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Meetings · Mount Dora

Mount Dora Planning and Zoning Commission — September 17, 2025 minutes

City of Mount Dora Planning and Zoning Commission — September 17, 2025

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (5 of 7 members present) Duration: 10:00 AM – 10:45 AM (45 minutes) Location: City Hall Board Room, 510 North Baker Street

Attendance

  • Present: Chairman Miles Beach, Tom Dring, Harris Turner, Barbara Tietmeyer, Suzanne Scheck
  • Absent: Adrian Coombes, Andrea Lother
  • Staff Present: Michele Janiszewski, Deputy Planning Director; Whitney Scott, Associate Planner; Alexandra Stevens, Administrative Coordinator; Andrew Hand, City Attorney (via Zoom)

Prior minutes: August 20, 2025 minutes approved 5-0 (moved Tietmeyer, seconded Dring).

Staff title change: Janiszewski appears as Deputy Planning Director for the first time in this record, having been listed as Senior Planner through August 2025.

Agenda Items

Item 1: Small Bay Warehouses — Site Plan (SP24-03)

  • Type: Site Plan
  • Case Number: SP24-03
  • Location: 1649 Lincoln Avenue
  • Applicant: G3 Sky, LLC (owner); Metro Architecture Partnership, Inc. (applicant and architect); Tawill Engineering Inc. (engineer); Landscape Architects and Planners LLC (landscape architect). Austin Guenther appeared for the applicant.
  • Request: Site plan approval for the Small Bay Warehouses project — the same site whose PUD amendment (PUD24-01) the board conditioned in February 2025.
  • Current Zoning: PUD
  • Proposed Zoning: No change
  • Acreage: [not available]
  • Staff Recommendation: [not stated in the minutes]
  • Action: Approved with staff conditions
  • Vote: [tally not recorded — moved Tietmeyer, seconded Scheck]
  • Conditions: Approval with staff conditions and landscaping installed within six months of the OnSyte (septic) system being decommissioned.
  • Notable Discussion:
    • The wastewater workaround arrived and cleared. The minutes record that an advanced treatment septic tank is being used for sewage, which requires a drain field — and that the drain field conflicts with trees. The system is identified as "OnSyte."
    • Discussion of trees and mitigation. Guenther stated the applicant will abide by whatever is needed to get approved, would like to "go above and beyond for trees," and if they have to pay into the tree bank they understand and will adhere to the code.
    • Beach recommended tabling because the landscaping plan "does not explain or show enough."
    • The motion mechanics matter. Turner first moved for the developer's agreement to be approved with landscaping within 30 days. Hand stated the board cannot include the developer's agreement with conditions. Turner withdrew the motion. Tietmeyer then moved approval with staff conditions and landscaping within six months of the OnSyte system being decommissioned — which passed.
    • Discussion of the scope of the developer's agreement and of the wastewater system.
    • The warehouses "are proposed to be used as commercial offices but can be used as storage."
    • Turner asked for an "Ask the Staff" section to be added to the published agenda. (It appears on agendas from December 2025 onward.)
    • Discussion of accessory dwelling units. The board asked for a discussion or list of available/vacant/undeveloped lands for development.

Public Hearings Summary

  • Number of speakers: 0 members of the public recorded. The minutes show the public participation heading with no entries. Applicant testimony from Austin Guenther.
  • General sentiment: No opposition recorded.
  • Key concerns: The board's concerns were the landscaping plan's inadequacy, tree mitigation conflicting with the septic drain field, and the enforceability window for landscaping installation.

Key Signals

  • The wastewater freeze produced its workaround, and it is onsite advanced treatment. In February 2025 the same project proposed a private wastewater plant, staff found it non-compliant, and the City Attorney said package plants have practically been prohibited. In September the project was approved running on an "OnSyte" advanced treatment septic system with a drain field — an interim, decommissionable system with a landscaping obligation triggered by its removal. This is the mechanism by which commercial development proceeds in Mount Dora while Plant 2 stays committed. Anyone modeling Mount Dora's near-term build-out should count onsite-treatment projects separately from sewered ones.

  • The approval condition is keyed to a future event nobody has scheduled. Landscaping must be installed within six months of the OnSyte system being decommissioned — and decommissioning happens when the site can connect to the central system, which depends on the Plant 2 mirroring project that Public Works put at four to five years out in March. The board bound the landscaping to a trigger that may not fire until the 2030s. Turner's instinct — 30 days — was procedurally blocked, not substantively rejected.

  • The City Attorney ruled the board cannot condition a developer's agreement, and the board's leverage moved accordingly. Turner's motion died on that point. The distinction is worth carrying: in Mount Dora, conditions attach to the site plan approval, not to the negotiated agreement, which is a Council instrument. Boards that want durable conditions here have to put them in the planning motion.

  • The drain field competes with the tree code, and the tree bank is the pressure valve. A drain field cannot have trees over it. Mount Dora is simultaneously running an onsite-treatment strategy that requires cleared land and a landscaping rewrite that keeps raising tree-bank contributions. Guenther's preemptive offer to pay into the tree bank is the applicant reading that collision correctly.

  • A warehouse approved as "commercial offices" that "can be used as storage." The minutes record the use ambiguity flatly. For neighbors on Lincoln Avenue — where the February PUD conditions already required Building One's Lincoln-facing façade to carry no overhead doors — the operative constraint on what actually happens inside is the PUD's use table, not the site plan's label.

  • Five of seven members approved a site plan with no recorded vote tally. Coombes and Lother were absent; the minutes record the mover and seconder but no count on the only substantive item of the meeting. Mount Dora's roll-call discipline, introduced in July 2025, did not survive the September change in minute-taker.

Raw Notes

  • Source provenance: Standalone minutes retrieved as CivicClerk file ID 6429, published as "09.17.25 Signed Minutes" (event ID 2033, agendaId 1215). The published PDF is a scanned image of the signed original, two pages, and required OCR.
  • These minutes were approved at the December 17, 2025 meeting, together with the November 19, 2025 minutes, 5-0 — a three-month lag caused by the October 15 cancellation and by the November meeting tabling minutes approval pending the "Ask the Staff" correction.
  • The November 19, 2025 correction applies to this document: at that meeting the board declined to approve minutes and asked that the "ask the staff" item be added to the agenda before approval. The signed copy harvested here is the approved version.
  • The applicant entity changed between February and September: the PUD24-01 owner of record was Lincoln 1649, LLC; the SP24-03 owner of record is G3 Sky, LLC. Austin Guenther appeared for G3 Development in February and for the applicant in September.
  • Tietmeyer stated her last meeting would be October 15, 2025. That meeting was canceled; September 17 was her final recorded attendance.
  • Adjournment 10:45 AM, moved Turner, seconded Scheck, 5-0. Attested by Alexandra Stevens, Administrative Coordinator; signed by Chairman Miles Beach.

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