The development team that was set to close this week on a purchase of 100 acres of land in Eatonville has backed out of the sale, in a victory for residents who felt the project planned for the former Hungerford school site would have endangered the historic Black town’s legacy.
The sale’s unraveling comes amid escalating pressure from Eatonville residents led by the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community (PEC), which filed suit against property owner Orange County Public Schools to block the sale last week with the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights group.
“The developers issued a notice of termination in the purchase agreement,” said Karen Castor Dentel, the school board member who represents Eatonville.
Castor Dentel said OCPS is “taking a pause” to determine what is next for the land.
“This gives us an opportunity to collaborate with the Eatonville community and go forward together,” she said. “I look forward to having future conversations with residents and stakeholders. We’re taking a pause and we’re taking the pulse of the community… with our intention to preserve and celebrate the historic nature of the town and the cultural significance as well.”
Eatonville Mayor Angie Gardner has long been outspoken against the sale. She said she is “relieved” to see it be terminated.
“I like the idea that now the town can get a plan together,” she said, adding that the cancellation of the sale provided “breathing room” for residents and elected officials to come up with a new plan for the land. Residents “have already shown that they can stand up for what they want and I’m very proud of every citizen that has voiced their concerns. I’m very proud of that.
“But now, the onus is on the town. … Now that we’ve said we want to develop the land, lets go ahead an put that in package and have deliverables that show that the future of our town can be trusted in our hands.”
Eatonville resident Julian Johnson, who led the fight to stop the sale alongside the PEC, said he’s ready to take the next steps to make sure Eatonville residents will get to decide the future of the land but, for now, he’s taking time to celebrate.
“Right now, for me, it feels good to get a win because we haven’t seen that in a while,” Johnson said. “I know it’s a lot more work that goes with this but for now, we’re going to celebrate that win. We’re going to celebrate with the community. Even though it’s a small win, it’s big for us. It showed unity. It showed the power of working together and collaboration. … I’m happy.”
With Winter Park-based Sovereign Land Co.’s decision to nix the deal, it’s unclear what will happen to the property next but Castor Dentel said “the superintendent is not going to entertain any other bids.”
PEC Executive Director N.Y. Nathiri and others have argued the land should be placed into a trust so the town can determine its future. The school board has donated a small portion of the former school site in the past but Castor Dentel said the laws have since changed and the district is no longer legally able to donate the remaining land.
The battle over the fate of the last 100 acres of land once occupied by the Robert F. Hungerford Normal and Industrial School has made national news and pitted Eatonville’s mayor and community leaders against OCPS, which has owned the land since 1952.
“OCPS has been informed the contract for the purchase of the former Hungerford Prep property will not go through, which unfortunately will prevent the Town of Eatonville from realizing their portion of the proceeds as well as the increased tax revenue to support the citizens of Eatonville that this sale would have provided,” district spokesperson Michael Ollendorff said in a statement.
In the $14 million deal, OCPS would have received $10 million and Eatonville $4 million, minus fees totaling more than $1 million. But many residents worried the housing planned for the land would be unaffordable to them, leading to displacement and changing the character of the first incorporated Black town in the nation.
Residents’ ire about the land sale intensified as details of the decades-old transaction that transferred its ownership to the school district came to light in a series of reports by the Orlando Sentinel.
Opened in the late 1800s as a private school for Black children when public schools were legally segregated, trustees for the Hungerford school began considering a sale in 1947, when it was educating a mix of boarding students and day students from Winter Park and Maitland.
After an effort to sell the school to a church failed in early 1950, its seven-member board of court-appointed trustees, none of whom lived in Eatonville and at least six of whom were white, moved quickly to turn the Hungerford property over to the school district.
The sale of the school and the 300 acres it sat on — at a price of just $16,000, a fraction of its appraised value — was described in news reports at the time and since by OCPS as the best option for a struggling school.
But recently unearthed court records revealed an alternative plan pitched by a coalition including Robert Hungerford’s daughter as well as Nobel Peace Prize winner John Mott and Bethune-Cookman University founder Mary McLeod Bethune was pitched, but disregarded by the trustees.
The plan would have kept Hungerford a private Black boarding school. Bethune, a famed educator whose statue today stands in National Statuary Hall, would have sat on a new Board of Trustees, with Hungerford becoming an “affiliated institution” to B-CU.
Hungerford’s daughter, Constance Hungerford, fought the transaction to the state Supreme Court, but Justice John E. Mathews, a former senator and ardent segregationist, sided with the district in a 1952 opinion.
Over seven decades of ownership, the school board transformed the school into a segregated public high school, then a desegregated one. After Interstate 4 bisected the land, OCPS cited the highway to justify removing a requirement that the site only be used for education.
The district built and rebuilt Hungerford Elementary School, donated a small portion of the land to the town to build the public library and closed, then demolish Hungerford high school. The 100 acres at the center of the recent controversy is all that remains of the site.
The removal of the educational-use requirement is central to the lawsuit recently filed by the SPLC, which argues it may have been done improperly. The suit also questions if OCPS complied with a legal obligation to only sell the land if it’s “in the best interest of the public.”
No hearings have been set in the lawsuit, which was filed March 24 in Orange County Circuit Court.
dstennett@orlandosentinel.com
