Winter Park will likely ditch plans to make Park Avenue a one-way street

by Beth Kassab | Aug 1, 2024 | City Commission, News

Winter Park will likely ditch plans to make Park Avenue a one-way street

Closing two-way traffic would add more parking. But more spots might not be necessary.

Aug. 1, 2024

By Zoey Thomas

Winter Park city staff recommended scratching an idea to turn Park Avenue into a one-way street to increase parking options after a study revealed the area already has a surplus of spaces.

The change would add 41 parking spaces, converting one side of the street from parallel to diagonal spots. 

But parking supply along Park Avenue already exceeds demand by 48 spaces on a typical weekday and 37 on a typical Saturday or Sunday, according to a report from engineering firm Kimley-Horn.

The firm charged the city about $35,000 to update its previous study, conducted in 2013, on downtown parking inventory.

“The one million dollar question … is there a parking problem?” said Hongmyung Lim, the Winter Park Public Works & Transportation engineer who presented the study to commissioners at a July workshop. “Generally, our statement would be no, but it really depends on the perspective.”

Parallel parking spots along Park Avenue can be hard to find during peak hours. (Photo: Zoey Thomas)

Finding a spot becomes more problematic during December, Lim said. During that “peak season” in downtown Winter Park, demand outnumbers available spaces by about 135 spots.

But he emphasized there is never a deficit in parking throughout the total downtown area, which stretches west to Denning Drive, south to Fairbanks, east to Interlachen Avenue and north to Webster. Only spots located right along Park Avenue fill up.

“There’s plenty of opportunities to park and walk to your destination in five to ten minutes,” Lim said. “And during the peak season in December, I’m sure when parents bring their kids over, they would like to walk a little bit further than a typical five to ten minutes to show them around.”

The challenge is to help visitors understand their parking options, said Charles Ramdatt, the Public Works & Transportation director, at the workshop.

Randatt is working with the Winter Park Community Redevelopment Agency to create an app that will direct drivers to available spots. He’s already met with Currus AI, a University of Central Florida-based technology program, about the project.

“The additional demand can be covered by overall parking in the general area — we just need to show people where those spaces are,” he said. “The younger generation, especially, is very accustomed to using apps like these.”

Mayor Sheila DeCiccio pointed out the study, which used the same geographic zones as the original 2013 analysis, didn’t account for new demand from the recent $36 million expansion of the Alfond Inn. The expansion, completed in late 2023, included adding new meeting, boardroom and event spaces to the hotel’s New England Avenue space.

“I go to a lot of luncheons there — there’s over 200 people,” she said. “So, I don’t know where they’re going to park all those people.”

The study area also did not include the old Winter Park Library building, where Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts recently signed a lease to open a multicultural live music venue and education hub. Alfond Inn is currently parking cars in the unused library building lot. Once it can no longer do so, valets will have to park elsewhere, the mayor said.

“I think just watching them for two days after they cannot park and stack cars in the old library site is going to tell you a lot where the valet puts all those cars,” DeCiccio said. “I think that is going to cause a huge deficit.”

Alfond Inn spillover parking shouldn’t be problematic as long as valets use garages like the high-vacancy Truist Parking Garage on Comstock Avenue, rather than parking along the street on Lyman Avenue or Comstock Avenue, said City Manager Randy Knight.

Knight also pointed out the city can’t plan its parking around the one month out of the year when spaces become limited.

“The Church doesn’t build parking for Easter Sunday,” he said. “I think that’s what the study’s saying — on a normal day, there’s ample parking.”

After receiving the updated parking report, which found weekend parking demand wasn’t as high as expected, Knight said he no longer recommended going through with a plan he previously supported: closing Park Avenue to two-way traffic.

Although doing so would add 41 parking spots, it would also create a potential safety hazard. The road would only be about 11 to 13 feet wide, which would make it difficult for emergency vehicles to access the area during an accident. 

Typically, a one-way street is 16 to 18 feet, and said city engineer Lim.

“After seeing this, and I understand their report, I was much less excited about the one-way option than initially,” Knight said. “It’s not a staff recommendation that we move forward with the one-way …. I think the safety issues outweigh the benefit.”

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Growing a community: Residents advocate for public garden

by Beth Kassab | Jul 17, 2024 | City Commission, News

Growing a community: Residents advocate for public garden

City works with nonprofit affordable housing organization to improve volunteer garden program

July 17, 2024

By Zoey Thomas

When Rolesia Barton got a call from The Meadows Apartments approving her public housing application, her life changed.

“It literally saved me and my sons from the destitution of homelessness,” she said.

The U.S. Army veteran, 44, still lives at The Meadows with her two sons eight years later. A former South Carolina resident, Barton is always looking for ways to find community in Winter Park, she said. Two years ago, she found the perfect outlet: managing a community garden.

Barton now grows plants from habanero peppers to hibiscus flowers in her complex’s courtyard for residents to pick, cook and enjoy — for free. But the project hasn’t reached its full potential, she said. That’s largely because Barton funds the garden out of her own pocket.

After a trip to City Hall last month, Barton is working with city leaders to turn her garden from a passion project into a communitywide resource.

The Meadows, just west of the Ravaudage development off U.S. 17-92, opened in 1975 to house low-income Central Florida families. The building is one of six managed today by the city-supported nonprofit Winter Park Housing Authority.

Housing Authority management invited Fleet Farming, a nonprofit urban agriculture program, to deliver nine garden beds to The Meadows about three years ago, Barton said. But after the plots were set up in the building’s courtyard, no one took the initiative to care for them, she said.

“I was walking across the garden, and me and my son were walking past the bananas, and he was like, ‘Man, these bananas are going to die,’” she said. “And I said, ‘They just need food, and they’ll be all right.’”

The building manager at the time overheard Barton’s conversation and asked if she’d be interested in taking over the garden, she said. Barton jumped at the chance.

She originally had about 10 volunteers helping her, she said. But the number eventually dwindled until only Barton and her two teenage boys remained.

Barton didn’t give up. She continued working alone, turning the nine garden beds left by Fleet Farming into a sprawling 600-square foot horticultural expanse in two years.

“I want to put my foot in where I can see there’s something lacking,” she said. “You want some basil for your spaghetti, we’ve got it out here. You want lemongrass for your tea, we’ve got it out here. You don’t have to go and buy that stuff — it just helps people to save money.”

Barton went to her first City Commission meeting to ask for support in June. She got the idea after talking with Equity Council Corp president LaWanda Thompson for advice, she said.

Thompson, 46, is a longtime community advocate. She proposed building a community supported agriculture garden in the historically Black Hannibal Square neighborhood to commissioners in 2020 and again in 2022. 

Community supported agriculture, or CSA, gardens were first developed by Black farmers in the 1950s to foster relationships between farmers and local residents. Thompson hoped to manage a mixture of staff and volunteers at her own proposed CSA. Food produced would go mainly toward feeding the area’s disadvantaged senior citizen population, she said.  

But commissioners never gave Thompson the land or financial support she requested.

“My issue with Winter Park is they care about land, developers and parking more than actually helping the community,” she said.

Thompson’s proposal was “quite ambitious,” said Commissioner Marty Sullivan in an email to the Voice. Thompson did not act on the details necessary to initiate the project, he said. 

Thompson told Sullivan the garden could operate on 0.3 acres with $120,000 in start-up funding in an email July 2022. Her nonprofit, Equity Council Corp, would manage the garden, pay staff and recruit volunteers, she said.

Because her own project never left the ground, Thompson warned Barton she wouldn’t find support from the city if she asked for help at The Meadows, Barton said. But when Barton said she wanted to attend a commission meeting anyway, Thompson joined her.

The two women spoke during public comment. Barton introduced herself to commissioners and asked their support for one of her most pressing needs: a fence to surround the garden. Thompson then urged commissioners to help. 

“When residents like Ms Barton want to power through and do more with the garden, if she needs tools, if she needs fertilizer, if she needs seeds, whatever she needs, she shouldn’t have to fund that out of her own pocket,” Thompson said. “That is shameful.”

To Barton’s surprise, she received positive feedback immediately, she said. Sullivan visited Barton at The Meadows to discuss next steps for the garden three weeks later. 

Rolesia Barton works in the community garden at the Meadows Apartments in Winter Park. Photo: Zoey Thomas

Barton’s small volunteer-based garden posed an easier target for assistance than Thompson’s community supported agriculture model, Sullivan said.

“A CSA is a group of people that contribute money for a farm,” he said. “It’s a real business operated with intensive labor and expense.”

Although Thompson’s idea never materialized, Sullivan looks forward to helping Barton with her her garden at The Meadows — a garden he didn’t know existed before she spoke up at public comment, he said.

The garden’s most pressing current needs include a fence to keep out critters and prevent theft; a better lighting system, so Barton can keep an eye on the plants at night; and a larger volunteer pool, maybe drawing from neighboring high schools. Sullivan offered to talk with city staff about making the requests happen.

All Winter Park Housing Authority buildings have community gardens, although none are as large as The Meadow’s, said Winter Park Housing Authority Interim Director Tarena Grant, who also attended the meeting with Sullivan.

Taking the lead on volunteering initiatives, especially ones that promote food security, helps tenants build self-sufficiency, Grant said. She asked Sullivan to look into also improving lighting at Tranquil Terrace and The Plymouth, two other Housing Authority properties, which both serve seniors.

“It’s about tapping into strengths of resident volunteers,” she said. “We look forward to working with the city … we’re open to however they see best to streamline the process.”

Barton, for her part, envisions a network among all Winter Park community gardens, she said. If one garden needed a specific plant or gardening tool, they could share among themselves — building community while doing so, she said.

Community gardens aren’t new to Winter Park. Our Whole Community, an organization of multiple local Christian churches including St. Margaret Mary and St. Mary Magdalen, has run a community garden just south of Depugh Nursing Center, off of Park Avenue, since 2010.

But the garden’s leader, Olive Mackey, 73, said the garden doesn’t produce enough food to feed a family — much less a community, as Barton hopes to accomplish with her own project. The Our Whole Community lot holds 21 wooden garden beds, which are rented out to individual gardeners in exchange for free compost, mulch and garden education events.

Mackey, a retired Department of Agriculture employee and UF Institute of Food and Agriculture professor, said community gardening benefits the spirit as well as the body.

“I don’t know anybody who has not felt good when they see something grow that they grew themselves,” she said.

The next step for the Winter Park Housing Authority garden will take place when Barton and her building directors meet with the city’s Sustainability Division July 24. With her garden’s future growing before her eyes, Barton said her only regret is not going to City Hall sooner.

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