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A new townhome development is in the works in Oviedo, with surprise benefits to the local park and art scene.
On March 6, the Oviedo City Council unanimously approved a preliminary subdivision plan for Aulin Square, located on the north side of Clark Street and west side of Aulin Avenue. The development will include 52 townhome lots on more than 7 acres, with a park that will be available to the public.
Beazer Homes Orlando, the applicant, will give a $25,000 donation to the Oviedo Public Arts Fund (PAF) “to support a sculpture project at Solary Park,” according to the agenda documents, as mitigation for deviations from Oviedo’s land development code. The deviation for the Aulin Square development is due to Beazer Homes wanting the property’s free-standing garages to be setback 10 feet from the road, rather than the usual 15 feet.
Oviedo’s land development code allows for reasonable deviations, but to be approved, applicants must mitigate them through one of the city’s listed techniques. Included in those are tree preservation, electric car charging stations, public amenities such as landscaped mini-parks and plazas, and public art donations.
The donation will be used for the proposed Wings of Joy sculpture at Solary Park, Oviedo’s Development Services Director Teresa Correa said. The sculpture was first announced in June and would feature large butterfly wings without the bodies so it can be an interactive experience for parkgoers once developed. The $25,000 donation is the largest ever made to the PAF by a developer, with the previous largest donation being $10,000, Correa said.
“The city did not provide any recommended dollar figures, so the $25,000 figure that is being provided is [Beazer’s internal decision],” said Chris Warshaw, a project manager for England-Thims & Miller, who represented Beazer Homes at the meeting.
The donation adds to the $57,740 already assigned to the project through Oviedo’s Community Redevelopment Agency.
“We almost have all the money that we need to fund the whole thing,” Correa said. “So, it is moving forward, which is a good thing.
“We are still missing a portion [of the needed funds], so I can only say it is a project and we will start the project when we have the money,” she said. “At this point it is an idea that has … the commitment of partial funding.”
Since Beazer Homes is asking for a 33% deviation from the code, they must provide two mitigation techniques. In addition to the donation, they are also adding a semi-public 20,000-square-foot park to the corner of Aulin Avenue and Clark Street.
“That’s actually creating a nice little corner intersection,” Warshaw said. “The sidewalks would connect both ways. It’d be a meandering path. We’re trying to preserve as many of the trees in that area as possible.
“It’s a quiet street, with [Oviedo Methodist Cemetery] across the way,” he said. “It’ll give the opportunity to just have a little bit of a shaded area as you walk up along those two roads.”
The deviations were approved, Correa said, because having the garages closer to the road would not cause much of an impact, due to the fact that they are not complete streets with bicycle lanes.
“The addition of bike lanes in a small community like this would probably cause people to drive a little too fast because it would create a wider roadway for people to drive on,” Warshaw said. “Working with [the city], the discussion was [that this] deviation was the best method to make this work.”
The timeline for the Aulin Square development is not available, as Beazer Homes has not yet submitted their site plans, architecture development order or final plat for approval.
