The news Tuesday that yet another drawn-out development plan might be on the skids came as little surprise.

What was interesting in the case of the Adams Ranch Rural Land Stewardship/Cloud Grove project was the ailing real estate market had less to do with the plan's demise than Tallahassee politics.

Officially, Cloud Grove — a former citrus grove in unincorporated northwestern St. Lucie County — is "on hold." Yet prospects for its resuscitation anytime soon look pretty dim.

Briefly, the idea was two-fold. First, give longtime cattle breeders the Adams family a financial mechanism to ensure the future viability of their ranch while saving pristine land and without spending any public money to do so. Secondly, transfer the development rights you could have used on the ranch to Cloud Grove, while guaranteeing the Adams land could never be developed.

It all sounded great, yet the further one went into the Cloud Grove end of the equation, the murkier things became.

The Rural Land Stewardship program originated in Collier County. In exchange for preserving endangered Florida panther habitat, the developer of Ave Maria University was allowed to build a new town in the middle of nowhere. Can you say win-win, students?

The concept was modified here to allow a town with potentially more than 30,000 people in an area with substandard roads, no schools or other amenities, like jobs.

After interminable public hearings, the math kept getting fuzzier. The development team kept referring to a "matrix" that had something to do with environmental land quality but which looked more like voodoo to me. It sure smelled like a land grab cloaked in enviro-sheep's clothing.

Apparently, the Florida Department of Community Affairs felt the same way, which may explain this week's shelving. I believe the decision has less to do with a moribund housing market, and more to do with serious trouble ahead in gaining the blessing of state planners.

I've said it before: The PR on this project was brilliant. Ally yourselves to one of the most respected agricultural families in the county, folks who've practiced impeccable ecology since the 1930s.

Yet, if you take away the "good" side of the equation — the Adams family — you are left with a glorified subdivision in the middle of nowhere that wouldn't have a hope in hell of being approved.

The DCA's new secretary, Thomas Pelham, has made no secret of his reservations about the whole Rural Lands Stewardship program. The DCA raised red flags at Cloud Grove about the 500 percent increase in housing density the old comprehensive plan envisaged, especially when there's ample land inside the urban services boundary to the east.

Cloud Grove, no matter what its final form (New Urbanism, clustering — you name it, the developers offered helpfully), would have encouraged creeping urban sprawl all around itself. It wouldn't have been big enough to offer any meaningful jobs either, the DCA decided. Another mini Port St. Lucie out there is just what we need.

I feel bad for the Adamses in all this. They've done nothing wrong; their sole concern all along is to preserve their land and their family's way of life.

It all comes down to a class act hitching its wagon to the wrong team. May they roll ahead with much better mules in the future.

Associate Editor Anthony Westbury may be reached at (772) 409-1320 or anthony.westbury@scripps.com.