By CHRISTOPHER TUFFLEY
christopher.tuffley@newssun.com
AVON PARK -- In a 3-2 vote Tuesday evening the Planning & Zoning Advisory Board recommended the city council deny Yudith Fernandez's application for a variance regarding parking at her proposed boarding house. Her property is the historic Touchton building at 1 W. Main St.
This is a controversial issue.
On the one hand, Fernandez who has been trying to open her proposed business for months, has been met with new demands each step of the way. She pointed out to the P&Z advisory board, she had fulfilled every demand every step of the way.
Part of the wary response to her business is that through Fern and Fern Corp. and Fern Finance, Fernandez owns 21 properties in Highlands County. One of those properties is the Sharon Motel at 2180 U.S. North in Avon Park, an establishment that is neglected and in disrepair.
However, when accused of multiple code violations at the P&Z meeting, City Manager Julian Deleon said Fernandez had no outstanding code violations.
Her plan to turn the second floor of her building into a 16-room boarding house for migrant agricultural workers is opposed by many in the community.
Tuesday evening Fernandez was asking for a variance from the on-street parking code.
Speaker after speaker Tuesday night got up demanding the board vote against giving Fernandez that variance.
Members of the board and downtown businessmen said they were most concerned about how transient business parking would be affected along Main Street when boarding house residents began to park on the streets themselves.
Earlier, in response to these parking concerns, Fernandez made arrangements for off-street parking in a vacant lot. That lot, however, is well down the block from the building. Some individuals worry boarding house residents won't park there because they would have to walk.
"Residents could be parked there (on the street) for two or three days," said Carl Cool, whose business is further west on Main Street. "This is bad for Avon Park."
Other objections revealed themselves during the evening.
Jim Barnard, a candidate for the city council in 2012, said, "We have many schools and churches in the area. They'll just be walking up and down the street. I worry about our children."
Others were too, one man rising to say he had changed his mind about the boarding house, of which he had been in favor. "I am now totally, 100 percent against it," he said. "I do have a daughter."
"How is this a betterment," another speaker asked. "We need restaurants and businesses on Main Street."
"Boarding house people would live downtown; they would be customers," board member David Cloud replied. He repeatedly said that as a business in an historic building, city code clearly said Fernandez was entitled to an exemption regarding parking, because no provisions for parking had been made when the commercial building was built.
Jean Jordon, another member of the board, disagreed. "The building is not really commercial," she said. "It is for her, but it's really a residence." Therefore, she added, no exemption was allowed. Multi-residential buildings have to provide a specified amount of off-street parking per living space.
At one point Fernandez and Jordon got into a heated discussion regarding the past use of the Touchton building.
If the Touchton building had once housed residents, Fernandez argued, it should qualify for a parking grandfather exemption, like the Jacaranda.
Fernandez, citing material at the Historical Society, said the second floor of 1 W. Main St. had once been residential.
"I'm 80 years old and it's never been residential in all that time," Jordon said. "The building has always been offices. There is no precedent of people living there."
Fernandez replied she read it in a book at the Historical Society.
Jordon admitted a book she helped write with Leoma Maxwell years ago was not well fact-checked and filled with errors. Fernandez had bad information, she said, but that didn't change anything. The code was the code. "We're trying to bring (the city) back to the charming town it was before," Jordan said.
Deleon said according to city code the matter was moot. A building has to have been uninterruptedly residential, he said. Even if people had once lived in the Touchton Building, they left long ago. 1 W. Main St., therefore, did not qualify for a grandfather clause.
In the end, Jordan made the motion to refuse Fernandez's request for a parking variance. Paul Miller and board chair Roger Gurganus voted with Jordon. David Cloud and Rebecca Jaramillo voted against her motion.
The matter now comes before the city council, which has the final say on the matter.
Sunday, February 17, 2013 - www.newssun.com/021713-ct-AP--P-amp-amp-Z