City of Lake Wales Planning and Zoning Board — January 27, 2026

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (5 of 7 members present) Duration: Approximately 1 hour 53 minutes (5:30 PM – 7:23 PM)

Backfill. This meeting sits between the harvested January 13, 2026 special meeting and the February 24, 2026 regular meeting and had not previously been read. Minutes are the signed scan published to the AgendaCenter (image-only PDF, recovered by OCR); staff-report detail below is drawn from the January 27, 2026 agenda packet.

Attendance

• Present: Chairperson Kyra Love, Vice Chair Bud Colburn, Roy Wilkinson, Casey McKibben, Scott Blackburn
• Absent: Eric Rio, Mark Bennett (both notified the secretary before the meeting; quorum maintained)
• Staff Present: Autumn Cochella (Growth Management Director, AICP, FRA-RA), Shannon Hancock (Recording Secretary)

Agenda Items

Item 3: Approval of Minutes — Special Board Meeting November 20, 2025

• Type: Procedural (minutes approval)
• Action: Approved
• Vote: Unanimous (Colburn moved, Blackburn seconded)

Item 4: Communications and Petitions

• Type: Other (public comment period)
• Action: No speakers; Chair Love opened and closed the period.

Item 6: Watermill Express — SEUP for Outdoor Display and Sales

• Type: SEUP (outdoor display and sales as an accessory use)
• Case Number: PID 273003-000000-014100
• Location: 600 Hwy 60 W — Lake Wales Plaza, north of State Road 60 and south of Central Avenue; unit sited in the southeast corner of the plaza parking lot
• Applicant: Michelle Kucaba, Permitting Coordinator with Watermill Express, authorized agent for owner
• Request: Place a 106-square-foot pre-manufactured, unmanned, drive-up self-service kiosk selling purified drinking water and ice on a new 15-by-15-foot surface pad occupying two leased parking spaces.
• Current Zoning: C-3 Highway Commercial (future land use CAC Community Activity Center)
• Staff Recommendation: Approve with conditions — the accessory structure "will not have a negative impact on existing surrounding area," including site circulation and parking
• Action: Approved
• Vote: 5-0 (Colburn moved, Blackburn seconded; Love, Colburn, Wilkinson, McKibben, Blackburn all Yes)
• Conditions: A Business Tax Receipt application must be reviewed and approved before a Certificate of Use is issued.
• Notable Discussion: The unit arrives already inspected and approved by the State. Staff framed the fiscal effect as redevelopment of excess parking using existing impervious surface.

Item 7: 242 Scenic Hwy S — Landscape Buffer Waiver and SEUP Amendment (Automotive Sales & Repair)

• Type: Variance / waiver + amendment to an existing SEUP
• Case Number: PID 273001-883000-045060
• Location: 242 Scenic Highway South — east of 3rd Street South, north of Bullard Avenue, west of Scenic Highway South
• Applicant: HAB Holdings LLC (Henry Kebabjian, owner; mailing address Toms River, NJ)
• Request: Waive the planting requirements inside the Scenic Highway landscape buffer, amending Condition of Approval 2 of the automotive-sales SEUP granted March 26, 2024.
• Staff Recommendation: Deny — the waiver violates Condition 2 (a hedge reaching six feet at maturity, minimum two feet and 50% view blockage at planting, mature within two years); the City Horticulturist inspected the planting area and soil in October 2025 and found both sufficient to support growth with adequate care; and the Ridge Scenic Highway Corridor is intended to preserve scenic vistas.
• Action: Waiver denied
• Vote: 5-0 (Blackburn moved to follow the staff recommendation of denial, Wilkinson seconded; Love, Colburn, Wilkinson, McKibben, Blackburn all Yes)
• Notable Discussion: Kebabjian argued the landscaping failed for reasons outside his control and cited the original cost of installing the buffer. The enforcement record in the staff report is unusually explicit: a Notice of Violation issued June 2025 for failing buffer plantings; the owner told Code Compliance in September 2025 he intended to seek a waiver instead of replanting; in October 2025 staff relayed the Horticulturist's finding that vehicle tire tracks were visible in the grass and may have damaged irrigation or plantings, and that staff would not support a waiver. David Price, President of Bok Tower Gardens, spoke, urging the board to hold business owners to the city's landscape standards. Charlene Bennett asked that City Horticulturist Kevin Polk be sent to advise the owner. Tim Bragg asked about the names of certain city roads. The minutes record a motion and vote only on the waiver; no separate disposition of the SEUP amendment is recorded.

Item 8: Steeple Chase — Major Modification of Approved Preliminary Subdivision Plat / Residential PDP

• Type: PUD / PDP amendment (major modification, recommendation to City Commission)
• Case Number: PIDs 273012000000033020, 273012000000034000, 273012000000041010, 273012000000041030, 273012000000014010, 273012000000023030, 273012000000023010
• Location: Approximately 97.86 acres of vacant grove north of Belleview Drive and east of Scenic Highway South — south of Highway 60 E and the CSX railroad, east of McLaughlin Middle School, adjacent to the County subdivision Ridge Manor and to Belle Lago, Belleview Subdivision, and Grove at Orchard Hills
• Applicant: David Waronker, owner of CBD Land Investors, LLC (engineer of record Dave Schmitt, P.E.; John McVay of Elite Design, Lakeland, presented)
• Request: Amend the 318-unit approved plan (250 single-family detached lots + 68 townhomes, approved by City Commission December 19, 2023) via two options — Plan A: 301 single-family detached lots only (145 in Phase 1, 156 in Phase 2) with a waiver from the Section 23-443 housing-mix requirement; Plan B: 110 single-family detached + 56 duplex lots in Phase 1 and 156 single-family detached in Phase 2, with a waiver from the alleyway requirement for duplex lots.
• Current Zoning: R-1A and PF Professional (land use LDR Low Density Residential and RO Residential Office); maximum density under LDR is 5 units per gross acre, or 489 units
• Acreage: ~97.86 acres
• Staff Recommendation: Approve Plan Option B with waivers and conditions — staff found it generally consistent with Section 23-443 and responsive to the Board's November 2025 finding that the approved plan's housing mix was superior.
• Action: Denied — the Board moved to deny the recommendation of approval, finding that neither Plan A nor Plan B is superior to the original approved plan.
• Vote: 3-2 (Blackburn moved, Wilkinson seconded; per the roll-call grid — Love Yes, Wilkinson Yes, Blackburn Yes; Colburn No, McKibben No)
• Notable Discussion: The staff report states plainly why the plan keeps changing: "Since the December 2023 approval, the applicant has not been able to find a developer willing to build the alley-loaded homes." This was the third pass — the Board rejected an alley-removal amendment in June 2025 and denied a revised plan in November 2025. Waronker spoke to the project history, Lake Wales Envisioned, and his reasoning for the changes. Six residents spoke: Tim Bragg (Alta Vista Street) on roads, sewer, and water; Molly Hale (Emerald Avenue) on access and whether a wall would enclose the development, and later on parking; Anna Clarke (Beverly Drive) welcomed the development but raised traffic; David Price (813 Campbell Avenue) said the changes do not reflect Lake Wales Envisioned; Charlene Bennett objected to the changes and the developer; Catherine Price raised the waivers and the effect on existing home values. Staff noted the originally-approved plan remains in force despite the denial.

Item 9: Iron Mountain — Major Modification of Approved Preliminary Subdivision Plat / Residential PDP

• Type: PUD / PDP amendment (major modification, recommendation to City Commission)
• Case Number: PID 272922866300041010
• Location: Approximately 76.95 acres north of Burns Avenue and west of Buck Moore Road / Mammoth Grove Road — north of Lake Bonnie, west of the Florida Rock Industries sand mine, adjacent to an existing multifamily development and Impact Church
• Applicant: David Waronker, owner of CBD Land Investors, LLC (Dave Schmitt, P.E., authorized agent; John McVay of Elite Design presented)
• Request: Amend the 520-unit approved plan (City Commission approval December 19, 2023) via two options — Plan A: 279 single-family detached lots with a waiver from the housing-mix requirement; Plan B: 234 single-family detached lots + 76 duplexes with waivers including 0-foot interior side setbacks for attached duplex units, 30-foot duplex lot frontage, 70% lot coverage for duplex lots, and relief from the alleyway requirement for lots under 50 feet wide.
• Acreage: ~76.95 acres
• Staff Recommendation: Approve Plan Option B with waivers and conditions, finding it generally consistent with Section 23-443 and responsive to the Board's November 2025 direction to return with a mix of uses and housing options.
• Action: Denied — recommendation of denial forwarded to City Commission for Plan Option B.
• Vote: Two roll calls. First motion (Colburn moved to approve Plan B with waivers including waiving Section 23-443.6 to allow front driveways; Wilkinson seconded) failed 2-3 — Colburn Yes, Wilkinson Yes; Love No, McKibben No, Blackburn No. Second motion (McKibben moved to recommend denial to City Commission; Blackburn seconded) passed 3-2 — Love Yes, McKibben Yes, Blackburn Yes; Colburn No, Wilkinson No.
• Notable Discussion: The staff report notes the amended plan removed the originally approved townhomes, apartments, and the commercial area at the southeast corner, and that the latest configuration fixed a pattern the City has tried to avoid — the backs of homes fronting Burns Avenue. Catherine Price objected to the developer and the project. Richard Spohn (1510 Chamberlain Loop) raised infrastructure, schools, and the sheer number of developments under construction. Note the vote flip between the two motions: Wilkinson supported approval and then opposed denial, leaving Love, McKibben, and Blackburn as the operative majority.

Public Hearings Summary

• Number of speakers: 9 across four public hearings (three on Item 7, six on Item 8, two on Item 9, with David Price, Catherine Price, and Charlene Bennett speaking on more than one item)
• General sentiment: Opposed to the two PDP modifications; supportive of holding the automotive-sales site to its landscape conditions. One speaker (Anna Clarke) supported Steeple Chase in principle while raising traffic.
• Key concerns:
  • Roads, sewer, water, and access capacity around Steeple Chase
  • Loss of the approved housing mix and the waivers requested to replace it
  • Effect of the modified plans on existing home values
  • Fidelity to Lake Wales Envisioned, the city's guiding plan
  • School capacity and the cumulative volume of construction (Iron Mountain)
  • Enforcement of the Ridge Scenic Highway landscape standards (Bok Tower Gardens)

Key Signals

• The Board denied both of one developer's projects in a single night — and it was the third denial in seven months for the same design fight. David Waronker's CBD Land Investors asked to strip alley-loaded product out of two approved PDPs totaling 838 units (Steeple Chase 318, Iron Mountain 520). Staff recommended approval of the mixed-housing Plan B on both. The Board denied both 3-2, finding neither option superior to what was already approved. The staff report names the market cause outright: since December 2023 the applicant "has not been able to find a developer willing to build the alley-loaded homes." Central Florida's townhome and alley-loaded segment has gone unbuildable, and Lake Wales' P&Z is refusing to let entitlements be reshaped around that.

• Section 23-224.7's "superiority" standard is functioning as a real veto. Lake Wales writes its PDP amendment test as a comparison against the approved plan, not against the code minimum. That framing is what gives a five-member board the leverage to reject a staff-endorsed plan: the question is not "is this legal?" but "is this better than what we already have?" For any developer holding a 2023-era Lake Wales entitlement, the operative risk is that redesigning downward re-opens the whole approval to that test. Contrast Clermont and Minneola, where amendment fights turn on code compliance rather than a superiority comparison.

• A stable 3-2 split runs through both PDP votes, and it is not the usual staff-versus-board line. Love, Wilkinson, and Blackburn formed the Steeple Chase denial majority; Love, McKibben, and Blackburn formed the Iron Mountain one. Vice Chair Colburn voted with the applicant on both. Wilkinson switched sides between the two Iron Mountain roll calls. This is a board that individuates — Lake Wales records votes as a per-member grid rather than a tally, and the January record shows why that matters: there is no reliable pro-development bloc to count on.

• Code enforcement is the front door to this docket. Both non-residential items arrived carrying violation histories: the 242 Scenic Highway automotive lot came in on a June 2025 Notice of Violation for a dead landscape buffer, seeking a waiver rather than replanting; the Watermill Express kiosk was conditioned on obtaining a Business Tax Receipt before use. The board denied the waiver 5-0 with the President of Bok Tower Gardens testifying for the standard. Read alongside the May 2026 docket (Capo taco truck, 107 Crystal Ave — both violation-driven), Lake Wales is consistently using its permit gate as the enforcement instrument, and the Ridge Scenic Highway corridor is the standard it will not trade away.

• The unit counts moving through here are a leading indicator for southern Polk absorption. Two projects representing 838 approved units both tried to convert to lower-density, front-loaded, single-family-plus-duplex product in the same month. Whatever gets built at Steeple Chase and Iron Mountain, the developer's own filings say the townhome and alley-loaded market has no builder. For anyone tracking the US-27 / SR-60 southern corridor, that is a product-mix signal ahead of any permit data.

Raw Notes

• Minutes are a 6-page image-only scan (CCITT gray, 300 dpi); text recovered via tools/ocr-pdf.py. Vote grids are shaded-cell tables — absent members' cells are blank, so a five-value row maps to the five members present in column order (Love, Colburn, Wilkinson, McKibben, Blackburn). Where the minutes state a numeric tally ("3 – yay and 2 - nay") it is reproduced above; per-member attributions are read from the grid and corroborated against who moved and seconded.
• Iron Mountain approved-plan composition (from the July 23, 2026 staff report, for reference): 42 single-family detached front-loaded, 250 alley-loaded townhomes, 228 multi-family, plus a commercial outparcel — 520 units total. Future land use MDR Medium Density Residential; zoning R-3.
• Steeple Chase parcel 273012000000023030 (3.92 acres) keeps its RO Residential Office land use and PF Professional zoning inside the project, since single-family is permitted in that district.
• Steeple Chase Plan A waivers: 5-foot side setback (10 required), 15-foot rear setback (20 required), 50-foot lot frontage (85 required in R-1A, 75 in R-3 within PF), and waiver of the Section 23-443 housing-mix requirement.
• The January 27 agenda packet runs 57 pages / 34 MB. Extraction used pdftotext -f N -l M -layout in page bands per memory discipline.
• Agenda footer notes the Business Impact Estimate forms for Ordinances 2024-01 and 2024-11 are posted at lakewalesfl.gov/DocumentCenter/Index/433.
• Sequel: Iron Mountain returned to the Board on July 23, 2026 with a 282-unit plan (232 single-family detached + 50 twin villas + commercial outparcel) and was recommended for approval 5-2. Steeple Chase has not returned as of the July 23, 2026 meeting.