Clermont Planning & Zoning Commission
The Clermont Planning & Zoning Commission is the municipal board governing the city's land-use entitlement reviews. Across 2024 and 2025, the Commission transformed structurally — three new commissioners (Bain assumed chair November 2024 from Krzyminski; Cramer, Hoisington, May, joined January 2025; Tidona's voice strengthened across the period). The reformed board moved from rubber-stamping 350,000 square feet of self-storage in 2024 (Hooks Street Phases 1 and 2 alone) to denying a 7-Eleven at Wellness Way 0-5 in October 2025 on form-based-code grounds. The Wellness Way Design Standards (2022) and DPZ CoDesign downtown engagement now anchor a defensive code architecture that survives SB 180 because it predates the August 2024 retroactive line. Strong Towns Clermont — co-founded by Commissioner May — operates as external civic energy aligned with the board. The Professionalizers framework: a board that learned to read its own code architecture and apply it.
The board's posture
The Clermont P&Z is the most-transformed board in the South Lake corpus. The Krzyminski-era board (through 2024) approved 350,000+ square feet of self-storage in Clermont — Hooks Street Phase 1 (74,400 sf, 7-0, February 2024) and Hooks Street Phase 2 (doubling to 150,000 sf, 5-0, August 2024) chief among them. The reformed board — Bain (chair from November 2024), Cramer, Hoisington, May (all joined January 2025), Tidona — moved within twelve months from approval default to defensive default.
The defining exhibit — 7-Eleven Wellness Way
October 2025: the Commission denied a 7-Eleven Conditional Use Permit at the Wellness Way / Schofield Road intersection inside Wellness Ridge PUD by a 0-5 vote. Staff recommended denial on conflicts with the PUD ordinance, C-1 regulations (car washes prohibited), and the 2022 Wellness Way Design Standards form-based code. The board agreed unanimously. The denial proved the form-based-code architecture works — the 2022 standards, which sit before SB 180's August 2024 retroactive line and are therefore protected from state preemption, operate as substantive regulatory tools and not aspirational language.
The defensive code triad
Three legs of code architecture, all pre-line and therefore protected:
- Wellness Way Design Standards (2022) — protects the 15,500-acre master plan area
- Pointe Grande ordinance / Ord 2024-10 (March 2024) — restricts Live Local Act applicability
- DPZ CoDesign downtown form-based code engagement (in progress) — extends form-based discipline to downtown
This architecture is the strongest defensive code position in the South Lake corpus.
Strong Towns Clermont
Commissioner May launched Strong Towns Clermont in August 2025 — a local civic advocacy group focused on stopping urban sprawl, improving transportation, preserving natural resources, and safer streets. The first public meeting drew on parking and transportation. Strong Towns Clermont is the external civic energy aligned with the reformed board's agenda, importing national smart-growth ideology into local governance.
Where the board operates
The Professionalizers framework: a board that read the code architecture left to it (Wellness Way Standards from a prior council, the Pointe Grande ordinance from prior P&Z work) and learned to apply it case-by-case. The board's transformation aligns Clermont's posture against Leesburg's denial-bloc posture, Minneola's approval-chair posture, and Groveland's identity-coding posture — four different defensive postures inside the same regulatory storm.