Zoning Signal

Meetings · Winter Garden

Winter Garden Planning and Zoning Board — June 1, 2026 minutes

City of Winter Garden Planning and Zoning Board — June 1, 2026

Upgrades the agenda-only record at 2026-06-agenda-PZB.md. Minutes published to CivicClerk as fileId 1555 and approved at the July 6, 2026 meeting (4-0).

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (5 of 7 members present) Duration: 18 minutes (6:35 p.m. – 6:53 p.m.)

Attendance

  • Present: Chairman Will Hawthorne, Vice-Chair Steve Ambielli, Myron Brown, Jeff Ewing, TJ Ryan
  • Absent: Linda Bennett (excused), Jimmy Dunn (excused)
  • Staff Present: City Attorney Kurt Ardaman; Planning Director Kelly Carson; Planning Supervisor Shane Friedman; Senior Planner Yvonne Conatser; Recording Secretary Ellen King
  • Other Attendees: Karen Beeke (SKELF Enterprise); Christopher Jeune (Botero Carts); Donna Gallo and Matthew Henry (1023 Sadie Lane)

Agenda Items

Item 2: Approval of Minutes — May 4, 2026

  • Type: Other (procedural)
  • Action: Approved
  • Vote: Unanimous 5-0 (motion by Ambielli, second by Brown)
  • Notable: Finalizes the record of the 613-unit Johns Lake PD UVPUD approval and Ordinance 26-16 (the I-1/I-2 ERU water-threshold code amendment).

Item 3.A: 88 Broad Street (Botero Carts) — Special Exception

  • Type: Special Exception Permit (public hearing)
  • Location: 88 Broad Street (Parcel ID 23-22-27-7824-00-140)
  • Applicant: Botero Carts (Christopher Jeune)
  • Request: Golf cart sales and service on the property, with an on-site fenced test-drive area
  • Staff Recommendation: Approve subject to conditions in the staff report (presented by Senior Planner Conatser)
  • Action: Approved
  • Vote: Unanimous 5-0 (motion by Ewing, second by Ambielli)
  • Conditions: Subject to staff conditions
  • Notable Discussion: The board asked whether Special Exceptions had been issued for prior uses on the site, whether the test-drive area would allow cart storage or only the delivery truck and trailer, whether surrounding streets are golf-cart approved, and for an explanation of the fenced test-drive area. Staff answered that the previous bus operation held a Special Exception; storage of golf carts is permitted only inside the building; the surrounding streets are not golf-cart approved; and because street test drives would not be allowed, the applicant requested an on-site test-drive area instead.

Item 4.A: 1023 Sadie Lane (Gallo Screen Room) — Variance

  • Type: Variance (public hearing)
  • Location: 1023 Sadie Lane (Parcel ID 11-22-27-3897-00-080)
  • Applicant: Donna Gallo / Matthew Henry (owners)
  • Request: 12 ft rear-yard setback to build a screened-in patio
  • Staff Recommendation: Approve subject to conditions in the staff report (presented by Planning Supervisor Friedman)
  • Action: Approved
  • Vote: Unanimous 5-0 (motion by Hawthorne, second by Ewing)
  • Conditions: Subject to staff conditions
  • Notable Discussion: The board asked whether the screened patio stays within the existing footprint and whether neighbor letters had been received. Staff confirmed the same footprint and letters of support from neighbors.

Item 5.A: Ordinance 26-17 — Code Amendment, Accessory Buildings & Structures

  • Type: Text Amendment (public hearing) — multiple sections of the Land Development Code
  • Applicant: City of Winter Garden
  • Request: Clarify standards for accessory structures and accessory buildings, and formally expand where accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are permitted city-wide. ADUs become a permitted accessory use in R-1A, R-1, R-1B, R-2, R-4, R-5, R-NC, RNC-2, PUD, UVPUD and CAPUD districts, subject to specific development standards. The ordinance also updates and refines definitions for accessory buildings, accessory structures, detached garages, front porches and principal structures.
  • Staff Recommendation: Approve Ordinance 26-17 (presented by Planning Director Carson)
  • Action: Recommended to City Commission
  • Vote: Unanimous 5-0 (motion by Ewing, second by Ryan)
  • Notable Discussion: Board members supported the homesteaded-property provision and asked how long homestead takes to obtain, whether the changes came out of rear-yard garage problems in the traditional downtown area, whether PUD ordinances override this ordinance, whether ADU standards meet code, and how the city plans to regulate conversion of an existing built structure into an ADU. City Attorney Ardaman explained homestead requirements. Staff said the driving force was cleaning up the accessory-structure code, with detached garages the primary issue — and that while exploring it, staff identified potential state law changes that may open the door for ADUs, so the city moved to impose its own regulations pro-actively. Staff confirmed PUD ordinances overrule this ordinance and that ADU standards are in place. On short-term rentals, staff noted the State of Florida regulates short-term and Air B&B rental properties, local municipalities are not allowed to regulate them, and the city would follow state provisions; if a unit became a rooming house the city has code-enforcement remedies, but there is currently no registration in place for tracking these situations.

Public Hearings Summary

  • Number of speakers: 0
  • General sentiment: [no public comment offered on any item, including the city-wide ADU expansion]
  • Key concerns: None raised by the public.

Key Signals

  • Winter Garden legalized accessory dwelling units in eleven zoning districts and nobody from the public spoke. Ordinance 26-17 makes ADUs a permitted accessory use across R-1A, R-1, R-1B, R-2, R-4, R-5, R-NC, RNC-2, PUD, UVPUD and CAPUD — effectively the city's entire residential map — and cleared 5-0 in a meeting that ran 18 minutes with zero public comment. This is the single largest change to what can be built on an ordinary Winter Garden residential lot in the harvested record, and it arrived attached to a definitions cleanup. Homeowners gain a by-right second unit; buyers of neighboring property gain a neighbor who can add one.
  • The stated motive is pre-emption of anticipated state law — regulatory pre-coding, on the record. Staff told the board that while fixing the detached-garage problem they identified "potential State Law changes that may open the door for ADUs and the city wanted to be pro-active by imposing the city's own set of regulations." That is the same mechanism the corpus already names elsewhere: Clermont and Leesburg coding SB 954 recovery residences in a 16-day March 2026 window, Maitland following March 5, and Minneola drafting a Data Center ordinance in the 30-day gap between SB 484's signing and its effective date. Winter Garden is now running the play on ADUs, and it is doing it while the SB 180 freeze is fully enforceable — meaning the city is choosing to write standards it may have to defend as "more restrictive or burdensome" if a challenger applies the statute to them.
  • The April 6, 2026 Cappleman code gap closed in under two months. At the April meeting, the 523 N Woodland Street variance exposed that Winter Garden's code caps accessory-structure roof peaks at 12 ft with no rule relating accessory height to the primary structure, and staff committed to a revision. Ordinance 26-17 is that revision, expanded. Two cycles from surfaced defect to recommended fix is the fastest pattern-to-precoding loop in the Winter Garden record; the same class of gap at R-NC setbacks (August 2025) is still open a year later.
  • The city stated plainly that it cannot regulate short-term rentals — and has no registry to even see them. Asked how an ADU would be stopped from becoming a rental, staff said Florida preempts municipal regulation of short-term and Air B&B rentals, the city follows state provisions, and there is "currently no registrations in place for tracking these situations." Winter Garden has therefore just authorized second units city-wide while holding no instrument to observe their use. Code enforcement against a rooming house is the only stated backstop.
  • Golf-cart commerce is arriving in a city whose streets are not golf-cart approved. Botero Carts got a Special Exception for golf cart sales and service at 88 Broad Street, but staff confirmed the surrounding streets are not golf-cart approved and test drives must happen inside a fenced on-site area. Public engagement on the Winter Garden 2050 comprehensive plan two months later shows golf-cart connectivity among residents' top mobility priorities. The retail demand is running ahead of the street network's legal status — a gap the 2050 plan's Complete Streets and mobility policies will have to resolve.

Raw Notes

Board seat continuity: Bennett and Dunn both excused; the same five-member configuration that carried the May 4 docket forward. Vice-Chair Ambielli is titled "Vice-Chair" here, having been "Co-Chairman" through 2025.

Staff bench: neither City Attorney Dan Langley nor Planning Consultant Ed Williams — both listed on the June 1 agenda's "Other Attendees" roster — appear in the minutes' Staff Present line. Kurt Ardaman remained the attending City Attorney.

Karen Beeke of SKELF Enterprise signed in but is not recorded speaking on any item.

Meeting adjourned to July 6, 2026.

Source: standalone Minutes PDF (fileId 1555), CivicClerk tenant wintergardenfl, agendaId 1194. Text extracted cleanly; no OCR required. The prior agenda-only document for this meeting remains at 2026-06-agenda-PZB.md; this document supersedes it as the substantive record.

Connected records

2 connected records

Corridors1

Places1