Winter Park will stick with existing parking codes

Current parking codes in Winter Park were given the thumbs up during Monday’s City Commission meeting, despite Park Avenue’s consistent parking problems and the ongoing parking battle outside Trader Joe’s.

Winter Park’s Planning and Zoning Board suggested that parking codes for retail, supermarkets and restaurants were already sufficient after the City Commission asked for a recommendation weeks earlier.

The board reasoned that there was no reason to change the codes following parking woes outside the new Trader Joe’s location, made known by residents since its opening in June, said Planning and Community Development Manager Jeff Briggs.

“They are not recommending we make any changes,” Briggs said. “The four [spaces] per 1,000 square feet for super markets and retail stores has worked well in the past. … It seems to work well for every supermarket in the metropolitan area except Trader Joe’s, because it’s the only one serving 1.5 million people.”

“That’s the draw.”

Briggs added that changes to the codes wouldn’t help the Trader Joe’s plaza anyway. An amendment would only apply to new super markets and retailers moving forward, he said.

“We’re hoping that when the Trader Joe’s opens on Sand Lake Road on Feb. 15 that will take some of the pressure off,” Briggs said.

Winter Park has made attempts at boosting parking in the past. Restaurant parking was increased back in 2009, changing the minimum requirements from one parking spot per four seats to one parking spot per three seats.

The city tried to address the scramble for spots along Park Avenue as well late last year by freeing up 29 spaces to the public near city hall and creating 73 parking spaces in place of the old public works building.

Mayor Ken Bradley said that Winter Park’s parking issues aren’t caused by an ineffective code, but the large influx of people moving through the city.

“We have a very active downtown Park Avenue,” Bradley said. “Our codes may say we need to have this number of spaces or that number of spaces, which is important to have, but the real issue for me is a lot of people are going there now.”

“We might have the right number of code spaces, but you may still need additional spaces.”

Bradley added that the city should avoid modifying the codes to increase parking requirements.

“This review brought me a lot of peace, because I really reacted to what happened at Trader Joe’s,” Bradley said.

“It looks like we’re right smack-dab kind of in the middle of a lot of benchmark communities…. If we increased our codes people would say ‘All you have are parking lots.’ I think we’d have people [negatively] react to that too.”

Unicorp National Developments, the developer of the Lakeside Winter Park Plaza containing the Trader Joe’s, hopes to aid the parking struggle outside the popular grocery store with a new development across the street on U.S. Highway 17-92. The four-story, 223,940-square-foot development would offer 366 spaces between a new parking lot and garage.