P&Z Upholds West Side Single-Family Zoning
On the night of Tuesday, May 3, Winter Park residents spoke to the Planning & Zoning (P&Z) Board to successfully defend the single family scale and character of the Hannibal neighborhood in west Winter Park against another expensive, speculative development of high-density, multi-family units.
Developer Asks to Build Three-Story Duplexes
Attorney Becky Wilson, representing the developer, came before P&Z to request approval to develop the properties at 326 and 354 Hannibal Square East and at 465, 463 and 455 West Lyman Avenue with six three-story duplexes totaling twelve residential units.
City Planner Recommends Denial
City Planning Director Jeff Briggs, who presented the application to the P&Z, recommended P&Z deny the applicant’s request on the basis of the Comprehensive Plan, which “strongly discourages” out of scale development in neighborhoods with single family zoning.
Comp Plan: Land Use Bible?
Ensuing discussion centered more on the purpose of the Comprehensive Plan, to protect the village scale and character of Winter Park, than it did on the relative merits of the proposed development. In his recommendation for denial, Briggs referred to the Comprehensive Plan as our “land use Bible.”
That sparked a spirited response from attorney Becky Wilson, who countered that the Comp Plan was not “divinely created.”
No More Chipping Away
When the floor was opened for comment, one after another, the neighbors approached the podium, to decry the speculative development of multi-family projects that are “chipping away” at the character of the Hannibal neighborhood.
Several also displayed a detailed knowledge of the City’s Comprehensive Plan. Notable among them was Bob Cambric.
Talk of Social Justice
Citizens and P&Z members both spoke of social justice. Barry Greenstein, who had worked on the staff of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in Washington, D.C., warned about discriminatory zoning practices.
P&Z Upholds the Comp Plan
The men and woman who make up the Planning & Zoning Board listened to the residents. They heard the voice of the people. They upheld the recommendation of City staff and the principals set forth in the Comprehensive Plan. They voted unanimously to deny the applicant’s request to further chip away at the essence of the Hannibal neighborhood.
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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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This is a hollow victory. If this had been a well connected developer it would have been approved.
Well put. Ain’t that the SAD truth.
If anyone is making a list to complain to the Civil Rights Commission about, don’t forget to tell them about the City Commission ordinances that outlaw free speech in Winter Park. Our City Commission believes they are above the law, and can do whatever they damn well please. They are frequently supported by City Attorneys who enjoy having a prestigious (and paying) client that they don’t want to lose. Republican or Democrat, everyone agrees that re-zoning single family to multi-family in a black neighborhood is discriminatory, just like when Commissioners wrote and approved ordinances in recent years to arrest people for reading a Bible or writing a poem or circulating a petition is a violation of residents’ Civil Rights.
I think we can all now see exactly to WHOM the big new events center, errrrr um Library, is important to…….multi blocks of multi family development=$$$, Honey.
When I can’t do simple things to my home due to setbacks…..but developer sharks attempt to maximize every square inch at the expense of our city character there is something rotten in the State of Denmark…thanks to P and Z for saying NO! to the stinky cheese in the room.