Skycraft site may be redeveloped into Magruder Eye Institute office

It may be time to shed a tear for the old Skycraft Surplus building in Winter Park, perhaps best known for its cartoonish facade featuring protruding red rockets and a flying saucer hovering above.

Preliminary plans to replace the old 6,000-square-foot retail store at 2245 W. Fairbanks Ave. with a new 32,000-squarefoot medical office building for the Magruder Eye Institute medical group were unanimously approved by the Winter Park’s planning and zoning commission Tuesday night.

“Unfortunately we are not going to have the Skycraft building anymore,” city planner Jeffrey Briggs told board members. “It has been quietly for sale for the last couple of years … and I can tell you being part of the city we have only gotten two kinds of phone calls: We got a client call from Wawa and the only other phone calls are about fast food.”

Fiedler’s Skycraft Parts And Surplus Inc. assembled four residential properties just north of the old retail store and the eye institute has another two under contract for a total of about 2.5 acres of land for the new medical office development.

Attorney Becky Wilson represented the applicant, Magruder Eye Institute, at the meeting.

She said the medical group plans to own and fully occupy the medical office building and will be relocating from its Mills Avenue office location.

The applicant also plans to remove all the curb cuts along Fairbanks Avenue and create access points on Orange Terrace Drive and Cambridge Boulevard, as well as a crosswalk connecting the development to an employee parking lot.

Private lacrosse fields proposed

Business owner Joe Norsworthy has embraced the challenge of helping the sport of lacrosse grow in Central Florida.

Seminole County planners will begin discussions with Norsworthy and civil engineer Torben Abbott with Resilient

Civil Design LLC this week to go over a proposed recreational lacrosse facility featuring an indoor practice area and storage center, as well as two gated playing fields located on land west of the Black Hammock Wilderness Area, near Oviedo.

“For my daughter to play at a national level we had to travel and for almost a year, and partially live in Maryland,” he said. Being around the sport for so long, also made him realize that other parents were struggling to find opportunities for casual recreational leagues, he adds.

Today, Norsworthy helps run the charity Sol Blazers Lacrosse Inc., which is dedicated to advancing the sport of girls’ lacrosse through education and outreach. Its website says, it focuses on player development for grades K-8 in the form of clinics, academies and organized game play.

The development of the facility is something Norsworthy is doing with his own funds, he said. Its development will allow the charity to have a central location to practice.

Currently a tree farm, the 8-acre site R Howard Avenue and Elm Street was purchased by a company led by Norsworthy about a year ago for $175,000, records show.

Before starting his own tourism and strategic planning consulting company in 2003, Norsworthy held a corporate job at Walt Disney World overseeing the marketing, finance and strategic development of its theme parks and resorts.

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