Proposed Park Avenue project would seek 200 additional spaces

A project currently in the pipeline near Park Avenue has some business and property owners concerned about how they’ll be affected – and whether they’ll have much parking left.

Winter Park locals voiced their concerns during the City Commission meeting last Monday about the proposed project for a three-story, 52,601-square-foot, mixed-use building proposed to replace a parking lot at 158 E. New England Ave.

The building would be made up of retail, restaurant and office space, and a 57-space parking basement, but that could all come at a much higher cost of parking spaces on the Avenue.

The developer of the project, Daniel Butts of Battaglia Group Management, LLC, has requested a variance to add 200 parking spaces – the amount they’d need to make room for the customers and tenants under current code.

The developer suggested using parking that they already own just across the street: a 278-space Bank of America parking garage.

But according to a staff report from a Planning and Zoning Board meeting on Nov. 1, 75 percent of that garage is already reserved for tenants in the Bank of America building, leaving only roughly 70 spaces available to the public.

Planning and Zoning Board members told the developer to figure out a solution to the project’s major parking deficiency and tabled the item.

“We’re not satisfied with the parking at this point and we’re waiting for quite a bit of additional information, as well as a draft development agreement,” Winter Park Director of Planning and Community Development Dori Stone told the City Commission last Monday. “Until those things arrive, we are not supporting the parking.”

Residents like Bill Rosenfelt, owner of Rosenfelt Properties on Lyman Avenue, asked the City Commission the question that’s on everyone’s mind: where will those extra spaces come from?

“I know you guys understand that we have a major [parking] problem on Park Avenue,” he said. “If these guys can come up with [the appropriate parking], they can build up as high as Jack and the Beanstalk, but they’re going to ruin the Avenue.”

Rosenfelt added that the Bank of America parking garage doesn’t allow for public parking anyway, as it requires a key code to get inside.

Resident Allen Deaver, owner of Taylor’s Pharmacy on Park Avenue, said that the developer’s proposal just doesn’t make sense.

“Some of the arguments made by the Battaglia group during the zoning meeting were flawed, like that we needed more restaurants in that area…that what we could do is overlap the parking and that parking during the day was not needed as much as parking during the night, which is completely flawed,” Deaver said. “My customers have nowhere to park at all. Period.”

Stone said the project will come before the Planning and Zoning Board once again for a January meeting assuming they receive the requested information by Dec. 7.