Winter Park reworks plan for development
Cost soars as city seeks to build up Orange Avenue corridor
Nearly 10 months after Winter Park scrapped a controversial zoning ordinance, the cost of developing its replacement is more than double what the city spent to create the original plan aimed at spurring development within the Orange Avenue corridor.
The plan, known as the Orange Avenue Overlay District, was rescinded in March, three weeks after it was approved and at the first meeting of two new commissioners. Two major property owners that would have gained entitlements from the district sued the city and are asking an Orange County judge to declare the repeal ordinance void.
Since then, the city has paid $347,733 for engineering, design and planning consultants plus legal expenses — including about $63,000 to fight the lawsuit — compared to $155,945 spent during the original multi-year process, according to public records.
At stake is 75 acres from near Fairbanks Avenue to Westchester Avenue on Orange Avenue, an area often congested with commuting drivers from nearby Orlando.
Through the overlay district, the city wants to make the area easier to walk around, set new architectural standards and increase green space.
Critics of the original plan said it didn’t address drainage issues or limited parking. They also worried that tall buildings would ruin the “charm and scale” of Winter Park.
Commissioner Sheila DeCiccio, who led its repeal at her inaugural meeting and was on the overlay’s advisory committee before taking office, said the additional costs are necessary because the city didn’t initially have enough information from previous studies to gauge the impact of increased building heights and density on traffic in the area.
The redo process “has taken an agonizing long time,” she said, because the early days of the pandemic drastically reduced the regular flow of traffic, making it
difficult to complete a study.
“That’s going to help us [know], if we do all of these fixes, this is how much more-intense development the road could take,” she said. “We have this opportunity to make a really great spot. We can take care of these problems, but everything costs money to do.”
But Mayor Steve Leary, the lone vote against revoking and replacing the original zoning plan, has been critical of the new consultant fees piling up and hasn’t attended any recent workshops with other commissioners.
Leary argues the city already had an “open, transparent, professional-led process,” which was done “for a reasonable cost.” It included an advisory committee, 19 public meetings, two work sessions by the planning and zoning board, 12 work sessions by city commissioners
and “hundreds of hours” for individual meetings with city staff requested by anyone who wanted to provide input.
“It’s embarrassing,” Leary said. “We are spending additional taxpayer dollars on consultants who told us months ago that, if they did more work, it was just going to tell us what we already knew, what they already told us.”
The city has spent about $500,000 so far for both versions — not including staff hours, which city spokeswoman Clarissa Howard said aren’t tracked for each project. The city’s planning director, Bronce Stephenson, wasn’t available for an interview to discuss the amount of staff work involved in both processes. New expenses include around $93,000 for a study with multiple traffic models based on various possible scenarios from future development, nearly $20,000 for a financial analysis of the district, and $113,000 for an architectural
firm to explore options for the city-owned 4 acres of land known as Progress Point.
A combined $144,000 has been budgeted for a study and design to realign Palmetto Road and improve traffic flow at the five-points intersection of Orange and Minnesota avenues and Denning Drive.
It’s unknown what the final cost of a replacement plan will be or when it will be voted on. Two commissioner workshops are set for this month, community feedback is needed and public hearings must be scheduled.
An Orange County judge is reviewing the city’s request to dismiss the lawsuit. At Wednesday’s commission meeting, Vice Mayor Carolyn Cooper asked city attorney Kurt Ardaman if the adoption of a new overlay plan would help the city’s chances in court.
“The sooner the re-adoption occurs, the better off we will be,” Ardaman said.