Pappy’s Patch property yet again in the middle of rural boundary fight

Just as the Oviedo City Council is set to hold a public hearing to add increased protections to Seminole County’s rural boundary, a new proposal could lead to a fight over the future of the boundary lines themselves.

The 67-acre Pappy’s Patch property, a former U-pick strawberries family farm in Oviedo, is yet again being eyed for eventual development by local developer Chris Dorworth, who has targeted the land in the past. If he succeeds, it would require the lines of the rural boundary to be altered, a move that has long worried local politicians and activists and has led to multiple ballot measures and charter amendments to make it more difficult to do so.

The project would be for 136 single-family detached homes — no duplexes, townhomes or apartments. And 25% of the property would be open space.

“The applicant files this petition with no illusions about the likely outcome,” Dorworth wrote in an application to Seminole County’s Planning and Development Division on July 3. “The board’s members have publicly and individually pre-committed to deny every rural boundary withdrawal application; the applicant accepts that a denial is the probable result, and one purpose of this petition is to preserve the formal record on which subsequent proceedings will rest.”

All five Seminole County Commissioners declined to comment until the measure comes before the County Commission. 

Chris Patton, a spokesperson for Seminole County, said the proposal to remove Pappy’s Patch from the rural boundary would need to go before the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Board of County Commissioners. 

That could happen as soon as August for Planning and Zoning, and in September before the County Commission.

Dorworth, who served in the Florida Legislature from 2007 to 2012 and was in line to become House Speaker in 2014 before losing in the 2012 election, said he has the land “under contract” and “I’m closing [on it] one way or the other.”

“I’ll buy it when we’re done with all this,” he said.

While the property is no longer active as a strawberry patch, Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek said “it should be in the rural boundary, and that’s why the line was drawn there. There’s no utilities over there, there’s no water over there … so it would require creating a whole lot more infrastructure. 

“It just doesn’t make any economic sense for anybody,” she said. “It is not [an economically] sustainable type of development.”

Dorworth, who has been proposing the removal of the Pappy’s Patch acreage from the rural boundary since at least 2021, championed a proposal earlier this year that would have gutted Seminole County’s rural boundary. Voters supported a measure in 2024 requiring four votes on the county commission to remove a property from the rural boundary. 

In 2018, an application by Dorworth to remove 669 acres of land from the East Rural Area for a mixed-use development that would have been called River Cross was denied, leading to litigation that eventually saw his firm River Cross Land Company file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy while it owed the county more than $430,000 in legal and other fees. This year, that acreage, known as Hi Oaks Ranch, was added to the Florida Forever conservation list for potential state acquisition, however the program’s funding was not included in the 2026-27 state budget.

While Dorworth anticipates another court battle if his application is rejected, he said “this one’s very different from River Cross because River Cross was adjoined on all sides by 5-acre lots. This is adjoined on two sides by 80-foot lots.

“There’s no reason that you should not be able to put 80-foot lots across the street from two communities that have 80-foot lots,” he said. 

Dorworth’s request to the Board now is to remove the Pappy’s Patch acreage from the rural boundary. The application “does not seek the Board’s permission to develop,” but “seeks release from a Charter provision that has made the County the single and exclusive land use authority over the Property.”

Established in east Seminole County, the rural boundary separates the urbanized area of Seminole County from the East Rural Area, which encompasses 74,668 acres on the east side of the county. The rural boundary was adopted into the county’s comprehensive plan in 1991, and voters approved to have it placed into the county’s charter in 2004, keeping the then-existing rural boundary lines in place.

A presentation prior to the 2004 vote explained what the amendment did, how rural was defined at the time and how it was established.

The legality of the area has been under dispute from both Dorworth and lawmakers in Tallahassee in recent years, however. 

While Gov. Ron DeSantis and his cabinet did approve the 1,361-acre Yarborough Ranch property that sits inside the rural boundary to be acquired by the state’s Florida Forever program in 2024, ensuring its ongoing protections as part of Florida’s Wildlife Corridor, the state’s Attorney General’s Office argued in 2025 that Seminole and Orange counties’ rural boundaries are “likely” unconstitutional and are “a taking” by the government. 

In 2024, Seminole County voters approved two charter amendments that made it more difficult for the Board to sell off or change usage of natural lands owned by taxpayers, or to move the lines and remove land from the county’s rural area. The amendments both passed with more than 82% of the vote. Now, a supermajority vote — 4-1 in the Board’s current makeup — would be needed for any changes.

Dorworth’s application says that two properties have been withdrawn from the rural boundary since its creation: the nearby Rook and Mermel properties in 2006 and 2013, respectively. Due to the possible precedents set from these withdrawals, the application claims that the Pappy’s Patch property “is the only undeveloped parcel left on this stretch of the boundary line. The Board, twice before, looked at this exact stretch and concluded twice that withdrawal was appropriate. 

“The applicant’s parcel is the obvious next link in a chain the Board itself has built.”

The two previous properties withdrawn from the rural boundary, in 2006 and 2013 (rendering via application)

Prior to the amendments’ passing, Oviedo and Seminole County officials explained why the rural boundary is such an important issue for the area, with reasons ranging from increased traffic, infrastructure buildout cost, and drainage and runoff concerns.

“There is no appetite on this County Commission for the foreseeable future to do anything with the rural boundary,” Commissioner Jay Zembower said in 2024. “There’s no need for it, because we still have ample housing throughout the county.”

Dorworth, however, sees it differently.

“I believe Seminole County is expressly in violation of state law as it pertains to the rural boundary,” Dorworth said. “It is not meeting its growth projections. It’s not building adequate housing. Currently, … the solution that they suggest is to build skyscrapers through up and down the 17-92 corridor. That’s never happened. … I favor anything that gets rid of the rural boundary.”

Oviedo looks to add additional protections

At its July 6 meeting, Oviedo City Council discussed a proposed charter amendment for November’s ballot that would increase rural boundary protections. It moved it to the public hearing stage for its July 20 meeting. If approved and passed by voters, it would require a supermajority — a 4-1 vote in its current makeup — for approval of any ordinance annexing land lying within the Seminole County Charter’s rural area as of July 4, 2026. The rural boundary borders Oviedo’s eastern side. 

The lone vote against advancing it to a public hearing was Councilmember Jeff Boddiford, who said that since it could still be brought up at future dates, “why is there such a rush here? It just makes me think like there’s something going on that I don’t know that’s going on.

“That’s what gets me about this … it’s like we’re in such a rush to push this out, and we have the ability, we can put it out when we need to, when we’ve fully vetted it,” he said. “It just seems kind of rushed to me.”

The Oviedo City Council discussion occurred independently of Dorworth’s application, Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek said, which she did not know about until after the meeting. However, she said it shows why it was urgent. 

The City of Oviedo’s recommended charter amendment which will have a public hearing on July 20.

“[A reason] why it’s important to do it now is because the state moves pretty fast every spring to do things to take away the right to protect the rural boundary,” Sladek said at the meeting. “Adding a little bit of extra protection seems OK.”

While the process of adding this charter amendment did not include it being done through the city’s Charter Review Committee, which already sent four amendments to the November ballot, Deputy Mayor Natalie Teuchert said it is an important enough and timely enough of an issue to supersede the official process.

“This might be the one exception I could be OK with,” she said. “The reason is because the residents have voted on this, we do have extensive history with this exact legislation. We’ve had it come through with an 84% vote.

“Our state government keeps trying to throw away the current protections,” she said. “Right now, if we were to get this on the ballot and it passed, it really doesn’t do anything. … If we were to annex someone into the city, the county still has control. If the state legislature goes through and gets rid of that control, that’s when this would come into effect. My goal here would be that this never even applies, but we don’t have control over our state legislature.”

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