East Orlando HOA

Boston Coffeehouse, in Waterford Commons, has offered us their space for meetings on the second Wednesday of each month, and it is a room more conducive to a large group.

Also, the food and drinks are of excellent quality and reasonable price.

Agenda is being prepared for the meeting and will be posted shortly, but you can be sure it will include committee reports! If your committee has not met yet, please do so, if only by phone or email.

(from website manager John Tenney)

I have received nearly a hundred emails concerning the Morgran PD for Alafaya Reserve.

Many are asking me if we have a consensus as to how we feel about this. There is no consensus. I have received nearly as many emails in favor of the Morgran zoning changes as opposed.

There is only one common thread in all the emails, and that is that we want Alafaya Trail finished and connected to the Beach Line.

I wish to clarify one thing about the contributions mentioned by each party. These contributions are actually advance payment of impact fees. It helps the county to pay these in advance, but they will be credited to the developers later on when they begin building.

I plan to let the board of commissioners know that my main concern is fixing the road.

This is an excerpt of an email received from a traffic planner in Orange county. When we get permission, we will post his name.

“Received the information regarding the proposed changes to the Alafaya Reserve (Morgran PD). As a practicing transportation planner and partner in a local consulting firm, I am often involved in the analysis of proposed developments on behalf of local government and private developers.

The information provided in the letter we received regarding the trip production from the approved and the requested development program is a bit misleading. Although the base trip generation from the existing and requested programs is stated relatively close to what the ITE Trip Generation guidelines would produce (17,771 and 33,955 trips, respectively), the actual calculation of net new trips that would be added to the roadway network outside the project (net external/new trips) must consider the phenomenon of internal and pass-by capture. When those factors are applied, the actual estimated net new trips for the existing project is 13,951 daily, or about 1,576 trips during the PM peak hour. The net new trips from the requested change would be about 18,286, or around 2,127 new trips in the PM peak hour.

This is significantly different from what was presented in the letter we received from the POA. The difference in daily trips is meaningful but most important is that the additional trips that may be assigned to Alafaya Trail during the PM peak period, when the project is completed (assuming no other access to the site is constructed and connects to a roadway that would distribute traffic other than on to Alafaya, is sufficient to require at least one new lane in each direction, maybe more if the planned widening does not leave some “reserve” capacity for this project when the widening is completed under the Avalon Park development order condition.

Just wanted the POA to be well informed. Contact me if you wish.”

We were pleased to have Eric Marks of Avalon Park Development and Tom Corkey, the developer for Morgran with us tonight at our second meeting.

Each were given a five minute block to make their presentation. Not surprisingly, the two five minute blocks turned in to an hour of discussion, heated at times.

Both sides presented their position and the crowd listened carefully. At the end of it all though, it is fair to say that what the members present are most concerned about is not a developer vs. developer battle, but who is going to address the needs of the community, which was identified as the completion of Alafaya Trail.

The members in attendance were in consensus that the key issue here is finishing the road. It is probably this issue that we will concentrate on at the Board of County Commissioners meeting next Tuesday.

Rumors have been flying that Morning Glories is not open, but they are false.  They had briefly closed due to a family emergency but have confirmed that they are alive and well, and tonight will provide us with an excellent meeting venue.

The meeting commences at 6pm.  We have some committee reports to hear, and one or two new committees to form.  One in particular that has been mentioned is a School Board Watchdog committee.

Please attend and get on one (or more) of the committees. The committees are where the action is, so plan on being involved.