City of Leesburg Historic Preservation Board — February 25, 2026

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (5 of 6 members present) Duration: ~38 minutes (4:28 PM - 5:06 PM)

Attendance

• Present: Sanna Henderson (Chair), Vickie Lingerfelt (Vice Chair), Mark Plymale, Christopher Redding, Joshua Brewster
• Absent: John Moyer
• Staff Present: Dan Miller (Planning & Zoning Director), Sabrina Mitchell (Executive Assistant I), Melissa Medders De Los Santos (Planner), Mel Ortiz (Planner)

Note: This is a Historic Preservation Board meeting, not a Planning Commission meeting. The HPB is the City of Leesburg's design-review body for the downtown Historic District. It is the first HPB meeting captured in the Zoning Signal corpus. The PDF was filed in the same City P&Z document center alongside Planning Commission minutes.

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Agenda Items

Item 0: Board Introductions

• Type: Procedural
• Notable Discussion: Chair Henderson introduced new Board members and gave each member time to present their background. Planning & Zoning staff also introduced themselves with their backgrounds and assignments. The board appears to have multiple new members after a recent appointment cycle, mirroring the Planning Commission's 2024-2025 turnover.

Item 1: Dance Dynamix — 606 W Main Street — Exterior Renovation (After-the-Fact)

• Type: Historic Preservation Certificate of Appropriateness (after-the-fact)
• Case Number: HP-25-795
• Location: 606 W Main Street, Historic District
• Applicant: Dance Dynamix (operator)
• Request: Approval of exterior renovation work already completed
• Staff Recommendation: Accept as presented
• Action: Approved as presented
• Vote: 5-0 (Lingerfelt moved, Plymale seconded)
• Notable Discussion: Work was already done — stop-work order had been issued for code violation. Applicant stated he did not know the property was in the Historic District. Staff presented current appearance vs. proposed in exhibits, including a sign discussion (sign not available, edged in black, current building primer-edged in black), parapet addition, and new awning over old façade connections. Board discussion centered on building color, prior tenancy (department store), Historic District color palette, and rear elevation. The "approve as presented" outcome legitimizes already-completed work without requiring rework — a relatively forgiving posture toward unpermitted Historic District alteration.

Item 2: Beacon College — 123 W Main Street — Exterior Renovation (Façades)

• Type: Historic Preservation Certificate of Appropriateness
• Case Number: HP-26-848 (referenced as HP-25-795 in the motion text — likely a transcription error; case number HP-26-848 is correct in the agenda title)
• Location: 123 W Main Street, Historic District
• Applicant: Beacon College
• Request: Façade change to existing building; building plans include board room, alternate classroom, and meeting room
• Staff Recommendation: Approve proposed façades
• Action: Approved as proposed
• Vote: 5-0 (Brewster moved, Redding seconded)
• Notable Discussion: Applicant absent due to car trouble; staff presented on their behalf. Dan Miller noted Beacon "always done first class work" and the Beacon College gymnasium project from two years ago is a quality reference point. The City owns the railroad station and Beacon holds a 99-year lease on it. Beacon's downtown footprint continues to expand via incremental façade and renovation approvals.

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Public Hearings Summary

• Number of speakers: 0
• General sentiment: No public participation
• Key concerns: None

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Discussion Items / Updates

• Pinsa Fire pizza place: Applicant came before Historic Board November 2025; working on building interior.
• Building next to Pinsa Fire: Owner lives in Pennsylvania and "doesn't want to sell" (per Brewster).
• 901 Lilly Street: Front porch removed; staff encouraging applicant to paint.
• Lee School: Nothing happening at this time; no action.
• Historic sign: Chair Henderson plans to find a home to give the sign for renovations at next meeting.

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Key Signals

• First HPB meeting in the corpus — establishes a separate downtown design-review track: The Zoning Signal coverage of Leesburg has been entirely Planning Commission-focused. This document opens a parallel channel: the Historic Preservation Board governs the downtown core's Main Street face — specifically W Main Street properties — through Certificates of Appropriateness. The HPB and PC are separate boards with separate members; their decisions cumulatively shape Leesburg's downtown character independently of subdivision-scale rezonings.
• Stop-work-order-then-retroactive-approval is a tolerated path for downtown property owners: The Dance Dynamix case is small dollars but informationally large. The owner did exterior work without knowing (or claiming not to know) it required HP review, received a stop-work order, came before the Board, and was approved 5-0 as already-presented. There is no penalty, no rework, no design conditions in the record. For owners and contractors, the practical lesson is: ask forgiveness, not permission, in the Historic District.
• Beacon College's downtown anchor is quietly compounding: Beacon holds a 99-year lease on the City-owned railroad station, completed a gymnasium two years ago, and is now doing façade work at 123 W Main with City staff describing their work as "first class." Beacon is functioning as Leesburg's de facto downtown stewardship partner — the small-college-as-historic-district-anchor pattern visible in many southern downtowns. Worth tracking as a real estate signal: Beacon's footprint shapes Main Street property values and tenant mix.
• The HPB is sleepier than the PC, by orders of magnitude: Two cases, 38-minute meeting, no public, no opposition, two unanimous approvals. Compare the same week's Planning Commission landscape (the January 22 PC produced a 4-2 denial bloc and ~118-minute meeting). Downtown design review and suburban subdivision politics are operating in entirely different emotional registers.
• New HPB members suggest staggered appointment refresh: The chair gave new members extended introductions — a pattern that usually means at least 2-3 of the 5 attendees were recently seated. Combined with the PC's late-2025 churn, the City of Leesburg's planning-adjacent boards are in a multi-board membership refresh cycle that may continue producing voting-pattern shifts through 2026.

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Raw Notes

• November 5, 2025 HPB minutes approved 5-0 (Lingerfelt moved, Plymale seconded).
• Next regular HPB meeting: March 25, 2026 (on an as-needed basis).
• Source PDF was filed in the City of Leesburg P&Z document center alongside Planning Commission minutes; harvest tooling found it as a "Planning & Zoning" document. The HPB shares planning staff (Dan Miller, Melissa Medders De Los Santos, Mel Ortiz, Sabrina Mitchell) but is a distinct board with separate members.
• The motion text on Item 2 (Beacon College) cites case HP-25-795 — this appears to be a clerical carry-over from Item 1; the agenda title gives the correct case number HP-26-848.