Monday morning, officials from the Osceola County School District, Tavistock and its construction partners ceremonially broke ground on a new K-8 school to be built in Sunbridge, a development east of Narcoossee Road not far south of Boggy Creek Road.
That’s not the heart of this story, as new schools are being built all the time to keep pace with the number of families moving to the area every week, every month, every year.
What’s unique about this school build is that none of the children who will attend it live in the community yet.
Phase I of Sunbridge, a Del Webb development, has been built and has residents — but it is deed-restricted as a 55-and-up community. The next two phases of single-family homes will start welcoming them soon.
The new school will serve them, as well as provide some relief to nearby Narcoossee Elementary and Middle schools, starting in the fall of 2024 — 18 months from now.
“Our facilities staff has a tall task on this aggressive schedule, but I have not doubt they are up to the challenge,” said School Board member Erika Booth, whose district 5 includes Sunbridge. “In my career I have opened five new schools. It is tough, exciting, and also very rewarding to see it all come together.
“The design is open to being an E-STEM school, with an environmentally-friendly focus. And I love the K-8 model, because it’s a community model. Osceola County is changing, and it’s a quality change for everybody.” When fully built out, Sunbridge is slated to be home to over 20,000 homes and families. It’s a staggering number, but it’s being built in stages over 15-20 years to simply keep up with the demands of growth, and it’s being master planned with high architectural standards put in place by Osceola County. Tavistock, the developer who also laid the original groundwork for the Lake Nona community in Orange County, is behind the project, touting proximity to Lake Nona, its medical district and Valencia College campus, St. Cloud and the Orlando International Airport.
“Our vision for Sunbridge is to create a place that generates economic opportunities for our region while also prioritizing the native ecosystem and providing enhanced access to the land and water for residents and visitors, said Karlee Dutton, Tavistock senior communications manager. "It’s a one-of-a-kind blend of the big Florida nature we all know and love, and inspired neighborhood design that we like to call the 'naturehood.'”
Tavistock Senior Vice President Clint Beatty said Monday that the new school will reflect the ideals of, “Nature and sustainability we hold so dear in Sunbridge.”
“Educational facilities are the anchor for all great communities,” he said.
A traffic light at Narcoossee and Cyrils Road, Sunbridge’s current main access road, is up and running. Cyrils is slated to be widened to four lanes through Zuni Road to Abscher Road, roads where longtime residents live on multi-acre properties, watching “the city come out to meet them” to the north and east.
Ricky Booth is the district 5 commissioner for this area, and has lived to the south in St. Cloud his whole life.
“I think they’re doing it the right way,” he said. “You’ve got a ton of commercial space (8.5 million square feet is planned for all of Sunbridge), and there are transportation and job stop-gaps in between (phases) that they have to meet. This is being built with almost a 2-to-1 ratio (new jobs to new homes), and a lot of Central Florida has been being built with under a 1-to-1 ratio.”
Minor changes will likely be made as Sunbridge is built in, but overall, Booth said deals brokered originally in getting everything in here are moving forward.
“Some of the things Tavistock is doing here, were the genesis of things we integrated into the new master plan for Alligator Lake — higher quality development and standards, requiring industrial and commercial space, to reduce transportation impact. We’re trying duplicate some of the great things in this plan for growth across the county.”
