Winter Park City Commission purchases wetland, bans medical marijuana dispensaries

Winter Park City Commissioners waded through a thick agenda and made a series of critical votes during their meeting on Monday, Aug. 14 – affecting everything from a chunk of wetland surrounding Howell Creek to medical marijuana dispensaries to the potential sale of the former bowling alley property along Fairbanks Avenue.

City Purchases Wetland Area

Early on in the meeting the Winter Park City Commission was faced with an exciting opportunity: the chance to buy 55.6 acres of wetland area surrounding Howell Creek.

The land is made of seven parcels just north of Howell Branch Road, with 12.2 acres located in Maitland and the rest located within Winter Park city limits.
That mass of wetland currently belongs to two property owners. About 32 acres belong to JBC Land, while the remaining land is owned two-thirds by JBC Land and one-third by resident Jerry Banks.
City Commissioners jumped at the opportunity, unanimously approving the purchase of the land for $304,500 and giving residents a new path to kayak up to Lake Waumpi.

A state grant will help cover half the cost, while the rest will be paid for with park impact fee funds.

“Not only does it give us an opportunity to have that path and kayak trail, but it gives us the tree canopy cover,” Commissioner Carolyn Cooper said.

Winter Park resident Donna Colado said she was concerned with how much the city was paying though, noting that the land was only appraised at $166,000.

City Manager Randy Knight said that their purchase price was what it took to get a deal done.

“As you know, any transaction in real estate takes a willing seller and a willing buyer,” Knight said. “That was the price it took to get willing sellers.”

City Narrows Down Sale of Property to Two Offers

The Winter Park City Commission also found themselves on the selling end of a piece of property: the former Bowl America Property at 1111 W. Fairbanks Avenue.

Winter Park put the piece of land – valued at $2.96 million – up for sale earlier this year after purchasing it with CRA funds last year.

After carefully vetting through six different offers on the property, the Commission narrowed it down to two: an offer of $3.5 million by Verax Investments, LLC and another offer of $3 million by Towers Realty Partners, Inc.

Verax has the intention of developing the land as a mixed-use medical and business office, while Towers plans to build a mixed-use retail and office building.

Both projects would be roughly 20,000 square feet.

But some residents believe the city should hold on to the property due to its close proximity to Martin Luther King Jr. Park to the north, though a portion of Comstock Avenue between the two properties would have to be vacated. 

At a public meeting on May 2 for the park’s pending master plan, three groups of residents illustrated their own vision of the park on a map.
Two of the three groups suggested building a new softball field on the former bowling alley property to make space for more amenities in the park. 

City Commissioner Peter Weldon said the money acquired from the sale of the property should go toward improving existing park space instead. 

Mayor Steve Leary agreed that a sliver of road along Fairbanks Avenue doesn’t make sense as park land.  

“It’s a commercial corridor, it’s too small to turn into a playing field and we’re not going to vacate streets that serve other businesses to have a patch of green in the middle of our commercial corridor that people really can’t walk to,” Leary said.  

The city will continue working with both Verax and Towers to see which offer will be chosen.

Winter Park Approves Ban of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries

The City Commission also took a final vote on whether or not to ban medical marijuana dispensaries.

It passed on Monday by a vote of 4-1, with Commissioner Sarah Sprinkel dissenting.

The city was forced to ponder their approach to medical marijuana dispensaries in the wake of Gov. Rick Scott signing the medical marijuana bill into law. 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, City Attorney Kurt Ardaman 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.

Sprinkel told the Observer that she believed the state voters had spoken and that local municipalities should acknowledge that desire.

“Seventy-one percent of the voting public said we should make medical marijuana legal,” Sprinkel said. “It’s hard for me to vote against 71% of the public. I voted on what I believe. I believe that my job is to make (medical marijuana) available to the public. It’s not about me.”

Winter Park City Commissioners waded through a thick agenda and made a series of critical votes during their meeting on Monday, Aug. 14 – affecting everything from a chunk of wetland surrounding Howell Creek to medical marijuana dispensaries to the potential sale of the former bowling alley property along Fairbanks Avenue.