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Meetings · Eustis

Eustis Local Planning Agency — February 20, 2025 minutes

City of Eustis Local Planning Agency — February 20, 2025

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (5 of 5 members present) Duration: 5:31 PM – 5:37 PM (6 minutes) Location: Eustis City Hall

Attendance

  • Present: Chairman Willie Hawkins, Vice Chair Gary Ashcraft, Mr. George Asbate, Ms. Emily Lee, Mr. Michael Holland
  • Absent: None
  • Staff Present: Mike Lane, Director of Development Services; Christine Halloran, City Clerk

Prior minutes: October 17, 2024 minutes approved (moved Holland, seconded Ashcraft), 5-0. The board's previous meeting was four months earlier — the February 6, 2025 meeting was cancelled.

Agenda Items

Item 1: Approval of Minutes — October 17, 2024 Local Planning Agency Meeting

  • Type: Other (procedural)
  • Case Number: Item 1.1
  • Location: N/A
  • Applicant: N/A
  • Request: Approve the October 17, 2024 LPA minutes.
  • Action: Approved
  • Vote: 5-0 (moved Holland, seconded Ashcraft)

Item 2.1: Ordinance Number 25-01 — Land Development Regulations amendment, § 102-11(b) Community Meeting and § 109.4 Use Regulations Table

  • Type: Text Amendment (Land Development Regulations)
  • Case Number: Ordinance Number 25-01
  • Location: Citywide
  • Applicant: City of Eustis (staff-initiated)
  • Request: Make pre-application community meetings mandatory for five categories of development, and revise the Chapter 109 Table of Uses for hookah lounges and self-service storage.
  • Current Zoning: N/A (citywide)
  • Proposed Zoning: N/A
  • Acreage: N/A
  • Staff Recommendation: Transmit to City Commission
  • Action: Recommended for transmittal to the City Commission
  • Vote: 5-0 (moved Holland, seconded Ashcraft)
  • Conditions: None added
  • Notable Discussion:
    • Lane set out the five development types that would trigger a mandatory community meeting: (1) residential subdivisions over 10 acres; (2) mixed-use and multi-family developments greater than five dwelling units per acre; (3) commercial projects with a building over 50,000 sq ft; (4) any planned unit development; and (5) any future land use district change for properties over four acres that is not part of an annexation application.
    • The board asked whether a size threshold applied to PUDs. Lane: the community meeting would be required for a PUD of any size.
    • Use table changes: hookah lounges proposed to be allowed in all commercial districts as a conditional use. Self-service storage — currently allowed in General Commercial, General Industrial, Mixed Commercial-Residential and Mixed Commercial-Industrial — proposed to be stricken from all four and allowed only in the Industrial district, as a conditional use.
    • Lane's supply figure is the load-bearing fact: the City currently has 32 sq ft of storage facility per resident, totaling 801,500 sq ft, with three projects underway; once those complete the ratio reaches 103 sq ft per resident.

Public Hearings Summary

  • Number of speakers: 0
  • General sentiment: No public comment recorded
  • Key concerns: None raised by the public

Key Signals

  • Eustis is about to triple its self-storage supply, and the code change is the city reacting to that fact after it happened. Lane put the number on the record: 32 sq ft of storage per resident today across 801,500 sq ft, rising to 103 sq ft per resident once three approved projects finish. That is roughly a 3.2x increase in inventory for a city of about 22,000. Ordinance 25-01 responds by pulling self-service storage out of General Commercial, General Industrial, Mixed Commercial-Residential and Mixed Commercial-Industrial entirely, leaving it as a conditional use in the Industrial district alone. Anyone holding commercial land in Eustis on the assumption storage is a fallback use should read that as the fallback closing.

  • A mandatory community-meeting trigger now attaches to any PUD of any size. The other four triggers carry thresholds — 10 acres, five units per acre, 50,000 sq ft, four acres. PUDs carry none. Lane confirmed the intent explicitly when the board asked. For a homebuyer or an adjacent owner, this is the practical change: a developer proposing a PUD next door must convene a public meeting before the application is filed, not after it reaches the LPA.

  • The four-acre future-land-use trigger carves out annexations. Category five requires a community meeting for a FLU district change on properties over four acres unless the change is part of an annexation application. Eustis processes most of its land-use changes as annexation companions — every comprehensive plan amendment the LPA heard in the following year arrived that way. The carve-out means the city's dominant intake channel stays outside the new notice requirement.

  • The board had not met since October 17, 2024. The February 6 meeting was cancelled and this one ran six minutes. The LPA's cadence is item-driven, not calendar-driven: it convenes when Development Services has something to transmit, and dark months are the normal condition rather than a lapse.

Raw Notes

  • Source: minutes PDF at https://mccmeetings.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/eustisfl-pubu/MEET-Minutes-ca298f15e8294e0d9cbea00af6148007.pdf (2 pp.), retrieved 2026-08-15. Agenda PDF at the matching MEET-Agenda- path.
  • Minutes stamped "APPROVED 3/6/2025".
  • Minutes pages are headed "Eustis City Commission" rather than "Eustis Local Planning Agency" — a clerk template artifact that persists across all Eustis LPA minutes through 2025. The body text and the agenda both identify the body as the Local Planning Agency.
  • Attested by Christine Halloran, City Clerk; signed by Chairman Willie Hawkins.
  • Ordinance 25-01 returned to the LPA on April 3, 2025 in revised form before going to the City Commission.

Connected records

1 connected record

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