City of Winter Park Planning & Zoning Board — March 31, 2026 (Work Session)

Meeting Overview

Type: Work Session (midday, non-action) Quorum: Yes (7 of 7 members present — full board) Duration: 52 minutes (12:01 p.m. – 12:53 p.m.) Location: City Hall Commission Chambers, 401 S. Park Avenue

Attendance

Present: Alex Stringfellow, David Bornstein, Jason Johnson (Chair), Bill Segal, Charles Steinberg, Michael Dick, Vashon Sarkisian
Absent: None
Staff Present: Allison McGillis (Director of Planning & Zoning), John Harbilas (Asst. Director of Planning & Zoning / Zoning Official), Nicholas Lewis (Planner II), Corinna Lundgren (Planner I), Mary Jean (Administrative Coordinator)

Agenda Items

Item 1: Staff update — 436 North Knowles Avenue denied by City Commission

Type: Staff update (non-action)
Case Number: [not restated in the work session minutes; the underlying lot split and variances were heard by PZB on March 3, 2026]
Location: 436 North Knowles Avenue
Applicant: [not restated]
Request: Report on the disposition of an application the Planning & Zoning Board had already approved.
Staff Recommendation: N/A (informational)
Action: No action — informational. McGillis reported that the 436 North Knowles Avenue application, approved by the Planning & Zoning Board at its March 3, 2026 meeting, went before the City Commission on March 25, 2026 and was denied.
Vote: N/A
Notable Discussion: McGillis explained the consequences of the denial: applicants face a time restriction before reapplying with a different proposal, or a commissioner who voted no may bring the item back for reconsideration. Absent one of those paths, the project cannot move forward.

Item 2: Preview — PQP zoning district text change to permit single-family development

Type: Text Amendment (preview of an item set for the April 7, 2026 regular meeting)
Case Number: [heard as ZTA #26-01 on April 7, 2026]
Location: Former Orange County Technical College site behind Whole Foods (901 W. Webster Avenue per the April 7 record); currently occupied by Orlando Gifted Academy
Applicant: Habitat for Humanity in partnership with Orange County Public Schools; Jeff Briggs presenting for Habitat
Request: Amend the Public-Quasi-Public (PQP) zoning district — which governs city- and institution-owned property such as schools and churches — to permit single-family residential development as a permitted use.
Current Zoning: PQP
Proposed Zoning: PQP with detached single-family as a permitted use
Acreage: Northern portion of the site to be subdivided into five single-family lots, each approximately 60 feet wide by 80 feet deep, built to R-1A setback and dimensional standards
Staff Recommendation: [presented as staff-supported; formal recommendation carried to the April 7 hearing]
Action: No action — work-session discussion
Notable Discussion: Orlando Gifted Academy is expected to vacate the site by 2027, after which the project can proceed. Briggs described Habitat's model — high-school student volunteers, owner-occupied affordable housing aimed primarily at public school employees including teachers and cafeteria workers — and said land costs are the binding constraint; this project secures three to five years of building opportunity for the affiliate. Driveways will accommodate two cars; garages are generally omitted to hold costs down. The text change was drafted to permit only detached single-family homes, so multifamily or apartment development would require a further zoning amendment. Orange County has no current plans for the remainder of the parcel. Extending roads, water, sewer, and electric service to the site is a funding challenge Habitat would have to meet through fundraising.

Item 3: Preview — 860 W. Fairbanks Avenue Conditional Use (former RV dealership, southern parcel)

Type: Conditional Use (preview of an item set for the April 7, 2026 regular meeting)
Case Number: [not stated in the work session minutes; heard as CU #26-02 on April 7 and May 5, 2026]
Location: Southern portion of the former RV dealership site, southeast corner of Fairbanks Avenue and Denning Drive (860 W. Fairbanks Avenue per the May 5, 2026 record)
Applicant: [not named in the work session minutes; Z Development Services, representative Bob Zeigenfuss, per the May 5, 2026 record]
Request: Extend the zoning and development standards already approved on the northern parcel to the southern parcel under the underlying C-3 commercial zoning, for a one-story commercial development of retail and restaurant space with internal courtyards and parking behind the buildings.
Current Zoning: C-3, within the Orange Avenue Overlay (OAO) district
Proposed Zoning: No change; conditional use plus OAO standards
Acreage: [not stated]
Staff Recommendation: [carried to the April 7 hearing]
Action: No action — work-session discussion
Notable Discussion: A community benefit agreement accompanies the project and stipulates: no building above three stories; no parking garages; preservation of existing mature oak trees at key intersections; and a prohibition on vehicle sales, service, and rentals on the site. The developers committed to donating land along Fairbanks for a turn lane at the Denning intersection, upsizing the stormwater pond on the northern parcel, and selling a small parcel to the city at an affordable price for potential affordable housing. Design: brick facades, fabric canopies, bronze storefront systems, rooftop equipment concealed by parapets, wide sidewalks, landscaped planters, outdoor seating. Access limited to side streets — no direct entry from Denning. Restaurants capped at three, serving alcohol, with state licensing seat minimums accounted for in the parking plan, which provides more spaces than required plus a buffer against spillover. Stormwater uses a dry pond on the southern parcel and a larger wet pond on the northern parcel, meeting new city rules requiring separate dry and wet storage. Some landscape islands will be narrower than standard. Timeline anticipates concurrent development of both parcels, pending FDOT coordination on the Fairbanks turn lane. Board members raised long-term streetscape vision, on-street parking options, and pond aesthetics — the city has internal policy encouraging naturalistic pond design but no zoning-code requirement.

Item 4: Board comment — quality of information reaching the City Commission

Type: Board comment (non-action)
Action: No action
Notable Discussion: A board member raised concern about the accuracy and completeness of information provided to the City Commission regarding Planning & Zoning Board decisions, emphasizing the need for transparent and thorough communication so commissioners and the public understand the board's deliberations and outcomes. The comment landed in the same session that opened with the Commission's reversal of the board's 436 N. Knowles approval.

Public Hearings Summary

[Not applicable — work session. No public hearings, no public comment taken.]

Key Signals

The City Commission reversed the Planning & Zoning Board on 436 North Knowles Avenue three weeks after the board approved it — and the board noticed. PZB approved the R-3-to-double-R-2 lot split with three stacked variances 6-1 on March 3, 2026 (Michael Dick dissenting). The Commission denied it on March 25. McGillis's briefing spelled out the consequence: a reapplication time bar unless a no-voting commissioner moves reconsideration, otherwise the project is dead. This is a clean Winter Park exhibit of the commission-board-philosophical-inversion pattern the corpus tracks in Lake County — the advisory board and the elected body reading the same lot split in opposite directions. It is also the trigger for the session's closing board comment about whether the Commission is receiving an accurate picture of P&Z deliberations, which is the friction the pattern predicts.
Winter Park is opening its institutional-land zoning district to housing, and drafting the door narrow on purpose. The PQP text amendment would let detached single-family homes be built on land zoned for schools and churches — five lots on the former Orange Technical College site for a Habitat for Humanity / Orange County Public Schools workforce-housing partnership aimed at teachers and cafeteria staff. The drafting choice is the signal: only detached single-family is permitted, so no future applicant can use the same door for apartments without returning for another amendment. Winter Park is buying affordability at one site without conceding density district-wide. The Orlando Gifted Academy vacancy in 2027 sets the construction clock.
The Fairbanks/Denning redevelopment is being bought with a community benefit agreement, not a rezoning. The developer of the former RV dealership site is trading enforceable restrictions — three-story cap, no parking garages, mature oaks preserved, no vehicle sales or service — plus donated right-of-way for an FDOT turn lane, an upsized stormwater pond, and a discounted parcel sale to the city for affordable housing, all under existing C-3 zoning within the Orange Avenue Overlay. For anyone reading Winter Park's commercial corridors: the entitlement lever here is contractual, not zoning-map. Watch the community benefit agreement, because that is where the actual constraints live.
The board is using work sessions to run full quasi-judicial previews of applications one week before hearing them. This session walked through site layout, parking counts, stormwater design, facade materials, and traffic mitigation for two items on the April 7 agenda. Three months later — at the June 30 work session — the city attorney's office flagged this practice as a legal problem, and by July 28 the board had adopted a new Chair's opening statement restricting work sessions to fact-finding with no public comment and no position-taking. March 31, 2026 is the high-water mark of the old practice, and it is the baseline against which the procedural correction should be read.

Raw Notes

Source platform note: Harvested from the March 31, 2026 PZB Work Session agenda (fileId 5942) and approved Minutes (fileId 6101) — CivicClerk winterparkfl tenant, agendaId 1462, event 2748.
The published agenda listed exactly two discussion bullets: "Text change to PQP zoning district to allow single-family development as a permitted use" and "860 W Fairbanks Ave Conditional Use." The 436 N. Knowles Commission-denial update and the closing board comment on Commission communications appear only in the minutes.
Meeting structure: Meeting Called to Order → Discussion Item(s) → Adjournment. Held in the Commission Chambers rather than the Chapman Room used for most work sessions.
Recording secretary: Mary Jean.
The minutes name neither the developer nor a case number for the Fairbanks/Denning project. The CU #26-02 / Z Development Services identification above is drawn from the May 5, 2026 minutes (2026-05-meeting-PZB.md), not from this document.
Downstream: 860 W. Fairbanks (CU #26-02) was tabled 5-0 at the April 7, 2026 regular meeting for architectural articulation and a Holt Avenue streetscape plan, returned to the April 28, 2026 work session with revised plans (2026-04-meeting-PZB-WS.md), and was approved 6-0 with a Community Benefit Agreement on May 5, 2026. The PQP text amendment (ZTA #26-01) was heard April 7, 2026 (2026-04-meeting-PZB.md).
Full board attendance (7 of 7) at a midday work session is uncommon in this corpus and worth noting against the April 28, May 26, and July 28 sessions, each of which ran short one or two members.

Winter Park Planning & Zoning Board — March 31, 2026 record