Winter Park ponders banning medical marijuana dispensaries

Winter Park City Commissioners are pondering their approach to medical marijuana dispensaries in the wake of Gov. Rick Scott signing the medical marijuana bill into law last week.

City Attorney Kurt Ardaman gave the City Commission an idea of what’s next for the city of Winter Park during their meeting on Monday. The state legislation on medical marijuana preempts any local regulations in place, but does give cities the opportunity to ban dispensaries if they choose to do so, he said.

Unless the facilities are banned outright though, the city has no control over where the dispensaries go or how many of them can be established in the city, Ardaman said.

“If you choose to do nothing, then anybody who would look to apply in the commercial districts can apply and be entitled to obtaining a dispensary,” he said.

Ardaman said that he’s already drafted an ordinance that will ban the dispensaries, which will go before the Planning and Zoning Board on July 18 before it goes before the City Commission at the second meeting of the month.

The state law passed by the voters last year will do away with regulations Winter Park had put in place back in 2014. Looking to get ahead of the medical marijuana issue, City Commissions approved an ordinance that limited potential dispensaries to industrial areas.

That language would be struck from the charter since it’s no longer permitted, Ardaman said.

City Commissioner Carolyn Cooper said the legislation puts local officials in a difficult position. Medical marijuana should be available to those who need it, she said, but it doesn’t feel right having no control over the number of dispensaries or where they can be established.

“That really ties your hands,” Cooper said. “It says you can’t have rules. If you can’t have rules and the pharmacies don’t want to dispense it, then I think they’ve made it just a little bit too complicated.”

The Commissioner said she’s leaning toward the side of banning the dispensaries until things “normalize.”

“When it’s treated like a medicine and it’s dispensed through pharmacies, then I think we should revisit it,” Cooper said. “I’d like to have the dust settle a little bit.”

Other municipalities are considering a ban on dispensaries as well, Ardman said, including Winter Garden, who will be considering a similar ordinance in July.

Commission approves Lakemont Avenue lot split

How do you preserve a historic home when its owners have no interest in protecting it?

That’s the issue that City Commissioners were wrestling with Monday as they approved a lot split for the piece of property at 331 S. Lakemont Ave.

The split would set the foundation for two separate homes planned for construction, but would bring the wrecking ball crashing down on an existing home on the property that dates back to 1925.

The home, which is in disrepair, was never placed on a local historic registry.

According to the agenda item, city staff told the property owners that the house could be preserved and still yield two lots, but there has been no interest from the owners in doing so.

That didn’t stop City Commissioner Carolyn Cooper from speaking up on the historic home.

“I can just say from my personal perspective that I hope that we don’t allow part of our history to go away unnecessarily,” Cooper said. “If it’s not economically feasible, I understand, but it may be. To move this in a direction that doesn’t give that conversation a reasonable chance to happen … I’m not quite comfortable going there yet.”

But City Commissioner Sarah Sprinkel said the house has been in significant disrepair for years. The property owners have no interest in preserving home, so they shouldn’t be forced into accommodating it any longer, she said.

“I’m probably the only person up here who walks by this house all the time and it has not been a house worth keeping for a very long time,” Sprinkel said. “I hear people saying that it’s an old house, [but] it’s a really old house that has not been kept up.”

“I see rodents running around, so I can tell you that this house is not appreciated in this neighborhood.”

Winter Park residents like Jacob Stern spoke in favor of moving the house to another location where it can live on. It could serve as a potential event space at Mead Botanical Garden, he said.

It wouldn’t be the first time in Winter Park that a home was picked up and placed elsewhere. Casa Feliz, the popular brick wedding venue and event space dating back to 1932, was saved from the wrecking ball back in 2001 when residents pulled together and had the home relocated on a transport trailer to its current location at the north end of Park Avenue.

The Capen-Showalter House built back in 1885 took a more nautical escape route in 2013 when it came under threat of demolition. Residents had the home split in half and floated across Lake Osceola on barges to its present location on the grounds of the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Today it stands reconstructed, serving as a wedding venue and event space.