Green Reserve Cluster Plan could bring six homes to Windermere

WINDERMERE  If all goes as planned, up to six single-family homes could be going in to a property off McKinnon Road in the near future.

A short community meeting for the Green Reserve Cluster Plan on Tuesday, Sept. 27 at Windermere Elementary served to inform the handful of residents in attendance of Green Tree Development’s request to rezone just more than six acres of land. 

Located on the south and west sides of McKinnon Road, about 600 feet north of Lake Butler Boulevard, the land is currently zoned as a citrus rural district (A-1). 

The applicant, Tim Green of Green Tree Development, is requesting for a rezoning to country estate cluster district (R-CE-C) in order to subdivide the property and develop the six homes. 

“We’re just over six acres, so we’re looking at doing six single-family homes,” Green said. “There are some wetlands on site, so we’ll obviously have a conservation area done for it. That’s kind of our next step going forward.”

Green said that it might be a gated community, with lot sizes of about three-quarters of an acre. Homes could be anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 square feet. Sewer is not available at the site, so available water will be septic.

A resident who lives on the east side of Lake Buynak showed up to find out what the plan was and to express concern from the property he owns, which is close to the subject site.

“We have a special piece of property and I don’t want to mess with it,” he told Green.

Orange County District 1 Commissioner S. Scott Boyd assured the resident that his property will stay the same.

“Your property will stay the same,” Boyd said. “There’s no entitlement change to your property. It will only change the affected property. He’s looking at clustering the lots and making them smaller to provide green space.”

Steve Allen, the civil engineer for the project, added that should the rezoning go through, the developers are interested in keeping the new community similar to its surroundings.

“We’re looking at something that’s consistent with the neighboring properties,” Allen said. “We feel like it’s (the plan) very consistent with what’s out there.”

The project went to the Development Review Committee after press time on Oct. 5. If passed, it will head to the Planning and Zoning Commission on Oct. 28, and could go to the Board of County Commissioners as early as Nov. 15.

For more information on the Green Reserve Cluster Plan, contact Orange County Case Planner Steven Thorp at [email protected] or (407) 836-5549.

Contact Danielle Hendrix at [email protected].