Commission calls for re-vote to allow bigger buildings

A change to Winter Park’s Comprehensive Plan allowing more development of a larger size is set to come back before the City Commission, despite commissioners already voting it down by a count of 3-1 last month.

City Commissioner Steven Leary asked to bring the item back to the Commission in the final minutes of last Monday’s meeting, believing he could convince his colleagues to move the changes forward.

They originally discussed the item at their April 28 meeting, when Mayor Ken Bradley was absent.

“I think it’s important that the mayor hears [this item],” Leary said. Leary cast the third opposing vote to turn the change down, but said he did so be a part of the majority of the vote, which has the power to bring the item back – in this case when the whole Commission is present.

“I don’t like to see things go down on a 2-2 tie,” he said. “That’s not how the Commission was originally set up. The Commission was set up to have a majority.”

The amendment would allow all city property next to a four-lane road — outside the box of property surrounded by Fairbanks, Interlachen, Pennsylvania and Webster avenues — to be zoned for planned developments, larger projects usually made up of mixed land uses.

Other language from the ordinance would exclude parking garages when calculating a development’s floor area ratio, a regulated percentage of a building’s size compared to its lot.