Concerns delay Vista Park plans

Developers planning to build thousands of homes atop a World War II-era bombing range in southeast Orlando have delayed their plans after area residents last week flooded a public meeting to express concerns.

The project, known as Vista Park, was set for consideration by the city’s Municipal Planning Board on Nov. 17, but developers asked for a deferral. The plan now won’t go before the board at least until January.

Jay Thompson, a Palm Beach Gardens developer involved with the project, said the decision to delay stemmed from larger-than-expected turnout at a recent meeting the development team hosted.

The project’s backers had rented a pair of meeting spaces at the Holiday Inn on T.G. Lee Boulevard for a presentation and Q&A on Nov. 12. But so many people attended that it became a standing-room-only affair.

“Clearly, there was a lot of emotion — negative emotion — in the room, and it was a full house,” Thompson said.

Instead of moving full steam ahead, the project’s developers now hope to arrange a meeting next month with representatives of the concerned residents in the hope of addressing their worries about Vista Park.

The residents have formed an ad-hoc committee, according to Ron Cumello, one of those to whom Thompson’s group reached out. Cumello estimated 275 people attended the Nov. 12 meeting.

Cum el low as homeowners association president for the nearby Vista Lakes neighborhood in 2007, when the discovery of buried munitions on the same range sparked a scare that tanked property values.

“I guess I would say I’m surprised that they came back to the community and said that they wanted to open a dialogue,” Cumello said. But he added that he’s “not sure where this is going to go.”

The concerns of residents, he said, are “kind of across-theboard.”

The Vista Park land has long been owned by John Brunetti, who, unable to reach terms with the Army Corps of Engineers to clean the site, recently announced he would hire a private company to scour for bombs.

Everything from tank-busting rockets to fragmentation bombs and rifle-fired grenades is thought to lurk beneath the 1,500-acre tract, which was once occupied by the U.S. Army’s Pinecastle Jeep Range.

At the recent meeting, residents’ concerns largely fit into two categories:

Some were worried about the cleanup: Will the site ever be truly safe? Will the work harm the environment? Will property values go down again? And will there be months of noisy explosions?

In short, the developers say: yes, no, no and — per one Brunetti attorney — no louder than a distant shotgun blast.

Other residents were concerned about what Thompson called “the things that anyone’s concerned about with new growth” such as the increased traffic from new residents and strain on local schools.

Vista Park and its sister development, Starwood, could eventually bring 10,000 homes and apartments. The planning board has approved Starwood