BUSINESS and the college trustees with selling the community on a development plan. “Our greatest challenge proved to be negotiating the politically sensitive process of securing city approvals,” Bornstein told a reporter after the project was complete. “Nothing prepared us for the complexities and intense scrutiny of a real estate venture.” Herbst says the college considered simply selling the land and letting an outside developer take the heat. But, he adds, “the more we looked at it, the more self-development made sense.” Frank Herring, then managing partner for Dallas-based developer Trammell Crow Co., was hired as project manager. Now president of his own company, The Herring Group, he continues to advise the college on its commercial real estate ventures and serves on the real estate task force with Keen and others. “I guess you could say I was the arms and legs,” says Herring, who’s also a trustee for the Hamilton Holt School, the college’s evening program. “I ran the day to day operation of getting the project done.” But there were plenty of feelings to be soothed and reassurances to be made before construction actually got underway. Herring, who describes himself as “low profile,” was a developer, not a public relations practitioner. It was up to the college to reassure suspicious locals. “I spoke to every group around town,” Herbst recalls. “It was before PowerPoint, so I lugged around all these renderings. People were afraid we were going to build a skyscraper. They were afraid that whatever we built wasn’t going to be on the tax rolls. There was a lot of doubt.” SunTrust Plaza, after considerable discussion and debate, was opened in 1999 as a threestory, 82,000-square-foot complex abutting an 850-space parking garage. Tenants include Gap, Starbucks, Restoration Hardware and Merrill Lynch, as well as its namesake bank. At 40 feet tall, the structure exceeds the city’s height limit by 10 feet. But with the third story partially recessed, it doesn’t feel out of scale with the rest of Park Avenue. And it provides the city with $248,890 in annual property tax revenue. Subsequently, Rollins began buying various commercial properties along the south side of West Fairbanks Avenue, from the campus entrance to the railroad tracks. In 2012, it redeveloped Winter Park Plaza — a strip center anchored by Ethos, a vegetarian restaurant — and is now landlord to an array of businesses, from a waxing salon to a vitamin emporium. The center’s original developers had defaulted on a $7 million note, and the college snapped it up for $2.8 million via an Internet auction. It’s expected to generate $43,658 in property taxes this year. Other college-owned commercial properties lining Fairbanks bring in considerably less,
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W I N T E R P A R K M A GAZI N E | WI N TER 2016
TAXES ARE ONLY PART OF ROLLINS’ TOTAL IMPACT Determining the amount of property taxes paid isn’t the only way to measure the economic impact of a college on a community. It isn’t even the most important way. The accompanying story deals primarily with that topic because it engenders so much discussion and conjecture. So, apart from its hefty tax bill, what are the other economic benefits to Winter Park of having Rollins College within the city limits? And can these benefits be quantified? Such studies are often done on behalf of governmental agencies and major institutions of all types, from colleges to sports franchises. But the last full-fledged impact study involving Rollins was done in 2008 by Tripp Umbach, a Pittsburgh-based consulting company whose services include research, strategic planning and economic analysis. The study was commissioned by the college. The Tripp Umbach team analyzed taxes paid; the spending power of students, staff, faculty and visitors; purchases made for ongoing operations and capital improvements; and the number of jobs supported directly or indirectly by the college. As is standard procedure with such studies, a multiplier was applied to determine the indirect impact of college and college-related expenditures on the state, county and city economies. Using data from 2006, the consultants figured the college’s total impact, direct and indirect, was $204.9 million. What would the number be today? Obviously, considerably higher since the Tripp Umbach data is nine years old. But as of now, a new study giving a broader picture of the college’s economic impact isn’t planned.
but all contribute to city coffers proportionally, based on their assessments. This summer, Rollins jumped across Fairbanks to buy its only property on the north side of the street — the building at 315 W. Fairbanks that housed the law offices of the late Russell Troutman. The college paid $2.65 million for the building and an adjacent parking lot. The Holt School’s offices have temporarily moved there from the Pioneer Building, located in the college’s Samuel B. Lawrence Center. The Lawrence Center is a city block in downtown Winter Park that also encompasses a 40,000-square-foot building occupied by PNC Bank and other tenants. The Pioneer Building sustained water damage over the summer and is undergoing repairs.
Eventually, says Eisenbarth, the Holt School will probably move back and the Troutman building will be offered for lease. A college-owned property that will soon change uses is 200 W. Fairbanks, until recently home of Frank & Stein’s, a bar and restaurant. Eisenbarth says he hopes the site will be used for a campus and community bookstore. It was announced earlier this year that the on-campus bookstore would be converted into an event center. It’s unclear whether or not the property would become tax exempt if it’s used for a bookstore — especially if an outside company runs the operation and pays the college rent. In 2007, Rollins began a townhome-buying spree, corralling nine units on Orchard Avenue near Mead Botannical Garden. The college uses these and other scattered townhomes for faculty housing. New hires pay market rate for rent, and may remain for a maximum of three years. The townhomes remain on the tax rolls because they’re considered incidental to the college’s core educational mission. Faculty housing is expected to generate $65,872 in property taxes this year.
But the biggest development project ever undertaken by the college was the Alfond. The idea to build a hotel emerged from a freewheeling 2008 trustee brainstorming session, Eisenbarth says. Although Rollins was nationally renowned for its picture-postcard campus, there was a vexing problem. Visitors, including prospective students and their parents, had no place on campus — or even adjacent to it — to spend the night. In addition, following on-campus weddings for alumni, there was no convenient venue to gather for receptions. There was also a shortage of meeting and conference space for the college and the community. The solution seemed obvious. “I was on the job two months and got the job of hotel developer,” recalls Eisenbarth, who had been hired from a comparable post at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. “I went back to the office and looked at the job description. I didn’t see ‘hotel developer’ in there anywhere. I saw ‘other duties as assigned.’” The trustees formed an Alfond task force, and asked Keen to work with Eisenbarth and formulate a plan. The Alfond family — longtime college benefactors — had already committed to putting up $12.5 million, with the condition that profits be used to provide scholarships and endow a scholarship fund. But $12.5 million wasn’t nearly enough to get the job done. Instead of partnering with a developer, though, Eisenbarth and Keen recommended that the college finance the remainder with a $20 million