Seminole County Commission’s $500 million move

The Seminole County Commission is asking staff to bring back a proposal to move the county headquarters from its lakefront Sanford location to the Five Points Complex, the site of other county operations.

The move has been in the works since the 1990s, but started in earnest in 2021 with the construction of the $65 million Seminole County Courthouse Annex, named after former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice James E.C. Perry. The county has mostly completed the first phase of its plans to consolidate government services to the sprawling 123-acre site, just east of Seminole State College, across U.S. Highway 17-92 from the former Flea World location. The new location is on the southern end of Sanford, closer to the edge of Winter Springs.

At a board retreat April 1, the county manager tried to get guidance on where commissioners stand on a longer-term plan to move the remaining county administration building to Five Points from its current location at the County Services Complex, 1101 E. First St. in Sanford. 

Some of the commissioners were clear that it wasn’t a question of if the county should move, it was a question of when – and how to fund it.  

“We’ve stopped and started this project so many times I’ve lost count,” said Commissioner Amy Lockhart. “At some point, the money that we’re spending to try and keep these old buildings running is just a horrible waste of resources. I don’t see how we don’t figure out a way to move forward.” 

County staff wanted permission to spend $500,000 to have a consultant reevaluate the existing master plan. That would have taken about eight months to do. 

Instead, commissioners asked the county manager’s staff to do its own in-house evaluation of the older master plan and bring back some options to the board.

“We can definitely do it in-house,” said County Manager Darren Gray. 

Seminole County Chairman Jay Zembower said the question that will help guide him is the net cost of a new administration building – keeping in mind lower costs from less maintenance. That would also include the potential property taxes paid to the county if the existing Sanford site ends up redeveloped and put back on the tax rolls. 

The Five Points master plan, if developed as it was envisioned, would take until 2030 to complete and cost nearly $500 million, according to consultants who evaluated the project in 2020. The first phase was the site infrastructure, a parking garage, central energy plant and the construction of the Seminole County Courthouse Annex, which houses judicial and public safety buildings. The first phase is nearly complete, although a nearly $30 million renovation of the existing Criminal Justice Center is slated to begin in the fall.  

The second phase is the relocation of the Public Works facility that exists currently on the Five Points site, then demolition of those buildings to make way for construction of a new county administration building. The current plan is to move Public Works into the former David Maus Toyota site, which the county bought nearly 10 years ago and is south of the Five Points site. The plan is to move Public Works Administration, Traffic Engineering and Engineering into that space. 

The third and final phase would be a number of buildings – the health department, fire station, a park, museum, plus renovating and expanding the correctional facility on-site. In a contentious meeting in 2022 the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections headquarters was approved to be moved to the same general location.

“It sounds like we have consensus that we do not need a new study,” Zembower said. “Go with the original master plan. Staff and our on-board professionals will mark it up, make whatever changes we need to make and bring it back to us and say here’s our suggested changes. We can either bless it or say, ‘No, we don’t like those changes.’”

Commissioner Andria Herr said she wants to see the county get a proposal out soon to market the existing Sanford building. The building was originally built as a hospital, and repurposed for county administration. The building sits on lakefront property in downtown Sanford. 

“How long is it gonna take to market that building? More than a year and a half, folks,” Herr said. “We have an asset sitting on the water we haven’t packed up and got on the market yet, which could change the trajectory of this program.”

Zembower said the existing site should have been put out for marketing in 2018. 

“Put a for sale sign on it, Darren,” County Commissioner Bob Dallari said. 

At the retreat, though, some commissioners supported the idea of eventually moving, but were worried that there would be other priorities that needed to be addressed first. Dallari said he’s expecting some bad news out of a report on the facility conditions for the Seminole County jail. 

“I’ve heard there are some critical issues in that (jail),” Dallari said.