Orlando council OKs plan for homes atop bombing range

A plan to build more than 4,000 homes and apartments atop a World War II-era bombing range near Lake Nona won unanimous approval from the Orlando City Council on Monday, despite the objections of some nearby residents.

“I am comfortable that we’re in the right place today, [while] recognizing that work needs to be done,” said Commissioner Jim Gray, whose district includes the 1,500-acre tract where Vista Park would be built.

The development would see as many as 4,300 homes and apartments, plus about

20,000 square feet each of office and commercial space, built on land once occupied by the Pinecastle Jeep Range.

During the Second World War, soldiers practiced firing machine guns, launching rockets, strafing convoys and dropping bombs there, and many explosives are thought to still be buried there.

The land’s South Florida owner, John Brunetti, has pledged a private cleanup will make the prop- erty safe.

But some residents remain concerned and worry about the impact thousands of new residents will have on local roads and schools.

“It is a very pretty neighborhood, and one that presents a lifestyle that we want to preserve,” said Frank Sebestyen, a neighbor who appealed a planning board’s approval of the project.

The project’s developers have pledged to partner with the city for $60 million in road improvements for the area.

Dean Grandin, Orlando’s chief planner, said that work “will provide the very relief that residents in this area are demanding.”

Many residents lived through a previous scare in 2007, when bombs were found at Odyssey Middle School — forcing a cleanup conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Resident John Daly said any new cleanup should again be done by the government, not Brunetti’s team. “The Army Corps of Engineers needs to be involved with this project, and they’re not,” he said.

Other concerns raised by resi- dents focus on local roads, schools and drainage, all of which critics say are already all but overwhelmed. An attorney for the developer, Miranda Fitzgerald, acknowledged that issues remain.

“None of that is settled today, but it will be. … It really is a work in progress,” Fitzgerald said.

School Board Chairman Bill Sublette recently said building new schools on the Pinecastle range is a “complete nonstarter.”

The project has the support of city planners and was approved 7-2 by the Municipal Planning Board.

The council’s decision Monday is not the final word on the project. Another appeal of the planning board’s vote is expected to be decided by a hearing officer in the coming months, before the City Council weighs in again.

Vista Park and its sister development, Starwood, would bring 10,000 new homes to the burgeoning Lake Nona area, which is expected to be the epicenter of Orlando’s growth in coming decades, Grandin told commissioners.