As St. Cloud continues its rapid growth, Thursday’s City Council meeting highlighted the ongoing tension between preserving the city’s small-town character while preparing it for long-term financial sustainability.
City leaders defended several development and annexation decisions, arguing that attracting commercial projects and expanding the city’s tax base are necessary to avoid future tax increases for residents.
“We need commercial development.,” Mayor Chris Robertson said. “If we don’t have commercial development, this city will fail. If we don’t have commercial development, taxes will have to be raised in order to operate the city.”
Robertson’s comments came in response to recent social media criticism surrounding a planned $60 million downtown mixed-use development next to City Hall and the annexation of 743 acres south of Kissimmee Park Road for another mixed-use development.
The downtown project includes a 500-space parking garage, which will replace the current roughly 75-space surface lot, along with more than 17,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and 150 apartments across two buildings.
“It’s important to have the units living downtown to support the businesses in our community,” Robertson said. “If we want to continue to witness restaurants or some of our stores failing, then we do nothing. If you don’t have people within a walking distance of these businesses, they will continue to fail.”
Robertson also tied the city’s growth strategy to ongoing traffic concerns, saying many residents currently leave the city each day for work because of a lack of local jobs.
“It’s not just because we don’t have enough roads,” he said. “We don’t have the jobs here, and so we’re trying to accomplish that by creating commercial projects throughout our city.”
Council Member Kolby Urban said there have been “a lot of misconceptions” about the downtown project and noted that it is being funded through the Community Redevelopment Agency rather than the city’s general budget.
“The CRA’s specific purpose is to redevelop properties to build the tax base for our city, and that’s exactly what this project is doing,” Urban said.
The mayor also addressed criticism surrounding the project’s affordable housing component.
As City Manager Veronia Miller explained, half of the project’s 150 apartments will be designated for residents earning up to 120% of the area median income. The remaining units will be allocated among residents earning 30%, 60% and 80% of median income.
“Low-income people, high income people, medium income people … we’re all people in our community,” Robertson said. “This is a project that allows for all types to live in one building and enjoy what our downtown has to offer.”
The council also gave final approval at Thursday’s meeting to the voluntary annexation of the 743-acre Whaley Platt project along Kissimmee Park Road, just to the south and west of the current Florida’s Turnpike interchange at Clay Whaley Road. The development previously received approval from the Osceola County Board of County Commissioners in 2022 for up to 2,818 residential units, along with plans for a crystal lagoon, marina, trails and a future K-8 school site.
Robertson stressed that the annexation does not create new development but instead brings an already-approved project under city control and into the city’s tax rolls.
“This isn’t just raw land,” he said. “It’s got the entitlements. It has the rights to build, and they can build it in the county as it stands. If we don’t annex it in, we don’t get the impact fees and we don’t get the tax base.”
Responding to online criticism that the city is continually approving new housing projects, Robertson said, “No. They have the approvals, and if we do not take them in, we lose a lot of money,” he said. “If the taxpayers want their taxes to go up, then we’ll stop annexing properties and then the taxes will go up. We can’t really have our cake and eat it too.”
Also Thursday, the council approved annexation of a separate 10-acre commercial site along the Narcoossee Road corridor while adding restrictions prohibiting selfstorage facilities, car washes, tire shops and several automotive uses in response to residents’ concerns.
“We hear what you don’t want anymore,” Robertson said. “That’s why last meeting, we wanted those prohibited uses added to that.”
Annexing the property gives the city more control over how it develops, he said. “It’s going to be commercial. That means we get a higher tax base.”
The mayor encouraged residents to remain engaged in shaping the city’s future.
“If a project is going to be built, we want to make sure the people of our community have input in it,” he said. “I believe this council responds to the citizens … to everything that the citizens want.
“It takes the citizens to actually be part of the community with us. Let’s all be part of the solutions here.”
