Governor OKs Hot Sugarloaf Mountain Project

ORLANDO-Gov. Jeb Bush and his six-member Cabinet are giving Orlando landowners Willoughby T. Cox and Karick Price another five years to develop or sell Sugarloaf Mountain, a controversial 1,433-acre planned unit development in an environmentally sensitive site in rural Lake County.

Despite impassioned pleas from environmentalists and residential activist groups, Tallahassee elected officials voted 5-2 to uphold a state judge’s July order giving the project until 2006 to break ground. A previous nine-year development order expired this year.

Cox and Price have the dirt under contract to Tampa, FL broker John Reaves for an undisclosed sum. The landowners’ lawyer, Cecelia Bonifay of Akerman Senterfitt Eidsen says no development decision will be made until at least Dec. 1. That’s when a deadline expires for anti-development foes to appeal the governor’s decision to the 11th District Court of Appeals in Atlanta.