Almost exactly two years after Polk County voters revived a land-conservation program, commissioners voted Tuesday to approve the first new purchase.
The Polk County Commission voted unanimously to spend $24 million on the acquisition of a set of tracts northeast of Lake Wales, known as the Masterpiece Road property. The property, totaling 1,195 acres, lies southwest of Lake Pierce.
The Conservation Land Acquisition Selection Advisory Committee, a group appointed by the County Commission, recommended the Masterpiece Road property and two others for acquisition in April.
Most of the land lies on both sides of Masterpiece Road along the section that runs north and south before a 90-degree bend to the west near the shore of Lake Pierce. A smaller parcel borders the lake.
The tracts have been owned for decades by Alcoma Properties, a company operated by the Updike family. Alcoma has leased much of the land for cattle ranching, said Larry Updike, the company’s secretary.
“We're very pleased that the county had an interest in the property,” Updike said. “We love the property. It's beautiful. But there's a generation of us, my generation, that is trying to retire, and we need to settle our assets in some way. And we thought this was a very good way to preserve the property, to keep that area undeveloped and unspoiled, and at the same time get a reasonable value for our property. We're grateful to the county, and we think this is a great thing for the overall community.”
The county opted to buy the property outright rather than purchase a conservation easement. Under the agreement signed with Alcoma, Polk County will buy separate groups of parcels in three phases, paying $3.2 million this year, $12 million next year and $8.8 million in 2026.
Ample conservation value
In 2022, Polk County voters approved a referendum for a property tax to generate funds for land purchases over a 20-year period. The measure imposed an ad valorem tax of 20 cents for each $1,000 of taxable property value over two decades.
The proposal, needing only a simple majority for passage, gained support from 58.4% of voters.
The Masterpiece Road parcels include scrubby flatwoods and sandhill remnants, along with some swamp, situated along the Lake Wales Ridge. Members of a technical assistance group documented the presence of gopher tortoises and sand skinks and found 600 examples of Florida Ziziphus, an extremely rare plant once thought to be extinct.
The technical assessment group scored the Masterpiece Road property at 89 points on a scale of 20 to 118 for such criteria as water resources, natural communities and landscape, plants and animals, human value and management.
“This project has a lot of conservation value to it for multiple reasons,” said Tabitha Biehl, Polk County’s Land and Water Natural Areas manager. “The first of those is it is located on the Lake Wales Ridge. Its soils are intact for sandhill and scrub soils. It harbors some rare plants and animals.”
Biehl emphasized the presence of Florida Ziziphus, a deciduous shrub endemic to the Lake Wales Ridge. Polk County consulted with Archbold Biological Station in Highlands County, which supported the acquisition, she said.
“The site also plays an important role in wildlife corridor and connections,” Biehl said. “Working with the Florida Wildlife Corridor and others, some panther biologists have recognized that this particular connection could play a very important role in protecting wildlife movement and the corridor of some of our larger species.”
Biehl noted that Lake Pierce is already listed as an impaired water body, and some of the parcels the county is buying were zoned for potential development. Buying the land for conservation means averting the installation of septic tanks in the porous soils around the lake.
“You hear a lot about septic-to-sewer projects,” Biehl said. “This is really just prevention of septic, and we actually have done the calculations, and it was much cheaper for the county to actually acquire those lands, rather than to invest in the future and doing a septic-to-sewer conversion on it.”
A sense of urgency
Marian Ryan, a Winter Haven resident who led the efforts to pass the original ballot measure and the tax renewal two years ago, described the site as a “wonderful” start for the new round of county acquisitions.
“It's very rare habitat and also offers a lot of opportunities for nature-based recreation for the public,” said Ryan, a member of the selection committee. “It has some very rare plants on it, and it's unusual to have yellow sand scrub on the Lake Wales Ridge. I know that other entities had tried to get a conservation easement on the properties, but I think it's thrilling that it's going to be owned outright by the county.”
Ryan said that rarely seen fox squirrels have been seen on the property. She noted that the land has a minimal presence of invasive plants, which overwhelm some natural areas in Florida.
There is an urgency behind the purchase of conservation lands in Polk County, which has been facing a surge of development in recent years, Ryan said.
“We've experienced such dramatic levels of development recently that the environment is being turned over to development at an incredible rate,” she said. “So it makes it even more important to acquire those rare habitats and those areas that are most important for the Florida Wildlife Corridor as soon as possible. I figure if we don't buy what we should have in the next 20 years, it will no longer be available.”
Biehl said that the county will conduct a thorough assessment and craft a management plan, with the goal of offering public access at some point.
Polk voters approved an initial property tax measure to fund the purchase of conservation lands in 1994. That 20-year tax, which enabled the county’s acquisition of Circle B Bar Reserve and other nature areas, had expired.
Polk Commission approves buying 1,195-acre property near Lake Wales
