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Last year, proposals for two housing complexes, totaling 672 apartments and 46 single-family homes, were submitted to Ocoee’s Development Services Department for approval. The city denied both projects, nixing one in July and the other in October. The developer, Ocoee Gateway LLC, has appealed the city’s decisions.
In December, the city held three information sessions at city hall to answer questions for area residents who could be impacted by the projects if they move forward in some form. A big misperception: that the developments are subsidized housing being pushed by the city — they're not.
“ There's a lot of frustration and inaccurate information,” Assistant City Manager Mike Rumer said at the Dec. 10 meeting.
VoxPopuli attended that December meeting and spoke with several Ocoee city officials about the housing developments. Here’s what we know.
One Ocoee Gateway LLC plan included an apartment complex with 130 units on about eight acres at Clarke and Jacob Nathan roads.
The second plan included 22 apartment buildings with 542 units on just over 69 acres at Clarke and White roads. This plan also included at least 46 single-family homes, a swimming pool, a dog park, six outdoor pickleball courts and two football field-sized parking lots.
There’s a lot going on with that plan. The sticking point is the 22 apartment buildings. Because of the 22 apartment buildings, Ocoee Gateway LLC submitted their plan in accordance with the Live Local Act. The Live Local Act was passed in 2023 to help mitigate the housing crisis by incentivizing developers to build affordable housing for middle-to-low-income families. Such incentives might be reduced or even waived impact fees or water and sewer charges, more floor space than permitted under zoning or tax abatements (though Ocoee doesn’t provide abatements for property taxes).
In return, 10 percent of any Live Local Act project needs to be designated “affordable.” For projects with rental units, 40 percent needs to be set aside as “affordable” for at least 30 years. For Ocoee Gateway LLC’s proposal, that means 217 apartments would need to be designated affordable.
In a nutshell, the city officials who VoxPopuli spoke with said Ocoee Gateway LLC’s proposal didn't comply with either the Live Local Act statute or Ocoee’s zoning ordinance, and their application for the 130-unit apartment complex was incomplete.
Let’s start with the 22 apartment buildings. The Live Local Act states that those developments must be built in commercial or industrial or mixed use areas. But the 69 acres Ocoee Gateway LLC wants to build on is first, zoned for single-family homes and a shopping center with some outparcels. But more importantly, according to the city, it has a development agreement dating to 1995 that doesn’t permit multi-family housing.
Ocoee Gateway seized on the shopping center to claim the property meets the commercial standard of Live Local Act zoning requirements.
“We have a whole slew of arguments why we think they’re wrong,” City Attorney Rick Geller told residents in the December meeting.
Geller did not mince words in a Dec. 6, 2024, letter to the special magistrate who had been appointed in September to mediate: “Under no circumstances will the city agree to a 542-unit Live Local Act affordable housing project on [planned unit development]-zoned property governed by a development agreement disallowing multi-family development.”
Meanwhile, Geller said in his letter that the 130-unit apartment complex never reached the stage where it could be denied because Ocoee Gateway LLC did not have a critical pre-application meeting with the city’s Development Review Committee. Ocoee Gateway LLC disputes this and has cited multiple dates when phone conversations and in-person conversations took place with Rumer, Ocoee Mayor Rusty Johnson and City Manager Craig Shadrix.
However, a Development Review Committee meeting would also include representatives from the Building, Planning and Zoning, Public Works, Fire, Police and Utilities departments, and Geller said in the letter, “the city has no record of any meeting taking place between the Development Review Committee and Ocoee Gateway." [Italics added.]
At the meeting, Geller pointed out that two site plans submitted for the eight acres in July and October were “completely different.” One plan locates the apartment buildings on the south of the property, while the other plan wraps the apartment buildings around all sides of a football field-sized parking lot.
“We believe that the intention of the developer in having all of this incompatibility is to sow confusion,” Geller said. “We don't know of any other explanation for it.”
One of the biggest misperceptions about the housing developments percolating on social media is that they’re subsidized housing. They’re not. With subsidized housing, the government provides subsidies or payment to landlords so they can lower the rent on apartments for low-income or very low-income tenants. Housing is through an application process, and factors apart from income also affect eligibility such as supporting a family or an elder or having a disability, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Rent is fixed by a family’s anticipated gross annual income and may include deductions for each dependent, elderly family member or person with a disability in the household.
That’s not what’s happening with either of the Ocoee Gateway LLC proposals. If any apartments in the Live Local Act proposal end up getting built, the “affordable” units will be capped at 90 percent of the fair market rent for the area. According to the Fair Market Rents Documentation System, the average two-bedroom in Ocoee costs $2,100. Under the Live Local Act, a two-bedroom apartment would instead rent for around $1,890 while rent for a one-bedroom would be $1,665. So it’s only about a 10 percent reduction.
Ocoee Gateway LLC’s proposals still stand a chance of approval. The developer appealed the denials under the Florida Land Use and Environmental Dispute Resolution Act (FLUEDRA). That act allows developers to challenge a government decision if they believe the local government has “unfairly burdened their property rights.”
The city’s response to that was to say the developer’s plan to build apartments next to established single-family subdivisions is “politically tone-deaf, incredibly misguided, and fails to create leverage in its favor.”
Here's where the special magistrate comes in. Ed Pantaleon, a 33-year attorney who specialize in real estate and land-use cases, was appointed to mediate between the city and the developer. He'll decide if the city erred in its denial and will make recommendations for moving forward.
On Dec. 12, representatives from the city and the developer met with the special magistrate for mediation. After the session, Rumer said the developer wanted to “go back to the drawing board and see what they could do.”
No additional meetings have been scheduled.
“We’re on pause on the mediation,” Rumer said by phone. “They’re going to go back to the drawing board. We've met with their design team, and if they come back with a plan that we react to, that’ll be under the mediation process.”
Eventually, there will be a public magistrate hearing where landowners whose properties abut the developer’s property can weigh in. But, Rumer said, ultimately, the city commission approves or denies even the special magistrate’s recommendation. Geller predicted “an uphill climb” for any proposal solution “if opposed by irate citizens.”
