Planning & Zoning Board — Jun 2, 2026

in control yes welcome everybody see we have another packed house tonight so i would like to call the city plantation planning and zone board meeting for june 2nd 2026 to order city clerk if you would please call the roll miss gelfand joseph goldstein miss denby burger here mr corman here mr freeman here mr max goldstein here mr mcintosh here thank you all right first order of business is approval of meeting minutes from may 5th 2026 does anybody have any additions or corrections to those minutes vicky go ahead i asked the uh owner of that home if and it's not in the minutes if in the future he was going to have religious services there and that was not in there that was in i read the minutes and it's not in there would you like it amended to indicate as such amended that's in there so just in case in the future it becomes a religious institution we will have him denying the fact any issues with that okay if we can cross check that and i remember her asking just yeah just verify i remember his answer too his answer was in negative no i'm not having okay so if we can just get that amended to miss gelfand's anybody else corrections make a motion to approve with the correction the motion miss gelfand just i'm making the motion said do i have a second second motion a second please call the roll mr goldstein i'm sorry joseph goldstein yes miss denby burger yes mr corman yes mr freeman yes mr max goldstein yes mr mcintosh yes miss gelfand thank you all right um um the agenda has three items on it two of which have been deferred to or one of them will be deferred and the other one has been deferred so the only item that we're hearing tonight is the first one on the agenda pp25-0041 consideration of a request for waiver request site plan elevation and landscape plan approval for plantation baptist church the property is located at one one seven zero zero northwest 28 court and his own cfp community facilities before the staff gives their presentation just if some of you are new to this procedure what how it's going to be working is this staff makes their presentation the applicant is entitled to make a presentation as well normally there will be questions from the dais but what we'll do is hold those questions until both of those presentations have been made and then we will open it up for comments from the chamber when comments from the changer chamber come up it's a little bit different from city council for those you have been here basically because there are so many people and i'm expecting a lot of comments just so you know if you sent us one this is a packet of 48 opposition letters that we have all sitting up here available to the board my assumption is a lot of those comments are going to be made again when you come up you will give your name your address and you will have three minutes to speak if you do not need all of the three minutes in other words if you just want to say yeah what that guy said you're welcome to do so otherwise it is your right to have those three minutes and based upon the numbers in here that could push a three-hour meeting but like i said everybody has a right to speak as far as how you're going to do so that's the microphone up there you're going to come forward and speak you'll see the clock right below me tick down for those of you who want to speak next michael you raise your hand right there if you could form a line in the aisle just behind that point and not push up on the microphone that would help it work in a much more organized fashion the one last thing i'm going to mention and if i have to drop a gavel on it don't take it personally um please don't applaud it's a public hearing i get that you will agree with some comments you might disagree with other comments just save the editorializing from the back because that slows things down because we can't hear the commentary up here on the dais um if any questions come up as you are presenting just fire them away once those comments are done i will close public comments and then we'll have our discussion on the dais vote on it and move forward uh that being said yes sir do we need a motion to defer the item number two do we want to do that first in case anyone's here to speak on that that is a good idea yes we are going to need a motion to defer um that is for the record pd25-005 consideration of a request to approve a land use plan amendment lupa for plantation marketplace the property is located at 7001 to 7181 west broward bouvard in zone b2p central business do i have a motion to defer and i'll second we have a a motion and a second please call the roll thank you joe goldstein yes ariel denby burger yes mr corman yes mr freeman yes max goldstein yes mr mcintosh yes miss gelfand yes thank you all right so that one is deferred until such time as staff brings it back which brings me back to pp25-0041 the plantation baptist church staff if you will uh no need to line up yet if that's where some of you are going unless some of you are leaving for the other one you're leaving because of the bro all right hey there good evening my name is hold on folks as you're leaving if you could do so quietly i'd appreciate it because we're going to start in on the other item jumping right in whenever you're ready okay thank you you're waiting for me i figured you're waiting for everybody to quiet down sorry hi good evening my name is amy dinter i am one of the city planners for the city plantation and i will be presenting the baptist church's request for an approval for the site plan elevations and landscape plan all right the request is to build a new two-story gymnasium building with three 33 677 square feet and it includes seven classrooms two locker rooms communal kitchen and offices and the building will be next to the existing church it is located in the north acres it's on the boundary of the city of plantation and city of sunrise it is the zoning district is community facilities and the lot is 8.1 acres and the land use is also community facilities the area is characterized by to the north the city of sunrise and single-family homes to the east west and south is the city of plantation north acres community single-family homes the purple circle is the public notification boundary which is 500 feet and 221 notices were sent out here's an aerial view just giving another image of the location of the church and the surrounding area one thing i would like to point out i always screw this it's not working but oh here it is this southern boundary right down here you can see that there is some like a landscape buffer here i just wanted to point that out here we have the site plan so to the west of the church we have an existing parking lot and up on the northern end of the site we have some new proposed ada accessible parking spaces this is the proposed gym building and then you have this area to the east of the lot which is fairly open still and you have an existing building which is a storage building the required site i'm sorry the required setbacks are all met most of them exceed the required setbacks the rear setback they're proposing exactly what is required which is 50 feet and that's down here on this line the lot coverage is proposed with the new building of 16 the zoning district can go up to 30 maximum lot coverage the building height proposed is 39 feet two stories and this can the zoning district can go up to 60 feet five stories this is the landscape plan again the landscape buffers are all being met with their proposed buffers and the the landscape pedestrian zones are also being met except for one and that is this area right here so that is your north landscape pedestrian zone they're asking to be allowed for a six foot two inch lpz instead of the 19 feet eight inches and the reason being is that they wanted to keep the alignment of the two buildings um you know next to each other they didn't want they didn't want to staggered they wanted it aligned so this is a rendering of what the gym will look like and these are the elevations so this sorry here we go to the left here is the gym to the right is the existing church you can see here that it has a total height of 39 feet and then these are the different facades you have your east elevation and your south elevation here is the first floor plan you can see you have the gymnasium i'm sorry you have the gymnasium in the middle and then along the sides you have locker rooms and a weight room some storage rooms lobby restrooms and then you have your kitchen and three classrooms the second floor plan we have five classrooms along with some offices and some more storage and a game room and then this area would be open i also wanted to show the photometric plan and it is important to note here that there is a written statement on the plans sorry right here explaining that there um the illumination will be automatically controlled after 9 p.m to 11 p.m required illumination will be reduced to half after 11 p.m only areas adjacent to the building and driveways will be illuminated for safety reasons and it'll be illuminated at that half lighting okay so we had the first conditional use which was approved back in 2008 for 40 students pre-k through 12th grade in 2019 they came back for a second conditional use approval to allow 200 students between pre-k and 12th grade the school year 2025 2026 which is just wrapping up they had a confirmed enrollment of 97 students the church is not requesting to increase enrollment and for next year the 2026 2027 school year it is confirmed enrollment for 84 students the city of plantations engineering department did do a traffic statement and they based it on the approved cup enrollment of 200 students and estimated trips at the vested capacity were between 75 and 100 peak hour trips two ways the gymnasium assembly use is expected to have negligible additional traffic events are intermittent and typically outside commuter peak hours and the estimated internal capture is pretty high between 30 and 60 percent which is typical for combined church school campus and internal use is it's a it's um the same population is using the facility so you have your church congregation you have staff and you have students the final conclusion of the traffic statement is that it's expected to create modest traffic impacts and does not warrant a full traffic impact study however there were recommendations and one is to have event scheduling management to avoid overlapping major activities on-site traffic control during large events and encouraging carpooling and church shuttle usage so this is just a little background on the sports teams there is a volleyball boys and girls each team has approximately seven students and the flag football team is just the girls team and they have approximately seven students home game days are between 3 pm and 5 pm for all teams on the same day and they have about 20 to 25 attendees per game that includes coaches students and spectators the league is small they only play four other teams which are listed on the slide and their regional and state tournaments tournaments are played out of town this is a picture of the existing landscape buffer which i did point out earlier in the presentation they planted coco plum back in 2017 and they're currently between eight and nine feet tall oak trees were also planted at the same time which are now really starting to kind of pick up with growth that's it for the presentation thank you very much is the applicant is here yes um if you all would like to make your presentation as i said and then we'll go to comments questions uh good evening board thank you for having us my name is matt for j with five architecture the architecture firm uh that's uh coordinated this submittal package along with our client and our design team um amy definitely covered everything i think that needs to be discussed with the building i did want to just mention one additional item just for clarity purposes as it relates to the building alignment on the north property uh north side property where we're looking for our landscape waiver uh the additional and main purpose for the alignment and request for the waiver on that side of the building is to allow for the one-way traffic uh pattern to flow from uh west to east uh simply and cleanly uh any deviation from the building placement off of that line would cause for some traffic concerns uh for kind of pick up and drop off at the facility so uh that's how the building was situated incited it is in alignment with the existing building and that that's the main reason for uh that alignment um otherwise i didn't really want to add to anything amy covered all the details of the project uh happy to answer any questions as we go through the process if anything needs clarity um and we'd have ownership here as well so we can solve any uh uh challenges that come about thank you um vicky you said you had questions can you wait until after comments perfect in that case then um anybody have any pressing things from the days and we're going to open it to public comments as i said please come up state your name your address for the record you'll have three minutes to speak those of you who want to speak after whoever's speaking please line up in the middle aisle there uh first come is first served so public comments are open from chamber you're so close well i'll make a comment i i've been name and address please for the record frank nemus 12030 northwest 27 street it's two streets over from the church west of 118th avenue and i've owned my property for 40 years i remember when plantation acres was dirt roads there was no uh sawgrass mall walmart all that stuff it was when i moved there it was a country area my neighbors had two horses and a stable acre and a half we loved it since then it's gotten busy crowded and some of the houses even have been look like they've been packed in where they shouldn't be i remember when i pulled my permit i had to require it was important to keep so much free space there for drainage for water retention now i see this i remember this church i seen it get bigger in december when they have their christmas festival it is a nightmare with the traffic and the noise that goes on there now i'm not exactly sure what's happening i know they're planning on building a school but to me that is not the place for school way back in a residential area like that and i can only imagine how much traffic and trouble we will be having for that so i am totally against anything more happening i've seen it over the years the big warehouse built there and the other things that were added to the building and i am against it thank you okay guys like i said no clapping let's keep it quiet because the longer that goes on the longer this meeting goes on we understand what everybody's feelings are everybody has a chance to speak ma'am if you would good evening i'm linda nemus his wife live at the same address 12030 northwest 27th street i agree totally with my husband on those things but i did want to add that aside from the christmas celebrations i'm not against a little church being there but it has gotten bad during that time of year and it's also increased during normal uh mornings and you know when they come in and out and whatever the 118th avenue gets very crowded um and there's a lot of um you know noise and things that are generated from this area so you know i'm against having anything else put on that property because it's already gotten you know so big and so congested around there so um you know we we like the country atmosphere and it has changed a lot um we were there when there wasn't even a red light on 118th and sunrise so you know we like that atmosphere we want to keep that atmosphere and so for that reason we're against it thank you uh elizabeth selick i live at 11531 northwest 27th court which is abuts directly against the church so i'm right behind them i sent a letter already to a lot of you so i'm not going to reiterate what's already there i'm going to tell you about my lived experience i do not attend the church but i can tell you when their services are because that's the time that my family and i can't go walking because of the amount of traffic that there is wednesday night services i can't take my toddler out because he's gonna get hit by a car um there's just too many people in a place that has streets coming in but no no cross through you you go in and you circle around and you come out so it doubles the traffic um we have had extraordinary um additions to our commute times during lights in the acres which clearly well it seems that this might not be the same level of traffic impact as lights in the acres but that has become such a burden it's something that the neighbors and i all talk about right during during when it happens we talk about how we have to make sure we don't have to go out i mean we get stopped by plantation police coming into our gnome neighborhoods and we have to show that we live there to make sure that we're not visitors cutting in it's it's become incredibly burdensome the the traffic and the amount of people coming into our very small rural neighborhood um so that's that's our experience i would also like to add um i hear everything i hear everything i hear every practice i hear the kids in the playground i don't mind the kids like the kids in the playground but i hear everything um and and science backs this up right i was just doing a little bit of reading journal enviro of environmental management has said that it's canopy density right single trees don't do anything to dampen sound you need canopy density and and we don't have that with the small shrubs that are planted i hear every single thing i've actually asked uh during lights in the acres for them to please lower the the sound because my kids are having trouble sleeping and that they're it's never been done there's never been a discussion about that so that is my experience and my i am coming out against this because i'm very concerned that this is going to exacerbate those lived experiences that we are all having as neighbors and that we've all kind of come together to talk about and bring these concerns before you so that's it i'm i'm not gonna um take up too much of your time thank you thank you so much for letting us letting us have this opportunity to talk thank you good afternoon my name is gene johnson my address is one one two three zero northwest 27th street i'm right off old hat hiatus road and the impact that i personally receive is the traffic whenever the christmas lights are going on they blocked off the roads i nearly ran over one of those barricades trying to get to my street the police would not let me turn off of sunrise i had to go down 118th and get totally impacted by it but a little background we built our house in 1971 our first permits were with barard county and then we were asked do we want to belong to sunrise or do we want to belong to plantation we opted for plantation because it was a family friendly city it also had a good administration here a decent council etc we thought we would have better to be under plantation we actually lived out there and saw was there the night that the uh the mayors lamello and veltri were fighting to close old plantation or old hiatus north through sunrise they actually literally got out there with backhoes and dump trucks full of dirt to block that off because they were going to honor our respect to keep a residential rural community there were more horse families in the north acres than there are now but there are still horses there they ride up and down the roads they should be safe and i recently got a pull from the police department about the violations the last it was just last five or six months most violations were traffic tickets were speeding and most of the time area was between eight and nine in the morning and that afternoon hour where kids get out of school so who's speeding i don't know for sure who is but i can assume somebody was late for school in that i just think personally that this is an overbuild of an area that is a beautiful rural community and our price um our home what do you call it assessments definitely will drop which means your tax dollars will drop too so please i am against this expansion thank you thank you hi my name is melissa fitzgerald and my husband and i live at 11240 northwest 27th court and i'm here to speak in opposition to the development i think one of the things that hasn't been mentioned yet is that there are no sidewalks anywhere in our neighborhood except for along the greenway which doesn't get to anyone's homes there are children and there are animals and there are people out walking as people have mentioned when the christmas lights are going or just on a normal school day i have had multiple times where when i was walking my dogs just trying to get to the paved greenway across the street where i've almost gotten run over i actually had someone almost run over one of my dogs in my driveway because they were getting impatient about a line of cars to get to the church so they pulled off onto our street we're going very quickly anyone coming from outside of the neighborhood doesn't necessarily realize the limitations of our neighborhood i think the notice that was given while i understand it was legal is sort of irrelevant because when you go above the church north you're talking about a completely different neighborhood that is not affected by traffic those are most of the residences that you can excuse me that you gave notice to they're in a different city in sunrise and there's a fence along there and again that you of traffic doesn't impact that neighborhood at all um i just i think that when you talk about the flow into the school part of that flow is because they're limited by space you open up more space and you're going to have more people coming at exactly the same times of the day and the evening and the scary times to walk out of our homes and try to walk up or down the street are directly correlated to the morning traffic traffic the afternoon traffic after school and wednesday evenings and sunday mornings which are other church activities that's just going to multiply by two if there are classrooms in this building we're not talking about a gymnasium to supplement existing student body we're talking about growing the student body so um i would respectfully ask we've lived in our place for four years we purchased it at a premium specifically because of the nature and the and the zoning in that neighborhood and i would like you to respect the fact that we would not have bought that house and we probably won't continue to live there if we if our neighborhood is not taken into account in the impacts rather than a commercial business thank you my name is chris cariffi i live in 11401 northwest 27th court with my wife i'd just like to reiterate what you've heard from everybody and that's a complete disregard for our residential neighborhood by this church we've had multiple incidents during the holiday lights we've had accidents speeding we now have barricades on our streets we have police cars at the end of our blocks this is a residential neighborhood not city streets we have problems with the church having lights into neighboring properties blaring right into people's living rooms we have music on sunday mornings blaring out of the parking lot because they installed speakers throughout the parking lot i'd just like to remind everybody this is a residential neighborhood we have two trunks that go into this neighborhood two trunks that are constantly filled with speeding cars as you've heard between 7 30 and 8 in the morning i'm out there there's people that are late dropping their children off that are speeding up 112 because you've put in speed bumps only on 118 so who are you respecting here the residents or the church who has no regard for the residential people thank you board members and neighbors good evening my name is adolfo scarano and i live at 11230 northwest 18th street this is about a community facility district zoning let me read this under the city of plantation code of ordinances the cfp community facility district zoning classification is intended for public institutional and community oriented spaces to ensure the orderly development of civil infrastructure these districts are also subject to specific architectural and environmental overlays such as those for plantation acres i think a community facility should integrate harmoniously with the surrounding and benefit local residents however this project's massive scale is incompatible with our peaceful neighborhood and contradicts safety concerns and the express will of the majority of the community i respectfully respectfully ask for the board members to consider the impact this development would have if it were located in your own neighborhood given the issues raised by the community would you support such a large-scale project next to your home thank you very much how you all doing jose morales 115 70 northwest 20th court i'm here to tell you that i understand like the situation they said that the young lady here said that people know they were notified within 500 the purple circle there this is something that i think i i know that's the the rules of the game right but this is something that affect the whole north acres and this is an anomaly everybody in the north acres should have been notified if everybody in the north acres should have been notified about this situation here board you will have a line here all the way out all the way out you know because this is something that affects us the community there you guys are here to to represent the residents and the problems with that we only have two 118th avenue and no hiatus road so during the christmas lighting we've been putting up for that for a couple of decades if if not more okay and it's an inconvenience i have like the the gentleman's before me and the ladies before me have said we have had problems with a plantation police telling me hey listen you live in in this i have to show my my driver's license car so now the the pastor says oh we're not going to have any more any more christmas like any more christmas stuff so but now you're going to put us through a whole year of inconvenience and this is this is totally wrong this is uh a power grab by by you know by by schools now because they're getting that this is not a place if this if this property was in the corner of 118th avenue and sunrise boulevard i will say okay all right we'll go deal with that this property is located in the very last street of the neighborhood this every single resident in this in the north acres is going to be affected by this in one way or another we don't want to have sidewalks like we said because we have like a country like a country area we don't have sidewalks we don't have that that luxury and then on top of that we're going to be put up with this and and this is you know this is something like my dad used to tell me oh i got to be careful because i give you my hand and you're going to go all the way up to my elbow this is something like oh 87 students and a couple of years more students and more students and this is grow up grow up into a bigger thing please board please consider the people that you're really representing is your residents your residents that live in plantation acres please okay thank you very much okay my name is ian mcwilliam 11690 northwest 27th court when i step out my front door or when my wife sits at her piano looks out our window our neighbors neighboring view will be dominated by the 39 foot two-story building hovering over my neighbor's one-story home while the church states the project is a simple gymnasium to support their existing students this year's size and scope tells a completely different story this is a massive multi-purpose event center it features 400 bleacher seats a performance stage a commercial kitchen a game room seven additional classrooms if chairs are placed on the gym floor the facility can hold over a thousand people this represents a massive expansion the school is currently capped at 200 students the church is building a structure for 400 students for over 10 years the traffic lights the christmas celebration has kept us in our homes for four nights a week for five weeks with endless amplified music permeating our walls the church has ignored repeated uh repeat uh pleas for relief uh they uh they claim that this year they're going to stop but the only reason they're stopping the the construction is the uh the christmas event is because of the construction project more importantly what guarantees do we have that even a larger more destructive event will return when this massive event venue is built if the goal is truly to support the existing student student body a single storey gymnasium with a few classrooms would easily suffice however if any structure is built strict legal binding conditions must be imposed to protect our community one eliminate the rear service road road between the gym and the backyards of the homes next to the church property and isolate it with permanent sound noise dampening walls and mature trees and heavy landscaping to restrict the exterior lighting southern facing wall fixtures must be low impact and not illuminate into the backyards the 29 foot light poles need to be lower and adhere to dark sky compliance to prevent light intrusion into our yards and three permanent covenant on the facility should restrict the use to standard school hours only and strictly prohibit large-scale indoor and outdoor events please protect the peace safety and integrity of our neighborhood thank you hello my name is judy gorman i live at 11551 northwest 27th court um i want to say that i feel really angry about the attitude of the church the we are a church and we can do whatever we want has been going on for years i've lived there for 47 years i live directly behind the offensive christmas display i've lived on 27th court like i said for 47 years the lights are very bright they're flashing and the music is extremely loud when i asked multiple times for the music to be lowered i was ignored my sliding glass doors behind my family room in the back of my home rattled and the music made it impossible to even watch my tv i had to install heavier doors with the cost of the heavy doors and replace my coverage with room darkening to minimize the situation the church removed the trees behind my home that were in the buffer zone between the two properties and removed my fence along the back of my property thus leaving my pool open to the open field behind my home and in full view of 28th court behind the field anyone walking down 28th court could see the pool and walk across the field and potentially fall into my pool making this a dangerous and lethal situation not to mention against the law when i multiple times pleading for the fence to be replaced i had to obtain a lawyer to have the fence replaced behind my home to prevent any accident in my pool a fence was then installed behind my property but was it a four-foot fence instead of a five-foot fence like the rest of the fencing bordering my property the original poles on the corners of the fence he is still present excuse me with the original holes for the five-foot fence above the hookups to the four-foot fence the church has not been a good neighbor and continues to be disrespectful of my rights as a plantation acres resident i hope you can protect our rights as residents thank you good evening my name is mark laffler i live at one one five five zero northwest 21st street my first introduction to plantation baptist church was through its christmas lights display leaving in the neighborhood i quickly realized how many visitors came through during the holiday season i understand why some residents become frustrated with the traffic as pastor hunter has said 2026 will be the final year of the christmas lights display i believe much of the anxiety surrounding this proposal comes from those experiences with the holiday traffic wanting to better understand the proposal i reached out to the pastor and we met last thursday and to discuss how the space would be used what i found was very different from what i heard and read online the proposed building is approximately the same size and height as the existing church building the new building could have been designed taller but the church intentionally kept the height lower out of consideration for the surrounding neighborhood the school has operated for nearly 20 years without air conditioning in their gym without an air-conditioned gymnasium the students and their families are fortunate that the church can now make that happen pastor hunter also explained how the church currently handles fellowship events and ministries many of those events must be held in multiple seedings because there simply isn't enough room for everyone at one time that helped me better understand the purpose of this new building the proposal creates more space not more people traffic was the biggest concern i heard this proposal is not expected to increase traffic the same members students and families who attend today will be using this facility in fact traffic should decrease one of the largest sources of traffic in our neighborhood has been the annual christmas lights display with that event ending in 2026 the reduction in traffic will likely be greater than any impact associated with this proposal i have seen the animation circulating on next door along with descriptions such as mega church and huge arena after reviewing the actual plans i believe those characterizations are misleading the plans show a project that is far different from the picture created by the animation i understand and respect that people have concerns however plantation baptist church has been a part of this community since 1978 and owns this property both florida and federal law protect the rights of religious institutions to use their property for religious and educational purposes and i believe this community respects those rights the church is not asking the city to change the zoning laws it is not asking for special treatment it is asking only to be evaluated evaluated evaluated fairly under the same standards that apply to every property owner in this city i trust the city will give this proposal the fair review it deserves thank you for your time good evening uh kathleen von hull 11901 northwest 24th street plantation acres um i also met with the pastor because i had a lot of concerns about this project um my first concern was that while the pastor has come to us every year for months to the hoa before the christmas lights to get us on board to give us our free tickets there was nothing said about this this was quiet as a church mouse i'd only heard about it when i heard from neighbors that were within the 500 feet um i think it is clear from a person who's been to church for the last 73 years that that is not a regular church being built that is the definition of a mega church they have a huge and beautiful church what they're building now is a meeting space for twice as many people as they already have plus to expand everything that they have and i i feel that they can build it and they will come just like we would want to have a church there for people i go to saint benedict's right here we have all kinds of missions we could fill that church every day we do fill that church every day but it's on fifth street it doesn't go all the way down the neighborhood where there is no sidewalks there's once well two little streets in and out and that's it um when i try to go to church on sunday i'm stuck at the light several light changes because there's so many people coming in on sundays now all day sunday there's several services and this will give them the opportunity to have many many more services many many more mission opportunities my grandchildren go to saint thomas they play varsity sports and they play against home school teams now where is the discussion about the home school that this that they have at the church because there is also a home school hybrid component that i only learned about when i met with a pastor that could be 10 children that could be 10 000 children i don't know but those kids have to practice somewhere and it sounds like we found a place thank you hello everybody my name is robbie davis neighbors i live at 550 northwest 118 avenue plantation acres i'm a 52 year resident it's kind of wild my parents bought that place in 1969 my dad was the president of the homeowners association he was on the paid board and he was running for city council until he went into um heart failure and had to drop out of the race so i was born and raised in plantation acres i have amazing fond memories of the rural community that it once was we have a horse ranch i still have horses my dad was a rodeo cowboy i proudly call myself a cowboy i've wrangled horses on all types of movies tv shows i do a lot of things i used to ride my horse as a child down to what was central baptist church i used to play football with all the neighborhood kids in that field where they now want to build the gymnasium um now living on 13th avenue we got a lot of traffic ourselves that goes to american heritage i've watched a lot of expansion watched american heritage all the other churches expand i've watched the community grow and change i've watched the quarter deck come in a bar that's in plantation acres i've watched best buy and everything else i've watched all of the horse stables be just bulldozed and taken down an 88 88 stall concrete barn quail roost ranch was right next to our ranch it's gone i had neighbors move in that pretty much told us we don't like your barn we don't like your horses well look to see where you move that's all i'm saying the church has been there a long time i was married in that church that man right there married my wife and i that man has count counseled me personally as a mentor i've never met more loving people my son goes to that school he's seven years old the fall festival that they have it's a wonderful event i understand the people that live behind the lights they're talking about the children laughing in the playground i understand the noise problem but now these are going to be indoor events and i understand people not wanting expansion in the neighborhood but let's not kid ourselves though it's not the rural neighborhood that it once was i didn't see people stand up when all the farms were bulldozed in the heart of the acres sun all cheyenne acres and all the other beautiful horse ranches that were there the bridle pass that i used once to ride as a child it's changed there's been a lot of change some that i don't like but as far as the church goes they're some of the most wholesome wonderful people that i've ever met now i understand the impact with the lights i understand the noise i understand the traffic but they do a lot of great in the community thank you good evening um my name is alfonso soprano i am at one one two zero zero northwest 26th street plantation florida i actually am on old hiatus on the main road as a corner property i can tell you that it's not just sunday and wednesday that they're speeding involved into that into that community um it's not all the church it's the neighbors it's everyone that plays a part and i know they're using that as a position but it is something that we all understand um i appreciate the plan and the in-depth overview of what uh was shared as far as the the zoning and what's approved and what's not and i feel i feel that the building that's being built does um resolve a lot of existing problems that others are opposing i've heard noise issues i feel like a gym would would help that benefit because now the kids do play outside um i've had many years of my work experience working outside i understand what heat does to a body um and you you're talking about children that are volleyballing and flag footballing and there's no place for them in a school to do this and the last thing we need is somebody to have a heat stroke or something like that so having someone with an ac obviously you can't punch a volleyball in a one-story uh gym it needs some some room to go up my daughters play volleyball um so i feel like they're very transparent with what they're what they are sharing and uh it seems like they are zoned to be even higher and they're not permitting that they're doing it at a reasonable level um there is mentioned that uh the lights and i know the lights do cause uh traffic again i live on that main road to hold a hiatus um i see north acres as three exits there's 124th that doesn't go straight out as two tree trunks but it does wrap around to north to the north acres park to get out so there is multiple egresses to that area um others have mentioned others have mentioned that um like the gentleman before me that um american heritage is another school that's in the area as well as um volunteer park we don't mention volunteer park and their stamp shows their plant festivals uh the voting precinct etc all this plays a part in the in the plantation acres plantation baptist has been there for two more two plus decades and i just feel that that they're being very transparent for what they stand for and i think it's a benefit to the whole entire community in this now again you're talking about holiday lights that bring people from dade county and homestead this is local this is a school that's in a local community again somebody did mention uh schools are not placed in local communities neighborhoods and i beg to differ because it is safer for them to walk and to be closer to their home and that's what i'll say and i um i agree with the building thank you hi my name is marcy brennan i live at 11691 northwest 27th court which is directly behind the church i've been a resident for 40 years and i will say first of all the church has been a good neighbor but we recently did receive the letter telling us about the gym this is the first i ever heard of it and when i first got the letter i thought okay a gym cool you know the kids need it until my neighbor started digging into it and said it's not just a gym it's a monstrosity it's huge and it's going to be high and it's going to be overlooking my neighbor my house and again i'm all for a gym i think a gym is great but this thing is a little big and as a lot of my neighbors have said there's two entrances into our neighborhood what many may have forgotten is years ago we actually could go through the city of sunrise through the back way the city of sunrise closed it off because of the traffic and now we're opening up for more traffic again they're building a multi-million dollar building are you telling me that they're going to stay with 97 students even 200 students multi-million dollar they want to return on their investment i find that hard to believe sorry guys but maybe it is true we'll see um but again progress is great i'm all for a gym i think they need downsize it the traffic is my biggest concern traffic and the lack of sidewalks i walk that neighborhood just like elizabeth the first person said the drivers are not always very courteous i have literally been pushed over to the grass because they don't obey our traffic laws they don't live in our neighborhood they don't always care um i would like to see sidewalks or something be done i don't know if you can but another thing that was mentioned was american heritage well they put up american heritage have you seen american heritage they're on broward we've had to rate um widen that road um they have cops out there now it's a mess during the school time we don't want to be american heritage we don't need that um so i'm opposed to the size of the facility um that's all i have to say thank you thank you hello everyone yona weiner nick william 11690 northwest 27th court there are three main points that do not make sense and are confusing this issue what the church is saying about the intended use of the building and what they are actually requesting to build just don't line up calling it a simple gym does not make it okay does not make it so it's a case of believe what i say and not what you see look at what this building is going to be and i would like a kidney to a trojan horse very very scary two there seems to be confusion of the fact that the church does not have permitted by right use as a community facility it has conditional use and we won't go into what can what what the conditions are but we know all those ordinances that are in place to protect us and i wrote a five-page letter which i hope you guys received in detail um many of the ordinances again would be violated by this project if it stands as it is and it must not be allowed three they are calling it an auxiliary structure and your own engineer has called it an internal intensification which it clearly is not by definition the scale alone makes it a primary use and everything inside it can stand by itself and is larger than the original church larger and significantly more massive it contains everything needed for full scale events that would generate many hundreds if not a thousand or so more surge trips this is the only place of worship deep within any residential part of the city and to allow it to more than double size and capacity it's larger than the original building and the footprint look at the footprint and the whole thing is high the original church only a portion is high and then you have low classrooms so you're not getting that skyline massive massing that this would give us um and to call it um yes uh to say that it's smaller is not accurate the cities and i would say that this needs to be treated as a new building request because it is not an auxiliary structure um the city's denial of an independent traffic study is also based the trip generation assessment is based on these verbal representations but our roads will be impacted by physical capacity not intent not let's not talk about the cement trucks and instruction which would take two years by their own projections down our roads assumptions about occupancy are also made about parking spots how can you assess the parking spots when they park all over the grass they have 175 spots there has been assumption they won't raise the count but they're parking on the grass now after services and it's endless acres so will you continue to allow grass parking for this project and for the church i at the minimum the physical structure we request be reduced in height eliminate additional classrooms mitigate light pollution and enhance buffering may i have another minute no okay i'm sorry thank you uh hello my name is alejandra arango i lived at 126 northwest 20th court and i opposed to this project thank you hello my name is jaime cardona i live in 126 northwest 20th court um i want to say stuff that hasn't been said already you know it's hard for you guys to make a judgment about the location because visiting is one thing and hearing and reading looking at it on a plan is a different thing we moved uh from a big city down to this area two years ago um and we expected this because we wanted it for our family um we we love the place because as you're as you're driving in it's like you're going to a countryside it's something that is something that that needs to be taken care of and it's we moved there because we wanted that space we loved it um a year after we moved there unfortunately uh our dog was killed by a car um and even though the the there's no sidewalks in that area and even though a lot of the residents do travel very you know they respect the um the traffic some of them don't do that and my kids go out and play this is a a place that we consider obviously it's our house and in our home and it's a place that we want our kids to go on their bikes and run free and do things i mean there are places if you want to go to a supermarket you go to a supermarket and it's shown in a way that that it helps for that what happens uh right now with the church which i respect the church and i think is a very good uh place to to have a church is a very good thing to have a church but the reality is that the two entrances for this space if you go visit it you will see that is a long way even if let's say there's an incident you know rising through that if you have to like uh if you have to go really fast through there is is going to be it's very dangerous now they're they're talking about high schoolers you know high schoolers have their own cars and what's going to happen when they're going late what's going to happen you know i'm just we're just trying to protect our community our housing and definitely it's it will be naive to say that this wouldn't affect the cost of or the value of our properties you know and um unfortunately those two entrances that we have are are the only way that they can um have the traffic and that traffic will increase so i just want you i will look for you guys to consider this and really put yourself like if this was your community if you live there every day you took your kids to school and they went out to play would you let them go out you know not being worried that somebody was going to run them over no there's no sidewalks imagine a kid with a bike go in that place and look at a kid running on a bicycle traveling around i mean it's just think about that thank you very much i oppose it hello my name is christian davis i live at 550 northwest 118th avenue um that's my husband robbie i'm not a public speaker i did not plan to come up here um but i wanted to come up and say my son attends the school there we attend the church we're members of the church um i've been kind of a little bit flabbergasted as to why everyone is assuming first of all that the church is lying about their use of what the gymnasium is to be for um my son does attend the school i would uh encourage any one of these people that thinks that they're lying about the need for extra classrooms to go to the school during a school day because my son just graduated kindergarten he shared a classroom with the vpk kids and they had to pull a curtain across there's just not enough room for the kids to be able to spread out and have individual classrooms i think it would be amazing for you know him to have his own classroom and not be distracted by the younger kids in another grade um i'm also confused as to why everyone assumes that all of the speeding problems are from church members i live at a three-way stop i literally have uh police officers that sit in the driveway weekly and just catch our own her own residents flying i mean flying through that three-way stop i have a child i have animals as well we have horses that get out you know so the the residents are just as capable of speeding through there my daughter lives in the north acres and she sees people speeding through all the time at all times a day all times of the day sorry um let's see also the kitchen someone said something about the kitchen and that this couldn't possibly be being used for what they're saying it's being used for the school does offer hot lunches every friday which i'm super thankful for because it's one day that i don't have to pack a lunch um the kitchen that they use is probably smaller than most of these people's kitchen in their house it's tiny to try to get around and be able to feed the 87 students or 94 that were there this year uh i don't know how they do it it's a miracle good job beverly um someone said uh apparently they're building a school now the school's been there all along and you haven't even noticed apparently because um this traffic from the school is not an issue everyone keeps talking about the christmas lights that's not going to be an issue anymore so i agree with um one of the other gentlemen who said you're actually going to have less traffic and um i think it's going to be easier for us to get in and out we'll have that extra space for us to pull our cars in i don't really notice traffic on school mornings and afternoons when i pick myself um yeah all that to say i'm just kind of confused as to how it's getting blown out of proportion when we genuinely just need a place for our kids to go like during the school day to be able to go have pe or be able to participate in sports and have the same opportunity that other kids at other schools have so thank you again thank you for your time sorry to take the full 30 minutes hello board my name is tom hunter i'm the pastor of the church i also live on 26th street 11391 northwest um i'm here just to make the case and present that plantation baptist church purchased 10 acres in 1970 for 150 000 pretty good deal when they purchased it there was not anything out in plantation acres it was them matter of fact if you know in my study all the churches were pushed out to the west of plantation at that time that's why you have so many churches down 112 both sides um the area has grown and the church has grown um i would say that the church and the residents have grown together um as far as i understand the activity of the church has not hurt the community and the property values our property values have skyrocketed matter of fact the quarter acre that's for sale right beside the church we bought one one time for 40 or 50 000 it's over 300 000 everybody's property value has gone up um the church is building a building for its overall use and the church has major uses the school is one of those uses we have sunday school sunday uses we have wednesday night uses we have other uses that is designed to meet the current needs of our of our church um you know our school capacity you know the students we have you've heard about the functions as far as i understand we have three drivers three high school drivers for next year three three of our students have driver's license i walk in this community i walk my dog i have to use the thing at any time any one of my neighbors gets going down the road i have to move over everybody understands that well i do understand we've had concentrated traffic that will be eliminated with the end of the christmas lights i would beg um understanding for one more year so we can finish that out um we're not putting up 39 foot light poles um they're 25 foot um i have spoken to some of the residents about some of their concerns and we've tried to meet those when we can and where we can um and we're not adding additional traffic this is to contain what we have i feel like um where things are being presumed upon us and agendas being put upon us that is not true in my closing time i would say to the community that i appreciate the wonderful respectful way they have communicated uh their understanding and i thought they've done a good job communicating with respect however the church has a right to operate and we try to balance that between church and community thank you for hearing excuse me just a point of order was that comment as a resident of plantation or as a pastor can it be both uh i mean the answer is yes uh i am there i've lived in the community since 2005. all right been here 20 years so if it can be for both and let it be for both yes sir good evening board members my name is lewis corral i live at 11630 northwest 27th street the reason why i'm here this evening is because i am totally opposed to this expansion and i'll tell you why i bought this property spent an awful lot of money and i've seen the property over time change when my wife and i bought this property it felt like a community it felt like a private area uh we felt safe now there's a lot of traffic there's a lot of expansion going on i respect the church and i respect any place of worship but this is not only just a church this is becoming now a commercial entity where they're bringing in people in there they're not going to invest this kind of money to put one or two or three students in there this is only going to expand further and further and further impacting our entire community and we have a lot of residents there that have been there for a long time as well as i that are there for the purpose of having a community for families and even like i said i respect the church but this thing with the christmas going on that's crazy in itself i have people that if i do not park my vehicle inside my garage i literally have people that use my circular driveway as a cover sack even with commercial build commercial uh uh trucks i have cameras which i just recently videoed people doing a circle around okay because they don't want to go to old hiatus so they want to go out the other way and this way and that way it's just crazy there and um i'd appreciate respectfully for your the whole board to consider the impact that you're giving the residents that are paying all these taxes and all these services on top of that our roadways are being messed up by all this traffic you know we have to pay for all that and i understand that the church is growing and i understand that the church has the right to grow but it doesn't have the right to build a walmart within a small little tiny community like they're doing little by little they're inching away and making it bigger and bigger if you look at all the schools all the public schools in the residential area look at the traffic how backed up people are bringing picking up students police it's everywhere and now they're doing it within our enclosed community that place is enclosed it's not an open field where you can come every which way so in my opinion i totally oppose to this build up of this situation so i appreciate it for your time thank you so much hello overseers how are you my name is uh vinceloma john my wife uh is not here she's with her sister i live at 12150 northwest 20th court and i've lived there for 30 for 12 years i i am a member of uh plantation baptist church and uh prior to that i was a member of uh florida bible church down in miramar 7 9300 pembroke road i was one of the overseers there for 20 years and uh there's a lot of stuff that gets thrown out about uh that are kind of a little bit uh over sensationalizing a mega church normally uh is is a very large church and uh i do respect my neighbors and and and i i love you guys and it's a great neighborhood i moved i moved here 12 years ago because of plantation baptist church prior to me moving into plantation baptist church there was there was no uh christmas lights so that's been hasn't been decades uh my history in plantation goes back even further because my one of my daughters was a horse person and when volunteer park was a mud pit we used to do the horse racing there the so go we go way back and we rented stalls and and and what have you uh the american heritage traffic there's there's a calvary church there there's the synagogue and there's other other facilities that that uh are very active the seven dead venice churches north on 118th street and all that plays into the traffic that happens there uh and there's that's a lot of people uh so i just want to kind of put put put that aside uh the uh i bought there like i said 12 years ago i bought the property and i've invested over two hundred thousand dollars in that upgrades on my property uh uh so i'm invested uh financially uh there's been a turnover after covet there's been a turnover in the neighborhood to my to the rear of me and uh everybody that was able went and sold for a large profit and we got people coming that came from new york and other places and they have fast cars so i cut my grass because i enjoy cutting my grass and uh i wave at everybody that goes by because i'm a friendly person and i want to be neighborly uh but they do fly and anyways there's there's a lot of there's a lot of things that are sorry three minutes thank you i'm in for yes thank you i'm in favor thank you john callahan 11480 on northwest 26th street i am the christmas light guy the lights were at my house from 2006 to 2012. the church offered me to use their property to move my lights too because the flow of traffic was getting heavy in our neighborhood before i moved into the church i had higher detail to manage the streets back then we moved it to the church it has grown over the years we do higher detail just want to make one point when the property was purchased in 1978 initially they told the people that bought the property that 28th court was going to be a thruway like sunrise boulevard the neighbors did oppose that project and that's why it is blocked off that's why there was only two entrances two exits in and out and that's it so i just want to state that and that the christmas lights are done after this year because i am done i'm getting old time for me to be done thank you any other question or any other comments from chamber all right public comments are closed we don't have any on mine i assume all right uh two items of note before we start getting into questions from the dais this board is an advisory board we do not have final say in this this is going to go to city council what we do is we make our recommendations to city council based upon what we've heard so what is happening here today is not final it's going to be up to city council to make that decision also when it comes to issue of notification boundaries and radii those are an element of code if you don't like them my advice to you is to get in touch with the city and petition for them to be changed because i agree with you in some regards notification radii are too small this one meets a radius that was actually increased so more people were noticed on this than would have been otherwise um so with those comments closed from the chamber do i have any questions for either party from the dais vicky go ahead okay thank you all for coming it was nice to know that people care about what goes on in our city and i have a couple of questions the new gym edition has offices classrooms and a kitchen which is great um is there an accessible elevator to get to the second floor i saw the plans i didn't see it on there applicant for these could come up to the microphone and answer the questions i did not see it on the plans that i looked at there is an elevator yes okay um so the illumination that you said was not going to be uh it's going to be toned down because of the games and the kids uh and the sports and everything like that so the bright lights will not be lit after nine o'clock at night is that what you're saying and the neighbors that live behind the church or across the street will not have lights going into their living rooms dining rooms whatever room it is we there i don't have the verbiage on my notes here but there was a commitment to a schedule for the lights um i don't know if we can pull it up but so there was a commitment i i i have gone once once was enough i appreciate holiday lights that was like way too much for me but i'm i'm kind of happy that it's the last year um so for all the you're saying that there's a going to be maybe another 100 students so be maximum 200 as per the council approved that in 2019 and next year there will only be three students that will be driving so say you have 150 students next year and 147 will be picked up and dropped off by their moms or dads or aides or grandmas or whatever is that is that am i correct in assuming that i think that's fair well i mean he the pastor said three students will be driving next year right so say you have 150 students by next year so that means 147 will be dropped off in the morning by mom dad nanny grandma whoever and picked up at whatever time the school is over by mom dad nanny or whoever and that's not going to cause any traffic problems on either 100 i'm what what was it let's make a what street 118 118 well 118th or the street that runs east and west any student that does not drive of course is going to be brought to school and picked up by their mom and their dad some of those students are already in the acres many of those students are already in the acres um but currently we don't have that we only have 85 and we've already been approved if we did go to 200 they've already done the traffic study that that we've been approved for so yes i mean those little kids can't drive themselves mom and dad would have to bring them and take them but that's not our situation our current situation is what it is and we have three that have a driver's license for next year well i i'm just saying because i drove there yesterday and i entered off of a hundred you know i entered off the old hiatus drove north till i had a turn yes and then go west and of course it was um 1 30 in the afternoon there were only two cars in the whole parking lot which was you know great and then i drove down the other street and i left through 118th and i know the area well i have friends that live in the acres and the north acres central acres and south acres so but the comparison between the south acres where american heritage is and the north acres is where where your church and your school is is like apples and oranges not even apples and oranges it's it's so outrageous um so i was just concerned because the noise from the holiday lights which the gentleman said are finished this year yes ma'am and the way that the the neighbors are so against it does this have any consequence to your thoughts on how you're gonna do this is a neighborhood you don't have to love every neighbor you don't have to you know i mean i i know that it says love thy neighbor you don't have to i was getting ready to say that i have a neighbor that i don't love at all and he just sold his house and i'm happy i'm dancing in the streets i'm telling you that was the happiest day of my life but you know you have to have concern why all these people have come here tonight and they're so upset about this whole thing i mean how doesn't that affect your feelings towards this expansion it affects my feelings as the pastor of the church we're definitely concerned for the residents and the neighbors we do our best to try to do what we can do right we we tell the people to obey we tell the people to be courteous we tell the people to do that when we have any type of event we have the police there we have help there we try to navigate that as well it does have my concern as the pastor and we are to love our neighbor however tonight i feel like there's projection upon us and what we are going to do that's not what we're going to do and so that projection is creating um a reason for us to stand up and say that's that's not our intention well what other events do you have because you have church services on wednesday evenings and on sunday during the day is that correct yes we do and if you're talking big events we have a fall festival that we do which many of the residents come to we we rent volunteer parks so we can park our cars for those that work we shuttle in so just the visitors that come can park there we have the christmas lights and then other things that we do we would just be normal church activities um which would be a ladies bible study a men's bible study anything that any of the that anybody goes to church does how many members do you have in your church how many members do we have i mean isn't that on our 830 service we average 200 people at our 11 o'clock service we can average 400 people and where does the overflow parking go we don't have we don't need any overflow parking everybody parks on our parking lot we have 165 spots right if you have 200 people you don't have 200 cars if you have 400 people coming you still i think the ratio is like three people to one car so we all none of our traffic other than the christmas lights none of our traffic backs up on any road it all is handled on our property okay thank you anyone else yes uh through the chair i have a question uh so the way i understand it is uh as the chair said we're making uh an advisory opinion it still has to go before the um um the city council and you know we we we we've read your materials we've listened carefully and have sympathy for the residents that you've got a you know you've got a uh a church and a school in your neighborhood and i have sympathy for the the church you know you've owned that property for a long time and you have a right as a property owner to develop it i had a question for staff so the way i read it we have to review use the same um criteria that the development review committee would consider and of course that's compliance with all the codes and and rules um there's language under the section that says we shall evaluate the site plan among other things conformance with the character of the surrounding area so is that's an appropriate consideration for us in making a decision and and then would be by by the city council and if you could elaborate on what that what that phrase conformance with the character of the surrounding area and how we can take that into consideration in making our decision okay good evening for the record dan holmes planning zoning and economic development director well the first thing that i think you want to go and look at in this case is what the property is zoned for okay so the zoning on the property also dictates uh how we feel development on the site should kind of fit in with the character of the neighborhood and so uh you know if you look at this property the the property meets the setback criteria which is one of the things that you want to evaluate height criteria buffering things of that sort those are the factors that we look at and that also determine you know compatibility issues because they're put in the code for compatibility purposes but if if if they didn't comply with one of those criteria they'd have to seek a if they didn't comply with a specific criteria they like the landscaping they'd have to ask for a variance that's correct so the fact that there's this language about considering conformance with the character of the surrounding area that gives either us or the council down the road the ability to consider some more general factors relating to what else is in the area correct correct okay and there's uh the other thing that you know i say is that we take a look at their other i know there's a lot of concerns and i i hear uh what the community is saying in terms of maybe traffic and noise and you know there are other uh criteria in the code which if if there are violations of that there's other ways to uh address those issues because there's noise we do have a noise ordinance which governs certain activity we do have uh uh our lighting standards uh require that the light be captured uh on site and not spill over so if that's happening then they're going to have to correct their lighting to make sure that it's appropriately uh located on their property and not spilling over into other property um quite technically the the christmas event could really be considered a special event that needs approval uh from the city uh and you know so that we can make sure that the appropriate police or whatever uh you know needs to be there um so those are how we would answer or respond to a lot of the issues that have been brought up but right now uh as you've indicated there's one variance and that's the uh the landscape pedestrian zone uh you know as part of the site do i understand that variance that that's because of the height of the building because it's 50 feet then they need either the 25 what is the the size of the landscape pedestrian zone is determined you know by that however in this case as they indicated because of the uh as the architect indicated because they're trying to maintain a drive out uh you know in the front there that they've decided to try to line the two buildings up and so that's what creates the the lpz request here but the reason why it needs the 25 feet as it's nine it requires 19 feet eight inches okay and they're uh proposing to uh but where does the 19 foot does that come from the height of the building or something yes yeah that's what i meant yes yeah yeah i was determined in the code okay what that your pedestrian zone would be okay are we allowed can we the the one thing that i that i thought about also and i'm sorry for for talking so much here right now but the the issue of because i know when i've lived in plantations in 1994 and i used to use one of the gyms off of um flamingo they rented it out so people who didn't belong to the i think that was a school back there so we could play basketball and you'd have adults coming can can us or the city council get a commitment from if this was to pass can we get a commitment from the church that they wouldn't allow non-students you know to rent it out to community groups to come and play intramural leagues and things like that is that something that the city or us could do you can get that from the pastor right now you can ask him if that's their intent sure i certainly would pose that question then we currently do not let any of our facility be used outside of our ministry rarely do we let our community be used outside of our ministry so as a church you may have a men's basketball night but that's your church people that right now we do that on the concrete outside but we would have a gymnasium to do that um i get asked all the time even from not maybe these folks but even people in the residence you know and wanting to release the facility to do that we currently do not our church property is used for our church ministry and and i understand it but it's going to be a beautiful gym there you know from looking at the pictures and it's a beautiful well-designed building and i think the character of it goes nicely with the the the school um you know again i have concerns of the character of the surrounding area but are you committed that you put in writing that you're not going to allow outside groups to rent out for basketball leagues or volleyball leagues and it would only be in in conjunction with church members or school members in our chart in our statement of faith it says something like that which would cover that um i can tell you the commitment is a big word we don't do that i'm not sure i want to say we're going to commit i'm just telling you that we don't do that and i don't want to lock myself and i don't think i want to lock the church into something in a commitment along those lines however in our charter and we currently i've been here 20 21 years we've never done it okay nothing thank you um so in the back of it says that initially this was going to go this is for staff um that it was going to go initially straight to city council and not to planning and zoning and i was wondering i it says that because of the number of complaints i guess they brought here can you tell me what the criteria is for bringing items to and why it was initially intended to be brought here is that because of the lpc waiver or is that typically if it was just a site plan would that be brought to us just yeah there are some criteria in the code that indicate when there are i think it's three or fewer variances that are part of a site that it can because largely they're meeting the criteria of the code that uh you know the the uh planning and zoning director has the discretion to move it to uh the the council without it going to planning and zoning board so it is a provision within the code usually uh there are times where probably i've been here almost 10 years now i can probably count on one hand the many the number of times that that happens uh usually uh in favor of of moving it through the full process but when there in this case there was a small lpz variance that i did consider uh you know allowing them to exercise that provision however when we start getting some of the letters of complaints uh from the community and i i did talk to the pastor and i said listen i know we talked initially because there was only that one landscape pedestrian zone but because the community has some concerns this needs to to go to the planning and zoning board so i have i actually told them that i changed my position on it and it needed to come here and then on to the council and so as mr goldstein asked do you consider the the criteria in the code about compatibility at the shining neighborhood to be a subjective do i consider it subjective yeah so is there like a standard you use is that i mean so how do you determine whether it like you know i noticed that the recommendation is approval and it states in the back of that staff believes that it is compatible with the neighborhood so i just want to understand is that a subjective decision or are there criteria objective criteria used to decide those things well as i said some of it is objective because when we develop the standards for the district we're trying to make considerations at that time to put in certain standards that it's it's going to be uh you know in harmony with with the surrounding area so some of the standards are already built in like for example you'll notice from that residential area even in the rear for this property there's a 50-foot setback there now there are times when we're going through like a site plan review where we may say hey well it requires um you know a certain buffer there may be certain circumstances where we'll uh talk to the applicant and get a commitment to maybe increase that buffer because of uh maybe what's adjacent to it or you know uh things of that sort but for the most part most of it is objective some of it can be subjective yeah there's some subjectivity uh involved thank you thank you all i appreciate everyone coming out and making comments i have a couple questions i guess the first one is for staff um since everyone has mentioned traffic right and you guys said no traffic study what if it's on the applicant what if you make the onus on them to pay for a traffic study i think maybe that would alleviate some of the misconceptions as well as actually answering the question we yeah i'm gonna let the city engineer answer that because she's more of the expert on traffic than myself expert uh good evening samira shallan city engineer we have a criteria for traffic studies and traffic statement and usually the criteria which is published in uh on our website is providing 20 or more trips in addition to the vested trips that the property already have that's not the case in this application before us the application before us there is existing vested trip that haven't been used due to lower enrollment than the final capacity or the expected capacity of the or the approved capacity of the school therefore the engineering department did not request the applicant to provide a traffic study however i am the city engineer of city of plantation and after receiving similar concerns from resident i performed a traffic statement which was uh recorded in the records in front of you and to the public and was emailed to several resident explaining and detailing the classification of the roadways the trips and the impact or lack of impact of this application before us which i made a state statement it's an intensifying of an existing use it's not additional use since the school is not increasing the approved enrollment or approved capacity of the school i hope i explained the question yes however my question i guess then we talked about commitments this is to the pastor um right now you're approved for 200 students but then you kind of guys you threw in home school hybrid what is that how many students that's my concern yes great question thank you our curriculum is called the abeca curriculum it is a home school curriculum right so it's a video school with facilitators in the classroom okay so our kids come and the instruction is on a video we have a facilitator in the classroom that is considered home school we're not open for every home school or out of the nine the current students that we have 90 to 95 percent of them are go to our church not outside they go to our church so it's not a home school i'm aware of home school uh co-ops and all of that that that was mentioned before that's not us we are a school a church school that provides a home school curriculum for parents to do which is fully accredited in its way so the request for sorry a traffic statement was based on the number of students and you said you're approved for 200 yes so again we're talking about promises and whatnot and being a good neighbor are you saying i mean because i don't i don't want you to lock in to say we're not going to go over 200 you build this gymnasium and then there's 400 kids and that changes everything and you know it's because of a commitment so how do we know that you're not increasing beyond these 200 children well if i did increase i would have to come back here to get permission and they are not going to let that happen at all i fully understand that we're not we're not a mega church or mega school we have what we have and if we did want to enlarge our capacity i believe we would have to come back here to do that and you can already see that we're happy at our 200. so another question i was wondering like a boiling frog analogy you guys started putting those plants in a few years ago the trees the thin trees in the back that are covering um when did you start putting in those trees in the back there when we put the parking lot in we had to come and get permission and put the parking lot in and some of those we put in when we put the metal building up and then the rest we put in when we put the parking lot in so 2017 2017. so this has been something that's been a plan of yours or an idea of yours this isn't out of nowhere you mean to have a building yes yeah i mean it's always been a potential we've we we never when i got there we didn't even have a front on the building we had no place to get out from the inclement weather when i got there we parked on grass we got rained out mudded even today when it rains we we had difficulty so that's why we put the parking lot in now our children have no place to go for it other than outside and now we're putting in the gymnasium not just for our children but for the overall use of our ministry so the overall use that's the one thing when you say overall use it's kind of fuzzy okay sure so we are a church underneath the church churches have ministries for example we have sunday school ministries for children and adults we have a wanna ministries on wednesday nights for our children we have bible studies we have choir you have underneath the church you have ladies ministries you have men's ministry one of our ministries is a christian school the christian school is not the dog the church is the dog it's just one of the ministries does that help or no it helps i just you know because they were making a good point about return of investment um so you know capping yourself at 200 but i understand you know growing the facility and having you know an active church that's you're entitled can i make a statement to that we charge five thousand dollars a student to go to school five thousand dollars we don't we don't fleece our people so we're not charging fifteen twenty thousand dollars our church is supported by the tithes and offerings of its people that's how it's cared for um one one other question actually i thought two others one of them i thought was a really good idea when someone brought up canopy density would you be willing to put in better trees that would give more protection from sound and light voluntarily not being ordered to but voluntarily so that way there's you're a better neighbor yes okay yes and i even i even mentioned something to when um one of the ladies i won't use her name but when she called me we talked about that and she had a concern about the back of the building looking like a warehouse so i met with the architect and now we've moved that to be a decorative nice situation there so we have had some of those conversations so you're willing to you you're coming before us you're willing to have canopy density which i saw from uh one of the residents which i thought was a very good uh request so you're willing to do that and you're i mean i'm a pastor i'm standing here i don't even know what canopy is but if you're telling me am i willing to put up more buffer or whatever to help our neighbors the answer to that would be yes more mature trees actually i'll let max ask that my other two other questions were just more speed bumps is that a possibility and do people that's that's what the city no no that's what i'm asking do we want more speed bumps okay yes never mind no no let me answer that because it's going to help some of the traffic questions throughout the community so the community came to the engineering department and requested traffic calming elements to be introduced to 118 a year and a half ago subsequently the city engineering department conducted a traffic study and we found speeding issues on 118 there is currently six speed cushions that will have been installed on 118 from broward boulevard all the way to the city limits late last year and beginning of this year we following the our traffic calming policy we did a re-evaluation study and there is a still speeding problem through the 118th corridor therefore there will be another community meeting with the community to discuss further traffic calming element in addition we engage the police department into more engagement and enforcement and if you if the neighbors can um attest to that you will see more presence of traffic policing throughout 118s in the last couple of weeks thank you last question i promise what about sidewalks is that an option uh so the characteristics of the community per code is 118th per code is a rural collector roadway that does not support sidewalk by characteristics in addition the swale area of 118 and 112 are infrastructure drainage infrastructure owned and maintained by plantation acres improvement districts so introducing sidewalks need to be discussed with paid on the impact of the drainage because you're increasing pervious and filling those swales that used for drainage thank you very much thank you for answering uh for the traffic studies where it accounts for kind of the speeding does it uh notate like where this the person that's violating the traffic law is coming from if it's like a resident within the acres or for someone like more like using as pass-through traffic is that notated in the traffic studies if you know the community there is rarely cut through traffic because it doesn't go through so if you don't have if you're not a resident or providing a service to a resident in plantation specifically on 112 118th because they don't go through you're turning around and going back to sunrise boulevard so it doesn't allow for cut yeah it was just because there was like a lot of comments tonight about traffic and you know i'm a very big hater of traffic in my own way but also it seems like how much of this like complaints about the traffic is actually coming from outsiders versus within the community itself from what i've understood about plantation acres is that it's mostly residential which would mean that if you want to do anything like go somewhere for shopping that means it's going to be the plantation acre resident that needs to be driving to and from that generating those sort of trips i will agree to that assumption yeah so yes i mean just something to keep in mind i mean because i don't i'm a big animal lover i don't want my i wouldn't want my dog to be uh in danger of being run over but i'm also not van driving so that's why i live in midtown where i can walk to the grocery store and cut down the road trips that way i've trust me i hate traffic more than most of the people in this room and just to add to that um i have been personally engaged with the community and i attended many community meetings educating them about traffic calming and traffic uh elements i want to end my statement by saying traffic uh calming or traffic management is based on five what we call five e's engineering economic engagement enforcement and i forgot the last one so there's five e's that need to work together for traffic management to work and we work hand in hand with the community and the police department to better the traffic and community yeah i did like note like it seemed like the speed questions might have been a traffic calming but it was seemed like a very unpopular one so it's kind of i don't know it's kind of curious to me it's like if the traffic is a concern why was the traffic calming opposed so much exactly um also one last statement uh i asked the police chief this morning and he made a statement a written statement to my attention there was no calls related to the church related to traffic so he looked and researched the records so there's not concerns from the police department regarding the traffic so some of the statement regarding there's no inflow of parking or traffic from the school that was confirmed by the police chief and i this might not be for you but more for the city is the if a resident did have a concern like for example like floodlights coming into the person's living room or noise disturbance like how does the how would the residents supposed to report that and has there been any reports to like the police regarding those noise or light pollution concerns anybody want to take that one from the city that's code enforcement right yeah yeah that would mostly go to code enforcement uh we have not i mean occasionally i will tell you when there's a development uh sometimes i'll get a call or the planning department we'll get a call from an adjacent property uh if there's like a light uh complaint or um because we will go back and sit and visit with the developer and make sure that they're uh either blocking the you know the light source or changing uh the direction or what have you of the light source yeah sometimes zoning will get involved but mostly the noise stuff will go to yeah because i mean that does seem like legitimate problems to me but at the same time i don't see it being i don't see the gymnasium being the cost there so yeah that's that was just my thoughts all right i got a couple um pretty much all for city well not all uh first one is it said a zoning height maximum this is 60 feet is that for community facilities or the surrounding area of plantation acres that's where this district that's community facilities so does anybody have enough top of their head the max height in the acres for the estate uh no for the acres just what we have in the residential one michael albert assistant director 35 feet okay um another one for the city um normally we have approved subject to conditions in 5b um looking at 5b staff recommends approval subject to the comments below and under planning and zoning no objection and then we have the drc comment report so if we were to approve subject to conditions or or comments rather are we looking just at planning and zoning comments or that whole list of comments that comes after the whole list of comments got it all right now for the architect can we put up the plan uh the elevations please thanks so looking at the elevations here i think one of the reasons why people have an issue with uh what they're talking about in the comment making a mega church i don't think they're talking about the actual definition of number of people attending the church but rather the building on the left seems to be out of scale with the building on the right and the building on the left has the gymnasium in it and the classrooms as i look at that elevation right there the classrooms are in the darker brown and the gymnasium is right there next to it with that yellowish color is that correct yes all right and we have that big portico in front of the gymnasium the portico to me seems to be a little bit out of scale for what you're looking for which is an entrance to the building but i want to talk about the building behind it the hot top of the gymnasium what's the height of that going to be the very the where the where the mouse is now very peak of the roof nope the roof our our mean roof height is 39 so that's another call it four feet so we're at 40 so we're so we're 40 something feet which is well above the 35 feet that we just talked about for the surrounding acres so when we talk about is does it fit from a standpoint of um meeting the aesthetic standards it does for community facilities but community facilities is just this carved out property that your church is on so the question i have comes to how can we possibly make that a scaled building because if you look at the building on the right the actual church using old school church architecture know that the bell tower is 40 foot tall and i'm going to get to that if you would so if you look at church architecture you've got a central nave and if you're going gothic cathedrals two side aisles functionally what you're looking at there is a central nave with symmetrical buildings on the side those four arched areas on either way in other words you have a central building that tapers out you can draw a nice little shallow angled triangle from that is there a world where instead of a two-story classroom structure because you've got the classrooms and the washrooms the uh the locker rooms on the bottom floor there up top you have a game room and two classrooms plus the bathrooms now i understand there are practical considerations like the plumbing coming up you draw single plumbing line it can go to the bathrooms on that side is there a world where you center the gymnasium and put the classrooms lower on either side that does two things one it matches the aesthetic structure of the building on the left and two it lowers the overall blocky appearance of the building thereby making it less massive not massive in the sense of huge but massive in the sense of a presence is that something that can be accomplished so you're saying take the second floor classrooms and drop them on the first floor drop my first floor on the east side of the building correct take a more ground floor ground side area built more building coverage increases yeah i mean you're only talking about 16 coverage with both of these buildings well below the maximum lot coverage yeah and wouldn't do anything to necessarily impact the spaces but it would balance those two buildings a lot better is there a world where that can happen i mean we'd have to explore what that looks like i think by unstacking the classrooms and setting them on either side of the gym you're you have a gym functionality that has specific space requirements uh clearance etc the plan view of the buildings the actual architectural plan the floor buildings the plan do so you have functionally of a church space existing church on the right you have a gym on the left on the east side functionally they they they have different practical practical requirements so the volume of that gym building needs to be what it is to sustain this function so i i think i mean i'm just this is just i'm catching this last 30 seconds yeah dropping a single story volume on either side of the gym would further accentuate the difference in height between the classroom wing and the gym volume yeah except right in this particular case that classroom wing that we're looking at as far as i could tell from the elevation if we look on the left side of this slide the peaked area the yellow portion of that building is the dark gray where the entrance portico is lobby that whole area and then the other portion is that lighter gray that's on the bottom part of the slide correct the second story is stacked on top of that lighter gray so in essence all you're doing is taking that second story throwing it on the other side and then there's just a connector hallway that goes basically they're walking the length of a basketball court in this in the in the scheme of inconvenience and this is somebody who spent 10 years teaching high school it's not a big walk to get from point a to point b and it still gives you the same spaces the only thing it doesn't do is mass the building in a certain way and so i don't see it being a big problem and it might solve one of the big objections which is the element of that big blocky structure which as you mentioned exceeds the height requirement or limits that are in the rest of the acres they're certainly within the limits of cf right but it doesn't fit the surrounding neighborhood i mean that's a uh challenging request of of developers and and people that are building structures to ascertain what the character is when they're following the requirements of the code absolutely and i wish that that had occurred in the drc but it didn't for whatever reason whoever was in that meeting didn't ask that particular question but i'm somebody who my background is in art history and architecture so i can look at it and i can see that there's got to be a solution to it because frankly as is i don't think that building matches with the other one that's next to it nor does it necessarily fit for that property it certainly accomplishes the goal of what you're trying to do for the school element and for creating the facilities that the school needs it doesn't accomplish the aesthetics part and that's where i have a question so if that's something that you can look into great uh on the other side with regards to the lighting i couldn't tell from the lighting diagram but are the lights going to be attached to the back of the building and is there a world where you could put light posts for the bottom half of this picture along the property line facing inwards so that somebody doesn't look out and see a spotlight missing through the trees i mean we could definitely look at that i think right now if my memory serves me correct the there are three fixtures on the back of the building that are probably at i don't know if you can see them i mean my assumption is those are going to be up a ways in the building in order to maximize the radius of light in other words are they going to be up at the 30 foot level or are they going to be 15 above the ground those those fixtures are scheduled at about nine feet so those are at doors and openings shining outward to illuminate the street the driveway so there are poles on the east side facing west there's one two three four poles on the west side facing west to illuminate that road all right so the only lights on the back side of the building are like over entry lights and yeah all right um any other questions from the days uh i mean kind of part of the question more of a statement i mean you know once again seemed like the traffic was the biggest concern and seems like the rural characteristic was very important and historically there was dirt roads my understanding is that it's hard to speed on dirt roads maybe that is something that's worth considering bringing it back i mean it sounds ridiculous to me but but at the same time i mean when you when you're talking about plantation acres today being a rural community and then like visiting rural communities it seems like there's like a misalignment of like what's what but i'm also a big fan of horses and stuff like that and that would like really i mean i would kill a law of stones and i'm sure i mean if with the dirt increases the permeability then you have the space for the sidewalks because then there's like the concrete is for the people i don't know i just feel like it's a bit underrated i mean if i was part of plantation all right all right all right i would go for all right 100 that's not going to happen you got one i let i live in the acres i don't want that to happen um however i will unless anybody else has any comments or questions i'm going to move to approve this subject of the staff comments in section 5b of the report i'll second we have a motion in a second please call the rule joseph goldstein no ariel demby burger as is no robert corman no joshua freeman yes max goldstein yes mr mcintosh yes miss gelfund all right uh like i said that is advisory in nature so even though it was not approved here it does have to go to city council i encourage you all to contact your city council members uh thank you so much and if you would look at that one because that might solve some of your problems thank you appreciate it all right hold on a second killer we're not done yet um any other business that we have for this particular meeting or is that it all right in that case then meeting is adjourned it's