1952 Building to be Razed for Wendy's in Winter Park

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By Mark Baratelli
A group of buildings built in 1952, 1954 and 1985 by Cox Parker Funeral Home in Winter Park will be demolished to make way for a Wendy's. The fast food restaurant is coming to a group of properties made up of 1308 & 1324 & 1350 W. Fairbanks. These combined properties measure approximately 1.53 acres in size, and have 250 feet of frontage on Fairbanks Avenue and 200 feet along the side street of Shoreview Avenue. 

The proposed site plans show a one-story, 2,700- square foot, Wendy’s fast food restaurant with one drive-thru lane and a companion free-standing one-story, 6,882-square foot retail or office building. The site plans shows 68 parking spaces which is more than the code requirement of 50 parking spaces based upon the building sizes and seating count. 

The site plan layout and urban design provided does not make an effort to conform to the desires of the City to locate the buildings toward the frontage of the property on Fairbanks Avenue, nor does it attempt to comply with the Comprehensive Plan policy to have drive- thru components as an end-cap to a larger building. Staff conversations with the applicant were related to the economics of the site and the desires of their end-user.

The City says "there is nothing distinctive about the architectural style. It resembles and contains no elements of any known architectural style such as Mediterranean, Arts & Crafts, Colonial, etc." Staff stressed to the applicant the important of a distinctive architectural product, especially given the City’s financial investments in this corridor and their need for