City of Maitland Planning and Zoning Commission — November 6, 2025

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (5 of 5 members present) Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes (6:00 PM – 7:15 PM)

Attendance

• Present: Chair Glen Jaffee, Vice-Chair Kathleen McIver, Commissioner Greg Hardwick, Commissioner Jody Barry, Commissioner Eddie Baird
• Absent: None
• Staff Present: Mike Daniels (Director of Community Development), Drew Smith (City Attorney), Sara Blanchard (Chief Planner), Barrett Chaix (Senior Planner)

Agenda Items

Item 1: Planned Development AZPD(2025)-0002 — Maitland Concourse North Lot 3

• Type: PUD (Planned Development amendment)

• Case Number: AZPD(2025)-0002

• Location: 601 Trelago Way, Maitland, FL. Parcel ID 25-21-29-5475-03-000. Bounded by West Maitland Boulevard (SR 414) to the south, MCN Lot 4 (stormwater pond and access road) to the west, MCN Lot 6 (undeveloped) to the north, and MCN Lot 2 (commercial/retail) to the east. Accessed via Vista Trelago and Trelago Way through MCN Lot 2, which provides three cross-access points.

• Applicant: Marcus Geiger, Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc. (189 S. Orange Avenue, Suite 1000, Orlando) and Matt Bloomfield, HRP Maitland, LLC / Harbour Real Estate Partners (3 Keel Street, Unit #2, Wrightsville Beach, NC). Owner: BPL Maitland Concourse North, LLC (250 S Park Avenue, Winter Park, FL).

• Request: Amend the Maitland Concourse North PD to establish a building layout for Lot 3, developing the vacant lot with two commercial buildings of approximately 12,500 SF and 5,300 SF plus off-street parking. Lot 3 was designated in the 2016 final development plan for office, residential, or retail uses but carried no approved building layout or site plan, which required a PD amendment prior to development. Proposed use: retail sales.

• Current Zoning: PD (Planned Development, Ordinance #1303, February 2016). Future Land Use: Corridor District; Maitland Concourse North Area of Special Consideration.

• Proposed Zoning: PD (amended to fix location, size, and character of the proposed development)

• Acreage: 2.90 acres (+/-), roughly rectangular, currently vacant

• Staff Recommendation: Approve with conditions. The Development Review Committee met October 22, 2025 and voted to recommend approval with conditions under LDC Section 2.5.1(f)(3).

• Action: Approved — recommendation to City Council to approve, with added direction to staff

• Vote: 5-0 (Ayes: Baird, McIver, Hardwick, Barry, Jaffee; Nays: none. Mover: Baird; Seconder: McIver)

• Conditions: The motion adopted the DRC conditions and directed staff to continue working with the applicant to address additional ways to break up the parking area consistent with the large parking lot guidelines the city has adopted. DRC conditions of approval:

  1. Conditions applicable through Ordinance #1303 remain unless specifically requested and approved for Lot 3 as a modification through this amendment.
  2. Site plan review shall demonstrate that proposed water and sewer usage conforms with the master development plan and that existing sanitary sewer utilities have capacity; the revised water/wastewater demands table shall include prior demand calculations from Lots 1 and 2 to show overall proposed demand against approved.
  3. Site plan review shall specify square footage dedicated to restaurant usage anticipated within both buildings.
  4. The proposed outdoor seating area, dumpster enclosure, and tree installation shall not conflict with underground utilities.
  5. Any easements for water or other utilities shall be provided during site plan review and must appear on the plan set.

• Notable Discussion: Bloomfield presented a conceptual site layout, landscaping, and site constraints, and explained that the architectural design package from Lot 2 was carried forward to Lot 3. He gave a projected completion date of the first quarter of 2027. Asked by Barry why parking exceeds code, Bloomfield said the proposed tenant needs the extra spaces to relieve pressure on an existing store with parking problems, and that combined with existing spaces the ratio is 5.2 spaces per 1,000 SF, "on the low end for a shopping center of this kind." Asked by Jaffee about alternative layouts, Bloomfield said an additional outparcel was not possible given site constraints, "especially with the loading requirements of a grocery store and existing site geometry."

  Chair Jaffee objected at length and did not vote his objection. He said "we should not be designing buildings for specific tenants," invoked the Publix precedent — "when Publix was built, we were critical of the massive parking lots" — and said the city "didn't want big parking lots that were 'fake pedestrian friendly.'" He said he did not believe the majority of the spaces would use the pedestrian pathway, asked staff to clarify the large-parking-lot standards, and said he did not think staff was aware of them. He asked whether the FDOT drainage easement offered an opportunity for additional walkability, noted the pond "was intended to be an amenity," asked why the restaurant would not be oriented toward the lake, and asked why there could not be "a beautiful sidewalk around the pond like in Gem Lake." He stated his regret that hedges and cars front on and block the view of "the nicest feature of the site," and characterized the proposed concept plan as "a suburban strip-center, with a sea of parking."

  Chief Planner Blanchard responded that breaking up the parking lots "was an important part of this Planned Development," that this site was challenging for massing, and described the options considered. Senior Planner Chaix responded that staff was aware of the standards, that the Planned Development already contained parking lot standards governing parking lot character in the PD concept plan with "considerable, if not total, overlap" between them, and that exact measurements were to be done at site plan review, not on the PD plan, which is more about character and concept.

  McIver established the drainage easement width at 70 feet and asked about a stem wall that would complicate development. Bloomfield offered that the pedestrian pathway could be relocated to the west of the site. Barry said he wanted to be fair to the applicant and not change the rules of the PD, while making sure the rules are followed and the spirit and intent of the large parking lot standards implemented — the framing that became the motion.

Public Hearings Summary

• Number of speakers: 0
• General sentiment: N/A — the public period and the public hearing were both opened and closed with no one present
• Key concerns: None from the public. All scrutiny came from the dais.

Key Signals

• The chair lost a design argument 5-0 and it cost the applicant nothing enforceable. Jaffee called the plan a suburban strip center with a sea of parking, invoked the city's own Publix regret, and questioned whether staff knew its large-parking-lot standards. The board's answer was a unanimous approval with a non-binding instruction to "continue working with the applicant." Barry's framing — be fair to the applicant, don't change the rules mid-PD — carried. For a city whose entire governing principle is form control, this is the visible ceiling on that control: at the PD stage the board sets character, and character is not a measurement.

• Chaix named the mechanism out loud: the numbers bind at site plan, not at the PD. Staff's answer to the parking-lot objection was that exact measurements happen at site plan review while the PD plan "is more about character and concept." That is the operative rule for reading every Maitland PD approval in this corpus — the approval a resident watches is not the approval where dimensions are fixed, and site plan review happens at DRC without a public hearing. The same deferral appears in the June 2026 Charles Schwab item, where tree mitigation was pushed to site plan.

• Grocery-anchored retail lands at Maitland Concourse North, targeting first quarter 2027. Two buildings totaling roughly 17,800 SF on 2.9 acres, with parking sized above code at a combined 5.2 spaces per 1,000 SF because the anchor tenant's existing store has parking problems. Staff later referred to it plainly as "the grocer on Maitland Concourse North Lot 3" (February 5, 2026). MCN is filling in on both tracks in the same cycle — commercial on Lot 3 here, 85 for-sale townhomes on Lot 6 through the parallel CDP amendment.

• The Live Local Act acquired working infrastructure in Maitland this month, and a special district went first. Director Daniels reported that the Gem Lake Water District requested and received a determination of its density eligibility under the Live Local Act, and that City Council adopted guidelines and standard operating procedures for processing Live Local Act projects. A density-cap city building an administrative intake path for a state density preemption is the same posture it takes three months later on SB 954 and SB 784 — code the mandated process, retain what enforcement authority remains. Watch the Gem Lake determination: an eligibility finding is the precondition for a filing.

• Board continuity breaks in December. Jaffee announced McIver was terming out the following month, praising her attention to detail. She had moved or seconded the motion on every substantive item across June, July, and November 2025. Ken Linehan is seated February 5, 2026, and the city attorney sitting at the table also changes between meetings. The Lot 3 follow-through — a direction to staff rather than a condition — depends on institutional memory that just turned over.

Raw Notes

• Minutes of July 17, 2025 adopted 5-0 (Mover: McIver; Seconder: Hardwick). The AYES line reads "Baird, McIver, Hardwick, Berry, Jaffee" — "Berry" is a clerical rendering of Commissioner Jody Barry.
• Under Old Business, Senior Planner Chaix provided updates on several development projects underway. Director Daniels provided an update on the CDP EAR-based amendment process alongside the Live Local Act items.
• Chair Jaffee stated he wants to hold a workshop "because he continues to hear from the development community that Maitland has a difficult development process" — the second time he raised this in 2025 (first at the July 17 meeting) and the antecedent of the development-review committee Vice-Chair Barry reported forming with the Mayor on June 4, 2026.
• Under Other Business, Jaffee recognized McIver's term ending the following month.
• The existing sanitary sewer system serving the site is privately owned and maintained by the property owners association; a copy of the utility agreement must be provided to the City before construction starts (DRC informational comment).
• Additional DRC informational comments: geometry (widths, right-turn radii) needs revision per Engineering Standards; utility easements required for existing water mains on the east side of the lot; an impervious breakdown was not provided for PD conformance review.
• Both the agenda (fileId 4376) and the approved minutes (fileId 4512) were retrieved; the agenda adds no items beyond those in the minutes. The agenda packet (fileId 4381) supplied the DRC staff report and the embedded July 17, 2025 minutes.
• Source: CivicClerk tenant maitlandfl, agendaId 624 (event 954).