The agenda for the Historic Preservation Board meeting of July 8th includes the schedule for further consideration of possible changes to the existing ordinance as follows: August 12 – Historic Preservation Board regular meeting with draft ordinance review (citizen group comments may be available at this meeting) September 9 – Historic Preservation Board regular meeting, receive and final recommendations from the citizen group Community Forums in late September October 7 – Special Historic Preservation Board meeting to consider any amendments October 14 – Historic Preservation Board regular meeting to approve the ordinance and final report November 9 – Ordinance amendment…
Category: Development
Re-Thinking Winter Park Historic Preservation
The Historic Preservation Board will be having a work session (no public comment) on Wednesday, June 17 at 6 PM at city hall to discuss the draft ordinance and input from the May 7th public meetings. Click here to email members of the Historic Preservation Board (HPB) and ask them to re-think the current draft ordinance. “Especially in politics, any relationship between the effect of policy, the goal of policy and the stated goal is often incidental to the point of randomness.” Holman Jenkins Jr. In this post I analyze the stated goals, actual goals, and the effects of our current…
Winter Park Residential Zoning History (overview)
The following is a brief history of Winter Park single family residential zoning resulting from my research of the zoning code and discussions with city staff. Residential zoning in Winter Park started in the 1930’s (before that you could build anything). From 1930 to 1985 criteria limiting the size of a home was primarily a 35% footprint, meaning a two story home could have as much as 70% floor area. In today’s terms (Floor Area Ratio) a typical 13,000 square foot lot could have a house with as much as 9,100 square feet. As a practical matter there was no limitation….
FOLLOW UP: Take Action to Protect Your Rights
REMINDER: Please consider attending the Historic Preservation Ordinance Public Forum Thursday, May 7, at 9 a.m. or 7 p.m., at the Winter Park Welcome Center located at 151 West Lyman Ave. to voice your opposition. READ THE PROPOSED ORDINANCE HERE. Send a message to city commission members telling them to remove all “historic district” language from the Historic Preservation Ordinance and to focus on ways to encourage voluntary historic designation for individual properties: MayorandCommissioners@cityofwinterpark.org. Reducing the voting threshold for Historic District approval from 67% to 50+% will only create neighborhood disharmony and law suits. The current Virginia Heights Historic District came about only after strong objections….
Take Action to Protect Your Rights
Your freedom to improve your Winter Park home can be severely limited and your property devalued if a proposal being considered by the City of Winter Park is approved by our city commission. Attend the Historic Preservation Ordinance Public Forum Thursday, May 7, at 9 a.m. or 7 p.m., at the Winter Park Welcome Center located at 151 West Lyman Ave. to voice your opposition. READ THE PROPOSED ORDINANCE HERE. Click here to send a message to our city commission members telling them to remove all “historic district” language from the Historic Preservation Ordinance. The proposed ordinance allows any street or neighborhood in Winter Park to be designated…
History of Recent Development Approvals
I document the history of several recent Winter Park development approvals below (click links for source material). As a member of the Winter Park Planning and Zoning Board I thought it important that voters have a factual frame of reference so as to not be confused by false narratives and “whisper” campaigns that always seem to show up during election season. If you are frustrated by the 4 story apartment buildings on Denning you can blame the commission in place in 2006, not the current commission. CNL Office at Denning and Morse. This three story 88,000 square foot office building…
Winter Park Development Reality
I write as a member of the Winter Park Planning and Zoning Board and in the spirit of the duty of the board to keep the “public informed and advised as to” matters impacting development in our city. I encourage readers to explore the various links to source information below. Fear and frustration of many citizens was evident this past summer in the “no density” reaction to a proposed change in our comprehensive plan related to planned developments, or “PDs.” This change was not approved by the city commission. Objections to the proposed PD changes were founded in reactions to…
A Primer on Development
I offer the following points about development to share some of the realities I have learned as a member of the City of Winter Park Planning and Zoning Board. Much of the reaction to development approvals has been based on incomplete understanding of the city’s role in development. While there will always be political differences on where private property rights begin and end, the Federal and State Constitution, Federal and State statutes, Federal and State Court rulings, the City Comprehensive Plan, and local codes define the width and shading of the gray areas. Interested citizens may wish to learn more…
“Visioning”
November 14, 2014 Mayor and Commissioners, I commented on the proposed “visioning” process at the November 10, 2014 commission meeting, liking the proposal to a political massage parlor. I know your intentions are good and I apologize for the intensity of my concerns, but I have seen this “visioning” picture before and it is not pretty. A few years ago we spent, as I recall, over $400,000 (including costs of contract termination with the consultant) on something called “Planning the Possibilities.” This prior “visioning” process too was intended to seek community consensus on development. I participated in this process with…
Density Nonsense. Separating politics and reality.
Winter Park Commissioner Carolyn Cooper recently distributed a video listing recent Winter Park developments completed or underway on Denning Drive and 17/92. ….and then concludes “and it just doesn’t feel right.” Guess what? Carolyn Cooper VOTED TO APPROVE every one of these projects AND every one of them was approved within the bounds of legal entitlements from earlier approvals or otherwise built within all material limitations of our building codes and zoning rules. So Carolyn, please tell the people of Winter Park what “just doesn’t feel right” and what you propose to do about it? Regards, Pete Weldon