City of Winter Park Planning & Zoning Board — May 5, 2026

Meeting Overview

Type: Regular Meeting Quorum: Yes (6 of 7 members present) Duration: Approximately 2 hours 52 minutes (5:01 PM – 7:53 PM)

Attendance

• Present: Chairman Jason Johnson, Vice Chair David Bornstein, Bill Segal, Charles Steinberg, Michael Dick, Vashon Sarkisian
• Absent: Alex Stringfellow
• Staff Present: City Attorney Dan Langley, Director of Planning & Zoning Allison McGillis, Planner II Nicholas Lewis, Planner I Corinna Lundgren, Administrative Coordinator Mary Jean

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Agenda Items

Item 1: CU #26-02 — Holler / Orlando RV Mixed Commercial (860 W. Fairbanks Ave) — Returning From April 7 Table

• Type: Conditional Use Permit + Community Benefit Agreement
• Case Number: CU #26-02
• Location: 860 West Fairbanks Avenue (former Orlando RV property)
• Applicant: Z Development Services (representative Bob Zeigenfuss / City Development Services, 1201 E. Robinson St., Orlando)
• Request: Conditional Use approval to construct four one-story buildings totaling 29,760 sq ft, including alcohol sales within 300 feet of residential properties, on a parcel with vested C-3 zoning, together with a Community Benefit Agreement.
• Current Zoning: C-3 General Commercial (vested)
• Proposed Zoning: No change
• Staff Recommendation: Approve with conditions
• Action: Approved
• Vote: 6-0 (Stringfellow absent)
• Conditions:
  1. Community Benefit Agreement fully executed prior to issuance of a Certificate of Occupancy.
  2. The identified oak trees at the Fairbanks/Denning and Fairbanks/Capen intersections preserved until future transportation improvements commence on Fairbanks Avenue.
  3. Pond design refined to incorporate a more naturalized shape rather than rigid edges, given its visibility from the exterior of the site.
  4. Applicant to enhance the streetscape along Holt Avenue between Denning Drive and Capen Avenue to incorporate dedicated on-street parking with landscaped tree islands, completed prior to Certificate of Occupancy.
• Notable Discussion: This item returned from a 5-0 table at the April 7 meeting, where the board had directed the applicant to add building articulation and prepare a Holt Avenue streetscape plan. The revised submission added parallel parking along Holt (13 spaces), a more natural pond shape, a two-way drive aisle, 9x18 spaces, a 9-foot back-of-curb sidewalk, an 8-foot landscape buffer, and reworked articulation on the corner buildings at Denning/Fairbanks and Capen/Fairbanks. The applicant committed to dedicating right-of-way on both the north and south sides of Fairbanks Avenue to support a future westbound-Fairbanks-to-southbound-Denning left-turn lane. The board's residual concern was traffic at Holt/Denning; members asked for public transparency on traffic studies. Of four resident speakers from N. Kentucky Avenue, one (Ken Brown) spoke in approval and three (Sonia McClain, Suzy Stein, Steve Siegfried) did not confirm a position. The table-then-concede-then-approve arc resolved cleanly.

Item 2: SPR #26-04 — Lake Berry Lakefront Additions (673 Balmoral Rd)

• Type: Site Plan Review (Lakefront) with side and rear setback variances
• Case Number: SPR #26-04
• Location: 673 Balmoral Road, on Lake Berry
• Applicant: Verge Properties (representative Chris Barnes, 1014 W. Fairbanks Ave, Winter Park)
• Request: Approval to construct additions totaling 652 sq ft to an existing single-family home, including a lanai, with variances to the side and rear setbacks.
• Current Zoning: R-1AAA
• Proposed Zoning: No change
• Staff Recommendation: Approve
• Action: Approved
• Vote: 6-0 (Stringfellow absent)
• Conditions: None added beyond the approved plan.
• Notable Discussion: Staff confirmed the project met FAR, impervious coverage, and front setback; the open variances were to side and rear setbacks. Staff had received neighbor letters in approval; no trees were being removed; lake and neighbor views were not impacted; and waterfront stormwater retention was met. Board concern centered on precedent — granting setback variances for what functions as effectively new construction, and the risk of establishing a new rear-setback average for the block. The proximity of the neighbor-to-the-south's future build and whether a variance would later be needed if that lot were not vacant were also discussed. Approved despite the precedent reservation.

Item 3: CU #26-03 — El Car Wash Automated Car Wash (2011 Aloma Ave / 416 Lander Rd) — DENIED

• Type: Conditional Use Permit
• Case Number: CU #26-03
• Location: 2011 Aloma Avenue and 416 Lander Road (former Fifth Third Bank parcel + former self-service car wash parcel)
• Applicant: El Car Wash Florida, LLC (attorney McGregor Love of 215 N. Eola Dr., Orlando; Senior Director of Development Alex Quintana, Doral)
• Request: Conditional Use approval to construct a new 3,700 sq ft automated car wash facility.
• Current Zoning: C-3 General Commercial
• Proposed Zoning: No change
• Staff Recommendation: Approve with conditions (driveway adjusted to right-in/left-out with raised curb and directional signage; operations and non-essential lighting to cease at 8:00 PM; abandoned curb cuts removed and replaced; sign package to meet size/illumination limits; all employees parked on-site; naturalized pond shape; additional understory trees along the northern buffer)
• Action: Denied
• Vote: 6-0 (Stringfellow absent)
• Conditions: N/A (denied)
• Notable Discussion: This was the meeting's contested item and reverses the agenda-stage expectation that a staff-recommended-approval CUP would pass. Staff received three letters in opposition and one in favor, with cut-through traffic into the rear residential neighborhood as the dominant concern, plus noise, stormwater, and general use objections. Nine residents (from Bell Place, Lander Road, Byron Road, Taylor Avenue) spoke in opposition; the public disclosed neighborhood petitions at the meeting. Attorney McGregor Love offered to concede 3-5 employee parking spaces (cutting vacuum stalls), proposed off-site traffic improvements if the city required them, and emphasized willingness to accept conditions. The board's denial rationale, stated in the motion: overall incompatibility of the project with the location; the height of the proposed front tower; potential cut-through/increased traffic; and the absence of a site-specific traffic study and a noise abatement study, which members felt were necessary given the residential adjacency. Members invoked the AutoZone-near-I-4 precedent (a commercial use required to modify its architecture to fit the community) and noted that Winter Park lacks formal architectural guidelines, limiting their ability to assess design compatibility — yet they used compatibility as the denial basis anyway. Procedural note: the applicant requested tabling to revise; City Attorney Langley clarified the board must vote on a table and the applicant could not unilaterally impose one, and that pre-vote withdrawal would require restarting the entire process (new hearings and fees). Bornstein's motion to table died for lack of a second; the board then moved directly to a 6-0 denial.

Item 4: SUB #26-01 — 210 Stirling Ave Historic-District Lot Split — WITHDRAWN

• Type: Subdivision (lot split) with lot-dimension variances
• Case Number: SUB #26-01
• Location: 210 Stirling Avenue (Virginia Heights East Historic District)
• Applicant: William R. Prather
• Request: Split the lot into two single-family R-1AA lots, inclusive of lot-dimension variances.
• Current Zoning: R-1AA
• Proposed Zoning: No change
• Action: Withdrawn by applicant
• Vote: N/A
• Conditions: N/A
• Notable Discussion: Director McGillis informed the board the applicant had requested withdrawal, and that a June work session to discuss the request was planned. The withdrawal-then-work-session sequence signals the applicant is regrouping rather than abandoning — the historic-district lot-split path remains procedurally hostile but not closed.

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Public Hearings Summary

• Number of speakers: ~13 across the docket (4 on Holler/Orlando RV — 1 in approval, 3 unconfirmed; 0 on the Lake Berry addition; 9 in opposition on El Car Wash)
• General sentiment: Mixed-to-supportive on Holler/Orlando RV after concessions; neutral on the Lake Berry addition; strongly opposed on El Car Wash
• Key concerns:
  • Traffic/cut-through into established residential streets (Holler/Orlando RV on N. Kentucky; El Car Wash on Bell/Lander/Byron/Taylor)
  • Architectural-compatibility and scale (El Car Wash front tower height and bright pink signage seen as out of scale)
  • Absence of a site-specific traffic study and a noise abatement study at the El Car Wash hearing
  • Precedent risk on lakefront setback variances (Lake Berry addition)

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Key Signals

• Winter Park denied a staff-recommended car-wash CUP 6-0 — the corpus's first car-wash denial, and a sharp exhibit for the "bellwether gas station" family of auto-oriented-use rejections. El Car Wash arrived with staff approval, a full conditions package, an attorney (McGregor Love), and concessions on parking and off-site traffic. The board denied it unanimously on compatibility, tower height, cut-through traffic, and a missing traffic/noise study. The pattern resonates with the Minneola and Clermont unanimous gas-station denials: a board using site-specific study gaps and "fit with the community" as the lever to reject a fully-lawyered auto-oriented use. Note the structural distinction from the Winter Springs Wawa counter-exhibit — here the appointed board itself holds the denial authority and used it.
• The same applicant counsel keeps surfacing across the corpus — McGregor Love represents El Car Wash here. McGregor Love is a tracked entity (added in session 014 to the decoder index). His appearance in Winter Park, after corridor appearances elsewhere, strengthens the cross-corridor legal-counsel-network pattern: a small bench of land-use attorneys works the entire region, and a denial of their client in one city is intelligence for how they will posture in the next.
• The Holler/Orlando RV table-to-approval arc shows Winter Park's board extracts real concessions through tabling, not just delay. What the board got for its 30-day April table: dedicated Holt Avenue on-street parking with tree islands, naturalized pond, reworked corner-building articulation, oak-tree preservation tied to future road work, a fully-executed Community Benefit Agreement as a CO condition, and a right-of-way dedication on both sides of Fairbanks for a future turn lane. The 5-0 table converted into a 6-0 approval with a materially better project. This is the productive-table mechanism, distinct from the El Car Wash table-motion that died for lack of a second.
• A six-year board veteran is leaving — Vice Chair David Bornstein was thanked for six years of service, several as Chairman. Bornstein moved or seconded nearly every motion at this meeting (including both the table-motion and the denial-motion on El Car Wash). A long-tenure operator departing mid-cycle is an institutional-knowledge signal worth tracking against the board's composition stability — watch the June docket for whether his seat shifts the board's voting center of gravity.
• Lakefront-character defense is the through-line — and it is about to go from case-by-case to codified. Two of four items touched lakefront/character (the Lake Berry setback variance and the historic-district lot split), and the El Car Wash denial leaned explicitly on Winter Park's "character and charm." The June 2 agenda then escalates this into a Comprehensive Plan text amendment on lakefront lot splits (CPA #25-05, Tara Tedrow). Winter Park is moving the lakefront-preservation fight from discretionary site review into the comp plan itself — the form-based/code-as-defense move seen on the US-27 corridor, applied here to estate-scale lakefront.

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Raw Notes

• The April 7, 2026 minutes were approved 6-0 on the consent agenda (Bornstein moved, Steinberg seconded). No public comment on consent or on general public comments.
• Source: the May 5, 2026 minutes appear as the lead consent item (Page 3 of 52) of the June 2, 2026 PZB agenda packet (CivicClerk winterparkfl tenant). These are the draft minutes presented for approval at June 2; status recorded as approved per the consent placement, pending the June 2 vote.
• El Car Wash procedural sequence in full: applicant requested table → Langley clarified board must vote on a table → Bornstein moved to table → motion died for lack of a second → Bornstein moved (Segal seconded) for denial → 6-0 denial.
• This document is the minutes companion to the previously harvested May 5 agenda (2026-05-agenda-PZB.md); item numbering differs slightly because El Car Wash (CU #26-03) was item 3c in the minutes versus a separately listed item in the agenda harvest, and the agenda harvest's SPR #26-04 applicant ("Verge Properties") and outcome are now confirmed here.
• Adjourned 7:53 PM. Attested by Mary Jean, Recording Secretary.