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Full List Of Companies Behind Heartland Parkway

Posted Mar 15, 2007 by Billy Townsend

Updated Mar 15, 2007 at 06:09 PM

Rick Dantzler, former state senator-turned-front man for backers of the proposed Heartland Parkway toll road, stopped by the Tribune’s editorial board Thursday, and everyone involved was nice enough to allow me to sit in.

The discussion didn’t include many new revelations about the highway, which would stretch 152 miles from branches in northeast Polk and south Lakeland all the way south to the outskirts of Fort Myers. It’s projected to cost more than $7 billion.

But Dantzler did release a full list of the companies that founded the Heartland Economic Agricultural Rural Task Force, known by the acronym HEART. The companies – mostly agriculture and phosphate producers—own a collective 1 million acres of land in the Heartland region of Florida.

We’ve already reported on several of these, including Atlantic Blue Group and Alico, which are affiliated with state Sen. J.D. Alexander. But here’s the full list, as presented by Dantzler:

—Mosaic
—Duda and Sons
—Bonita Bay
—Lykes/Lykes Bros.
—Alico
—Atlantic Blue Group
—Latt Maxcy
—Highlands Cassidy
—Collier

Also, HEART now has a Web site for those of you who are interested in this project. www.heartlandtaskforce.com