Developers bank on Maitland extending downtown road

When JoAnne Snodgrass first started downtown development discussions with the city of Maitland, she said she had dark brown hair and sped around town in a 1970s sports car. On Monday she pulled up to City Hall in an SUV to issue the city an ultimatum, her hair slightly curled and snow white.

Her family has owned the lot at the northwest corner of the intersection of Horatio Avenue and U.S. Highway 17-92 since the days when orange groves lined the roadways. Today, the corner houses a used car lot, an empty and dilapidated bank, and small strip of mostly vacant storefronts. But that soon could change.

On Monday, Snodgrass and her contracted developer, Scott Ryan, presented the Maitland City Council with a decades-in-the-making ultimatum. Either the city participates in a land swap with the Snodgrass family to purchase space for an extension of Independence Lane to expand its downtown redevelopment by building a new block to the north, or Ryan will redevelop the property as is – the bank left standing where the city’s long-dreamed-of road extension would cut through.

“It is extremely important for you to realize the decades long effect your approaching decision will make,” Snodgrass said. “…It bodes to change the landscape, the opportunities awaiting our residents, and the very future of Maitland that would benefit the city in ways the residents have expressed a great desire for, for many years.”

Extending Independence Lane northward to create an additional block of main street roadway for downtown redevelopment has been in Maitland’s master plan for more than two decades, said Charles Rudd, the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency director. Doing so, he said, would extend available downtown retail frontage, remove blight and help support the incoming Maitland City Centre project on the neighboring block. Creating the additional roadway would also provide a more direct and cost effective pathway for necessary stormwater pipes the city needs to install to serve the incoming developments.

The costs of creating the right-of-way, including purchasing the land, easements and adding streetscaping, would add up to roughly $2 million. The total cost of the project for the city depends on which of five different options for the road the Council chooses.

The most ambitious of those choices includes a land swap and sale negotiated between developer Scott Ryan and the city to create a proposed redevelopment of the entire block of Horatio Avenue stretching from Maitland Avenue to 17-92. That development, Ryan said, would include revitalizing the corner of Horatio and 17-92 with retail and dining options, and building a retail-fronted parking garage on what is currently a city-owned parking lot to the west. That garage, he said, would also provide the city with much-needed parking opportunities for city employees.

“Given all the hurdles…we have attacked this in a step one, step two, step three process,” Ryan said.

“We’ve tried very hard to conform to the visions of the city.”

But some members of the City Council said the plans didn’t take the city’s vision far enough. Councilwoman Bev Reponen found issue with the fact that the proposed Independence Lane extension stopped short of going straight through to George Avenue, as was always imagined in city plans. Instead the plans have it stretching halfway down the block toward George, but then making a sharp 90-degree right turn onto 17-92. An agreement to extend the road all the way through failed to be reached with surrounding property owners, resulting in the right-angle proposition.

“We’re looking at half a road,” Reponen said. “…Right now we aren’t buying what we really want to buy.”

But the three residents who spoke up at the meeting, which stretched into the wee hours of Tuesday morning, urged the Council to take the proposal seriously and consider the implications that having or not having the road will have on the landscape of downtown Maitland in the future.

Michael Dabby, member of the city’s Planning & Zoning Commission, said extending Independence Lane is a key component in the walkability and sense of place in downtown Maitland. Without it, he said, any hopes of connectedness will fall disjointed.

“If we don’t do this, if we don’t do it now, we’re never going to do it,” he said. “If we do nothing, nothing will happen. Nothing we want there will happen.”

After hours of debate as the clock ticked toward 1 a.m., weary members of the Council decided to postpone a vote on the extension. The Council will reconvene for a special lunchtime meeting on Monday, Nov. 30, to decide the fate of Independence Lane.

Anything other than a clear “yes” from the City Council that they will agree to purchase the right of way, Snodgrass said, will be taken as a closed door for future negotiations.

“You truly are at a crossroads,” she said. “It is your decision and now is the time.”