WINTER GARDEN — For the third time in three months, the developer of a controversial shopping center is asking city commissioners to postpone tonight’s votes on Winter Garden Village at Fowler Groves.
This time, though, the city is behind the request for the delay.
Officials said more time is needed to study the ramifications of the recent downsizing of what had been billed as Florida’s largest open-air shopping center on 175 acres south of State Road 50.
Amber Overby, spokeswoman for The Sembler Co. of St. Petersburg, the center’s developer, agreed. “The residents have asked for this information, and they deserve it,” she said.
After increasing complaints by nearby residents that the center was too large for the residential neighborhood and would create too much traffic, Sembler announced last month that it was reducing the size of its 1.6 million-square-foot center by about one-third.
Voting on the three center ordinances was first shelved March 14, when the developer asked for time to address residents’ concerns. A second request for postponement from the developer came in late April — for the same reason.
Critics speculated that both continuances were requested to hold off votes on a center until a fifth, and perhaps more sympathetic, commissioner could be appointed by the governor to fill the seat vacated by recalled commissioner Bill Thompson.
Rod Reynolds, owner of Daily Graphics in Winter Garden, was sworn in two weeks ago. He has expressed concern about the traffic the center would generate.
The surprise downsizing announcement sent officials scurrying to update their own incomplete studies of the original plan.
Acting City Manager Mike Bollhoefer said a recently completed traffic study needs to be revised.
“It changes everything, from tax revenues to impact fees,” he said of the new center plan.
Bollhoefer said he wants to review Sembler’s market analysis, evaluate how much crime the center will generate and determine how the city’s revenue stream will be affected.
“I want to see what effect the center would have on the downtown area and [the businesses] along Highway 50,” he said. “And what is the long-term feasibility of the mall.”
Although residents of several housing developments near the proposed center had been asking similar questions since the project debuted, no independent studies on the center’s impact were conducted under former City Manager Hollis Holden.
He announced his retirement in April, after 11 years at the city’s helm. Bollhoefer, the city’s finance manager, is taking Holden’s place until a new manager is hired.
“They changed the original plan so drastically, it needs to be studied,” said Commissioner Carol Nichols, who proposed Winter Garden do its own studies shortly after she was elected to the commission in March.
Sembler critic James Balderrama agreed the city needs to do its homework.
“We’re not clear what the plan is,” said Balderrama, who leads a residents’ group opposing the center.
Other changes in the Sembler plan include eliminating a 24-screen movie theater, moving “big box” stores on the west side of the property away from residential developments across County Road 535 and building town houses there instead.
“Who’s going to build the homes?” Nichols said. “Sembler is a mall developer, and how many [homes] will there be?”
These and other questions will be on the table at tonight’s commission meeting.
Instead of approving on first reading ordinances to rezone the center property from low-density residential to “beltway center,” a new classification, changing the city’s growth-management plan and giving the project a green light to start building, commissioners are expected to postpone their voting until July 28.
