Winter Park annexes Ravaudage development

After discovering that Winter Park and Maitland had forgotten to claim a piece of land along U.S. Highway 17-92 for nearly a year, the Winter Park City Commission on Monday successfully annexed 51 acres slated to become one of the largest developments in the city’s history.

“As head of the militia of Winter Park I really don’t want to go to war with Maitland,” Mayor Ken Bradley said upon claiming a strip of land passing under a railroad bridge along 17-92 that connected the two cities.

The mistakenly unclaimed land had inadvertently been a part of Orange County, as had the aforementioned 51 acres after Winter Park de-annexed land into the county temporarily to ease the permitting process for the Ravaudage development.

“Today it’s in the county, unbeknownst to both police departments,” Winter Park Planning Director Jeff Briggs said of the strip of land. Both departments had been patrolling the area, mistakenly believing it was their jurisdiction. “Our police always felt it was in our city and Maitland always felt that it was in their city.”

Now it, plus an additional 50-plus acres, is part of Winter Park.

“Welcome to the city of Winter Park … and for those who were here before, welcome back,” Mayor Ken Bradley said after the unanimous 5-0 vote, which simultaneously ended any land ownership ambiguities and united the southern portion of the development under one city.

After more than 10 years buying property in the area, Sydgan Corp. developer Dan Bellows had been working with Winter Park, Maitland and Orange County to try to streamline the project. With groundwork being laid for an Orlando Ale House restaurant at the project’s southeast corner, the development is finally rising out of the ground.

Bellows said that the project is now “substantially out there under construction.” He has already leveled a block of buildings along the development’s southern edge.

But even as the project had been creeping northward, two Orange County homes remained as disconnected enclaves in the middle.

“Obviously Orange County does not want to have to serve an isolated pocket,” Briggs said. Neither of the homes’ residents turned out to speak against the annexation at the meeting.

Don Reid Ford, which will not be razed for the project along Ravaudage’s eastern edge, is in the process of being annexed by Maitland so that it won’t be split between two cities.