Pine Hills housing project to replace shopping center
Senior housing project may anchor new town center, offer low rent
Orange County commissioners set aside $567,000 for an affordable housing project in Pine Hills that could replace an under-used shopping center and become an anchor for the struggling community’s new town center.
The $19-million project, the Hawthorne Park Apartments, is a 120-unit, rent-restricted development for seniors. Rent could be as low as $420 a month for about a dozen of the one-bedroom units, a county housing official said.
Orange County Commis- sioner Victoria Siplin, whose district includes most of Pine Hills, described the project as crucial for resuscitating the Pine Hills/ Silver Star area and turning it into a community gateway.
“If we have a new senior-living facility, we might be able to bring in the interests of investors,” she said, citing neighborhood needs for a grocery store and restaurants. “I think this is the catalyst to bring those interests to the community.”
The county pledge was required to make the project eligible for funding from a state program designed to create affordable housing for seniors or families with low or moderate incomes.
As envisioned by community leaders, the four-story senior
complex would be a key part of Pine Hills’ transformation, said Michelle Owens, executive director of the Pine Hills Neighborhood Improvement District.
The district was created in December 2011 to focus on public safety and neighborhood revitalization in Pine Hills, a working-class community of more than 60,000 residents west of Orlando in unincorporated Orange County.
“It’s really going to feel quite different here in two years as all of these projects come to fruition,” Owens said. “We’re building momentum and synergy.”
She listed a handful of improvement projects that are helping to remake Pine Hills’ image from blight to hope.
In 2011, a rebuilt Evans High School opened. In 2014, a high-profile corner convenience story — Our ‘C’ Store — was rebuilt. Last year, Orange County opened the first section of Pine Hills’ first-ever bicycle-pedestrian trail with two more to come.
In the works is a Lynx bus transfer station, scheduled to open on Belco Drive in 2020.
All those projects are within walking distance of the Silver Pines Shopping Center, where Altamonte Springs-based Wendover Housing Partners wants to build Hawthorne Park Apartments.
In 2017, the company opened Brixton Landing, an 80-unit property in Apopka for income-restricted people 55 and older. Pricing for two-bedroom units start at $767, according to the property’s website.
But Hawthorne Park “is more than an affordablehousing project,” said Mitchell Glasser, community-development manager for Orange County. “It’s adaptive re-use of wasted retail space...that’s never coming back as a big-box store.”
The shopping center, anchored by a furniture liquidation outlet, has had trouble attracting and keeping tenants in its large spaces.
It has no national brands but three storefront Christian churches and enough parking for a WalMart superstore..
Owens calls the oftenempty 6-acre site a “no man’s land that attracts trouble.”
“It has a lot of vacancies, limited access and it’s been hard for the owner — in this day and age when we all seem to shop online for everything — to lure in the type of retailer that needs that size of square-footage,” she said. “A senior housing development is a higher use for the land, a better use for the land and something the community can really wrap their arms around. For us, it’s the perfect place for what we want to build: a mixed-use, mixed-income town center.”
At Tuesday’s Orange County Commission meeting, a group of Pine Hills seniors wearing yellow shirts showed up to lend support to the project.
The project offers hope for older residents struggling to pay bills, said Sheila Belle, president of Pine Hills Seniors, a nonprofit group that offers wellness programs, recreational activities and volunteering opportunities for active elders.
“Some seniors are trying to live on just Social Security, which is almost impossible,” she said.
“Some face difficult choices every month. Do I cut out medication or do I cut back on food to pay the rent? What do I do? Where do I go?” Belle said. “This will help some stay in the neighborhood, and stay close to the relationships important to them — a church, a senior center, friends.”