The Henderson Hotel at Lake Killarney
What’s Going On There?
Tuesday, Oct. 29 — Planning & Zoning Work Session, Noon, Commission Chambers
The P&Z Board will discuss the zoning changes and conditional use requests for the proposed hotel. This is for informational purposes only. The board members will take no votes and hear no public comment – but the meeting should be informative.
Wednesday, Oct. 30 – Developer’s Information Session, 6 – 7 pm, Farmer’s Market
The developer, Adam Wonus, will host a Q&A and show the latest concept drawings at the Farmer’s Market. If you have questions about the project, here’s your chance to ask. Word on the street is the neighbors, not all of whom favor the project, plan to be in attendance.
Tuesday, Nov. 5 – Planning & Zoning Board Meeting, 6 pm, Commission Chambers
This will be the formal P&Z hearing, where the board will vote on whether or not to move the Henderson Hotel project ahead to the Commission in late November. Votes will be taken and public comment will be heard.
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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 developer held it’s first meeting with the city commission about this hotel project on February 28, 2019, to test their appetite for this massive project and the mandatory condemnation of public roads which it would entail. The meeting took place the same day as the kick off of the Winter Park Land Trust.
My question is why does any developer of such a large and controversial project wait until just before the vote will be taken to schedule an informational session for the PUBLIC ?
Before Dori Stone departed Winter Park, she opined that early public involvement would be the best way to avoid the painful, zero hour, last minute commission denial of projects AFTER the developer had spent untold money and countless months planning / designing a project. Too often we see a planning department recommendation of approval and a unanimous, 7-0, P & Z sign off, only to have overwhelming citizen opposition result in a city commission vote to deny the project. (ANSAKA- Loring Chase 18 townhomes on Aloma, Villa Tuscany Memory Care Center are 2 examples.)
I was not Dori’s biggest fan- not by a long shot. But she may have been right about early public involvement on large and controversial projects.
Welcome back, Beth, to the comment board.
We missed hearing from you.
So between this monstrosity and the two at the corner of Lee and 17-92 we now know why we need a “library” in that location ….and begged Orange County for tourist dollars for said “library”.
I know I’m late and I admit that I didn’t attend any of the meetings but have heard about the hotel plans for Killarney area. My opinion remains the same since the 1st time I heard, we do not need another hotel. I’m seeing increase traffic congestion, crime rising and the total loss of the essence of Winter Park as we once knew it.
Sheila Reid,
If you think we are losing the essence of Winter Park just wait until they build
the 5 and 7 story buildings plus parking garages which we will be getting if
the commission votes to adopt the Orange Avenue Overlay as it is written.
The vote is January 13th. The ordinance will allow 7 stories at the site of
the old Lombardi’s building and 5 stories at Fairbanks and Denning at the
Holler / RV Sales parcel.
People were upset about the Henderson proposal. But the Henderson would have “only” been
200% FAR. The new overlay will allow a FAR of approximately 400% on the parcels I
mentioned. Double the intensity of land use that the Henderson would have represented.
Too BIG for Winter Park. Residents cherish the charm and scale of Winter Park. They don’t
want Maitland or Orlando ….Wake up, Folks! The vote in January 13th!