Ocoee staff: Spring Hill Plaza resubmission pending; urban designer leaves for teaching post

At the Sept. 9 Ocoee Planning and Zoning Commission meeting staff provided a miscellaneous projects update that included the status of the Spring Hill Plaza submittal and the recent resignation of the city's urban designer.

Deputy Service Director Whitfield said the Spring Hill Plaza team held a pre-application meeting last year and then submitted a site plan that staff found incomplete. Whitfield said staff asked the applicant to return with a revised pre-application but that the team instead submitted a site plan with outstanding issues; the city has since asked for another pre-application resubmittal and is waiting for a response.

Whitfield listed staff concerns that remain open on the submission: use of septic for a commercial building, fire access and circulation, dumpster access, the safety of a wide side-street access driveway, and a sidewalk location that conflicts with an existing drain line. He said the project team had been provided with alternate concept drawings prepared by the city's urban designer to improve fire circulation and site layout.

Commission Chair Lomnick asked whether a project was planned for the Worsch Road site at Carlos' Diner. Whitfield said the proposal would keep the existing building on site and add a second building, which staff believed would perpetuate a strip-plaza appearance without redesign. Whitfield described two alternative concepts the urban designer prepared to reconfigure the second building and improve circulation; the applicant has not yet resubmitted.

On staffing, Whitfield told the commission "Tori has resigned." He explained that Tori accepted an early-career teaching role she had long sought, noting she had been with the planning department for about a year and had left for a teaching position.

Why it matters: The Spring Hill Plaza project remains on hold while the applicant addresses multiple technical and circulation concerns; the city's urban-design capacity has also changed with the designer's departure, which could affect design review workload and timelines for projects that receive concept-level input from the city's design staff.

Next steps: Staff will notify the commission when the applicant resubmits and said alternate concepts provided to the applicant remain available. The department will also manage workloads while recruiting or reallocating urban-design responsibilities.