Maitland works to crack its development code

After saying they felt forced to approve a residential-only development in the city’s downtown district last month, members of the Maitland City Council are now debating how they can crack the city’s code to encourage more mixed-use projects in the city center.

Councilwoman Bev Reponen brought up the issue at the Council’s May 11 meeting, issuing concern that the city needs to have a focused plan as to what it wants and needs in its downtown all the way down to the area’s infrastructure, before approving more projects.

“If we’re going to be a bigger city, we need to plan like a bigger city. We need to know what our plan is,” she said. “…We can’t just think in isolated things, we need to think about the whole thing.”

In late April, the Council approved Epoch Properties proposal to place 293 apartments on the old Parker Lumber site north of the Maitland SunRail station. Members of the Council said they felt forced to vote in favor of the Maitland Station project because it met criteria in the city code, not because they actually liked the proposal.

“The game was over before we even started it,” Reponen said about the vote.

To change that feeling in the future of Council members being obligated to vote for projects they don’t agree with, Councilman John Lowndes suggested the city reevaluate its downtown development codes to make sure the restrictions are guiding them to the pedestrian-friendly downtown Maitland leaders have dreamed of for decades.

“The problem that I see…is that we may end up in a situation because of our code that we don’t get the pedestrian friendly, walkable downtown that we want,” Lowndes said.

Mayor Dale McDonald, who served on the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission during the drafting of the city’s downtown zoning code, compared the current situation to an accident in the kitchen. Say, he said, you thought you put in all the ingredients to bake a chocolate cake, but then it comes out of the oven and it’s carrot cake.

“We put a lot of ingredients into that code,” he said. “…And now I really like carrot cake, but that may not have been what we were looking for.”

Councilman Ivan Valdes disagreed with the majority of the Council both in the debate over the current code and the April vote in favor of the Maitland Station. Valdes was the only member of Council to vocalize support in favor of the apartment project.

“What you’re really saying is you want the code to be tougher to build in,” he said, addressing his fellow Council members when code changes were proposed.

Valdes said the city shouldn’t alter the entire downtown code just because two projects that have been approved under it haven’t been exactly what this Council had in mind.

“I’m welcoming the change that’s coming even if it’s not what I would have built,” he said.

The Council proposed continuing code discussions amongst themselves and city staff in the coming weeks.

“We can’t decide where the market is going to take us, but we can decide in what direction we might like to go,” Mayor McDonald said.

“I think we can do better, and I think we deserve better.”