What's on the record
Hanover Land Company brought Lake Bright-Brighurst (LSCP-25-774 + PUD-25-775) to the Leesburg Planning Commission in late 2025 and through January 2026: a 202-acre, 502-home Planned Unit Development on CR-33, structured with a $2.3M Hanover-funded improvement to the CR-470/CR-48/CR-33 intersection as a reverter condition. The mitigation directly addressed the infrastructure constraint the denial bloc had cited in nine peripheral residential denials across 2024-2025.
The P&Z denied 3-3 on January 22, 2026 — the bloc reasoned past the mitigation. Hanover's case advanced to City Commission second reading, originally scheduled March 23, postponed to April 13 pending state review comments. Council approved 4-1 (Connell dissenting). Lake County's separate approval of the intersection plan converted the contested technical objection into a settled one. The 502-home PUD entered entitlement.
Why this matters for the corpus
The Hanover case is the proof of the council-fracture mechanism: inter-jurisdictional approval of mitigation capital operates as a council-floor solvent. P&Z formations are not council formations. Future South Lake applicants representing high-density rural-arterial development will reference the Hanover playbook — line up county-level technical approval of mitigation, then accept the P&Z denial as procedural friction, then carry to council. The Resolution Bridge tracked the prediction (bloc would hold) as misread.