Winter Park City Commission approves first reading of parking code changes

Can’t find parking in Downtown Winter Park? The city is looking to prevent any parking problems from getting worse.

Winter Park City Commissioners approved Monday, Oct. 22, several changes to improve the parking situation downtown. The vote meant a preliminary approval on an ordinance that proposes different changes to the city’s land-development code that impact parking.

The ordinance stemmed from a study by consultants from Kimley-Horn, who were tasked last year with updating and modernizing the city’s parking codes within the Central Business District, Hannibal Square and Orange Avenue. Those rules and regulations in Winter Park have remained largely unchanged since the 1970s, according to a city staff report from the City Commission agenda.

One of the most significant proposed changes could help stop a perceived parking deficit in the downtown area from getting worse. The proposed ordinance in the land-development code would take away a condition put in place back in 2003 — a time when the Winter Park Village was booming and Park Avenue was in a lull. 

At that time, Winter Park attempted to attract more fine-dining restaurants to the area to boost foot traffic along Park Avenue and Hannibal Square. This was done by removing a requirement that any restaurant entering a former retail/office space had to provide the additional parking required for restaurants. 

Since 2003, 17 restaurants have been established in place of retail spaces within the Central Business District. Under existing codes, the CBD is 207 parking spaces short of what it needs to handle the restaurant guests.

Removing the special exemption from the code might result in a potential side effect though: fewer new restaurants in the CBD.

“It would not be impossible, but it’s going to be more difficult,” Planning Manager Jeff Briggs said during a Planning and Zoning Board meeting in August. “If The Gap wants to change to a restaurant, they’ve got a parking garage. They can meet the parking requirement. ... But there are only a limited number of property owners that have the parking. It will restrict the growth.”

Other changes to the code include changing the distance permitted for off-site shared parking from 300 feet to 750 feet and using the Urban Land Institute’s Shared Parking analysis to determine when shared parking scenarios are appropriate.

Two changes within the ordinance also involve specific parking requirements for new developments.

The ordinance changes the parking requirements for new retail and general office floor space within the CBD, the New England Avenue portion of Hannibal Square and along the Orange Avenue corridor. That requirement would change from one space per 250 square feet to one space for each 333 square feet (four per 1,000 square feet to three per 1,000 square feet). The reasoning behind the change, according to the staff report, is trips to these locations are multi-destination trips. It’s a measure that streamlines the code, City Manager Randy Knight said.

The other change outlines modifying the parking requirements for large office buildings. The code would provide for the current one space for 250 square feet (four per 1,000 square feet) on the first 20,000 square feet and then transition to one space for each 333 square feet (three per 1,000 square feet) for the floor area above 20,000 square feet. This is because many large office buildings see many unused parking spaces every day, according to the staff report.

However, there was one change the City Commission removed from the ordinance: providing for the potential future creation of a fee-in-lieu of parking program in which property owners would purchase or fund the needed parking within a city-owned parking facility.

Mayor Steve Leary saw the addition as unnecessary, and said it is too soon to consider such a parking structure because there aren’t any plans.

“I don’t want to get bogged down in something that’s probably not going to happen for the foreseeable future,” Leary said.

City Commissioner Carolyn Cooper said she was concerned about the changes, believing that changes to the parking codes could hurt the character of the Park Avenue corridor.

“Anything we do to change the parking code is going to make it more likely that we add intensity of land use to the Park Avenue corridor,” Cooper said. “As we start to tinker with the parking code, we are weakening the protection of the very corridor that distinguishes us from other communities and brings economic value to Winter Park.”

Winter Park Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Betsy Gardner Eckbert said the business community welcomes and supports the changes. She said the chamber supports the removal of the retail to restaurant exemption, but only if the City Commission remains open to revisiting it based on market influences.

“I want to thank staff for their hard work on a response to some of the issues around parking that we provoked last year when we started discussing this through a survey of over 500 people,” Gardner Eckbert said. “It’s not just about parking — it’s about how we plan land use that works for future generations.”