Orlando-area conservationists turned up in force Monday, packing an Osceola County public-comment meeting as a long-simmering fight over a proposed toll road through Split Oak Forest heated up again. The Central Florida Expressway Authority has already moved past the drawing-board stage and, in February, filed an eminent-domain claim against Orange County for conservation parcels it says are needed for State Road 534. An order-of-taking hearing is set for early June.
At the center of the dispute is a one-mile stretch of the planned SR 534 that would cut across the southern boundary of Split Oak Forest and a slice of neighboring Eagles Roost Park. For hikers and conservation advocates who regard Split Oak as a rare ecological refuge, the concern is not abstract. The preserve holds increasingly scarce scrub habitat and sheltered species such as the gopher tortoise and the Florida scrub-jay, so every acre feels like a high-stakes fight.
Project backers describe SR 534 as a limited-access tollway that would link State Road 417 near Boggy Creek to points east, with two travel lanes in each direction and seven interchanges along the route. As reported by ClickOrlando, members of the Save Split Oak campaign used Monday's meeting to urge Orange and Osceola counties to pull back their support for the road, warning that it would fragment wildlife habitat and encourage sprawl. Campaign manager Lee Perry told officials the land should “stay the way it is,” while hiker Glenn Knight cautioned that the proposed route could “destroy the park.”
Eminent-Domain Fight Heads To Court
According to Central Florida Public Media, the Central Florida Expressway Authority filed its eminent-domain action in February seeking access to roughly 24 acres of Orange County conservation land, with an order-of-taking hearing scheduled for June 3. Before that filing, the agency's governing board had already deemed about 44 acres essential for the project, including property within Eagles Roost Park, and offered Orange County about $2.3 million as an opening step toward purchase.
Orange County attorneys have warned commissioners that squaring off against CFX in court will be an uphill climb, which has pushed county leaders to look at hiring outside counsel and weighing other defensive strategies. The question in front of them is not whether a legal fight would be bruising, but how aggressive they are willing to be to try to keep conservation land out of the tollway footprint.
CFX's Conservation Pitch And Critics' Pushback
For its part, the Central Florida Expressway Authority has tried to frame the project as a net benefit to conservation. In its own news release, the agency says it has assembled a package of land donations and funding that would increase the amount of protected acreage, including $23.9 million for restoration and long-term management of 1,550 acres and another $1.25 million earmarked for upgrades at Split Oak.
State wildlife officials signed off in 2024 on a deal that partially released conservation easements to make room for the road, a step supporters cast as a reasonable compromise and even a win for conservation in the long run. Opponents and some scientists are not buying that framing. They argue the replacement lands do not truly match the legacy protections that Split Oak once enjoyed, according to reporting by WESH. The swap has sharpened a divide between agencies and the public over what actually counts as real habitat protection and what looks more like creative accounting.
Local Politics And The 2020 Promise
Local politics are never far from the surface. In mid-January, Orange County commissioners voted 4-3 to block transfers of county-protected land and to challenge CFX's plans, a move that reflected lingering anger from voters who, in 2020, backed a charter amendment to protect the area by a resounding 86 percent, Spectrum News reported.
That narrow commission vote laid bare a split on the dais. Some commissioners want to fight the expressway authority head-on, while others warn the county could burn political capital and lose in court anyway. The options now on the table include negotiating, litigating, or trying to bring in higher-level political help, and the choice will determine whether the contested acres stay as public parkland or end up under the pavement of a state toll road.
What Comes Next
With a legal showdown looking more likely, Orange County has moved to hire outside attorneys, and the window for an order-of-taking is already open, steps that could stretch the conflict into months of hearings and possible appeals.
Activists, meanwhile, show no sign of standing down. Organizers say they will continue to flood public meetings, file petitions, and wage their campaign in the court of public opinion, with the effort anchored online by Save Split Oak. They insist they will use every legal and political tool they can to preserve the forest. For now, the June hearing looms as the next hard deadline and a key test of whether those conservation promises made to voters in 2020 can survive a full-on courtroom fight.
