City of Winter Garden Planning and Zoning Board — August 4, 2025

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (4 of 7 members voting — minimum quorum) Duration: 18 minutes (6:30 p.m. – 6:48 p.m.)

Attendance

• Present: Acting Chairman Steve Ambielli (Co-Chairman), Linda Bennett, Myron Brown, Jimmy Dunn
• Absent: Chairman Will Hawthorne (excused), Jeff Ewing (excused); one seat vacant following Mark Hide's departure after the July 7, 2025 meeting
• Staff Present: City Attorney Kurt Ardaman; Planning Director Kelly Carson; Planning Supervisor Shane Friedman; Planner I Amber McDonald; Recording Secretary Ellen King
• Other Attendees: Jim & Jeanie Rahman (153 Apopka St); Kyle Shasteen (Bowman); Spencer Edwards (1184 Maxey Dr); Adam Parish (224 S Boyd St)

Source discrepancy: the minutes' attendance block lists Jeff Ewing as both Present and Absent (excused). Every vote that night is recorded 4-0, which is consistent with four voting members — Ambielli, Bennett, Brown and Dunn. The Absent line is treated as controlling here; the Present line appears to be a transcription error in the source document.

Agenda Items

Item 2: Approval of Minutes — July 7, 2025

• Type: Other (procedural)
• Action: Approved
• Vote: Unanimous 4-0 (motion by Dunn, second by Ambielli)

Item 3.A: 244 W Story Road (Winter Garden Retail Development) — Special Exception

• Type: Special Exception Permit (public hearing)
• Location: 244 W Story Road (Parcel ID 23-22-27-6650-00-010)
• Applicant: Winter Garden Retail Development
• Request: Allow commercial retail uses in an R-NC (Residential-Neighborhood Commercial) zoning district
• Current Zoning: R-NC
• Staff Recommendation: Approve subject to staff conditions (presented by Planner McDonald)
• Action: Approved
• Vote: Unanimous 4-0 (motion by Bennett, second by Brown)
• Conditions: Subject to staff conditions
• Notable Discussion: Neither the board nor the public raised questions.

Item 4.A: 244 W Story Road (Winter Garden Retail Development) — Variance

• Type: Variance (public hearing) — companion to Item 3.A on the same parcel
• Location: 244 W Story Road (Parcel ID 23-22-27-6650-00-010)
• Applicant: Winter Garden Retail Development
• Request: 5 ft front-yard setback and 5 ft side-corner-lot setback for a new commercial building
• Current Zoning: R-NC
• Staff Recommendation: Approve subject to staff conditions (presented by Planner McDonald)
• Action: Approved
• Vote: Unanimous 4-0 (motion by Dunn, second by Ambielli)
• Conditions: Subject to staff conditions
• Notable Discussion: The board asked whether the impervious surface ratio is still met and why a 40 ft setback is required at all. Staff confirmed the impervious ratio is met and explained that R-NC zoning falls back to C-4 commercial minimum setbacks of 40 ft front and 40 ft side-corner.

Item 4.B: 218 S Boyd Street (Rahman Residence) — Variance

• Type: Variance (public hearing)
• Location: 218 S Boyd Street (Parcel ID 23-22-07-8096-00-070)
• Applicant: Tyler Rahman (owner); represented at the hearing by Jim and Jeanie Rahman
• Request: 17 ft front-yard setback for a new front porch and 6 ft side-yard setback for a rear addition
• Staff Recommendation: Approve subject to staff conditions (presented by Planning Director Carson)
• Action: Approved
• Vote: Unanimous 4-0 (motion by Ambielli, second by Bennett)
• Conditions: Subject to staff conditions
• Notable Discussion: Board members noted that the staff report's Exhibit A — surrounding addresses with their prior approvals — is helpful, and asked about impervious area and existing stormwater concerns on the site. Staff said the developers will work closely with the city engineer before and after construction so stormwater flow creates no external impasses, and the Planning Director was not aware of any existing stormwater issues at that location.

Item 4.C: 15223 Starleigh Road (Slimick Residence) — Variance

• Type: Variance (public hearing)
• Location: 15223 Starleigh Road (Parcel ID 04-23-27-8229-21-230)
• Request: 17 ft 6 in rear-yard setback to construct a covered screen porch
• Staff Recommendation: Approve subject to staff conditions (presented by Planning Supervisor Friedman)
• Action: Approved
• Vote: Unanimous 4-0 (motion by Bennett, second by Dunn)
• Conditions: Subject to staff conditions
• Notable Discussion: No questions from the board or the public.

Item 4.D: 90 & 96 Center Street (Habitat Fence) — Variance

• Type: Variance (public hearing)
• Location: 90 & 96 Center Street (Parcel IDs 13-22-27-8573-00-030 and -040)
• Applicant: Habitat (for Humanity) — named in the minutes as "Habitat Fence"
• Request: 6 ft front-yard fence height, and a screening fence for the rear tandem houses, in an RNC-2 zoning district
• Current Zoning: RNC-2
• Staff Recommendation: Approve subject to staff conditions in the staff report (presented by Planning Supervisor Friedman)
• Action: Approved
• Vote: Unanimous 4-0 (motion by Ambielli, second by Brown)
• Conditions: Subject to staff conditions
• Notable Discussion: The board asked whether the fence covers a portion of the front yard and whether a 6 ft fence variance had previously been approved in the area. Staff confirmed both.

Public Hearings Summary

• Number of speakers: 0 members of the public spoke; the Rahmans attended to answer questions on the owner's behalf
• General sentiment: [no public comment offered on any item]
• Key concerns: None raised. Five public-hearing items cleared in 18 minutes.

Key Signals

• R-NC's silent fallback to C-4 setbacks is manufacturing variance demand, and 244 W Story Road exposes the mechanism. Staff explained that R-NC — the district Winter Garden uses to let commercial creep into neighborhood-edge parcels — carries no commercial setbacks of its own and defaults to C-4 minimums of 40 ft front and 40 ft side-corner. On a neighborhood-scale lot that is unbuildable, so the applicant ran a Special Exception and a 5 ft/5 ft variance the same night and got both 4-0. Two months earlier the 522 S Woodland rezoning to R-NC was approved with staff noting a Special Exception and site plan would still be required. R-NC in Winter Garden is a three-approval district by construction: rezone, special exception, then variance. That is a code-structure defect, not a permitting philosophy, and it is the same class of gap the board later commits to fixing for accessory structures.
• Tandem housing on Center Street is Habitat for Humanity infill, and it needed a fence variance to work. The 90 & 96 Center Street request covers a 6 ft front-yard fence plus screening for "rear tandem houses" in RNC-2 — two dwellings stacked front-to-back on narrow lots. Staff confirmed a comparable 6 ft fence variance had already been approved nearby. Affordable-housing infill in Winter Garden's older RNC-2 blocks is arriving through variance-by-variance accretion rather than any dedicated program, and the resulting site pattern — tandem units screened from the street — is now precedented.
• A four-member board with a vacant seat approved five public-hearing items in 18 minutes with zero public comment. The chairman was absent, the co-chairman presided, one seat sat empty following Mark Hide's July departure, and every vote was the bare minimum 4-0. Contrast the prior meeting: 102 minutes, six public speakers, two items tabled including one over staff's denial recommendation. Winter Garden's docket composition, not its board, determines whether scrutiny happens — residential setback variances clear unexamined; historic-district scale and industrial-park use questions do not.
• Stormwater review is being deferred to the city engineer rather than conditioned by the board. On 218 S Boyd Street the board asked directly about impervious area and existing stormwater problems; staff answered that the developers would work with the city engineer before and after construction. The same deferral appeared one month earlier at 99 N Boyd Street, where the board explicitly stated it lacked purview over impervious-surface calculations. By August 2026, Ordinance 26-26 formalizes exactly this gap by creating a mandatory Zoning Compliance Review that checks dimensional and drainage compliance administratively before any permit issues.
• The staff report's "Exhibit A" — a map of neighboring approvals — is becoming the board's decision instrument. Members explicitly praised the 218 S Boyd Street report for listing surrounding addresses and their prior approvals, and staff used the same precedent logic to carry the Center Street fence item. In a city whose historic blocks are dense with legacy variances, precedent mapping is functionally the standard of review. It also explains why the 99 N Boyd Street request stalled: staff could find no one-to-one comparison for a 4,800 sq ft home on that lot.

Raw Notes

The one-seat vacancy following Mark Hide's July 7 departure persists through this meeting; TJ Ryan is welcomed in September 2025, restoring the board to seven.

Kyle Shasteen of Bowman (engineering) and Spencer Edwards (1184 Maxey Dr) signed in but are not recorded speaking. Adam Parish (224 S Boyd St) likewise signed in, on the same block as the 218 S Boyd Street item.

Both 244 W Story Road items were presented by Planner I Amber McDonald — her first solo presentations in the harvested record. Senior Planner Yvonne Conatser is not listed among staff present.

Source: standalone Minutes PDF (fileId 375), CivicClerk tenant wintergardenfl, agendaId 101 / event 312. Text extracted cleanly; no OCR required. The attendance-block contradiction noted in Meeting Overview is present in the source PDF, not introduced in extraction.