Westsiders Win Fight for Low-Density
Developer Abandons High-Density Plan — Offers Single Family Homes Instead
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A Winter Park icon, the Mt. Vernon Inn, will close its doors forever on November 1. Long beloved by locals as a place to gather in the morning for breakfast or in the evening for drinks, the Red Fox Lounge will be replaced by three upscale restaurants boasting a combined total of 590 seats. Rather than hotel rooms, the new establishment, to be known as The Luxe, is slated to have 53 apartment units with rents of $3,000 a month, according to the developer, Unicorp National Developments president Chuck Whittall. At a projected 223,940 square feet, the Luxe will be more than double the size of the Mt. Vernon and will require Unicorp to request a sort of hybrid zoning – a blend of the existing commercial C-3 zoning and a “planned development” category known as PD-1.  Unicorp Needs Upzoning to Build The Luxe Unicorp’s Chuck Whittall, who will be developing The Luxe if his deal to purchase the Mt. Vernon Inn goes through in early November, is entitled to ask for this blended zoning. The Winter Park City Commission, however, is in no way obligated to grant his request.  Unicorp: 7 Parcels on 17-92 Mr. Whittall has amassed an ambitious amount of real estate along Highway 17-92. In addition to Mt. Vernon/Luxe property, Whittall has Lakeside Winter Park, home to Trader Joe’s, Gardens at Ravaudage, the Fleming’s Steak House property, the former Wazzabi property, the Cold Stone Creamery / Math building and Winter Park Terrace, the former site of Starbuck’s – a total of seven holdings. ‘T.O.D.’ Hits 17-92  The East Central Florida region includes 68 cities in six counties – Orange, Osceola, Volusia, Seminole, Brevard and Lake. 2060 Plan: ‘Stop Urban Sprawl’ Creating a model by projecting current development patterns into the year 2060, the Planning Council found “a less than desirable and consumptive outcome that promotes sprawl . . . including irreversible damage to our environment and economy.” The 2060 Plan is an attempt to avoid “development [ in ] the most critical ecosystems, [ promote ] denser growth in transit planned corridors, and [ to redevelop ] existing urban centers.” East Central Florida boasts one lone corridor, comprised of three parallel arteries – 17-92, a portion of I-4 and SunRail. According to the 2060 Plan, “Aligning transportation and land use is essential to the success of corridors. The 17-92 corridor will be a transit oriented development that “feeds” SunRail . . . .”
“Transit Doesn’t Work Without Density.”  Fred Milch, Transportation Planning Manager at the Central Florida Regional Planning Council, told the Voice, “Transit doesn’t work without density.” Orlando Area Apt. Construction Jumps 56% Chuck Whittall is not the only developer who has jumped on this bandwagon. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the current pipeline of apartment construction activity in the Orlando metro area is the highest in the state. It has gone from 3,640 starts in the second quarter of 2013 to 5,685 in the second quarter of 2014. Listed below are developments — planned, under construction, or completed — along the Maitland-Winter Park-Orlando portion of the 17-92 corridor. Together, they represent 2,253 apartments, 63 townhomes and an estimated 1.4 million square feet of commercial and retail space – all worth in excess of $500 Million. Florida Hospital Promotes TOD Winter Park Mayor Kenneth Bradley’s employer, Florida Hospital, has been at the forefront of TOD promoters. In a letter dated May 12, 2011, Florida Hospital President and CEO Lars Houmann wrote to Governor Rick Scott, “Florida Hospital will work cooperatively with businesses and municipalities all along SunRail to enhance ridership and development.” Mayor Bradley announced today in the Winter Park Observer that he would not seek another term as mayor. His current term expires in March 2015. Noting the sacrifices involved in holding public office, Bradley said, “I’ve done what I feel like I came to do.”
No Gain Without Pain  In Winter Park’s immediate future, 17-92 congestion and declining SunRail ridership are on a head-on collision course with the looming six and one-half-year reconstruction of I-4. According to one developer, “It’s going to be painful.” SunRail Ridership Plummets If the objective of TOD was to get us out of our cars and onto a train before I-4 construction began, that effort has failed. According to the Orlando Sentinel, SunRail ridership has steadily declined. For example, Florida Hospital’s Health Village is a huge mixed-use complex that exactly fits the “Florida 2060” model. It has approximately 17,000 employees, their own rail stop which was financed by the hospital, and a subsidy for employees who ride the train to work. In August 2014, the Florida Hospital stop had an average of 181 SunRail riders per day.
No Coordination Among Corridor Cities Asked if anyone was addressing the cumulative impact on the infrastructure along the corridor, Central Planning Council Executive Director Hugh Harling confirmed that all this new development falls within the jurisdiction of the local municipalities. He said, “Each city operates independently.” And officials in Maitland  They confirmed that there is no regional person or organization responsible for regional coordination or oversight. Regional Vision vs. Local Vision Clearly, there is a vision plan already on the books – and has been since 2010. TOD is barreling down the tracks straight at Winter Park, and it seems to be arriving way ahead of schedule. It may be very difficult for the City of Winter Park to embark on a local visioning process without being overtaken by the regional juggernaut. |
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By: Anne Mooney
Anne Mooney has assumed the editorship of the Winter Park Voice from founding editor Tom Childers.
Mooney got her start in New York as a freelance line editor for book publishers, among them Simon & Schuster and the Clarkson Potter division of Crown Books. From New York, she and her husband and their year-old toddler moved to Washington, D.C., where the two ran a newswire service for Harper’s magazine. “We called it Network News,” said Mooney, “because it was a network of the Harper’s writers, whose work we edited into newspaper style and format and sold to papers in the top U.S. and Canadian markets. We were sort of like a tiny UPI.”
The newswire ceased operation with the death of Mooney’s first husband, but Mooney continued to write and edit, doing freelance work for Williams Sonoma cookbooks and for local publications in D.C.
In 2005, Mooney moved to Winter Park, where she worked as a personal chef and wrote a regular food column for a south Florida magazine. She took an active interest in Winter Park politics and was there when the Winter Park Voice was founded. She wrote occasional pieces for the Voice, including the Childers bio that this piece replaces.
The Winter Park Voice is one of a large number of “hyper-local” publications that have sprung up across the U.S. in response to the decline of the major daily newspapers and the resulting deficit of local news coverage. The Voice’sbeat is Winter Park City Hall, and its purpose is to help the residents of our city better understand the political forces that shape our daily lives.
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