The Winter Park Town Council approved the first reading of an annexation agreement between the town and the Fraser River Development, LLC at its regular meeting last week. The agreement, up for public hearing on Jan. 2, would annex about 172 acres of unincorporated land owned by Fraser River Development into the town of Winter Park for mixed-use residential and commercial units.

The project is being called Roam and is slated to feature over 1,000 residential units, 400 hotel units and over 70,000 square feet of commercial space.

The majority of the property lies on the east side of Highway 40, located directly south of downtown Winter Park. The land will be split into two parcels, with six acres on the west side of the highway and 166 acres on the east, naturally bisected by the Fraser River.

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The purpose of the project is to offer a diversity of housing options, create mixed-use activity centers and to improve community connectivity. The proposed plans also call for creating additional parks, trails and open spaces on the land.

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Town also moves on workforce housing development

The town is also moving forward with the development of additional workforce housing at the Dimmit II site south of Kings Crossing.

Ground breaking is scheduled for June 2018, though to meet the ambitious schedule, the town decided to move the project through the design development stage.

The town entered into a contract with Davis Urban Architects to create a schematic design package to take the project through the design stage, a service that will cost nearly $300,000. The town also contracted Big Valley Construction for pre-construction services, costing nearly $20,000.

The 1.12-acre site will include 25 four-bedroom apartments, and is expected to be complete by September 2019.

Town building codes see update

The town of Winter Park adopted more up-to-date building codes at the meeting to allow citizens, design professionals and builders to take advantage of newer construction technologies and methods. The codes also update building safety requirements, and provide more consistency and uniformity with the codes in Fraser, Granby and Grand County jurisdictions.

Updates include the adoption of the 2015 international codes for building, residential, plumping, mechanical, gas, energy conservation, fire and more.