Pastures of faith sowed seeds of Viera's growth

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Andrew Duda had faith.
He had faith in America when he immigrated here in 1909 from his native Slovakia.
He had faith in the 1920s that he could turn 40 acres of Central Florida muckland that he had bought for $800 into profitable farmland.
In the 1940s, his sons had faith that 43,000 acres of scrubland in Brevard County they had just purchased could be turned into a thriving cattle ranch.
In the late 1980s, his descendants had faith that they could transform that same ranchland into a thriving new community of homes and businesses.
They decided to name that community "Viera," the Slovak word for faith.
It was a drumbeat of faith that kept them going — and growing — in more ways than one, for over a century in Central Florida.
Brevard's boom town
In the early 1990s, billboards at the Wickham Road exit of Interstate 95 read "Welcome to Viera: A New Town."
But all anybody likely would have seen at the time were brand-new roads leading through vast acres of cow pastures. If one squinted hard, they might have noticed the new government center and baseball stadium far off in the distance.
Now, nearly 40,000 people call Viera home. Projections are that twice as many will by 2045.
The development is one of the core reasons a recent national study ranked Brevard County's economy as one of the fastest-growing in the country for midsized communities and is projected to continue to rank high in the future. Viera is projected to almost double to a population of about 77,400 by 2045. The study by University of North Carolina and Fifth Third Bank found that the Space Coast had the highest growth rate among 100 midsized communities over the past five years, as measured by gross domestic project — the value of an area's goods and services.
Brevard also had the second-highest growth rate over the past decade. For the coming year, the study ranks the county's projected growth at No. 10 in the nation among 100 midsized areas.
"It's a special place," said Eva Rey, senior vice president for community management and communications at The Viera Co. "And I think people feel that, and it drives them there."
From veggies to Viera
The Dudas' dream began when Andrew Duda emigrated from Slovakia in 1909. He was among others fleeing economic plight and religious suppression in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Once discharged from the Czech Army, Andrew settled with friends and relatives in Cleveland. He worked as a carpenter to save for his dream of buying land in Florida and moving his family from Velečice, Czechoslovakia.
His faith kept him going. In 1912, Andrew and 11 other Czech immigrants journeyed to a 2,200-acre site near Oviedo in Seminole County. They joined others who founded the community of Slavia, just northwest of Brevard.
Andrew borrowed to buy 40 acres of rich muckland, at $20 an acre.
Then, in the summer of 1912, his dream came true. He was carrying buckets across a sandy road when his wife, Katarina, and their children arrived on wagon at their homestead, a few miles from today's Duda corporate headquarters.
The wagon's driver also had a telegram for Duda that the family had sent to announce they were coming to America. They had yet to learn English.
In Slavia at the time, there were a half-dozen shacks for sawmill workers and a church. The house the Dudas moved into had a dirt floor.
Most of the Duda family still lives in the area.
A crunchy no-frills vegetable helped build the Dudas' empire in Central Florida. Celery was among the first crops the Dudas tried in Seminole County. In Brevard, the Dudas would raise mostly cattle and grew sod that ultimately would turf one of Florida's fastest-growing areas.
Their first celery crop in Slavia went well, but three bad years followed. They went bust in 1916, so they went back to Cleveland. Andrew worked in a furniture factory, made payments on his Slavia property and set his family up on a small farm. He kept the faith. By 1926, the Dudas had saved $2,000 and, by 1928, returned to Florida.
Within a few years, they borrowed enough to buy a few hundred acres in Zellwood and Belle Glade, Florida. They'd expand their holdings in the 1930s, when Andrew bought land the state had foreclosed on. Further expansions in the 1940s and 1950s included the more-than-42,000-acre Duda Ranch in Brevard, and citrus and vegetable farms in Belle Glade.
Articles in 1951 in the Cocoa Tribune noted some had warned Andrew Duda that the land was "too wet" to raise cattle.
"But Mr. Duda reasoned otherwise," the article continued. "He figured that to grow cattle successfully you must have grass and to have grass you must have water." That, he had plenty of. He would drain it to his will.
What's in a name?
As Brevard grew in the 1980s, the Dudas envisioned a master-planned community on their ranch.
In 1989, they announced their master plan for Viera and broke ground for the Brevard County Educational Services Facility on land donated by The Viera Co. Dudas would donate additional lands for several other Brevard government buildings.
The name the family first considered for the new community was Duran, short for Duda Ranch.
But instead they chose Viera.
"What we finally decided on was not to name our project after our founder or a family name, but to name it after what we believe in," Joseph Duda, executive vice president for real estate at the time, told FLORIDA TODAY in 1989. "When my grandfather left Czechoslovakia, he came to this country, and one thing he had was faith. That is about all he had. He had a strong faith in the Lord and strong faith in this country, America."
FLORIDA TODAY readers also had voted 394-56 against the Duran name in a call-in poll earlier that year.
Years later, Duran would become a golf-course community within Viera, which would take steps to become certified by Audubon International by limiting chemicals and enacting environmentally friendly management practices.
A Sept. 24, 1989, story showcased Six Mile Creek, the first residents of Brevard's "city of the future" along 200 acres.
Now, about 38,700 people live in Viera, with about 77,400 expected by 2045.
There are challenges. Traffic is getting worse. Businesses like that, but those who live there, not so much.
The new developments weren't without oppositions, though.
Throughout much of the 20th century, Central Florida farmers like the Dudas drained the St. Johns floodplains to farm and stake claims on more land. Then, it was considered progress, but long-term environmental consequences were poorly understood.
The Clean Water Act and other environmental laws in the 1970s would temper the old ditch-drain-fill ways of creating more uplands from wetlands.
The late Leroy Wright and other activists with the nonprofit SAVE the St. Johns River Inc. fought for 15 years to have one dike removed that the Duda family had created just east of Lake Winder and west of Interstate 95 to drain land for farming.
In the 1990s, Duda had hoped to develop parts of a 14-mile stretch of riverfront along the St. Johns, which included the Moccasin Island area. Early plans envisioned 200,000 people in Viera, with condos along the shoreline of Lake Winder.
Wright and others fought for a state survey to determine what's called an "ordinary high water mark." That's the highest mark the water forms along the shoreline during the wet season, averaged over 20 years.
With Wright's urging, the Brevard County Commission in 1994 tried to require the ordinary high water mark survey before Duda could build any closer to the river than Viera's first phase of development. But the survey didn't happen. It might have lowered the land's per-acre worth, Wright suspected, if it resulted in more land being called wetlands.
In 1999, Duda would sell 14,137 acres, including the Moccasin Island area, to the St. Johns River Water Management District for $24.8 million for conservation and recreation.
Current plans are much more environmentally friendly than what was possible when Viera was first envisioned in the 1980s.
After negotiations with county and environmental officials, the overall development plan evolved to include a 5,200-acre wilderness park. It preserved large wetlands and made up for species impacted by the surrounding development, as well as to continue ongoing farming operations.
It's the open spaces — even the man-made ones — that lure many families here. The parks add to all the reasons Worawat Srimaart moved to new apartments southwest of Borrows West three years ago. This recent day, he brought his 2-year-old son, Davin, to Borrows West Park.
'I love it here," Srimaart said. "It's the best place to relax."
The Viera 'bubble'
Rey, The Viera Co.'s senior vice president, sees a bubble in Brevard, but not the bubble we typically imagine. It's more a defense mechanism against more extreme market swings, driven by a strong presence of the defense, space and tourism industries.
"There's almost like a dome over Brevard," Rey said. "The Space Coast has a great economic bubble here. I think we're a lot more insulated than a lot of other communities."
Viera's median household income is 30% higher than the rest of Florida, $103,016, compared with $76,993 in all of Brevard and $71,711 in all of Florida, according to The Viera Co.'s marketing research.
Among Viera's more than 13,200 employees, public employment is its largest employment sector, at 21.7%, with the prominence of government, educational and judicial facilities in the community.
Almost one in four working-age adults in Viera has a master's degree or higher.
"I think what really stands out is the level of education," Rey said. "You have a lot of white-collar here in Viera."
While other analysts show people leaving Florida and a glut of homes on the market, The Viera Co.'s research shows many still moving here from places associated with aerospace, such as Texas, Colorado and California
The Dudas always knew the area would take off. They kept the faith.
Andrew always did.
Waymer covers the environment. Contact him at 321-261-5903 or at [e-mail]. Dave Berman and Tim Shortt contributed to this story.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Dudas' faith turns humble pastures into the Space Coast
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