Editor’s Note: Taylor Ridge is a housing development of 65 single-family homes on 26 acres being considered for approval by the DeLand City Commission. It was approved on first reading Dec. 4, and comes before commissioners again tonight, Feb. 5, for a final vote. We’re sharing an opinion piece about Taylor Ridge, sent to city commissioners by DeLand resident Greg Heeter. He says the City Commission is failing to take advantage of the city’s new Transitional Residential District land-use designation by not demanding enough creativity from Taylor Ridge.

An open letter to the DeLand City Commission:

Taylor Ridge is not even a second cousin to TRD; it’s the same old sprawl … in a flood zone.

The proposed Taylor Ridge development is as much a TRD-type development as my grandmother was a star forward for the Boston Celtics.

The pastel cookie-cutter sprawl proposed for Taylor Ridge is nothing like a Transitional Residential District as professionally defined. But it’s almost exactly like the hundreds of homes in single-family developments already jammed into southeastern DeLand, on marshlands and bulldozed forests. It’s sort of a TRD, but not really a TRD, by a long shot.

The lead attorney for the developer slyly and smoothly made all his density comparisons to existing single-family housing in the area, stressing “the similarities to that which is already there,” and avoiding all comparisons to the creative TRD options. 

His apparently successful sleight of hand seemed to the audience to work way too easily on commissioners: “OK, fine. Call it a ‘TRD,’ but let us build it like a single-family development like all those others” but adding a mulch path and a swing set.

An aspect of a TRD is the TPA, or “tree-protection area.” It blows any thinking person’s mind that the allowed TPAs include barren utility easements devoid of trees. George Orwell in 1984 couldn’t have dreamed up that double-think, but our own “Tree City USA” did.

TRD afforded the City Commission one new, refreshing chance to be creative, to think outside the box, diversify housing options, protect green space, retain old trees, factor in huge livability and quality of life concerns in DeLand, and otherwise address the overwhelming opposition by citizens to more of the same sprawl — and you’re blowing it. 

Opportunity missed, ball dropped, ship sailed, more of the same. So much for 21st century solutions; keep DeLand firmly on the side of 1950s thinking and South Florida-level planning.

Municipal code definitions of a Transitional Residential District include the specification: “The livability or small-town character of the Transitional Residential District is made up of tree lined streets, open space, and greenways interspersed within a more urban residential pattern.”

Permitted housing options in a TRD include townhomes, cottages, duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes, multifamily housing and single-family housing, or a mixture of those.

High-wage-earning professionals and executives in larger DeLand businesses often live in other areas, like Lake Mary, Heathrow, Winter Garden, Ormond Beach and Maitland. They drive to work in DeLand simply because there are no sufficiently attractive urban-housing options here for them. There are no upscale townhomes or clusters of quadplexes of the type that command per-square-foot prices of 60 percent more in Lake Mary, or millions more in Winter Park.

By approving just another in a never-ending line of single-family housing developments, you cement DeLand’s growing reputation as another Deltona, but with four quaint blocks in Downtown.

Please make use of TRD while you can. These chances are rare. Do something imaginative, something classy, something greener, and something better.

Oh, and the “dry retention ponds” approved by the city in past years are still overflowing after years of sitting full of stagnant water. The hydrologist is a nice, intelligent guy, but so was the one who approved all the ponds and developments in past years in southeastern DeLand that are now flooded and costing citizens hundreds of thousands of dollars in corrections and repairs. It’s 2024 and we’ve got more floods coming.

So there’s that.

Please use the TRD to its full capacity, make it a DeLand showplace, and not waste it with the Taylor Ridge sprawl currently on the table.

Greg Heeter 

DeLand