In the early 1980s, plans by the Owens-Illinois Corporation to build "Lochloosa New Town," a city of up to 200,000 people with golf courses, marinas, hotel and restaurant complexes, a regional shopping center, a utility company and landfill, and tens of thousands of houses and apartments, threatened to transform Cross Creek and Lochloosa and Orange Lakes. After hearing of these plans at a gathering in Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' house in 1982, Cross Creek artist Kate Barnes became part of the effort to resist them. The Friends of Cross Creek formed to oppose the development and to propose ways to preserve the area's natural and cultural resources. Working with Alachua County staff and officials in the mid-1980s, they helped create the Cross Creek Special Area Study, which was adopted unanimously by the County Commission and became the basis for protections in the county comprehensive plan and a statewide model for balancing development with environmental and historical preservation. The struggle was contentious, and in 1984 other development proposals, including the "Wilderness Village of Cross Creek," were also submitted, while increased tourism after the 1983 release of the film "Cross Creek" may have fueled land speculation. In May 1988, 18 property owners sued Alachua County over the study's provisions, but Circuit Judge Chester Chance upheld the county's plan. The Friends of Cross Creek then prepared an application to the Florida Conservation and Recreation Lands program with help from University of Florida faculty and Alachua Conservation Trust, Inc., leading the St. Johns River Water Management District, in cooperation with the Georgia Pacific Corporation, to purchase 10,593 acres of lakefront property and protect another 16,610 acres of forest in the state's largest conservation easement to date. As a result of these efforts, Cross Creek retained much of its historic landscape and character, and Kate Barnes, later elected to the Alachua County Commission in 1988 and serving two terms, continued to draw and paint scenes of Cross Creek.