Maitland development revived after 12 years

More than a decade after it received approval from the Maitland City Council, a controversial six-story apartment complex could finally come to fruition blocks from the city’s downtown.

Only one vote remains between the Uptown Maitland West project – now called Maitland Estates – and final approval, said Maitland Community Development Director Dick Wells. And that vote belongs to the city’s Development Review Committee. The board of city staff members, headed by Wells, will do a technical review of the proposed development’s site plan at 2 p.m. in City Hall on Thursday, Aug. 25.

“We’re the only step that [the development] hasn’t gone through,” Wells said, “even though it’s been 12 years since the first step started.”

Wells said the Maitland city attorney, along with the project’s attorney, agreed that the developer’s agreement, which was set into motion back in 2004, is still valid, along with the motions to approve it by the City Council and Planning & Zoning Commission from back then. For more than a decade, the 200- to 300-unit apartment project with ground-floor retail never managed to make it off the ground. Now it’s one vote away from reality.

“It’s kind of unique, but the attorneys felt comfortable that all the pieces were in place to make that possible,” Wells said.

He said he’s never aware of a deal like this happening before in the city, and that 90 percent of the time, when developments like this don’t come through, the slate is wiped clean and the process starts again.

“In this unique case, that just didn’t happen,” Wells said.

In this case, the new developer has decided to design a site plan with the goal of meeting all the criteria from the 2004 agreement. The developer’s agreement is 52 pages long, and composed mostly of text, so, Wells said, the developer had to use the language of the document to come up with the new site plan, not just copy an existing drawn out plan.

“You can’t just lay it over the top of another piece of paper (to copy it),” he said.

The development is allowed to house 200 to 300 apartment or condo units, and a minimum of 20,000 and maximum of 45,000 square feet of commercial/office/retail space.

Next week the DRC will evaluate whether the new site plan complies with all of the requirements of the existing agreement or not. Wells said the review is purely technical, if it matches the criteria it will be approved, if not, it won’t. Public comment will be taken at the meeting.

In 2004, local residents sued the city over its approval of the Uptown Maitland West project. A settlement was reached the following year, which amended the developer’s agreement to allow fewer stories and apartment units in the project. The settlement also mandated that the developer donate $100,000 to the Performing Arts of Maitland and $300,000 to Maitland after-school programs. Both those donations are set to happen when the project reaches certain construction milestones. The new developer will also have to comply with stipulations of the settlement in its proposed site plan.

Residents can take a look at the new site plan, as well as review the developer’s agreement and a copy of the settlement details, at bit.ly/UpTownMaitlandWest