City of Winter Park Planning & Zoning Board — July 28, 2026 (Work Session)

Meeting Overview

Type: Work Session (midday, non-action) Quorum: 5 of 7 members present. Neither the Chair nor the Vice Chair attended — Planning Director Allison McGillis called the meeting to order. Duration: 71 minutes (12:01 p.m. – 1:12 p.m.) Location: Chapman Room, 401 S. Park Avenue

Attendance

Present: Alex Stringfellow, Bill Segal, Michael Dick, Vashon Sarkisian, Samuel King
Absent: Jason Johnson (Chair), Charles Steinberg (Vice Chair)
Staff Present: Allison McGillis (Director of Planning & Zoning), Nicholas Lewis (Planner II), Corinna Lundgren (Planner I), Mary Jean (Administrative Coordinator)

Agenda Items

Item 1: Board orientation video — Sunshine Law

Type: Board training (non-action)
Action: No formal action. McGillis presented the city's board orientation video on the Florida Sunshine Law.
Notable Discussion: A brief discussion followed about board members participating in discussion of a hearing item after declaring a conflict with that item.

Item 2: New Chair's opening statement for work sessions

Type: Board procedure (non-action; consensus reached)
Action: The board was in accord with a new opening statement governing work sessions. No formal vote.
Notable Discussion: The discussion "reinforced the purpose of the Planning and Zoning Board work sessions as fact-finding meetings rather than forums for expressing opinions on pending quasi-judicial applications." Members agreed they should avoid signaling how they intend to vote before public hearings and should reserve judgment until all evidence, staff presentations, applicant presentations, and public comment have been heard. The adopted opening statement clarifies that:
- work sessions are open to the public for observation only;
- public comment will not be accepted; and
- board members will not take positions on applications during these sessions. The board also asked that staff note in staff reports that work session discussions are part of the public record and available online.

Item 3: Staff report — City Commission action on CU #26-04 (1560 Orange Avenue)

Type: Staff update (non-action)
Case Number: CU #26-04
Location: 1560 North Orange Avenue (the Hub building)
Action: No action — informational. McGillis reported that the restaurant at the Hub building was approved by the City Commission with 21 conditions, expanding on the Planning & Zoning Board's recommended 11 conditions.
Notable Discussion: A brief discussion followed about placing certain hearing items on the consent agenda.

Item 4: Streamlining routine lakefront applications

Type: Board procedure (non-action)
Action: No formal action — the board generally supported the approach.
Notable Discussion: McGillis proposed streamlining presentations for routine lakefront applications using concise summaries highlighting compliance with lakefront review criteria, stormwater management, tree impacts, and neighborhood feedback, while still preparing complete materials in case an application requires fuller discussion.

Item 5: Preview — ANNEX #26-01, billboard-reduction annexation

Type: Annexation with future land use and zoning designation (preview)
Case Number: [not stated in the work session minutes; docketed as ANNEX #26-01 on the August 4, 2026 agenda]
Location: [not stated here; 915 North Wymore Road per the August 4, 2026 agenda]
Applicant: [not named here; Summer Time Management, LLC per the August 4, 2026 agenda]
Request: A small annexation tied to a citywide billboard reduction agreement — removing multiple existing billboards in exchange for allowing a single billboard along Interstate 4, with the annexed property receiving equivalent commercial zoning.
Current Zoning: [unincorporated county designation not stated]
Proposed Zoning: Commercial future land use and Commercial (C-3) zoning per the August 4 agenda
Acreage: [not stated]
Action: No action — work-session discussion

Item 6: Preview — CU #26-01, 210 E. Morse Boulevard townhomes and synagogue

Type: Conditional Use (preview)
Case Number: CU #26-01
Location: 210 East Morse Boulevard / Knowles Avenue
Applicant: GAI Consultants, Inc. on behalf of El Cortez, LTD, with Chabad of Greater Orlando
Action: No action — work-session discussion
Notable Discussion: Board member Alex Stringfellow disclosed a planned recusal due to prior involvement with the project; McGillis reminded him to complete the required recusal paperwork. Suggestions raised: compare the synagogue's design with nearby religious and civic buildings to evaluate compatibility; consider whether a design balancing traditional and contemporary architectural styles might be appropriate; include contextual images of surrounding buildings in the hearing presentation.

Item 7: Preview — six upcoming lakefront applications

Type: Site Plan Review (preview, six applications)
Location: [individual addresses not enumerated in the minutes; the August 4, 2026 agenda carries six lakefront applications on Lakes Maitland, Mizell, Forest, Virginia, and Berry]
Action: No action — work-session discussion
Notable Discussion: Lewis and Lundgren reviewed setback requests, tree preservation or removal, stormwater management, retaining walls, lake view impacts, and compatibility with neighboring properties. Staff also explained the city's process for addressing unauthorized filling or grading of lakefront property — such work requires permits, and enforcement occurs through code compliance where violations are identified. Staff noted most of the six applications had received little or no neighborhood opposition, and that hearing presentations would include more detailed maps and supporting materials.

Public Hearings Summary

[Not applicable — work session. No public hearings, and under the opening statement adopted at this meeting, work sessions will not accept public comment going forward.]

Key Signals

Winter Park formally closed its work sessions as a venue for signalling votes — the practice the corpus has been reading as the board's real deliberation is now prohibited by its own opening statement. As of July 28, 2026, P&Z work sessions are declared fact-finding only: open to the public for observation, no public comment accepted, and no board positions taken on pending applications. The chain is traceable across three meetings — a legal concern raised June 30 with a commitment to obtain applicant consent before discussing projects, then this statement four weeks later. For anyone tracking a Winter Park application, the practical consequence is that the fourth-Tuesday session no longer forecasts the following week's vote, and the substantive argument returns to the public hearing where opponents can speak.
The City Commission nearly doubled the P&Z's conditions on the Hub restaurant — 11 became 21. The board recommended CU #26-04 for approval on July 7 with 11 conditions including a permanent Westchester Avenue closure and a Community Benefit Agreement. The Commission approved it with 21. Four months earlier the Commission denied the P&Z-approved 436 N. Knowles lot split outright. Winter Park's elected body is actively rewriting its advisory board's work in both directions inside a single quarter — a commission-board-philosophical-inversion exhibit with a specific local shape: escalate conditions on commercial conditional uses, reverse on residential subdivisions.
Six lakefront applications arrive at once, and the board is simultaneously moving to process them faster. The August 4 docket carries six new-construction and addition applications across Lakes Maitland, Mizell, Forest, Virginia, and Berry — the heaviest lakefront volume in the Winter Park record. In the same session, staff proposed and the board accepted concise summary presentations for routine lakefront items, and discussed moving some hearing items to consent. Staff reported most of the six drew little or no neighborhood opposition. Winter Park is building the throughput mechanism at precisely the moment lakefront redevelopment volume spikes; the risk for adjacent owners is that the scrutiny threshold rises with the caseload.
Enforcement of unauthorized lakefront filling and grading surfaces for the first time in the corpus. Staff explained that filling or grading lakefront property requires permits and that violations are handled through code compliance. That the topic came up while reviewing six pending lakefront applications suggests it is not hypothetical. Shoreline modification without permit is the quiet counterpart to the permitted-addition pipeline, and it is now on the record as a live enforcement channel.
The city is trading a scattered billboard inventory for one I-4 sign, and annexation is the instrument. ANNEX #26-01 brings 915 North Wymore Road into the city with Commercial future land use and C-3 zoning as part of a citywide billboard reduction agreement — multiple existing billboards removed in exchange for a single billboard along Interstate 4. This is a voluntary-annexation-jurisdictional-tool exhibit in an affluent built-out city: annexation used not to capture growth but to acquire regulatory control over a sign inventory. Watch whether the I-4 billboard's placement and scale draw the same corridor-visibility objections that Winter Park applies to its arterials.
The board is losing members to conflicts on its largest pending item. Stringfellow disclosed a planned recusal on CU #26-01 (210 E. Morse); a conflict had already been flagged at the May 26 work session for CU #26-04, on which Steinberg recused July 7. With Segal absent July 7 and both the Chair and Vice Chair absent from this session, Winter Park's seven-member board has repeatedly voted at five or six. The synagogue-and-townhomes conditional use is scheduled for a 60-minute hearing on August 4 with at least one seat already removed.

Raw Notes

Source platform note: Harvested from the July 28, 2026 PZB Work Session agenda (fileId 6389) and approved Minutes (fileId 6448) — CivicClerk winterparkfl tenant, agendaId 1518, event 2752.
The published agenda listed three bullets: "Board Orientation Video," "Review the Chair's opening statement for work sessions," "Upcoming agenda items."
McGillis called the meeting to order, not a board officer — both the Chair and Vice Chair elected three weeks earlier were absent. The minutes record no presiding member.
The minutes do not reproduce the text of the new opening statement; they describe its three operative clauses. The statement's first use should appear in the August 25, 2026 work session record, which had not been published as of 2026-08-08.
Neither the annexation applicant nor the six lakefront addresses are named in this document; those identifications come from the August 4, 2026 agenda (2026-08-agenda-PZB.md).
Meeting structure: Meeting Called to Order → Discussion Item(s) → Adjournment. Attested by Mary Jean, Board Administrator.

Winter Park Planning & Zoning Board — July 28, 2026 record