New College neighbors head to mediation over disputed campus master plan

Nestled amid aged oaks draped in Spanish moss and native palms, the 110-home Uplands subdivision sits along Sarasota Bay between New College of Florida and the campus that, until recently, belonged to the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee.  

The quiet neighborhood off U.S. 41 has coexisted with New College for decades. For much of that time, residents describe the college and The Uplands as friendly neighbors.

But that relationship began to change after Gov. Ron DeSantis installed a slate of conservative trustees at the historically liberal college in 2023 and launched a dramatic transformation of New College. 

Tensions intensified as the school embarked on an ambitious campus master plan that could reshape the land along the neighborhood’s edge. 

Now, six residents from in and around The Uplands have mounted a rare legal challenge to that plan, arguing that if a taxpayer‑funded institution won’t follow Florida’s planning laws, the community has no choice but to force it to.

The residents cite a lack of transparency and an unwillingness by New College to work with them during the process. They also fear the plan will lead to environmental destruction of protected land and question whether New College followed Florida law and Board of Governors regulations in considering relevant data and analysis when putting the plan together. 

“This is bigger than just, you know, The Uplands challenging a master plan,” Uplands Association Inc. President Judy Burns said. “This whole process illustrates how very, very difficult it is to participate and have a voice in a system with these public institutions … Everyone should care about that. Not just our neighborhood.” 

In January, Burns joined area residents Karen Stack, Ruth Folit, Peter Schelhorn, Lilianne Raud and Jono Miller in filing individual petitions with the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings challenging the plan. The division handles administrative law complaints against state agencies, including public universities.

The group says they’re challenging the university without legal help, learning to navigate the administrative hearing process on their own.

They are scheduled for mediation Tuesday with New College counsel.  

New College spokesperson Jamie Miller told Suncoast Searchlight that the university does not comment on pending litigation, as a matter of policy, when reached by email with questions for this article.

Why petitioners challenged the plan

Under Florida law, public universities must update their campus master plans every 10 years. The plans must identify general land uses and the need for roads, parking, public transportation, trash collection and recreation and open space.

New College last updated its campus plan in October 2015, eight years before the conservative transformation that started when DeSantis replaced multiple trustees with Republican allies. The reconstituted board then ousted President Patricia Okker and appointed former Florida Speaker of the House Richard Corcoran as president. Corcoran almost immediately made it his goal to boost student enrollment and change the course of the small liberal arts school.

The planning process appears to have begun in May 2022, according to a presentation posted to the college’s website. Between December 2023 and December 2025, when trustees approved the plan, New College held six sessions where community members could provide input and submit written comments online.

The plan drew nearly 100 comments, many from Uplands residents raising concerns about its potential impact on their neighborhood. Others pointed out discrepancies in the draft, criticized what one commenter called a “haphazard update process,” or objected to the demolition of the Hamilton Center.

Neither the Florida Department of Environmental Protection nor the Southwest Florida Water Management District raised objections to the campus plan. DEP found that “no provision that, if adopted, would result in adverse impacts to important state resources” under its jurisdiction.

While the city of Sarasota noted that New College’s plan was consistent with the city’s plan, it raised several issues that New College addressed in a December 2025 presentation.

But the group challenging the campus plan contends the public comment process was largely performative. Its members said comments posted publicly were anonymized, some were posted late or not at all, and there is no evidence trustees received and considered public input before approving the updated plan, as they argue Florida law requires.

The Uplands Association also alleged a lack of transparency, inadequate notice and neighborhood input, as well as inaccuracies in the mapping of New College’s boundaries. 

While university staff seemed to address local government agencies’ comments in a presentation, the university did not fully address community concerns, the petitioners said. 

Stack, an Uplands resident since around 2018, said Corcoran met with residents several times during the planning process. She described Corcoran as gracious and receptive to their concerns but said little came of those meetings. By the December 2025 meeting when trustees approved the plan, Stack said residents felt brushed off.

During that meeting, two versions of the final campus master plan were presented: a redlined version posted for the public showing revisions and a clean version provided to trustees.

Schelhorn said the two versions did not fully align and that trustees were led to believe “that the redline changes represented the substance of what they would be voting to adopt.”

The issue was raised at the December 2025 meeting, with New College counsel assuring board members “that the redline and clean versions were the same and that the redlines merely identified changes from the original document,” according to Schelhorn’s petition. 

Schelhorn’s petition alleges that assurance was false and that differences between the documents were not disclosed or corrected before trustees adopted the plan.

Schelhorn argued that because the documents differed and no distinction was made, the adoption of the campus plan was procedurally defective. His petition states that the two versions should be reconciled and shared with the trustees, host jurisdictions, and affected persons before being voted on again.

After the document was approved, the six petitioners decided the only course of action was to take on a legal challenge.

What remains of the challenge

That challenge is now before the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings, where an administrative law judge has narrowed the roughly 25 allegations of noncompliance raised in the residents’ six petitions.

The remaining claims involve several parts of New College’s plan, from proposed athletic fields near Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport to development of land where the college plans to build its Education Freedom Institute. 

In Folit’s complaint, she worries about the impact of building new athletic fields downwind of the airport runways and the potential impact on student-athletes’ health. Her petition seeks analysis of outdoor air quality and changes to the proposed athletic facilities provisions as warranted.

Jono Miller’s concerns focus on the nine acres of land north of campus where New College administration plans to build its Education Freedom Institute. 

Miller argued the college’s plan conflicts with Manatee County’s comprehensive plan even though Florida law requires the two to be consistent. He told Suncoast Searchlight that a Manatee County planning official flagged the discrepancy in comments on the draft and that New College should have paused until it was resolved.

Burns, who filed a complaint on behalf of the Uplands Association Inc., notes in her petition she’s not seeking the “wholesale invalidation” of the campus plan, but is targeting specific provisions she believes are noncompliant with Florida law and Board of Governors regulations — a theme throughout all six petitions.  

One of her main concerns focused on the removal of about 138 mature trees in the Uplands Preserve, which historically acted as a protected space and a natural buffer between campus activity and the neighborhood, to make way for a temporary athletic field. She argued that after the removal, residents observed worsened flooding in the area, and nearby residents can now hear whistles and coach instructions as early as 7 a.m.

Stack also raised concerns with New College’s plan to expand vehicle access to campus through a southern connection to Uplands Boulevard. She said it’s unclear how it will impact traffic and seeks to find what, if any, traffic analysis was done. 

In late June, the judge dismissed part of the complaints filed by the group, narrowing how much evidence they could request from New College.

Petitioners are now left to pursue only their claims alleging New College failed to comply with specific state requirements and whether the campus plan was based on appropriate and relevant data and analysis.

If the sides cannot reach an agreement in mediation, a pre-hearing conference is scheduled for Oct. 29. 

“One of our hopes is that by going through this process, we can improve the process so that other stakeholders at other units of the state university system don’t have to go through this,” Jono Miller said. 

For Stack, had New College paid attention to residents’ concerns and followed the regulations, they wouldn’t be here today.

“Had they done this right from the beginning, and involved most of the stakeholders,” Stack said, “these challenges may not exist.”

Gabriela Szymanowska is a contributor for Suncoast Searchlight. Email her at gszymano20@gmail.com.