Visioning Steering Committee Completes Draft Report
Creates Foundation for Comp Plan Review
After more than a year’s work, the Visioning Steering Committee voted yesterday to approve their final draft report. The report will be presented to the City Commission for approval July 11.
Winter Park Now “City of Arts & Culture”
Winter Park vision statement has gone from “The city of culture and heritage,” to “The city of arts and culture, cherishing its traditional scale and charm while building a healthy and sustainable future for all generations.”
Four Vision Themes
Four main themes emerged from numerous meetings and conversations with the community.
- Cherish and sustain Winter Park’s extraordinary quality of life.
- Plan our growth through a collaborative process that protects our City’s timeless scale and character.
- Enhance the Winter Park brand through a flourishing community of arts and culture.
- Build and embrace our local institutions for lifelong learning and future generations.
Vision to Guide Comp Plan Review
This new vision of Winter Park is designed to provide a framework for the 2016 review of the City’s Comprehensive Plan, which ensures that Winter Park’s growth management plan meets state and federal regulations as well as “the stated vision for the city.”
The Vision Plan conclusion reads as follows. “This document provides an overarching direction for the future of Winter Park and establishes the foundation upon which other regulatory documents can build.”
To read the entire Visioning draft report, go to https://cityofwinterpark.org/docs/government/boards/other-info/VSC-vision-winter-park-draft-2016-06-09.pdf.
How sad that “heritage” has lost its place in the city’s vision statement. The green light, I suppose, to ripping down more older homes in favor of more insipid Mediterranean manses with big closets. Winter Park is swiftly losing its way.
Winter Park’s “Arts and Culture” draws from its heritage. It is a product of the American Renaissance. The movement began in the 1880s and disappeared after 1930, “the last full flourish of the Renaissance that began in Italy in the 15th Century,” writes Henry Hope Reed.
The Vision Document breezes over this history, which I documented in an editorial last summer. WP was modeled on Riverside, Illinois, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. It was named “One of 10 Towns that Changed America” in a recent PBS Special. http://www.pbs.org/program/ten-that-changed-america/10-towns-changed-america/
Rollins also was an Exemplar of the American Renaissance, which is documented in the first two pages of Design For Living: John Nolen and the Renaissance of New Urbanism:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ly2gpheg8obl2if/Design%20for%20Living%20Exhibit%20Booklet%20copy.pdf?dl=0
In February Rollins will host “Florida’s Golden Age” and share new research, “Winter Park’s Renaissance Landscape” with the community.
Peter Rocchio
‘Heritage’ is a positive and proud statement. Deleting it from the city’s
Vision statement dismisses the many years of community pride by
multiple generations. Yes, we are a community of culture but of the Arts
not so much.
The whole point of the “Steering Committee,” appointed by former Mayor Ken Bradley, was to steer the recommendations and conclusions of the Vision report toward the policies and development agenda favored by Ken Bradley and his cohorts.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. The cover photo of the canal and the peacock cartoon are a diversion.
Instead, break the code contained in the “Vision” report. “Quality of Life” means quality of life for hospital administrators and real estate developers. “Growth” means aggressive development. “A collaborative process” means more stacked city boards, force fed town hall meetings, deceptive and manipulative communications. “Timeless scale and character” refers to the increasing scale of building FAR ratios, heights, and density. “Enhance” means build a new 100,000 sq. ft., library and yet another parking garage in MLK Park with yet another obscene tax increase. “Local institutions” means Winter Park Memorial Hospital and those individuals, corporations, and “non-profits” who donate money or resources (i.e. City of Winter Park) to Winter Park Memorial Hospital.
The fix is in. Will Winter Park residents reject the fix this time or be fooled again?