$20 Mil Off-Campus Housing Project Faces Residential Wildfire

ORLANDO-Seminole County’s planning board and neighborhood activists are mounting a protest campaign against developer Philip Emmer’s planned $20 million, 252-unit, 816-bedroom Portofino apartment community.

The 45 acre venture in east Seminole County is five miles north of the 35,000-student University of Central Florida campus which is stretched thin on campus housing units, Emmer and other college shelter analysts contend.

The planning board maintains Portofino is planned at a two-lane traffic nightmare location at McCulloch and Old Lockwood Roads. Residents argue the project proposed near affluent single-family University Estates where homes sit on quarter-acre lots is not consistent with the area’s growth plan. And environmentalists say Emmer’s newest multifamily community would destroy existing wildlife such as sandhill cranes, deer and foxes.