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VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1
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JANUARY 6 - -JANUARY 12, 2023
WEC Jockey Club and opposing neighbors to face off
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New Year’s Day Tragedy
By Rosemarie Dowell rosemarie@ocalagazette.com
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nother volley in the fight against the massive WEC Jockey Club development is scheduled to take place next week, with expert witnesses offering testimony that either refutes or supports the reason for its approval in June. A Formal Administrative Hearing will take place at 9 a.m. Thursday and Friday (Jan. 12-13) at the Marion County Board of County Commissioners Auditorium, 601 SE 25th Ave., with Administrative Law Judge Suzanne Van Wyk presiding over the hearing. In July, Cape Coral-based land use expert attorney Ralf Brookes filed the request for the hearing on behalf of the property owners living adjacent to or nearby the 1,029 Planned Unit Development, and the conservation group Save Our Rural Areas (SORA) following the Marion County Board of County Commissioners (MCBOCC) June 21 approval of the project. The suit challenges the Commission’s adoption of amendments to its Comprehensive Plan which allowed a rezoning of the property, which then subsequently allowed the 3-to-2 vote approving the PUD. “The Administrative Hearing Request is because the Comprehensive Plan Amendments were not supported by data or analysis,” Brooks said after filing the request. The former Ocala Jockey Club property is located within the Farmland Preservation Area on rural two-lane County Road 318 in northwest Marion County. It was purchased in August of 2021 by Golden Ocala Equestrian Land, LLC., owned by billionaires Larry and Mary Roberts, long-distance trucking magnates who also developed the World Equestrian Center in Ocala. As approved, the project will allow Golden Ocala to build a similar multi-use equestrian venue on the property, with 94-site built homes, polo fields and stadiums 120,000-square-feet of commercial and retail space, 100-site RV park, and convenience store, but sans hotel, which the developer agreed to nix during the June meeting. The petitioners include Damian and Rebecca Guthrie, who reside on 22 acres directly adjacent to the WEC Jockey Club and Don Love who lives nearby. SORA is listed as an intervenor. Golden Ocala is represented by attorney Jimmy Gooding of the law firm Gooding and Batsel, PLLC. Gooding declined to comment for this story via email.
See full coverage Pg A4 A bicyclist rides by as flower are shown near the shooting scene during a double fatal shooting prayer vigil held by War Cry 4 Peace for Abdul Hakeem Van Croskey, 24, and D’amonta Harris, 30, on Southwest 5th Street in Ocala on Monday, Jan. 2, 2022. Abdul Hakeem Van Croskey and D’amonta Harris both died during a shooting early New Year’s Day. Four other people were shot at the end of a large block party in the neighborhood. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2022.
Local black farmer dies pending marijuana license worth millions By Andy Filmore Correspondent
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cala farmer Moton Hopkins Sr.’s lifelong struggle for a fair shake from the government is continuing, even after his death. Hopkins, who died April 11, 2022 at age 84, was among a dozen Black farmers seeking a state Medical Marijuana Treatment Center license set aside as part of a settlement in a class action suit from the 1990s that claimed the U.S. Department of Agriculture systematically discriminated against them when they applied for loans. Hopkins’ heirs now are locked in a new fight on his behalf, this time with the Florida Department of Health, which is overseeing the granting of the licenses. The family hopes to honor their patriarch’s legacy by securing a license in what Forbes.com has called a $1 billion industry in Florida. A license can reportedly fetch upward of $50 million. The DOH initially scored the application by Hopkins and his company, Hatchett Creek Farms LLC, as the best
choice for the lucrative license. But in September, months after Hopkins died and while his application was still being processed, the DOH stated that Hopkins’ application was tied to him personally and his legal interest in it died when he did. The family’s attorney, Tom Sosnowski of the law firm Boies, Schiller, Flexner LLP, insists that nowhere in the state rules is this determination spelled out, adding that the DOH has dragged its feet for years in granting the license. Had the agency moved in a timely manner, he said, Hopkins might have been alive when the license was granted. The DOH intends to grant the license to someone else. A News Service of Florida article identified Terry Donnell Gwinn and Gwinn Brothers Medicinals of Suwanee County as the DOH’s choices. The article notes 11 other applicants sought the license and all are challenging the DOH’s decision. The DOH and USDA communications offices have not responded to requests for comment from the Gazette. Sosnowski, who is representing the Hopkins
Algene Burton-Hopkins, 83, the widow of Moton Hopkins Sr. with some of the items from her late husband’s funeral at her sister’s home on Southeast 31st Street in Ocala on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2022.
estate and Hatchett Creek Farms, told the Gazette there are ample grounds for appealing the DOH decision. Foremost among them is that the Hopkins family suffered from the USDA discriminatory practices cited in the case from 1999 to 2008, and “the class action settlement was intended to benefit class action members
and their heirs.”
A lifetime of hard work
Hopkins, a native of Kendrick in Marion County, had only an eighth-grade education but his hard work for decades built a farming operation on 500 acres near County Road 484 See Fight, page A3
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