Letters to the Editor: Not in my backyard?

A town of historically embedded uses and NIMBYs won by overwhelming a provincial P&Z Board while we all lose, again.

Winter Park’s P&Z dispatched both a new employment center and non-residential taxpayer when they unanimously opposed an assisted living and memory care facility on 17-92. This is wrongheaded and misguided on several levels.

First and foremost, Winter Park is crisscrossed with major thoroughfares, including three state highways. There are many uses that coexist immediately adjacent to primarily residential areas including Winter Park Memorial [Hospital], Rollins College, the Winter Park (family) YMCA, Winter Park Towers, Winter Park High School (along with other schools including Brookshire and Lakemont), and many commercial areas. All for better and/or for worse while it’s nearly impossible to develop anywhere here that is not proximate to any residential neighborhood.

So I ask: If you can’t build a “nursing home” on a state road in Winter Park that necessarily is proximate to a world class health village, then where can you build one? Out of sight out of mind like The Mayflower and The Plymouth (what’s The Plymouth you ask?!)?

Americans are living longer today than ever and comprise an increasingly larger population. Aging in place is a desirable and challenging goal. Many people when they can no longer live independently still want to be near family and friends. For the well-heeled (well-healed?), The Mayflower is an option. But will there still be room at the inn to provide for this burgeoning population?

Where this decision is egregiously shortsighted is that a maturing community like ours needs new facilities like the one just thwarted. But where will they be allowed?

Counterintuitively, assisted living facilities require lots of drive-by traffic to thrive. Commonly it’s the children of the aged who are key in selecting a (local) facility for their parents and who are partial to a facility they drive by regularly and consider to be part of the community.

My mother resided for years – close-by to friends, family and her church - in a three-story facility in N.J. not only nestled inside a residential neighborhood, but in world-famous religious camp community (Ocean Grove) comprised partially of seasonal tent housing and that to this day I believe still doesn’t allow cars to drive their streets on Sundays – employing a heavy chain pulled across the entrance to the town.

In closing, I assert Winter Park, with its head buried in its comprehensive plan and anti-growth sentiments, is missing the big picture.

— William Shallcross

Winter Park