Developer’s pitch: Approve the Arya at Oviedo, or else

At the northeast corner of where State Road 419 and Lockwood Boulevard meet, the bustle of one of Oviedo’s busiest intersections gives way to an expanse of green that stretches unimpeded to the Little Big Econ State Forest. 

On May 5, a 9.62-acre piece of that land could get the OK to become a development called “Arya at Oviedo,” a mixed-use project that includes a 70-foot-tall, 55+ apartment building. The property is part of a 100-acre project called River Oaks Reserve. It lies 300 yards west of the rural boundary line that a voter referendum prevents high-density developers from crossing. 

On Monday night the Oviedo City Council debated a vision for the future of the small wooded chunk of land that’s facing pressure as the city struggles with issues from growth at a pace similar to the state at large. 

“The traffic is crazy,” resident Johanna Rivera Fuentes, who lives nearby, said. “We have Lawton [Elementary School], we have Partin [Elementary School], and down the street we have Jackson Heights [Middle School], and also traffic to go to UCF and people coming and going from work and home. It’s already insane. I don’t understand how this is being proposed.”

The development may be the city’s best option, Oviedo Councilman Keith Britton says. It’s already part of a larger development originally approved in 2001 that’s seen a residential neighborhood, Truist bank and more built on it, as the city has continued to grow. 

“We’ve grown by 700 people a year, and I’m guessing every year, since 1990,” Britton said of Oviedo’s rapidly changing population. “You can do the math: That’s 7,000 people every 10 years. And if it keeps going like it is in Florida with 1,000 people a day moving here, that’s not an unreasonable number for people that want to live here. This is a highly desirable place, and it’s probably going to continue. There’s a lot of pressure for us to build up, and not out.”

Oviedo Development Services Director Teresa Correa said the city has too many “single use” developments to deal with traffic, and now is looking to more dense, mixed-use developments that are more walkable or bikeable. 

“You have to get into your car and commute and get into the same arterial roads,” she said. “So we are trying to change that paradigm of development to say we need to have the uses closer so that people can walk and bike and do their needs. So now we can go from here to Oviedo on the Park and have several restaurants, and that is the idea.” 

The Arya project’s developers, Kimaya Real Estate, through development presentations and a presentation to the public, had begun in January introducing the idea of amending the city’s future land use map to allow the proposed development area to be changed from low-density residential to mixed use. That change would allow the property to become a five-story mixed use tower with retail businesses on the first floor and 172 age-restricted apartments above. 

The alternative, detailed in the applicant’s presentation, could be a much larger commercial development. Legally restricted from preventing a commercial development to be built on the property, the Council Monday was presented with the idea that it had little choice: Allow the land use change for the mixed-use project, or something much larger could legally take its place.

To show the advantages of the Arya project, the developer presented a theoretical alternative: a commercial project totaling more than 90,000 square feet and with an estimated more than 9,000 vehicle trips per day into and out of the development, rather than just more than 1,000 trips per day in the proposed Arya mixed-use project. The larger theoretical project could also potentially lead to more of the greenery on the land being bulldozed, Correa said. 

“There’s nothing we could do to prevent [a developer] from coming here and clearcutting it,” Mayor Megan Sladek said. 

But that may not be true, said resident Ed Stork, who lives on nearby Evening Sky Drive and who briefly addressed the Council about the project Monday. 

“One of the primary concerns is this does not fit our current comp plan,” he said. 

Councilman Alan Ott later pointed to the idea that the city might be unable to stop any mixed use development in that type of area that’s marked to be low-density residential, or LDR,such as a suburban single-family home neighborhood, or C1 commercial (typically restaurants, stores and small businesses) zoning in the city’s future land use map. 

The argument that it “meets the spirit” intended in the city’s comprehensive plan could be enough to legally allow a mixed use development to be built on the land, Ott said. 

“I guess the question is: Could this be said for any piece of property that’s LDR C1, for example, it would ‘meet the spirit of the text of the comp plan’ as you detailed in the presentation, to turn it into mixed use?” Ott asked.  

“Anything that is mixed use is by definition going to comply,” Sladek, who also works as an attorney and a real estate agent, said. 

Correa said that, in this case, “What we think is that the policies in the text of the comp plan are sufficient to support the change.” 

Sladek said that planned unit development zoning, which can be put in place decades ago and governs the larger development agreement under which the Arya falls, tends to tie the hands of city government to prevent certain types of developments. 

“I despise it,” Sladek said. “I do not like zoning by developer’s agreement. It is a project-by-project unique zoning and it doesn’t feel fair because you can make the rules whatever you want. It’s not consistent. There are no rules at all, and we do not have to apply the same rules with the next developer’s agreement.” 

But, given the flexibility inherent in the developer’s agreement on the project, both Sladek and Britton said there is an argument to be made for allowing a fully commercial development on the site. 

“We struggle around here with the fact that we’re only about 20% commercial and 80% residential, and when you add what the state legislature is doing with the homestead exemptions, it really puts a hurting on us,” Britton said, speaking of the effect of residential property tax exemptions cutting the city’s income. “We really need to add more commercial.”

“I like commercial,” Sladek said. “I think it would be very convenient. But I don’t have to traverse this intersection every day.” 

Sooner or later, the city may not have a choice whether the property gets developed into a higher-density use, Deputy Mayor Natalie Teuchert said. It’s just a question of managing what it becomes. The property seemed familiar to Teuchert, who asked City Manager Bryan Cobb if the property was the same that had seen the city embroiled in a lawsuit about a previous development. It was, he said. The city had been sued by a charter school developer who’d attempted to build on the same site, after an appeal failed in 2017.  The city settled the case for $4 million. 

“We have lost $4 million as a city for this exact parcel being developed into something,” Teuchert said. “So looking forward, someone is definitely going to develop this.” 

The vote for the land use change is expected to come up at the next Oviedo City Council meeting on Monday, May 5. 

Want to weigh in on the upcoming vote? The next City Council meeting is at 6:30 p.m. May 5. Check here for the upcoming agenda post to see when it will happen during the meeting. You can also send your feedback to Council members ahead of the meeting. Find their contact information here.