Great Expectations

"I think that speaks volumes about just how friendly and welcoming a place Oviedo really is," says Walters, who flew combat missions during the Vietnam War. "It has this very distinct sense of its pioneer roots, but at the same time it's a community that's growing by leaps and bounds. It's staged for great things to come."

Indeed, few Central Florida municipalities have witnessed the kind of growth that Oviedo has seen in recent years. The town's population is closing in on 30,000-more than a tenfold increase since 1980.

"The days of calling Oviedo a sleepy little farm town are long gone," says realtor Jerry Lowe, who has been selling homes in the area for 34 years. "Oviedo is now on the map, and people are moving here from everywhere."

Oviedo's growth was a long time coming. The area's first settlers, who put down stakes near Lake Jesup in the 1860s, called it Solary's Wharf. In 1883, postmaster Andrew Aulin dubbed it Oviedo, supposedly after seeing a Spanish town of the same name on a map. Then, after the railroad arrived in 1886, the town became a major shipping point for both celery and citrus.

Agriculture's importance increased further around the turn of the century, when groups of Slovakian immigrants formed the community of Slavia, just east of present-day S.R. 426, between Mitchell Hammock Road and Red Bug Road. Among the early settlers was Andrew Duda Sr., who made his fortune growing celery and founded A. Duda and Sons, today one of the world's largest growers of sod.

But longtime locals point to 1964 as perhaps the most significant year in Oviedo's history. That's when a desolate 1,145-acre tract in rural northeast Orlando" target="_blank">Orange County, about seven miles east of the city, was selected as the site for Florida Technological University (now the University of Central Florida).

FTU, as it was then known, opened in 1968, prompting Oviedo-born developer Ben Ward to build the city's first new subdivision, Mead Manor, to attract professors and other university employees. Initially, the carpetbagging PhD's and the wary farmers made an unlikely combination. But they were united by their desire to maintain Oviedo's small-town ambience and to cling to its agricultural heritage.

Eventually, the academicians became ingrained in community life-running for and winning city council offices, serving on community boards, initiating cultural and educational programs and researching local history.

Even so, Oviedo remained a small town, seemingly frozen in time. Until the late 1960s the only law was a crusty brawler named George Kelsey, who served as police chief and justice of the peace. The fire department consisted of volunteers summoned by a World War Two-era air raid siren. And the mayor was a lanky local named Leon Oliff, who also ran the town's only barber shop.

But regardless of who held office, the real power in Oviedo was concentrated among the patriarchs of a handful of citrus-growing families.

For example, little of note happened in the city without at least the implicit endorsement of Benjamin Franklin Wheeler Jr., also known as "Mr. Frank," a dignified man whose influence was a byproduct of respect, not fear.

Wheeler was, and still is, the primary owner of Nelson & Company, a diversified farming and citrus packing concern that was for decades the city's largest employer and landowner. In recent years, Wheeler and other farming families have been selling off their former citrus groves and celery fields to developers.

"Frank never threw his weight around, even though he could have," says Randy Noles Sr., owner of the Oviedo Voice, the city's weekly newspaper. "He got things done by just dropping suggestions. But that's all he needed to do. People around here knew that if Frank was for it, it was probably good for the town. If he was against it, it was probably bad for the town."

One of the first UCF staffers to move to Oviedo was Dick Adicks, a charter faculty member and English professor who co-authored Oviedo: Biography of a Town as part of Oviedo's centennial observance.

"When I first came here in 1968, Oviedo was most decidedly still an agricultural community," says Adicks, now retired from teaching. "There were celery fields and orange groves and every other person was likely to be a farmer. But in those 36 years, Oviedo, with all its growth, has essentially become a bedroom community. You don't go through a massive upheaval like that without suffering a few growing pains."

Oviedo's first large-scale residential project was the 2,200-acre Alafaya Woods subdivision, which broke ground in the mid-1980s. Other developments followed in rapid succession, fueled in part by mushrooming growth at UCF. Today, with more than 45,000 students, it's the second-largest state university in Florida.

Environmentalists were quick to raise the alarm, saying the sprawling new communities posed a threat not only to the area's fragile groundwater supply but to the future well-being of the Econlockhatchee River Basin.

The Econlockhatchee is actually two conjoining rivers, the Big Econ and the Little Econ. They feed the St. Johns River on its journey north to the Atlantic Ocean at Jacksonville. And the water quality of the Little Econ, in particular, has been threatened with harmful runoffs from some of the planned developments.

While developers made numerous concessions, including more stringent setback requirements and buffer zones along riverbanks, there are still the occasional squabbles between environmentalists and homebuilders that typify life in Florida. Even with tighter building guidelines, Oviedo has registered an average of 550 new-home starts per year over the past six years.

The biggest worry among many longtime residents these days is that Oviedo's sleepy old downtown might go the way of the long-gone orange groves and celery fields.

For those just passing through downtown and are forced to stop at the gnarly intersection where state roads 419, 426 and 434 crisscross, there's not a lot to catch the eye-the Townhouse restaurant, a huge Baptist church and a two-block row of fading cinderblock buildings housing an assortment of mom-and-pop businesses.

One of downtown Oviedo's most enduring and endearing landmarks, the historic citrus packinghouse beneath the Nelson & Co. water tower, was a victim of Hurricane Charley. The huge, ramshackle tin and wood structure had been used as a site for flea markets in recent years, although at press time the post-storm fate of the property was uncertain.

Take the time to wander the side streets, however, and an altogether different picture of Oviedo emerges, one of gracious old homes, rolling grass lawns and oak-shrouded oak trees. Indeed, the Oviedo Historical Trail lists no few than 85 sites, including the home of pioneer postmaster George Browne, built in 1885, and the James Wilson House, built in 1938 on Lake Charm Circle.

But change is afoot in the form of Oviedo Place, a.k.a. the "new downtown," which will spring up in what is now a tangerine grove just north of Mitchell Hammock Road.

Oviedo voters approved a $9.3 million bond issue in 2003 to help fund the 50-plus acre development, which will include restaurants, stores, offices, apartments, town homes, single-family homes, a public garden and an outdoor amphitheater along a man-made lake. Bike and pedestrian trails will connect Oviedo Place to the "old downtown" along a one-mile corridor.

"It's both rare and exciting to have the opportunity to build a new downtown," says Walters. "The intent is not to bury the old downtown, but to complement it. We think it's exactly the sort of project that will provide the quality of life that people who move to Oviedo have come to expect."

Another big draw for relocators are the Oviedo area's public schools. Oviedo High School, Lawton Chiles Middle School, Jackson Heights Middle School and Lawton Elementary School all received A's when the state Department of Education handed out grades this summer. A second school for grades 9-12, Haggerty High School, is scheduled to open for the 2005-2006 school year.

"People love the school system. It's a big reason why people move here from other areas," says Mary Jane McNaught, sales director for Crosswinds Communities. Its Sanctuary community, on S. R. 419 east of downtown Oviedo, will have 750 homes at buildout, ranging in price from the low $300s to the mid $400s. The community, which broke ground three years ago, has proved so popular that it held a lottery in October for its last 100 homesites.

Sales at Kenmure, at Red Bug Road and Brooks Lane, have also been brisk in recent months, according to Leah Turner of Ryland Homes. When Kenmure's model home center opened in August, 95 of its 162 homesites had already been sold. Homes are priced starting at $280,000.

"Convenience and location are what's bringing people here. You can hop on the beltway (S. R. 417, also known as the Central Florida Greeneway) and get to anywhere you need to be for work," says Turner. "And if you want to go to the beach, it's only 45 minutes away. Suddenly this just seems like this is a market that everyone wants to be in."

FACT BOX

Please place this fact box as a small sidebar in the neighborhoods/Oviedo story.

AT A GLANCE

Population: 26,315 (2000 census)

Land area: 15.1 square miles

Median resident age: 32.8 (Florida, 38.7)

Median household income: $64,119 (Florida, $39,677)

Median home value: $157,157 (Florida, $105,500)

Bachelor's degree or higher: 41.3 percent (Florida, 15.1 percent)

Factoid: The Florida Central & Peninsula (FC&P) Railroad that once ran through Oviedo was known locally as the "Friends Come and Push."

SIDEBAR

CRYING FOWL IN OVIEDO

No one can say for sure exactly how or when the chickens first came to downtown Oviedo. Perhaps they're descendants of pioneer chickens from the days when all manner of livestock wandered the streets.

Whatever the case, the free-roaming fowl have flourished through the kindness and tolerance of downtown businesses, even the local Popeye's restaurant, where, ironically, the none-too-bright birds have chosen to congregate.

Most significantly, the Oviedo chickens have become something of a symbol for this once-rustic outpost, where the old and the new often stand in stark contrast.

Despite their prominence, however, the chickens don't have an official spokesperson. That chore falls to Rick Burns, owner of Land Tech Survey and Mapping Company and a founder of Old Downtown Development Group, a not-for-profit organization working to preserve the two-block row of Depression-era buildings that line the city's main drag.

"I guess you can call me the chicken man," says Burns, who traces the current chicken population to a lone hen that wandered downtown more than a decade ago.

"She hung around for a few weeks and then one day walked out of the woods followed by 13 baby chicks," says Burns. "A few days later, the proud rooster daddy showed up with them."

Burns and others looked after the feathered interlopers, feeding them and occasionally taking in foundling babies. Soon the pampered flock adopted the parking lot around Popeye's as its base of operations, although chickens may be seen roosting in bushes and on window ledges throughout the old downtown area.

"There was this one rooster that used to perch up on the speaker in the drive-through lane," says Burns. "People would pull up to order fried chicken and he'd be staring them right in the eye."

Seminole County Animal Control once tried to round up the chickens and relocate them, but the effort brought cries of outrage from locals. So the chickens remain free to come and go as they please, Oblivious to traffic, they trot across the busy streets as thought they had somewhere important to go.

In the meantime, Oviedo has celebrated their ubiquity in a variety of ways. There are photos of the chickens on the walls at the Townhouse Restaurant. The Oviedo Chamber of Commerce once offered a Christmas ornament with a chicken on it. Chickens have graced the stationery of the Oviedo Woman's Club.

And when the Old Downtown Development Group was formed in 1997, it seemed only fitting that a chicken be the centerpiece of its logo.

The group has often struggled in its mission to preserve the heart of the old downtown area. Building owners are reluctant to invest much in renovations or even maintenance pending plans to widen state roads 426 and 434, which intersect at what was once the city's only stoplight.

However, Burns says the mixed-use Oviedo Place project, which many are calling the "new downtown," has given the group an added impetus to spruce up the city's original main drag. After all, it's doubtful that the chickens will be welcome when Oviedo Place's shops, parks and amphitheater are completed in 2006.

"The chickens will always be welcome in the old downtown," says Burns. "They're a good symbol. They are survivors, just like we are."