Grove to Southern Oaks
Grove Gave Root To Way Of Life Southern Oaks Takes Pride In Its Neighborly Manner
In the boom of the late 1960s, the place to move in Central Florida was south Orlando. It attracted the lion’s share of the corporate transferees coming to work for Martin Marietta, Walt Disney World and the Apollo space program.
It was during 1969 when a group of Orlando citrusmen started developing a 107-acre orange grove. The northern half of the property was just south of Pine Loch Lake. The developers named the project Southern Oaks — appropriate since the south end of the property was a sprawling oak hammock.
Austin Caruso Jr., who headed the development team, said the partners — his father, Austin Sr., Russell Anderson and Bob Hester — thought the development would turn out to be like many others in south Orlando: moderately priced with medium-sized, no-frills houses.
”We didn’t expect that it would turn out like it did,” Caruso said. ”But when we saw that we were getting bigger and more expensive houses, we changed strategies a little bit. We started making the lots a little bigger.”
As it turned out, Southern Oaks developed into a close-knit neighborhood of upscale houses. And it came to serve as a prototype for other luxury home communities in Central Florida.
”It really was one of the first new custom-home developments in the area,” said Michael Ashington-Pickett, a veteran Central Florida home builder and a Southern Oaks resident for more than 10 years.
Today, Southern Oaks has become one of Central Florida’s most desirable addresses. Former Florida Gov. Reubin Askew, who moved to Orlando from Miami in early 1986 to open a branch of his Miami-based law firm, lives in Southern Oaks.
The neighborhood also is popular with physicians. One resident estimated that more than half of the homeowners there ”are associated with the medical industry in Orlando in some way.”
The development is about two miles southeast of downtown Orlando, reachable from the city’s main roads via quiet, two-lane arteries such as Ferncreek Avenue and Gatlin Avenue. There are entrance off Summerlin and Pershing avenues.
Homes in Southern Oaks, which sold for $70,000 and $80,000 when they were built in the early 1970s, now sell between $180,000 and $220,000. That, of course, is if their owners sell them at all.
”You couldn’t get my wife out of this subdivision with a crowbar,” said Frank Anderson, a custom-home builder and a Southern Oaks resident for the past nine years. ”She loves it here.”
Anderson’s comments echo those of many Southern Oaks residents. They often characterize the development of roughly 210 homes as a ”traditional family neighborhood.”
Ashington-Pickett, who built many of the houses there, said, ”It has more of that old American character than most neighborhoods I know. It’s a nice place to bring up kids.”
Parents, he said, also like the fact that children from Southern Oaks attend long-established public schools such as Pershing Elementary, Memorial Junior High and Boone High schools.
Caruso attributed Southern Oaks’ popularity with upper-income buyers to its physical characteristics such as the stonework entrances, a small fountain near the middle of the development and the fact that all of the utilities are underground, an uncommon trait for subdivisions in the late ’60s.
”Having all-underground utilities was rare for those days,” Caruso said. ”Most of the developments in that part of town were on septic tanks, but we wanted sewage treatment capability because that helped promote a feeling of quality.”
Caruso also recalled that developers and residents resisted calls by city officials to install more than two entrances into the neighborhood. Although all of the roads within Southern Oaks are public, the development has a feeling of separateness from the rest of the city, which Caruso said helps foster a spirit of community within the neighborhood.
Residents said that spirit shows up in several ways. Anderson said residents hold a neighborhood picnic in a vacant lot near his house every July 4th weekend. The event is loosely organized, but well attended, Anderson said. Ashington-Pickett said that several days before Christmas, ”We heard a knock on the front door, and there were 15 Christmas carolers. They just stood there for five minutes and sang Christmas carols to us. How many other neighborhoods do you know where the people still go around singing Christmas carols?”
Ashington-Pickett also gave credit to the Southern Oaks’ homeowners association, which he said ”goes about its job quietly and gently.”
As one example, the homeowners association has decided to maintain the small fountain that serves as a centerpiece in the development, although the job is one that requires constant attention, Caruso said.
”We (the developers) almost decided to take the fountain out at one point because it was getting to be a real nuisance,” Caruso said. ”It requires a lot of upkeep.
”But the people . . . got together and decided they wanted to keep it because they think it enhances the whole neighborhood. That’s the kind of place Southern Oaks is.”