Handing Florida state forest to a golf course builder is another DeSantis deal

There’s a tradition among Florida developers of naming their projects after any natural attributes obliterated by the development. That’s why you see subdivisions with such monikers as “Cypress Woods,” “Panther Trace,” and “The Canopy.” My personal favorite, found in Naples, is “Wilderness Country Club.”

That’s why I’ve been trying to figure out what the Canadian developers from Cabot should call the Hernando County golf course development they plan to build on what’s currently a thriving part of the Withlacoochee State Forest.

The Burrows, for all the imperiled gopher tortoises to be destroyed? Maybe The Rookery, in honor of the sandhill cranes? Or how about The Habitat, for the black bears?

No, wait, I’ve got it. They should call it “Good Sense.”

That’s what was tossed out by Gov. Ron “None of My Administration’s Foul-ups is Ever My Fault” DeSantis and the Cabinet when they approved deeding this well-wooded acreage over to the Canadians in exchange for some less worthy land in Levy County.

“This deal was added to the Cabinet’s agenda the day before the meeting through an unusual, last-minute process typically reserved for natural disasters and other extenuating circumstances,” the Tampa Bay Times reported last week. “Emails show DeSantis’ deputy chief of staff, Cody Farrill, drafted agenda language with environmental agency officials a day before the rest of the Cabinet was officially notified of the new item.”

But surely, our top elected state officials were cautious about making such a drastic decision, right? Nooooope.

“The Cabinet’s June 12 discussion, which lasted less than 30 seconds, did not mention golf courses nor the state forest where more could be built. There was no debate, no public comment. No mention of endangered wildlife,” says the Times.

Oh, wait, I’ve got it. How about we call the new development “Transparency”? Because that definitely went out the window with this land swap.

Fortunately, when the huge scandal erupted over DeSantis’ attempt to build golf courses, hotels, and sports facilities in nine state parks, it flushed out news of this sneaky swap, too. Otherwise, it would have remained hidden from the public until it was too late to stop it.

Now, while the skids are well greased, there’s still one more stop where it could be derailed.

“If they get away with this, they can get away with anything,” former Florida Park Service director Eric Draper told me. “Any piece of land becomes available for a trade to a developer.”

Mitigating for the mitigation

Last month, when a reporter asked DeSantis about the land swap, he claimed it was perfectly justified.

“We were getting better conservation land … and we gave them less desirable land,” DeSantis said, talking as if it were a done deal.

Those comments are about as believable as saying DeSantis only gave up his pursuit of the presidency because he likes being governor so much.

Let’s examine the facts, shall we?

The Withlacoochee State Forest property has a history that’s … oh, let’s call it “interesting.”

The 164,073-acre forest was originally acquired by the federal government from private landowners between 1936 and 1939, then transferred to the state in 1958. But this particular 324-acre parcel that Cabot wants wasn’t part of it yet.

The Florida Department of Transportation’s Turnpike Enterprise section handed that land over to the state forest folks in 2016 to make up for the environmental destruction caused by the needless Suncoast Parkway toll road.

So, if the state okays this boneheaded swap with Cabot, it would be getting land in distant Levy County to make up for destroying some Hernando County land that had been preserved to make up for earlier destruction there — destruction that was nowhere near Levy County.

In other words, they’d be mitigating for the mitigation. You know how Bugs Bunny used to hold up signs that called Elmer Fudd a screwball and a crackpot? I think that would apply here, too.

But wait, it gets worse: DOT paid $6 million for what became state forest property. The Department of Environmental Piffle — er, excuse me, “Protection” — seems to be claiming the value somehow dropped to $85,000, but there’s been no land appraisal to explain why.

Perhaps it’s the only way the DEP could justify swapping it for the less valuable parcel in Levy County.

“I’m guessing that they are trying to game the public interest requirement,” Draper told me.

Retired Southwest Florida Water Management District executive director Emilio “Sonny” Vergara, who lives in Brooksville, pointed out to me that instead of dropping lower, the value of that forest property has likely escalated quite a bit. That’s because of all the nearby development — including, of course, Cabot’s.

“I’d like to hear [the DEP’s] explanation for this,” Vergara told me. “That it was done this way doesn’t speak well for the governor’s office.”

I’d like to hear that too, but DEP officials didn’t want to answer my questions about it for some reason. Neither did DeSantis’ deputy chief of staff, Cody Farrill.

So far the best comment about the land swap by any state official involved in this mess came from an email exchange uncovered by the Times. The assistant bureau chief of the forest management bureau summed it up perfectly: “It still sucks.”

Island versus Main Street

The person who did the most to educate me about this crazy situation is Eugene Kelly, president of the Florida Native Plant Society (and as far as I can tell, no relation to the star of “Singing in the Rain”).

Kelly, who lives 20 minutes away from the state forest parcel, holds a master’s degree in plant ecology. He spent 16 years working for the Southwest Florida Water Management District in the Save Our Rivers and Florida Forever land protection program.

In other words, he knows his onions, as well as all the other plants. And if Cabot had asked him to hand over this forest parcel, I think he would have not just said no but he would’ve quoted Tom Petty and told the company, “Don’t come around here no more.”

“It is easy to understand why Cabot … covets the parcel for development, but difficult to understand why [Florida] would even consider relinquishing ownership,” he wrote in a letter to the Florida Forest Service director last week.

Kelly told me he and everyone else interested in land preservation were clueless about this secret land swap until the Times broke the story last month. He went to see the state forest property himself, hiking a portion of it from south to north. He counted more than a dozen gopher tortoise burrows.

The property is full of 25-year-old pines and sandhill habitat of the kind fast disappearing from Florida. One of the best things about the property is that it’s close to other preserved lands, such as the Chassahowitzka Wildlife Management Area.

Plus, it’s a crucial part of the Florida Wildlife Corridor. Turn it into a golf course development and wild animals will find it much more difficult to get through.

The Levy County property, on the other hand, is a pine plantation with spotty growth that’s nowhere near any other conservation land, he said. In fact, it’s 17 miles west of the nearest land managed by the Florida Forest Service: Goethe State Forest.

That’s like the difference between owning a business on Main Street versus owning one on an island. You can probably guess which one’s likely to see more visitors, not to mention which would be easier to manage.

“No land manager in the Florida Forest Service would want to be responsible for a place that’s so isolated,” he told me.

How they did it up North

Cabot is considered hot stuff in the golf world, with picturesque courses in the Caribbean, the Scottish Highlands, and British Columbia. This property in Brooksville is their first in the U.S.

You can tell Cabot is from somewhere outside Florida because the company labeled its property “Citrus Farms” instead of “Citrus Grove.”

But that property was not a citrus grove when they bought it. It was a failed Japanese golf course development called World Woods. The company knew when they bought it that there was a state forest next door. In fact, Cabot uses that as a selling point:

“Tucked between state forests and nature reserves in the central-west region of Florida, aptly known as the Nature Coast, Cabot Citrus Farms is perfectly situated to enjoy laid-back southern living, while in convenient proximity to major urban centers,” Cabot says on social media about its property in Brooksville, where the real estate starts at $1.8 million.

I was curious about why Cabot had proposed this unusual land swap, but the Cabot folks did not return my calls. Perhaps they were worried about being tarred and feathered by people who remain upset over the state park debacle.

I even tried contacting Cabot’s Florida lobbyists, Sydney Ridley and Rachel Cone, both of the powerhouse Southern Group.

I was particularly keen on talking to Cone. Her bio shows she used to work for the DEP and served a couple of years as deputy chief of staff for former Gov. Rick “I Love Toll Roads” Scott before he appointed her interim secretary of the Florida DOT. She was with DOT when it first bought the Withlacoochee property to make up for the toll road.

Alas, neither lobbyist was brave enough to defend their client. Fortunately, Cabot’s founder and CEO, Ben Cowan-Dewar, did an interview with a golf publication in which he discussed it.

“What we proposed is something we have done in Cape Breton (in Nova Scotia), a property swap to be able to build more golf which will create more economic development, more jobs, and a more attractive destination,” Cowan-Dewar told Golf Week. “And in return, we give something to the state that I think they feel is of real value to them. That process is one we had done in Nova Scotia with great success.”

This is the point at which Florida residents will rise to their feet, shake a fist toward the Canadian border, and shout, “WE DON’T CARE HOW YOU DID IT UP NORTH!”

Apparently, Cowan-Dewar doesn’t realize that preserved environmental treasures like a state forest are of “real value” to folks in rapidly developing Florida. We’re losing land like this so quickly, we want to hang onto what we’ve got, not hand it over to a developer.

In fact, Kelly told me, Cabot’s Hernando holdings include a parcel the state has had on its acquisition list since 1995: Annutteliga Hammock. State documents call it “some of the last large tracts of longleaf pine sandhills in Florida, unique forests of northern hardwood trees, and many archaeological sites.”

If I ran Florida, I’d strongly suggest Cabot withdraw its request for the state forest land. Then I’d enter into negotiations with them for the Annutteliga Hammock property.

In real life, there’s one more step where this backroom business maneuver could be halted.

Something to investigate

When the Cabinet approved this stoopid swap, they did it backwards.

The Cabinet — operating under the title “Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund” — said the swap would still have to go before the state’s Acquisition and Restoration Council.

“A board with the word ‘trust’ in its name delegates its decisions to an agency that is directed by the governor’s staff to get it done,” Draper said.

The 10-member council usually sees these proposals before the Cabinet, not after. It “has responsibility for the evaluation, selection, and ranking of state land acquisition projects … and land uses for all state-owned conservation lands,” says the DEP website.

“The delegation of authority allows DEP to consider the approval of the proposed exchange if several prerequisites are met, none of which have been met by the applicant at this time,” DEP communications director Alexandra Kuchta said in the terse statement she emailed me.

As has been the case throughout DeSantis’ tenure, there are some empty seats, so it’s just seven people to vote. Of those, three work for DeSantis, one works for Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, and three hail from private industry or science.

To declare the Withlacoochee State Forest land eligible for handing over to Cabot, state law says the council has to determine “whether the lands are no longer needed for conservation purposes.” A number of Florida’s environmental groups have now written to one or more members of the ARC to point out that the state forest land is most definitely still needed.

Meanwhile, DeSantis has attempted to move on. He was busy this week trying to snag a little publicity by declaring that he doesn’t trust the feds to investigate the guy with a rifle near a certain West Palm Beach golf course. Instead, he vowed, the state would investigate.

Governor D, if you want to investigate something shady, send investigators into your OWN office to find out how Cabot nearly stole 300-plus acres of state property.

If this dirty deal still goes through, I have the perfect name for the development to show what lost: the Public Interest.

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