Eatonville, OCPS seek deal on slice of Hungerford property to help museum pitch

The tiny town of Eatonville views itself as “living history” and, as a town founded by newly freed slaves, an ideal site for Florida’s proposed museum of Black history.

But the land on which the museum would sit is owned by Orange County Public Schools — on property off Interstate 4 that until 2009 was home to Hungerford Preparatory High School — and the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.

The legal action aims to protect Eatonville’s interests, but it could threaten town leaders’ museum dreams by making the land unusable until the court case is resolved.

But now town leaders and OCPS officials are hopeful the 10 acres needed for the museum could be carved out of the lawsuit that focuses on the full, 100-acre Hungerford property, which sits at the western entrance to Eatonville’s downtown on the corner of Kennedy Boulevard and Wymore Road.

The property is both the gateway to the town and an important piece of its history, once home to the Robert F. Hungerford Normal and Industrial School, a private boarding school for black students during a time when white-run school systems would not educate them.

If the 10 acres were no longer part of the lawsuit, that should strengthen Eatonville’s bid to become the museum’s home by showing the property is “free and clear,” said Karen Castor Dentel, the Orange County School Board member whose district includes Eatonville.

Eatonville, which bills itself as “the first town to be organized, governed and incorporated by African-American citizens in this country,” is perhaps most famous as the home to author Zora Neale Hurston.

Town and school officials want to move quickly on an agreement on the 10 acres because members of the Florida Museum Black History Task Force will rank the eight museum bids — submitted by towns and counties across Florida, including Seminole County —  by April 12, Castor Dentel said.

The task force meets again on April 19, where it plans to narrow the list of potential museum homes to three or four.

OCPS leaders and Eatonville officials met Wednesday morning and left optimistic an agreement could be reached.

Eatonville’s attorney, Castor Dentel said, is having conversations with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which last year sued OCPS over its attempt to sell the Hungerford property to a private developer. The suit was filed on behalf of the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, which wants the Hungerford property donated to a trust controlled by the town.

Lynda Hasberry, a spokesperson for the law center, said Wednesday it had no comment on the proposal to remove 10 acres from the lawsuit.

The president of the association could not be reached.

But Eatonville Mayor Angie Gardner said she thought an agreement would be forthcoming soon.

“We’re feeling pretty confident that they would work with us on this,” Gardner said.

Castor Dentel agreed, saying she thought an agreement could be ready for a school board vote early next week and shared with the task force before its deadline.

The agreement would not solve the ongoing debate and controversy about what to do with the now vacant Hungerford property. The last school on the site was closed in 2009, with the buildings demolished more than a decade later.

Though once run by a private trust, the school was sold to the Orange school district in 1951 — the white-run district got it for a steal, some still-upset residents say — because the trust was struggling to raise enough money to keep it open.

That sale came during segregation, and the school became one of the district’s all-black high schools. It was later an alternative school and a magnet school before it shut down.

Gardner said a deal on the 10 acres could help “secure” the town’s museum bid and could help pave the way to further agreements on the full site.

The law center sued OCPS last year to stop the sale of the Hungerford site to a developer who planned to build 350 houses, townhomes and apartments on the land. OCPS said it worked with town leaders for years to find a buyer for the site, with several deals falling through.

Once the last deal became public, many residents and Gardner, then the town’s newly elected mayor, objected, fearing the proposed development would erase the town’s legacy by bringing in housing most residents could not afford.

The developer eventually pulled out, and the school board has since said it has no plans for the property.

At Tuesday’s school board meeting, Chair Teresa Jacobs said it made sense to focus first on the 10 acres given the town’s eagerness to pursue the museum and the April 12 deadline.

“We have 10 days. Ten days,” she said. “What I’ve heard is by the 12th we need to be able to say definitely the city has the property and can use it for that purpose. The only way that I see that we can do that is to separate the 10 acres from the rest of it.”

Jacobs also said the district will also seek opinions from the state on whether it can give the land to the town, as its legal staff and other attorneys have disagreed on the legality of such a transfer.

But it makes sense, Jacobs added, to first do that for 10 acres, which as a museum would continue to serve an educational purpose and be used by OCPS students.

Eatonville’s town administrator and mayor spoke at a state task force meeting in January, saying their small town, founded by freed slaves in 1887, was a perfect site for a Black history museum.

“It is living history, Eatonville is,” said Chief Administrative Officer Demetrius Pressley.  “It is living, breathing legacy. It is an ideal museum setting.”

Castor Dentel told her board colleagues she hoped that eventually the school board could give all the Hungerford land to Eatonville.

“We need to do right, and we need to be able to convey the land and the control to the town,” she said.