For the past 18 months, Orlando has given downtown developers a break on the fees meant to pay for transportation improvements — to the tune of $4.6 million.
The incentive is meant to spark downtown development.
Developers are supposed to pay transportation-impact fees to make up for the increased traffic their projects will put on surrounding roads. But a program adopted by the city in October 2012 deeply discounts those fees for projects considered “transit-oriented development.”
Orlando officials think nearly everything built downtown fits that description, because projects need only be within a quarter-mile of a SunRail station or a Lymmo bus stop — which is essentially all of downtown.