Plans for 2,900-acre golf course development on Lake Kissimmee have been withdrawn, Polk County officials confirmed today.\n<\/p>\n
The project known as Lost Oaks was proposed for a sprawling site north of Coleman Landing at Shady Oaks, a county lakefront park.\n<\/p>\n
The Polk County Planning Commission, which rarely recommends denying any project, voted 4-3 to deny this one following testimony from local environmentalists and area property owners about the site’s unsuitability for development and its potential conflict with planned wildlife corridors and military flights at nearby Avon Park Air Force Range.\n<\/p>\n
The case had been scheduled to be heard Aug. 7 by the County Commission.\n<\/p>\n
The site had originally been purchased for conservation by the South Florida Water Management District as part of the Kissimmee River restoration project to return lake levels t o historic patterns, which would sometimes flood some of the property.\n<\/p>\n
However, the property returned to private ownership as a result of a land swap involving the district’s interest in obtaining a parcel near Lake Okeechobee for the Everglades restoration.\n<\/p>\n
The development was first proposed a couple of years ago, but concrete plans did not surface until this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Plans for 2,900-acre golf course development on Lake Kissimmee have been withdrawn, Polk County officials confirmed today. The project known as Lost Oaks was proposed for a sprawling site north of Coleman Landing at Shady Oaks, a county lakefront park. The Polk County Planning Commission, which rarely recommends denying any project, voted 4-3 to deny […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}