Florida's Turnpike at Kissimmee Park Road, which is scheduled to open by December 2006, will spur growth in that sector.

In fact, four developments of regional impact, or DRIs, are already under review, ranging to the south and west of St. Cloud. City officials are trying to expand roads and add services ahead of the demand.

"One of our growth management tools is building infrastructure where we want it to go," Nearing says. "It's kind of like a chess game; you're trying to think four or five moves in advance."

What's next for Osceola County? Anthony V. Pugliese III of The Pugliese Company in Delray Beach, Fla., knows, but he isn't telling.

Late last summer, his company purchased a 27,400-acre tract of land in south Osceola, extending all the way to Yeehaw Junction. It was one of the biggest land deals to take place in the state of Florida since the 1960s, when wiley Walt Disney acquired the land, secretly and piecemeal, where Disney World is now located.

Rumor has it that Pugliese plans to put a massive, city-size development on the property. If he does, look for Osceola's cowpoke connection to recede further and further into memory.

OFFBEAT ATTRACTIONS

Osceola County may be the home of Disney World, but it also contains some vintage, decidedly more low-tech Florida attractions.

For example, Warbird Adventures visitors can fly like the aces of yesteryear in some of the most significant military aircraft in history. Passengers actually take the controls as experienced instructors teach them how to fly these beautiful pieces of history.

Then there's Reptile World Serpentarium, which provides just the right ingredients to make your skin crawl. Here visitors can watch snake handler George VanHorn in action as he extracts poisonous venom from cobras, rattlesnakes and other deadly serpents.

Other adventures are waiting to be had at The Nature Conservancy's Disney Wilderness Preserve, Green Meadows Petting Farm and Horse World Riding Stables. At Gatorland, a circa-1940s attraction, visitors can watch gator wrestling and purchase gator meat.

To discover more about Kissimmee's unexpected side, as well as special events and festivals happening in the area, call (800) 333-KISS or log on to www.floridakiss.com.