Critics tell Winter Park: Slow the growth
Comprehensive-plan change irks opponents
Like dandelions, yellow signs emblazoned with the crossed out word “Density” are popping up in yards across Winter Park.
The signs arrive amid a resurgence in building that has some residents fearful the city will lose its unique residential character. It’s a long-running issue in the city, which in 2007 paid millions to keep a developer from building condos atop the post office in Central Park.
After that time, building tailed off during the economic downturn. But in the past year or two, development has revved up again, stoking concerns about large-scale commercial projects encroaching into residential areas.
The latest catalyst for that concern is a proposed change to the city’s comprehensive plan, a blueprint that guides future growth.
If approved by the City Commission next month, the revised comprehensive plan
would remove size limits on what properties are eligible to be planned developments and would allow parking garages to be left out when figuring how big a building can be.
Residents have formed a political-action committee called Citizens forManaged Growth to argue against making the change, which won preliminary approval at a contentious meeting in June.
“It looks like many more things may be coming that, in my perspective, may not be in the best interest of the citizens of Winter Park,” said Marty Sullivan, a resident of the city since 1982. “Thecompplan is supposed to be a firewall and was developed with a lot of citizen input.”
Sullivan pointed to a pair of four-story buildings on Denning Drive — a seniorhousing facility and an apartment complex under construction — as examples of what his group doesn’t want to see. Those projects have upset residents in adjacent single-family neighborhoods on the city’s west side.
Jeff Briggs, the city’s planning-and-zoning manager, said removing the provisions from the comprehensive plan will not have any effect, because they’re redundant with provisions in the city’s zoning regulations.
“We had the exact same rules in the zoning code, the land- development code, and all we did was take them out of the comp plan, which is a policy document, not a rule book,” he said, likening the situation to having thesamelawinplace at the state and city levels.
But city Commissioner Carolyn Cooper, an oppobound of high- density projects in the city, said residents are understandably worried by all the recent development in the city. New businesses have sprung up all along the 17-92 corridor, with specialty grocer Trader Joe’s being the most prominent.
“We are approving these projects at such a fierce pace that the community isn’t given time to see if we can absorb what we are building,” Cooper said. “If we overbuild, it’s going to hurt everyone’s property values and quality of life.”
Briggs said the city’s development boom is a direct result of the economic renent and not any city action.
“I can’t think of any oneor two-year period where we’ve had so much commercial construction, so there’s a perception that somethingmustbe different in terms of the rules or what the city’s doing,” Briggs said.
“And it’s really just that the real- estate market is back, recovered fromthe recession. And we’re the prime address for it to bounce back the quickest.”
“There seems to be a perception that we’re bending the rules to allow these things to happen, and we’re not,” added City Manager Randy Knight. “If they own the property, they have the right to develop it under the existing codes.”
Sullivan, a retired engineer, thinks the city should get residents’ input through a visioning process on how Winter Park should grow and develop.
“It’s a long, messyprocess …,” he said. “But I think it’s a process that we need to go forwardand do, and it needs to be done with the cooperation of the city.”