Winter Park City Commission meeting set for Aug. 27, 2018

The Winter Park City Commission will discuss several potential changes to the city's parking codes during its Monday, Aug. 27 meeting.

An ordinance to the city's codes would take away a condition put in place back in 2003, when 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 parking codes — although largely unchanged since the 1970s — the CBD is technically 207 parking spaces short of what it needs to handle the restaurant guests.

The new ordnance would remove this condition and require incoming restaurants to provide the appropriate amount of parking.

Another part of the ordinance would allow for the potential future creation of a fee-in-lieu of parking program. Property owners would purchase or fund the needed parking within a city owned parking facility.