OUC May Turn Off A/C To Downtown Building

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Plaza in downtown Orlando owes $800,000 in air conditioning bills, so OUC is now threatening to turn up the heat and turn off the air conditioning. The Plaza owners told Eyewitness News the partially empty building doesn't owe what OUC claims, so they have no choice but to take the power company to court.

OUC pumps chilled water to The Plaza, which creates chilled air that's pumped through the building. The Plaza says it was forced into using the special system by the city of Orlando in exchange for getting tax breaks and that OUC's expert determined how big the system should be.

The Plaza says, after five years, it's obvious the system is twice as big as it needs to be and the owners don't think they should pay for the $800,000 mistake.

"We are paying for the equipment we're using. We are paying for the chilled water we're using. Our entire problem with OUC is we're being asked to pay for capacity that we're never going to use," said Griff Winthrop, Plaza Owners' attorney.

But OUC says a deal's a deal and it spent a lot of money building a system big enough to cool the entire building. OUC says it needs the $800,000 The Plaza is under contract to pay and also needs a long-term agreement with The Plaza for its future cooling needs; OUC is building a new chiller plant near the new arena and needs to know how big it should be.

"We had to put in pipe and we had to have a plant to supply the chilled water, so this is about what we had to go through to provide them with the service, in addition to how much water they needed to chill the building," OUC spokeswoman Roseann Harrington said.

Attorneys for The Plaza and OUC are planning to meet with the judge Friday about whether OUC can turn off the air conditioning to the building.

WFTV