A developer’s controversial plan to construct lots of of residences within the environmentally-sensitive Wekiva Examine Space has reached an deadlock with Seminole County officers, who say the mission will not be allowed below new restrictions written right into a state reasonably priced housing regulation.
A current county assembly with planning officers, builders and legal professionals shortly took a heated flip when an lawyer for the developer angrily threatened to sue Seminole if it doesn’t approve the mission below the 2023 Dwell Native Act.
“We can even be searching for our attorneys’ charges, and I’m not an inexpensive lawyer,” mentioned Rebecca Wilson, an lawyer with the Lowndes Legislation agency in Orlando who represents developer Middleburg Acquisition of Maitland.
“Oh, that is going to be attention-grabbing,” Wilson later added at Seminole’s improvement evaluate committee listening to on July 23.
Wilson claims Middleburg filed a discover of intent and website plan to construct a 280-apartment complicated with the county on June 16, about two weeks earlier than the efficient date of an modification to the Dwell Native Act that excludes the Wekiva Examine Space from the regulation’s reasonably priced housing mandates. Subsequently, in line with Wilson, the complicated is allowed below the older model of the regulation.
However Deputy County Lawyer Neysa Borkert disagreed and known as Wilson’s assertion “merely nonsensical.”
The proposed improvement on a mostly-wooded 12 acres off the nook of State Street 46 and Orange Boulevard has riled environmentalists, who say such an intense improvement shouldn’t be positioned inside an space the state has lengthy protected due to its pure assets.
“We’re not against improvement, and we’re not against reasonably priced housing,” mentioned Gray Wilson, a board member of the non-profit Buddies of the Wekiva. “However there’s already an enormous portion of the state that’s out there to builders to go outdoors a protected space for improvement of reasonably priced housing. So it’s form of arduous to fathom: Why go to this specific space that’s purported to be protected?”
The preliminary controversy began final February when Middleburg submitted a pre-application with Seminole to construct a bigger 300-unit house complicated on the website below the Dwell Native Act.
The state regulation is designed to encourage speedy development of reasonably priced multi-family housing by shortening the federal government approval course of. The developer was not required to carry group conferences and request zoning modifications earlier than county boards at public hearings — the place residents can weigh in — as required by most different improvement purposes.
However the software sparked a battle between two goals: offering sufficient reasonably priced housing for a rising area, or defending the setting.
The 12-acre house property is at present zoned business and sits on the jap fringe of the Wekiva Examine Space, a swath of land that spans greater than 200 sq. miles in Seminole, Orange and Lake counties. The research space is a part of the Wekiva Parkway and Safety Act, signed into regulation in 2004 by then Gov. Jeb Bush.
The Safety Act was established to guard the environmentally-sensitive Wekiva River, which Congress designated a Wild and Scenic waterway in 2000. In addition to being a wildlife hall, the land is a high-recharge space for the Floridan Aquifer.
In a late-session maneuver final April, state lawmakers exempted the Wekiva Examine Space from the Dwell Native Act starting July 1, partially due to pleas from Seminole officers.
In a June 19 letter to Wilson — after Middleburg filed its discover of intent three days earler — Borkert instructed the lawyer that Middleburg’s software couldn’t transfer ahead until it was modified to adjust to the restrictions of the Wekiva Safety Act, which permits for a business constructing or one residential unit per acre.
“Your shopper knew the Dwell Native Act couldn’t be utilized to your shopper’s property after July 1, 2025 attributable to its location throughout the Wekiva Examine Space,” Borkert mentioned.
However Wilson mentioned the amended Dwell Native Act does permit improvement purposes throughout the Wekiva Examine Space to proceed in the event that they have been beforehand submitted, in impact grandfathering them in.
Alison Yurko, an lawyer representing one of many property house owners of the 12-acre house website, mentioned the land sits alongside a five-lane busy freeway and close to Interstate 4 on the jap nook of the Wekiva Examine Space.
“We consider it’s primarily there to sq. off the part,” she mentioned in reference to the Wekiva Examine Space boundaries and in help of the house complicated.
However Seminole Commissioner Lee Constantine angrily mentioned “there’s a function to those borders” in defending the pure assets from intense improvement. He mentioned business improvement, similar to an workplace or retailer, is allowed and wouldn’t have the identical environmental impression as a big house complicated.
“A whole bunch of house models go opposite to all the things within the Wekiva Safety Act,” he mentioned. “It’s important to put your foot down and cease [intense development] on this space to guard our pure assets.”