Maitland City Talk

On May 14, the city of Maitland achieved two major milestones:

1. Completing the upgrading of the design standards for our downtown Land Development Code (LDC) and,

2. Rezoning of the downtown Community Redevelopment Area (CRA) creating a single, more design flexible, mixed-use zoning district.

This process took more than 16 months and was achieved through countless meetings that included our citizens, stakeholders, architects, engineers, city staff, city boards and the City Council. Along with the streamlining of our permitting process that was achieved last year, Maitland is now officially “Open for Business.”

These milestones are essential for Maitland’s future. They make it more inviting for quality development and redevelopment to occur in our downtown CRA area by:

• Making project approvals happen on a much more timely basis.

• Allowing more creativity and flexibility in project design.

• Rewarding well-designed projects with incentives and bonuses.

In contrast to the past, with this new code in place new projects are made more economically feasible and, therefore, more achievable.

The sites within our downtown CRA that developers are presently proposing

Projects for from north to south are as follows:

• The Parker Property across from the Mercedes dealership west of 17-92 where the SunRail Station is presently being built.

• The vacant site just north of Publix bounded by Sybelia Parkway to the north and east, George Avenue to the south and 17-92 to the west.

• The majority of the block bounded by George Avenue to the north, Horatio Avenue to the south, 17-92 to the east and Maitland Avenue to the west.

• The entire block bounded by Horatio Avenue to the north, Packwood Avenue to the south, 17-92 to the east and Independence Lane to the west where the old Winn-Dixie and Royal Plaza are located.

• The north half of the block bounded by Horatio Avenue to the north, our Municipal City Park to the south, Independence Lane to the east and Maitland Avenue to the west where our present City Hall is located, which will be demolished when our new City Hall is finished.

These and other future projects are very important to our city for the following reasons:

• To create much-needed jobs to help put our citizens back to work.

• To substantially increase our tax base, which will in turn increase our tax revenue that has been steadily declining due to the economic downturn.

• Achieve for Maitland something that it has been working toward for many years, the creation of a pedestrian-friendly, vibrant, new downtown.

Many people have worked tirelessly to create these new design standards and the new uniform downtown CRA property zoning reclassification. This has truly been a total Maitland team effort, and I want to express my sincere appreciation and thank everyone involved for a job well done. We can now move forward with confidence to encourage quality development and redevelopment in our city. This is vitally important for Maitland’s future prosperity.