City of Maitland Planning and Zoning Commission — July 17, 2025

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting (the minutes carry no meeting-type label; see Raw Notes — this meeting fell on the third Thursday, outside Maitland's first-Thursday cadence, and has no event record in the CivicClerk portal) Quorum: Yes (4 of 5 members present) Duration: 1 hour 32 minutes (6:00 PM – 7:32 PM)

Attendance

• Present: Chair Glen Jaffee, Vice-Chair Kathleen McIver, Commissioner Greg Hardwick, Commissioner Jody Barry
• Absent: Commissioner Eddie Baird
• Staff Present: Drew Smith (City Attorney), Sara Blanchard (Chief Planner), Barrett Chaix (Senior Planner), Jamie Kay Bennett (Planner III)

Agenda Items

Item 1: CDP(2025)-0001 — Comprehensive Development Plan Amendment, Maitland Concourse North Lot 6

• Type: Comprehensive Plan Amendment (text amendment, expedited state review track)

• Case Number: CDP(2025)-0001

• Location: Lot 6, Maitland Concourse North Planned Development — north of Maitland Boulevard, west of Maitland Avenue

• Applicant: David Weekley Homes and Kimley-Horn and Associates. Represented by Jonathan Huels, Lowndes Law.

• Request: Amend the Future Land Use Element to alter the Maitland Concourse North Area of Special Consideration's Overall Land Use Mix (Table 1.1.13.11) to add 85 townhomes, and to exclude residential parking garages from the floor area ratio calculation (Standard 1.1.3.10).

• Current Zoning: PD (Planned Development, Ord. #1303). Future Land Use: Corridor District; Maitland Concourse North Area of Special Consideration. Lot 6 permitted for a mix of office, residential (10–20 DU/acre), and commercial, FAR capped at 0.50 excluding parking structures.

• Proposed Zoning: PD (unchanged at this stage; a separate PD amendment was submitted June 12, 2025 and under staff review)

• Acreage: 7.67 acres

• Staff Recommendation: [not stated as a formal recommendation in the minutes; staff presented the application and the analysis]

• Action: Approved — recommendation to City Council to transmit the amendment to the state for review

• Vote: 4-0 (Ayes: McIver, Hardwick, Barry, Jaffee; Nays: none. Mover: McIver; Seconder: Barry)

• Conditions: None attached to the transmittal recommendation. The applicant volunteered on the record to accept a three-story height limit at the PD stage.

• Notable Discussion: Huels stated the site is currently entitled with 167,000 square feet of office use with a structured parking garage that does not count toward site FAR, and argued the townhome product is more consistent with the intent of the PD plan "than a potential project implemented through the Live Local Act," produces less traffic, and uses less water. He confirmed the product would be platted and sold as fee-simple lots and that the Council transmittal hearing was set for August 11.

  Commissioners pressed on whether the amendment added square footage or reallocated it. Barry observed that adding townhome units would consume square footage allocated to other uses "we just didn't know which ones." Blanchard clarified that any of the other permitted uses up to four stories could be built without amending the PD, including office or commercial, and that specific areas in the middle of the PD including Lot 6 were designed for higher intensity and four-story height. Jaffee observed it was unlikely the PD could absorb the entirety of the square footage approved for it, and said he "always thought office on this lot was a mistake." Barry established the drainage easement width at 167 feet. City Attorney Smith clarified that height transition would be addressed at the PD level, not here.

  Huels responded to public comment with commitments on the record: the property has no lake access and none is being sought; short-term rentals are not being proposed; the drainage easement stays in place; the stormwater system is already designed to accommodate the highest and most intense use allowed; the development will pay impact fees and the homes will be taxed; the applicant proposes three stories and will agree to conditions limiting it to that; and the garage is integrated into three stories and not counted toward FAR.

  McIver said she would expect residents to prefer townhomes over a four-story office building with structured parking, compared the price point to Montecino ("750-800 range"), and listed items to address downstream: a gated community, LED treatment for light and noise, drainage under the master stormwater plan, and restrictions favoring homeowners over investors. Jaffee said the developers "don't have an interest in creating bad outcomes," that "you don't own your view, even on the lake," and that short-term rental issues should be addressed by the developer.

Public Hearings Summary

• Number of speakers: 4
• General sentiment: Mixed-to-opposed on terms, not on use — two speakers opposed the amendment as presented; two preferred residential over the entitled office alternative but wanted conditions attached.
• Key concerns:
  • Paul Herwig — opposed 85 townhome units; concerned about unit elevation; argued some Lot 6 units should be limited to two stories because residential uses on Lot 7 have a "transition zone," and that Kimley-Horn's own drawings acknowledge a transition zone while the applicant seeks special treatment; called the amendment incomplete and asked that it be denied.
  • Nicole Herwig, 1410 Druid Isle Road — stated the applicant's notes from the April 3, 2025 neighborhood meeting "were a complete misrepresentation" and that neighborhood comments were ignored; raised noise, boats, and destruction of the natural area; noted low turnout because "everyone is on vacation."
  • Jessica Guthrie, 1504 Druid Isle Road (resident since 1967) — said there is a glut of office space and that office with a parking garage would be a worse outcome than residential, bringing "transient people with no connection to the community"; supported residential "with guardrails": a gated community, no lake access, no preserve access, no short-term rentals, an owner-occupancy period before long-term rental, a cap on the rented percentage or no rentals at all, and light and noise pollution controls; asked whether the drainage easement could be formalized.
  • Heidi Berry, 1314 Druid Isle Road — was unaware the parking garage square footage was excluded from FAR; said items raised at the neighborhood meeting were not addressed; framed neighborhood requests as protecting property values and lakefront investment; asked about impact fees supporting schools; raised "a huge concern" about water going into the retention pond and drainage into the lake.

Key Signals

• The office-park city voted to convert entitled office into for-sale housing, and the applicant's leverage was the Live Local Act. Lot 6 carries 167,000 SF of office entitlement with an FAR-exempt garage. Lowndes Law's argument for 85 townhomes was explicitly comparative: this is more consistent with the PD than "a potential project implemented through the Live Local Act." The statute did not need to be invoked to work — naming it as the alternative was sufficient. That is Live Local operating as negotiating position rather than as application, and it is the mechanism to watch in every built-out city where by-right office entitlements sit on land the market now wants for housing.

• The amendment moves no square footage; it changes what counts. Two provisions do the work — adding 85 townhomes to the Overall Land Use Mix table, and excluding residential parking garages from the FAR calculation. Commissioner Barry named the consequence from the dais: the townhomes consume square footage allocated to other uses, and nobody in the room could say which. A city that governs by form and allocation tables can be materially rezoned by an edit to a table, without a map change and without a single new acre.

• Maitland's first sustained neighborhood opposition in the corpus arrived arguing for houses over offices. Four Druid Isle Road / Lake Faith speakers appeared, and the two who engaged substantively preferred residential to the entitled four-story office and parking garage — then asked for gating, rental caps, and lake- and preserve-access prohibitions. The dispute was over conditions, not use. The specific accusation that the applicant's neighborhood-meeting notes "were a complete misrepresentation" is a procedural signal: in Maitland the neighborhood meeting is a required step whose record is authored by the applicant.

• This meeting fixes the numbers that the April 2026 approval inherits. The 85-unit count, the 7.67 acres, the three-story commitment, and the 167-foot drainage easement all enter the record here, nine months before the PZC approved the MCN Lot 6 PD amendment 5-0 on April 2, 2026 with twelve DRC conditions. The July 2025 record is where the applicant's voluntary height cap was offered; anyone reading the 2026 approval alone would miss that the three-story limit originated as a concession made under public pressure.

• The "Maitland is hard to develop in" thread starts here and institutionalizes eleven months later. Jaffee proposed a workshop on whether the city could work better with developers; Barry seconded and asked to hear from those with bad experiences; Hardwick saw no barrier to holding it jointly with City Council. Jaffee raised it again in November 2025. By June 4, 2026 Vice-Chair Barry reported he was in conversations with the Mayor and forming a committee on development review processes. A recurring board complaint became a standing body — worth tracking as the venue where Maitland's procedural friction gets renegotiated outside a public hearing.

Raw Notes

• Minutes of June 5, 2025 adopted 4-0 (Mover: McIver; Seconder: Hardwick; Ayes: McIver, Hardwick, Barry, Jaffee).
• Source and provenance: this document is drawn from the approved July 17, 2025 minutes embedded as the "Minutes of Previous Meeting" exhibit in the November 6, 2025 agenda packet (CivicClerk maitlandfl, agendaId 624, fileId 4381, packet pages 3–8). The minutes were adopted 5-0 at the November 6, 2025 meeting.
• Portal gap: the CivicClerk /v1/Events collection for tenant maitlandfl contains no event record for any July 2025 P&Z meeting — neither July 3 (the first-Thursday slot) nor July 17. The meeting is documented only through the November packet embed. Any future coverage audit driven off the event list will under-report Maitland by this meeting.
• MCN buildout status as recorded by staff (July 2025): transportation and stormwater infrastructure complete; approximately 75,000 SF of commercial structures developed; an Assisted Living Facility; a 350-unit multifamily development; a further 75,000 SF of commercial approved under the PD plan and in site construction permit review; a 10.12-acre passive park given a Parks and Recreation designation with ownership transferred to the City. Lots 3 and 6 remained undeveloped and subject to PD plan approval.
• Procedural path stated by staff: PZC recommendation → City Council decision to deny or transmit to FloridaCommerce → expedited state review → second Council hearing to amend the CDP → PD amendment → Site Plan Review → platting → building permits. The PD amendment application had already been submitted June 12, 2025.
• Blanchard cited "the recent amendment to add a drive-through use to Lot 1" as precedent for a PD established in the CDP requiring both a CDP and a PD amendment — that is Ordinance #1395 (February 28, 2022), the same standard the applicant returns to amend again in CDP(2026)-0002 on the August 6, 2026 agenda.
• Under Other Business, staff provided an update on development projects underway (not itemized).