Mike Thomas slams Horizon West

Typical front-loaded garage home in Providence, Horizon West. Providence lacks alleys typical of New Urbanist communities.

Mike Thomas's column in yesterday's Orlando Sentinel describes accurately how Horizon West strays from the principles of New Urbanism. In my view, Horizon West's problems stem from drive-only suburbanism, not walkable New Urbanism. New Urbanism's guiding principle is to establish environments for the pedestrian--not six lane arterial highways with strip shopping centers, lacking mixed-use development. In a comment published afterward on www.OrlandoSentinel.com, Mr. Thomas clarifies, "It is the bastardization of the original intent of New Urbanism that I'm condemning."

I'm very grateful that a strong consensus exists in Orange County Government to improve Horizon West. My fellow Planning and Zoning Board commissioners and County staff (chief of urban design Jim Ward, assistant county attorney Vivien Monaco, among many others) indulged me with dozens of hours of time as we re-worked the ordinance to eliminate loopholes, upgrade design standards, and provide incentives for mixed-use development off the arterial roads. The County Commission unanimously approved our revised Village Code last June on a motion by Commissioner Boyd, seconded by Commissioner Fernandez. The Planning and Zoning Board backed me unanimously, and Commissioner Boyd and his fellow commissioners followed suit, when we refused to accept Seidel Road as another typical multi-lane arterial highway, cutting off the ability of people to walk between where they live, shop, dine, and go to school.

Here's Mr. Thomas's column:

Nothing 'new' here--It's the same old sprawl

Mike Thomas COMMENTARY

October 29, 2009


Developers have unlimited imagination when it comes to concocting real-estate scams.

Here at Horizon West, we see the latest one.

It is called "new urbanism."

Horizon West is a sprawling, fledgling 59-square-mile development in the boondocks of southwest Orange County. It should not be here.

Until a few short years ago, there was nothing here but swamps and dead citrus trees.

But the landowners got together to decide how best to get it paved. And they sold glassy-eyed county officials on ... new urbanism!

They would build self-contained, densely packed villages where residents would talk on quaint front porches, enter the garage through the back alley, and walk or bike to village centers and town centers to work and shop. No expansive yards to maintain, no ugly driveways emptying into the street.

Green paving!

And there was a precedent.

Only a few years earlier, the County Commission approved Avalon Park out in the hinterlands of east Orange County.

Only in Florida could you have new urbanism without the urban.

"I think this is extraordinarily good planning," said then-County Mayor Linda Chapin about Horizon West.

"In 20 years of experience, this is the most sophisticated planning I've seen," state planner Charlie Gauthier said at the time.

"Horizon West ... is a perfect example of how government can encourage development without encouraging urban sprawl," said our editorial board.

They were about to put 60,000 people in the middle of nowhere, all without encouraging urban sprawl.

New urbanism has become a virus that spread the illness it was supposed to cure.

This is not to say Horizon West, or at least the part of it that has been built, is hideous. It is what it is: a network of sprawling commuter subdivisions far from any urban center.

There is little mixing of homes, condos and apartments, as you see at Baldwin Park. There is no coherent whole created from a tapestry of different parts.

Residents don't walk to stores, don't walk to schools and don't walk to parks. When they go to work, they get in their cars and take their place in the long rush-hour lines.

"It has not developed into the vision we all wanted," says Rick Geller, a county Zoning Board member appointed by Commissioner Scott Boyd. "People were expecting Horizon West to look like Baldwin Park or Celebration. But instead it looks like suburban sprawl."

Like Avalon Park to the east, the homes went in at Horizon West, but the job centers did not. And so people drive to work, often long distances on the expressway. To ease the traffic jams, rural two-lane roads such as County Road 535 are being expanded into four-lane thoroughfares.

They slice the development into pieces-parts.

County ordinances require walls for developments situated on these roads.

What you have are people who live across the street from a Walgreens getting in their cars, driving to their development entrance, then driving across the street to get toothpaste.

A guiding principle of new urbanism is that you put the stores in village centers, creating easy access for residents living around them. This was done at Baldwin Park.

But the chain stores wanted to be on thoroughfares in Horizon West, and the county naturally caved in. The result is strip shopping centers and parking lots — prettier than most, but strip centers and parking lots nonetheless.

On a tour of the place, I saw a total of two people on sidewalks.

In some developments, they even left out the back alleys — a big no-no in new urbanism. Instead of quaint homes and front porches facing the street, there are lines of garage doors and wide driveways. The reason for this, of course, is that alleys take up land that developers don't want to give up.

As Geller explains, Baldwin Park was built by one developer with one plan. Horizon West has dozens of landowners, developers and builders, each looking to maximize return on investment.

Baldwin Park also has the advantage of being in the urban core, with the roads and infrastructure in place. There are no thoroughfares cutting through it.

Geller led a charge to scale back plans to widen one road. He wants curbside parking to lower speeds and make it more pedestrian-friendly. Boyd wants to move a proposed high school closer to residential areas.

It seems too little, too late. But Geller says most of the development remains to be built — including the main town center — and can be improved upon.

"If we're going to have sprawl," he says, "I'd like it to be new-urbanist sprawl."

Baldin Park CVS--A drugstore to which people can walk or drive. In addition to on-street parking, a parking lot is behind the building.

Architecture, Not Parking Lots, Should Define Streets

At the last Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, I failed to win approval of a motion to "minimize" parking in front of a proposed 12,000 square foot, two-story professional office building on Apopka-Vineland Road. (The vote, 3-3, was technically "no action.") The applicant is proposing the new building to replace an existing one-story medical office building at the "Four Corners," just south of Conroy-Windermere Road, to continue and expand her medical practice.

We have degraded Central Florida's roads by lining them with parking lots.

The Windermere and Dr. Phillips communities opposed development at the "Four Corners" for many years. In the 1990's, the County Commission approved development along with expanding the intersecting roads to four lanes to support it. The concession to the community was a "Community Village Center" ordinance. The ordinance required "pedestrian oriented" development with a "streetscape" that would have "definition." The ordinance required development that would have a "sense of place."

I have never seen a parking lot with a "sense of place." A streetscape requiring "definition" needs architectural definition in addition to landscaping. We lose architectural definition by moving buildings far from our roads.

A huge parking lot in front of a building is not, by any stretch, "pedestrian oriented." Most people will not walk more than a 1/4 mile before opting for their cars. When we set back development 1/8 of a mile or more from the sidewalk, we make walking less convenient and encourage automobile travel, even by those who live in the subdivision next door. This development pattern unnecessarily adds to automobile congestion.

A professional office building, Perkins, and a CVS hide much, but not all of the parking on the northeast side of the Four Corners intersection. At the southeast corner, the stunning Tavistock Financial Center hides parking below and behind the building. Tavistock has set the correct example.


Tavistock Financial Center--No parking lot in front--Across from the proposed professional medical office building on Apopka-Vineland Road

Unicorp learned from the aesthetic mistake of placing huge parking lots along Sand Lake Road. Unicorp's most spectacular development to date, Dellagio, hides parking below and behind the buildings.


Dellagio. Sand Lake Road is to the right.


View of Sand Lake Road toward Plaza Venezia. Parking lot placement in front of buildings is an aesthetic error.

Celebration and Baldwin Park internalize their parking in the middle of blocks, which allows for on-street parking to buffer pedestrians.


Aerial View of Celebration Town Center. Buildings brought close to the street hide parking lots.


Aerial view of Baldwin Park. Buildings hide parking lots, in the middle of blocks.


Street-level view of Post Lake Apartments in Baldwin Park. Notice the parking lot hidden by the building at the far left.

Grocery stores and big box stores, where numerous customers make large, bulky purchases, can justify parking lots in front. But even in those instances, like the Baldwin Park Publix, developers should plan for future buildings to hide much of the parking lot. Another possibility: corner entrances can disperse parking at half the depth on two sides of the building, like at the Publix in Watercolor, Florida, in the Panhandle. One side can have a pedestrian orientation--ideally with small businesses wrapping an otherwise empty wall. The pedestrian side can connect to a residential area.


Watercolor, Florida Publix--Entrance at the corner to disperse parking on two sides.

The application for the 12,000 square foot Four Corners professional office building goes to the Board of County Commissioners for consideration in October. Section 38-1476 of the Orange County Code requires five parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of office use. Sixty more parking spaces lining Apopka-Vineland Road is too much. The County should insist on a parking lot to the building's side and rear, with perhaps a limited amount of parking in front for medical emergencies.

I agree with the Commissioners who did not support my motion, who took the principled position that we should amend the ordinance Countywide for uniformity. The more predictability we give developers and the community, the better for everyone.

JCC Grand Opening Draws Hundreds

District 1 Commissioner Scott Boyd addressing the crowd at the JCC Grand Opening ceremony. He paid special tribute to Harris Rosen for all his philanthropic efforts on behalf of the entire community.


Rick with Melissa and Caroline at the Grand Opening ceremony.

New JCC Opens in Dr. Phillips

Friends--The Jack and Lee Rosen Campus JCC had a "soft-opening" in early August. The architecture, designed by Helman Hurley's Mike Chatham, is iconic. At 34,000 square feet, it's larger than I ever advocated, and the inside is nicer than I ever imagined. Harris Rosen and his construction superintendent, Daniel Guttierez, made sure it got done right.

The gym floor "floats," cushioning shock on the knees. Above you'll find a photo of probably the first-ever documented basketball game at the new JCC, within hours of the doors opening. Having grown-up shooting baskets at the old JCC in Cincinnati, it was wonderful to see the kids running out there and grabbing basketballs.

The JCC's crown jewel--and the reason I became fundraising co-chair with Val Denner in 2003--is the award-winning preschool. No longer housed in trailers, our smallest children now have a school facility worthy of the community. Special thanks to the Dr. Phillips Foundation for the infant and toddler rooms.

The Darden Food Pantry will help families of all faiths who find themselves in short-term, urgent need, as a result of illness, divorce, job loss, or other unexpected event. Special thanks to Patty DeYoung and the board of directors of the Darden Foundation.

The JCC is open to the entire community.

Rick

P & Z: Make Seidel Road Pedestrian-Oriented

ORLANDO, July 16 -- The Orange County Planning & Zoning Board unanimously rejected plans to turn Seidel Road into a 110 foot-wide, high-speed arterial highway slicing through Horizon West Village F, east of S.R. 429. The Horizon West Code requires roads that "encourage" pedestrian use.

"The arterial roadway plan was not consistent or compatible with the Code and the comprehensive land use plan," said District 1 Planning & Zoning Commissioner Rick Geller. "No one in their right mind would let their kids cross, or themselves cross this roadway" on foot.

The design featured 11 foot lanes plus a foot of curb--the width of an interstate highway lane. Pedestrians would cross four high-speed travel lanes plus two turning lanes, totaling over 70 feet of pavement. Traffic engineers were contemplating 45 mph traffic.

"This design will induce traffic," Geller said. The proposed roadway would "create hundreds of [traffic] trips" by requiring residents in high density apartments and condominiums to get into their cars merely "to go across the street to go shopping." He said it would also require students to use automobiles to go across the street from the future Horizon West high school in order to visit the Neighborhood Center commercial district and park.

"I'm afraid we're making the same mistake we made on [County Road] 535," said Geller, where eight lanes of 55 mph traffic create a barrier between high density apartments and condominiums on one side of the road, and the future Lakeside Village commercial Center, on the other.


Arterial highway separating apartments on C.R. 535 in Horizon West from the future Village Center commercial district. This road design induces traffic by requiring residents to use their cars merely to travel across the street.

Renzo Nastasi, Orange County's director of transportation planning, said the 110 foot wide design was ten feet less than standard arterial roadways, including 535 and Apopka-Vineland Road.

"It's not good enough," said District 6 Commissioner Sheila White.

"There are more things we can do," said Nastasi.

Geller criticized the lack of on-street parking in front of the commercial Village Center located on Seidel Road. He pointed to Village Code provisions requiring on-street parking in front of ground-floor retail located close to the road. Geller said on-street parking is essential for buffering pedestrians and cafe patrons.

After the hearing, Geller noted that, under the Horizon West Code, on-street parking counts towards parking requirements and that developers would merely shift parking from parking lots located behind commercial buildings to the street.

Geller proposed consideration of boulevard designs, where medians on both sides of the road separate higher-speed through traffic from low-speed local traffic with on-street parking.

"I'd like to see that for future roads," said District 3 Commissioner Joe Roberts.

Vice Chair Kevin Seraaj said similar boulevards in Chicago, where he grew up, were both safe for pedestrians to cross and moved traffic.




Octavia Boulevard replaced an elevated freeway in San Francisco.


Jergan Duncan, a transportation planner with Canin Associates, informed Geller after the hearing that, according to the Federal Highway Administration, vehicles hitting pedestrians at 30 mph will cause death 45% of the time. The figure climbs to 85% of the time when vehicles travel at 40 mph. Duncan said decreasing the speed from 40 mph to 30 mph over the course of a mile lengthens travel time by only thirty seconds.




Source: Congress for New Urbanism, Emergency Response and Street Design (June 2009), available at: http://www.cnu.org/sites/www.cnu.org/files/CNUEmergency%20Response_FINAL.pdf.

Aside from making Seidel Road slower and safer, Geller said the landowners and developers will save considerable sums in paving costs if the street lanes decrease to 10 feet in width.

A land planner for a significant Central Florida developer, who observed the hearing, summarized, "The road did not fit the context."

The Planning & Zoning Board unanimously approved the Village F's rezoning to Planned Development except for Seidel Road's design. The Board approved a condition to re-engineer Seidel Road as pedestrian-oriented, with 30 mph traffic. The recommendation goes to the Board of County Commissioners for approval.

Re-Imagining Our Roads

The Orlando Sentinel published the following op-ed:


(click to enlarge)


West Colonial Drive near Kirkman--typical arterial road sprawl.


Village at Lake Lilly Apartments, Maitland, Florida


9th of July Avenue--Note the low speed lanes on the side for local traffic. Even the billboards blend into the built environment. "We don't need Buenos Aires' scale, but we do need vertical mixed use buildings..."


Buenos Aires street life--Parked cars buffer pedestrians and cafe patrons


Charles de Gaulle Avenue in Paris. Again, medians separate lanes for slower, local traffic. Boulevards like this one inspired 9th of July Avenue.

County Commission Unanimously Passes Horizon West Code

ORLANDO, June 2 - The Orange County Commission unanimously approved sweeping revisions to the Horizon West Village Code. The Commissioners adopted the ordinance 7-0 on a motion by Commissioner Scott Boyd, seconded by Commissioner Mildred Fernandez.
Planning and Zoning Commissioner Rick Geller spoke in favor of adoption. Afterwards, Geller said, "This ordinance will hopefully make it possible for Horizon West to look more like Baldwin Park and less like suburban sprawl."
The new Village Code contains new provisions intended to improve the architecture and layout of Horizon West neighborhoods. The Code closed a loophole allowing front-loaded garages with little setback.

The new code does not increase residential density, which was set by Special Area Plans, some adopted in the late 1990s. The new Code reduces Neighborhood Center business districts from four to two acres. Mixed use development, with dwellings over retail is encouraged.