Winter Park City Commission pursues rooftop venue for new event center

Winter Park’s new library and event center is coming more into focus — with a new feature approved for design.

City Commissioners on Monday, Nov. 12, voted to move ahead with designing a rooftop venue on top of the new event center slated for the northwest corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Park.

The City Commission previously approved designing only the first floor of the event center with the infrastructure for a potential rooftop venue in the future, but city staff believed the rooftop should be designed now so it can be put out to bid as part of the original construction, according to the agenda staff report.

“If too much more time elapses before the rooftop is designed, it will not be practical to include that element in the original project construction,” officials wrote in the agenda. “To do the rooftop as a future phase two would require shutting down the events center for a period of time and would cost even more to construct.”

The cost of the design is about $290,000, a cost City Manager Randy Knight is confident will be raised by the community.

“I feel strongly that we seem to be headed in the right direction, and the money will be there for the rooftop, but it’s certainly not a guarantee,” Knight said.

City Commissioner Carolyn Cooper said she wasn’t comfortable moving forward with designing a rooftop venue, because of the overall budget still is unknown relative to the underground soil borings and environmental assessments.

“While I appreciate that you have a very high level of confidence, I’ve been on this commission a long time and (with) fundraising — no matter how high our level of confidence is — until it’s a done deal, it’s still not a done deal,” Cooper said. “The rooftop venue was not part of the bond referendum, so certainly the idea that it would be nice to have I agree with. But there are also things that were part of the referendum that we are not able to deliver at this point because of budget. Budget to me is, frankly, one of my push-backs about spending any more funds. The owners’ rep has not presented a budget to this commission in quite a long time.

“Until we have a budget that shows line items set aside and how we’re going to have the money to do all these other things, I’m not comfortable adding another $300,000 for something I have not been shown a budget that supports,” she said.

Mayor Steve Leary said the rooftop venue is an important component of the project and that it makes sense to go ahead and design it now instead of accruing more costs later.

“I will tell you that from the conversations we’re having again with both public and private entities, this is one of the items that is key to this project, they feel, and has received the most positive response back, so that’s why I can support this,” said Leary, adding that the project appears to be within budget. “I think money spent now is well spent against money that’s going to have to be spent later, which will be much greater to get this piece done.”

The motion to complete the design for the rooftop venue was approved 3-2, with City Commissioners Cooper and Pete Weldon dissenting. 

PARKING REGULATION CHANGES

Winter Park Commissioners also gave final approval of an ordinance with numerous changes to the land development code affecting parking.

The ordinance came about following a study by consultants from Kimley-Horn, which was tasked last year with modernizing and improving the city’s parking codes, specifically 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 changes could help stop a perceived parking deficit in the downtown area from getting worse — but at the cost of fewer new restaurants coming to the downtown area. The ordinance in the land-development code takes 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 could make it more difficult for new restaurants entering retail spaces to find the parking they need though, Planning Manager Jeff Briggs said during a Planning and Zoning board meeting in August.

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

Cooper suggested the new distance of off-site parking would be too far for some residents to walk. She suggested decreasing the distance to 500 feet, but the motion did not go up for a vote.

“Going from 350 to 750 is an enormous jump, and once we give these entitlements, it’s near impossible to take them away without legal challenges,” Cooper said. “I’d like to see us agree to a more gradual increase this year and maybe look at it again next year and see if we want to move more. A lot of people are concerned that that is too far for them to walk.”

Leary said making sure the parking is close enough to businesses ultimately falls on the property owner seeking the parking, and that they wouldn’t seek parking that was potentially too far away.

“If (merchants) are concerned that this is going to impact their business, I don’t think they’d be supportive of this, but we’ve seen pretty strong support from merchants and the Chamber,” Leary said.

The ordinance was approved 4-1, with Cooper dissenting.