Spa, bakery could occupy new Ocoee building

Although no businesses have been announced officially, a new project in Ocoee could bring a spa and bakery to the city.

The Ocoee City Commission approved 3-1 an amendment to the Ocoee Landings project that paves the way for a new three-story, 51,680-square-foot mixed-use building. Commissioner Rosemary Wilsen was absent, and Mayor Rusty Johnson dissented.

The project will be located on 1.76 acres on the east side of Lake Ohio Road and the north side of East Silver Star Road, about 770 feet east of the intersection of North Clarke Road and East Silver Star Road. The site is the only remaining parcel in the Ocoee Landings Planned Unit Development.

According to the applicant the first floor will be commercial. Businesses are still to be determined and approved, but so far, the owners have received petitions from a spa, a bakery, a UPS store and a veteran care facility. Businesses such as thrift stores, tattoo parlors, pawn shops, hookah lounges, laundromats, clubs, dollar stores and smoke shops will be restricted from renting a commercial unit on the property.

The second and third floors of the future development will consist of 42 residential condominiums available for purchase only.

“The way visually the project is going to look from the road, you wouldn’t be able to tell that it is a residential community,” Lowndes Law Firm shareholder Tara Teadrow said on behalf of the property owners. “It’s going to look and be designed in an urban feel, and it’s going to have a complementary architectural style like whatever is already underway of building out adjacent to us. That way it looks like an integrated, more cohesive Planned Unit Development.”

Commissioners Larry Brinson, Richard Firstner and George Oliver supported the project.

“I like the residential more than the commercial, because it gives more residential places to live in the city of Ocoee,” Brinson said.

“I don’t have a problem with the mixed-use residential,” Firstner said. “(It) would go a lot better in that neighborhood.”

“I don’t have any concerns about this; I think it’s going to be a welcome addition to our community,” Oliver said.

However, not everyone was in favor of the development. Ocoee resident Robert Phillips expressed his concern pertaining the approved project as his backyard faces the future development.

“I was told that this land was going to be commercial … and speaking as a resident that does face that property, the preference would be to keep it commercial,” he said.

Johnson also voiced his concerns.

“I’m not really in favor of it,” he said. “Well, come time if you get out of Silver Star Road, I want you to tell me — right in, right out, there is no other way you get in and out of that project. Right in, right out. … I have a problem (with this project), and I’ve talked with citizens who live there, and they have a problem with it. ... I don’t believe this is a project we should do there. I don’t have a problem with the commercial there, but I’ve got a problem with the (residential), and I’m telling you that parking is going to be a problem.”