All right. Good evening. The time is 5.01 p.m. Thursday, May 7, 2026. We will now call the City of Delray Beach Board of Adjustment meeting to order. Clerk, could you please call the roll? Mark Ronald. Present. Brenda Cullinan is absent. Suzanne Donahue is absent. Michelle Wilson. Here. Ora Ramirez. Here. Jesse Slasher. Here. John DeLacio. Here. We will now move to approval of the agenda. Are there any changes or adjustments to tonight's agenda? Do we have a motion to approve? Second. All in favor? Aye. Against? All right. Passes. We will move on to minutes. There is one set of meeting minutes to approve the April 16th, 2026 minutes. Are there any changes or modifications to the minutes? Hearing none, is there a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. Second. All in favor? Aye. Against? All right. Minutes pass. We will then move into the swearing into the public. If anyone is planning to speak tonight on agenda or non-agenda items, if you could please stand to be sworn in. Please raise your right hand. By the authority of S&M, is the notary of state afforded? Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Next, there are comments from the public on any non-agenda items. If anyone's planning to speak on non-agenda items. Seeing none. We will move into the public hearing items. So I will first read the quasi-judicial rules. This hearing shall be conducted in accordance with the City of Delray Beach quasi-judicial rules. The applicant and the City shall be permitted to present their case. The public shall be allowed to speak for three minutes each or a maximum of six minutes if the person represents an organization or group of people who are present but agree not to speak. The board and the applicant may be allowed to cross-examine a witness. The City or the applicant will be allowed to offer rebuttal testimony. The decision to approve or deny an application or appeal may not be legally made upon the personal views as to whether a project is a good project or not, nor may a decision be based on the number of citizens who support or oppose a particular project. The law requires that all decisions must be made on the basis of whether the project meets the requirements of law, the comprehensive plan, and the land development regulations. So with that we will read in the first item. Staff? Hi, good evening. I'm Jennifer Views, Planner, and the file number is 550-2026 and it's for 237 SW 27 Terrace. Thank you. Has there been any ex parte communications? We'll just go down the row. I emailed staff some questions on the application. Other than that, we can now move into the applicant presentation. Just please state your name and address. Sure, of course. Sure. Hello, everyone. My name is Benjamin Loudon and this is my wife, Adee Loudon. We're the proud property owners at 237 SW 27 Terrace. Thank you. So I'd like to begin by showing you all some aerial views and you'll see in the next few slides how our property is situated. We are proud owners of our home and we are in the Woodlake community and as you can see we are on 27 Terrace and then we also have another side street that connects at the corner which is uh that's a third street as well. So you'll see that on the next slides. Here is another aerial of our property. On the left hand side you can see the front of our property and our adjoining neighbor of our duplex. Our property is a single story side of a duplex and our neighbors is two-story. Here we'd like to illustrate another rear view of our home. As you can see we also have a neighbor that faces southwest third street and he he shares a fence line with us and as we mentioned we do share the same wall with our neighbor and we have gone to them personally and we have received letters of support from them which have been uploaded as well. Here is a street view taken from the corner of southwest 27th and third street this is the front side of our property. I do want to point out that we have a roof line and we did consider placing the addition and other parts of our property to try to avoid needing to get a variance however with this addition it would not be in conformity with the uh with how the other properties would look and it would face the busy street. Here is another aerial view overhead as you can see to the south side of our property we have the swimming pool and then just to the left of that is the area that Dee was talking about where we also considered an addition which would not require a variance based on the setbacks that are required but the addition that we want to do is to the right hand side of our property on the east side where the pavers are currently we'll get into more detail here's a current survey of our property as you can see we are in the low density and we belong to the low density residential district what makes our community unique is we have a mixture of duplexes and single family homes we are one of the 16 properties that are on a corner lot and that are a duplex i do also want to point to your attention that presently we are at a 30.9 foot setback towards the northeast corner and our lot is over 8 000 square feet at 8 145 square feet and we are we will be discussing the variance that we are requesting for this project here is the pavered area on the rear side of our property where we would like to do an addition i do want to point out to your attention that for your reference the addition would not extend beyond where the pavers are currently set and here's an architectural floor plan that was taken from the permit set that was submitted our addition would include 196 square feet covered porch area and 204 square feet of air-conditioned area which would be classified as an office it would extend 13 feet and four inches from our current structure here is an additional view from the side as you can see we are not extending beyond 13 feet and six inches and we will have a flat roof to match the existing structure and another thing we want to point to attention is the height it would be eight feet and two inches as seen in the previous slides we have homes that are next to us both of our neighbors that have multi-story so we would not be infringing in any way with in regards to stealing any sunlight or getting in the way of that here's a similar addition that was constructed within our community this was before the ordinance was passed in 2023 as you can see the rear setback is 15 feet around a little bit more but it's within the fifth it's within the the the required 15 feet setback but it would not meet the new requirements of the 25 foot setback here's some background information in regards to how this all came about so in 1990 the ldr that we're going over had rear setbacks of 25 feet and then in 1993 the setback was changed to 15 feet and to summarize basically we are not developing a multi-story duplex existing development we are doing a single story development that would not infringe on any other people's right to enjoying the outdoor space here is a letter from 19 from the 1980s regarding our HOA community and the zoning in it uh it talks about the the right to build porches and screened in patios and you can see where we have the red arrow pointing i'll read that those of us who do not now have porches want to preserve the ability to install them in the future and we want to reserve the same rights for those who become our neighbors in the future to deny these advantage we feel would be very unfair to all and potentially harmful to the value of our homes here is another letter from 1992 so i'd like to bring your attention about how it speaks about the majority of developments within homewood lakes currently have screened in porches that were part of the original home construction our home is from 1982 and as you all could see we had a pool built on our property but no screened in porch and it also speaks about how these screened in porches are aesthetically pleasing they blend in nicely with the structures of all the duplex dwellings within the woodley community and they would enhance the value of the home in summary our request is to have an addition 13 feet and four inches away we have a rear setback of currently 30.9 feet and we want to request a setback of 17.6 feet whereas this ordinance that was passed in 2023 requires a 25 foot rear setback we would all like to thank you so much for your time thank you thank you thank you thank you okay um this is a variance request um for 4.3.4 k to allow 17.6 feet in the rear whereas a minimum of 25 feet is required for the construction of the one-story edition my presentation is very similar to theirs i might be able to go into a little bit more detail but this is in the rl low density residential um zoning and some of the background this was known as home homewood lakes it was constructed in 1982 with 272 duplexes and 23 single-family homes section c where the applicant lives is 24 duplexes and six single-family homes and during the development of wood lake there was a request that was made by the neighborhood to reduce the rear setback requirement of 25 feet so way back then it was 25 feet and to reduce it to 15 feet to accommodate these screen closures the request was ultimately denied city commission at that time felt it would have a negative impact on the similar zoning districts but back in 1993 they put an ordinance in that past that took it back from 25 feet to 15 feet for a rear setback these changes again were initiated by the homeowners association of wood lake and then in 2023 the ordinance 25 23 increased the rear setbacks again for rl and rm back to 25 but minimum this was due to duplexes taking on an increasingly larger form um i kind of put this picture down below to show you that um this is a good example of them taking it all the way out um as much as they can maximize um i do not think the intention when wood lake was built again you're looking at 1982 and um houses duplexes weren't that large back then i don't think they really cared back then how big your home was going to be so i i don't really think that the 25 foot setback for this duplex is really geared towards these older homes this is the construction um the addition that they did show you where it's the covered porch in the office and again this just here provides some of the um the zoning requirements they're meeting everything and they're meeting everything at this point um if but they are proposing the 17.6 for the rear um one more quick thing their neighbor to the east the east which would be their side um they have a 15 foot side um setback so between their 15 foot side setback and them having a 17.6 setback there is still a very large amount of property that they would not be really infringing upon um other people's rights and that concludes my presentation thank you is there any members of the public i would like to speak although i i don't see any so maybe we'll move into uh the cross-examination uh let's start down there i have no questions after just a moment the cross examination and rebuttal is if the applicant would like to say anything or rebut anything that the city said gotcha would you like to speak to anything yeah the staff said and if you do if you could speak into the microphone just like to clarify um what you said regarding the neighbor that has a lot of clear space next to us yes the property to the east the the two-story or the single single the single family structure right to the east of us is joe yeah yeah that's i just wanted to confirm that that's the structure that we were talking about there okay yeah not the shared wall with our okay understood that's all that i wanted to bring up thank you okay i guess just i don't have any particular questions but more just conversation among us it seems like if there ever was a case of what is the intent of the law in the history this does seem like a pretty self-evident case of something that's enjoyed by all their neighbors meets the intent of the law what they're asking for is not is not violating the spirit of what council recently passed in terms of the 25-foot multi-story like the the the picture on the screen so yeah i don't have any questions unless there's anything that was concerning presented okay well i guess with that we can uh want me to read the findings yeah i think we're ready to make the findings okay all right so this is file number pz 550-2026 um and the address is 237 southwest 27 terrace a variance request from the land development regulation section 4.3.4 k development standards matrix residential zoning districts to reduce the rear east setback to 17.6 feet whereas a minimum of 25 feet is required associated with the construction of a one-story addition pursuant to land development regulations 2.4 1185 following consideration of all evidence and testimony the board of adjustment for the city of delray beach finds as follows number one that special conditions and circumstances exist which are peculiar to the land structure or building involved and which are not generally applicable to other lands structures or buildings subject to the same zoning economic hardship shall now constant shall not constitute a basis for granting of a variance mark ronald brenda cullinan is absent suzanne donahue is absent michelle wilson or ramirez yes jesse slasher yes john delicio yes that literal interpretation of regulations would deprive the applicant of rights commonly enjoyed by other properties subject to the same zoning mark ronald yes brenda cullinan is absent suzanne donahue is absent michelle wilson or ramirez yes jesse slasher yes john delicio yes that the that the special conditions and circumstances have not resulted from the actions of the applicant mark ronald brenda cullinan is absent suzanne donahue is absent michelle wilson or ramirez yes jesse slasher yes john delicio yes that granting the variance will not not confer on the applicant any special privilege that is denied to other lands structures and buildings under the same zoning neither the permitted nor nor non-conforming use of neighborhood lands structures or buildings under under the same zoning shall be considered grounds for the issuance of a variance mark ronald yes brenda cullinan is absent suzanne donahue is absent michelle wilson or ramirez yes jesse slasher yes john delicio yes john delicio yes john delicio yes that the reasons established in the variance petition justify the granting of the variance and that the variance is the minimum variance that will make possible the reasonable use of the land building or structure mark ronald yes brenda cullinan is absent suzanne donahue is absent michelle wilson yes or ramirez yes jesse slasher yes john delicio yes that the granting of the variance will be in harmony with the general purpose and intent of existing regulations will not be injurious to the neighborhood or otherwise detrimental to the public welfare mark ronald yes brenda cullin is absent suzanne donahue is absent michelle wilson yes or ramirez yes jesse slasher yes john delicio yes so we'll just request a motion seeing as the votes as they may would someone like to make a motion i make a motion to approve second there's a motion in a second can we call a vote mark ronald yes brenda cullin is absent suzanne donahue is absent michelle wilson yes or ramirez yes jesse slasher yes john delicio yes pursuant to ldr section 2.1.7 f all decisions of the board of adjustment are final based on the entire record before it the board of adjustment approves the variance solely for the purpose as presented at the meeting the board of adjustment adopts this order this day of may 7th 2026 all right that concludes the public hearing items we will move on to reports and comments from staff we do not have any reports and comments i didn't i know i don't have my slide show up but we don't have anything anything i was just wondering are you guys aware that um all actions are final and that any appeals go to the circuit court yes okay i was so that you guys know why we do that yes we remember the last summer the need to rehear what was that we remember some of the case the nuances of the cases last summer okay yeah any comments from the board members all right with that we will adjourn