LAKELAND - For now, the Heartland Parkway, a proposed 110-mile toll highway roughly linking Lakeland and Fort Myers, looks a little like a wide-bodied snake drawn on a map. Its possible routes cut a wide, indefinite swath through some of Florida's most rural land.

What it might mean in reality for the giant cattle ranches, orange groves and isolated small towns west of Lake Okeechobee depends on who's looking at it.

Some environmentalists and planners see a multibillion-dollar boondoggle, a classic "road to nowhere" sprawl creator and habitat killer that should not be built.

The state Department of Transportation sees a needed north-south traffic corridor to ease pressure in "high-growth" Polk County and on Interstate 75, U.S. 17 and U.S. 27. It also sees a new hurricane evacuation route. The road is one of the highways envisioned in the Florida Transportation Commission's New Corridors study. State officials say it is more likely to happen sooner than a proposed east-west corridor that could crisscross it.

And a group of major area landowners represented by longtime state civic and political leader Rick Dantzler sees the future of the seven-county Heartland region, roughly defined as southern Polk, Highlands, Hardee, Glades, DeSoto, Hendry and Okeechobee counties.

Dantzler's group has dubbed itself the Heartland Economic Agricultural Rural Task Force, or HEART. Its chairman is Mark Morton, senior vice president of land investment for Lykes Bros. The famous Florida agricultural company owns 337,000 acres in Glades and Highlands, much of which lies in the path of the road, as it is broadly proposed.

Both men insist that HEART's advocacy for the highway is about more than converting agricultural land into right-of-way payments and lucrative development potential. They see an economic and quality-of-life corridor, with accompanying rail, telecommunications, utilities and wildlife corridors built in, along with tight growth rules - "a whole host of public benefits," as Dantzler puts it.

Beyond vision, Dantzler says his group brings something practical: "an awful lot of land owned by relatively few people." That probably would mean some form of right-of-way donation and greater likelihood of large-scale, multicounty planning agreements.

HEART has sought out environmental and planning groups in the hope of building broad support for the corridor idea. Some, such as the Florida Wildlife Federation, like what they hear from Dantzler and are willing to withhold judgment until more details emerge.

"HEART came together around the idea of a road," Dantzler said. "But now we see it as a chance to organize the growth that's coming. It's the planning of an entire region all at once."

What's Actually Happening?

Randy Fox is in charge of planning for Florida's Turnpike system.

His office is wrapping up a study of traffic potential for the parkway. The numbers are not final, but Fox said the study will show that potential traffic justifies construction of the road, most immediately for its northernmost portion in Polk County.

If approved, Fox said, construction of the Heartland Parkway would begin in Polk and move south as land and money become available. There's no real time estimate, though advocates have tended to talk about a 20-year plan for the road.

The Polk portion would happen sooner. It would create a large half-circle loop around the population centers of Lakeland and Winter Haven, and include a link to Interstate 4. The proposed loop - about 45 miles - also would tie into the CSX Transportation freight distribution center Winter Haven hopes to bring to a complex on its southeastern fringes, providing a route for the center's heavy projected truck traffic.

In a December letter urging state support for the road, Winter Haven City Manager David Greene wrote, "Many of the approximate one thousand semi-trucks that will enter and leave [the CSX complex] daily will be able to utilize the Parkway."

He added, "Growth is occurring and unless we expedite the process, the suggested corridor may close due to development."

Dantzler echoes that sentiment, suggesting that his group needs a green light in the next year to 18 months to maintain its cohesiveness.

If the financing and politics lined up perfectly, the Polk loop portion of Heartland Parkway could exist within 10 years, Fox said.

The remainder of the route would roll south, roughly straddling the long border separating Highlands, Glades and Hendry counties on the east and Hardee, DeSoto, Charlotte and Lee counties on the west. It would end at State Road 82, just east of Fort Myers.

It Will Take Billions

The money involved is enormous.

The central Polk section, the highway's most urban stretch, is likely to cost more than $1 billion, Fox said. Estimates for the entire parkway top $3 billion. As is typical for any large, new project, tolls alone will not cover that cost, Fox said.

But the proposed corridor is one of nine included in the Florida Transportation Commission's study, which aims to identify ways to ease a predicted congestion crunch driven by surges in population and freight traffic in the 20 to 30 years.

With that in mind, Fox expects the state to pay for a preliminary design and engineering study, which would better hone the route and costs of the parkway. No matter what the study shows, building the highway would require a patchwork funding arrangement involving tolls, governments at all levels, land contributions from property owners and other financial tools, Fox said.

HEART's planning and the state's planning appear to be proceeding on parallel tracks. Fox said he has had informal meetings with HEART but is not coordinating with the group.

Everyone seems to agree that growth pressures are increasing for the Heartland counties, as coastal living becomes increasingly expensive - both in cost of land and insurance. Dantzler says some parcels in the area are selling at square-foot prices that are too high to sustain agricultural uses.

And Morton, HEART's chairman, said he fears for the fate of the small towns along U.S. 27 if that road and others don't get relief from freight traffic, which the state says is expected to double statewide by 2020.

U.S. 27 is one of the few viable north-south freight routes not on either coast. "Everything ends up on 27, and it disrupts our small communities," Morton said. "Lake Placid could end up with an eight-lane, divided highway."

A New Kind Of Road?

HEART has existed for about a year as a nonprofit organization.

Dantzler, a former state lawmaker, is its public face and lawyer. It also has retained engineering consultants.

They all have been meeting with environmental and planning organizations. Dantzler said HEART is preparing to release two documents about the Heartland corridor proposal. The first is a list of principles "that will guide the land-use planning of those who participate" in whatever arrangement HEART might make with the state. Those principles could be released in the next few weeks, Dantzler said.

The second is a more detailed vision of the corridor, which HEART will debate and decide upon during a meeting this month, Dantzler said.

Without concrete plans, corridor advocates are left to talk about the project in attractive but general terms.

"We want this to be a prototype, the most environmentally conscious road in the history of the nation," Dantzler said.

Some of the features he touts include:

•An "enormous" amount of undeveloped space surrounding the corridor.

•Extensive wildlife corridors and other protective measures, such as fences to prevent roadkill, to protect such species as the Florida panther and black bear.

•Limited access and exit points to the highway.

•Rail, utility and other corridors.

•Growth rules that would mandate clustering development near the road and broad protection of the rural countryside beyond.

•Construction that seeks to preserve wetlands.

The key element, Dantzler said, will be a legal framework that locks in any commitments by local governments and landowners.

If that is achieved, the Heartland Parkway could become a mechanism for bringing growth to the Heartland region on its own terms and schedule, reversing a long Florida pattern.

"In the past, we've grown and then tried to thread the transportation corridors through existing growth," Dantzler said.

Curiosity And Skepticism

That all sounds good to Manley K. Fuller III, president of the Florida Wildlife Federation. Fuller has met with Dantzler and representatives of HEART and offered them suggestions.

"We don't like new highways," Fuller said. "They tend to be giant growth stimulators. But whether we like it or not, there's going to be more highways built.

"We'd like to see conservation planning totally connected to transportation planning," Fuller said, and Dantzler's vision has the potential to do that. Fuller said he is willing to wait on what emerges from the state and HEART documents before recommending a position on the corridor to his board of directors.

Not everyone is as forbearing.

John Ryan, a Sierra Club activist and a member of the Polk County Planning Commission, calls the parkway "a completely unneeded road to nowhere built solely for economic development." He adds, "There's no way in hell that road can be justified on trip rates."

Ryan does agree the concept Dantzler is peddling is better than nothing - if the road can't be stopped. But he also is skeptical that such a plan could be forged and enforced over time.

"Rick's a nice guy with good intentions, but based on experience, we don't see that scenario being played out the way he hopes it will," Ryan said.

Dantzler said he understands that sentiment, acknowledging he often "goes to war with myself" over the idea of a road. But he hopes critics will "hold their powder" until a more specific plan is revealed.

Reporter Billy Townsend can be reached at wtownsend@tampatrib.com or (863) 284-1409.