Planning Commission on 2024-07-10 9:00 AM

Good morning. Welcome to the July 10th Planning Commission meeting. We'll turn it over to staff now for any changes to our agenda. Good morning. There are no changes to the agenda, but there was one case that was noticed, LDC-PAL 2024-2, that is being continued to August 7th. I don't suspect anybody's going to be here for it, but just for the record. All right. Thanks very much, and we will reconvene at 9 o'clock. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and start with the roll call. Robert Beltran. Present. David Dalton. I am present. Brooke Agnini. I'm here. Tommy Addison. I'm here. Mike Schmidt. I'm here. Linda Schultz. I'm here. And Adam Bass. I'm here. Mr. Chair, we have a quorum. Thank you, sir. Let's all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. All right. Next item on the agenda would be the adoption of the minutes. The minutes did not get out in time for us to adopt this month, so we will be moving that item forward to next meeting for adoption accordingly. All right. I believe we had the workshop. We have one small minor modification. If you're here for LDCPAL 2024-2, the Juanita overlay, it has been continued to August 7th. So anybody in the room for that item, please be sure that that is not going to be heard today and has been delayed to August 7th. Can I have a motion to adopt the revised agenda? So moved. All in favor? Aye. All right. So, Ms. Voss, please, explanation of general procedures to the audience. Okay. Good morning, general procedures. The Office of Planning and Development will introduce the case and disclose any responses to the notification which were not already provided to the Planning Commission in their packets. The Office of Planning and Development will present their staff report and recommendation. Anyone in the audience who wishes to speak and present testimony on a case will be sworn in. The applicant and others in support or opposition of the case will be given the opportunity to speak. The applicant will be given the opportunity to respond to any opposition testimony. The Commission will discuss the case and vote on the matter. Expedited hearing procedures. Expedited hearing procedures may be used by the Planning Commission under the following circumstances. There is no opposition to the case present at the hearing and the recommendation of the Office of Planning and Development is for approval and all of the commission members present wish to use this procedure. Level 3 reviews. Pursuant to Section 906 of the Polk County Land Development Code, on Level 3 reviews, the Planning Commission may approve the applicant's request, deny the applicant's request, or approve the request with additional conditions. Pursuant to Section 921 of the Land Development Code, the applicant or any substantially affected interest may appeal the final decision of the Planning Commission to the Board of County Commissioners by filing a formal application with the Land Development Division and paying the application fee. The appeal must be filed with the Land Development Division within seven calendar days of the Planning Commission hearing. The Board of County Commissioners shall set a date and time for a de novo hearing. If a party decides to appeal a decision made by the Planning Commission with respect to any Level 3 review, he or she will need a record and may need to ensure that a verbatim record of the proceedings is made. The record includes all testimony and evidence given at the hearing. Each person or party that qualifies to file such an appeal must independently exercise their right of appeal in order to preserve that right. A party cannot and should not rely on their right to appeal being preserved by someone else filing an appeal on the same matter. Please be advised that a party may withdraw their appeal to the Board of County Commissioners prior to that de novo hearing. If one party withdraws their appeal and another party failed to file an appeal, there will be no appeal or hearing on the matter before the Board of County Commissioners. The application fee will not necessarily be refunded for such a withdrawal. Please also be advised that if a de novo application is filed with the board to be recognized during the de novo hearing as organized opposition, you must either file the application for de novo hearing or receive written authorization from at least five entities or individuals to speak on their behalf against the application and they have agreed to waive the ability to speak during the public comment portion of the public hearing. Level 4 reviews. Pursuant to Section 907 of the Land Development Code, the Planning Commission's decision on a Level 4 review is a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners. The Board of County Commissioners will ultimately decide the matter. Mr. Chair, would you like for me to swear on the witnesses for the cases today? Mr. Chair, please. So if you're going to address the Planning Commission on any case today, please stand up, raise your right hand, and answer out loud to the following question. And this is for all the cases, so if you think you're going to speak, go ahead and get sworn in. Do you swear or affirm the testimony and evidence you provide today is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Okay, just our housekeeping item. We need to admit the county's land planners as expert witnesses. They've all been accepted as experts in the past, but if you'd like to foredire any of them as to their background or expertise, you can do so at this time. I'm not seeing anyone. If we could just have a motion to accept staff as experts in the field of land planning. So moved. All in favor? Aye. Great. If we have experts of applicants, you can tender them at this time or wait until your case is called. And then finally, we've got a few quasi-judicial cases on the agenda today, so I'm going to briefly go through the procedures. Today's agenda includes quasi-judicial land use hearings, which means the action entails applying land development policies to a specific land development application in a fair and impartial manner. The commission's review is limited to two areas, consistency and compatibility. Regarding consistency, the commission must determine whether the application is consistent with both the comp plan and the land development code, and the staff report and presentation provide you with expert analysis and opinion regarding the applicable criteria, and a recommendation as to whether the application is consistent with those criteria. Regarding compatibility, the commission must determine whether the application is compatible with the surrounding area. The commission will be presented with testimony and evidence at the hearing, both written and oral. By law, the only evidence the commission can consider is competent substantial evidence, which means evidence that is sufficiently relevant and material that a reasonable mind would accept as adequate to support a conclusion. The following items are competent substantial evidence, evidence that is fact-based and relevant to the applicable criteria, staff reports and staff presentations. Citizen testimony can be competent substantial evidence so long as it is fact-based and can include testimony regarding subjective matters that do not require expertise, such as aesthetic incompatibility of a project with the surrounding neighborhood. However, popularity polls, petitions, testimony that is hypothetical, speculative, based on fear, or consists of generalized statements that do not address the land development code criteria are not competent substantial evidence. For example, fear that the project will cause increased traffic and crime is not competent substantial evidence. Lastly, when expertise is required for technical issues like traffic, engineering, drainage, wetland impacts, school and utility capacity, light and noise pollution, or the application's impact on property values, citizen testimony is not competent substantial evidence unless the witness is qualified as an expert in that area. That concludes my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Voss. All right, next on the agenda is the old business. I don't think we have anything to discuss on that line item. As we begin the new business, I'd like to just remind the audience there are a fair amount of people here today to speak on cases that are going to be presented. We ask you all to please be courteous, polite in your comments. Please refrain from any comments from the audience. As other people are speaking, we want to hear everybody's testimonies. As a reminder, you have three minutes when you come up to speak, and please silence all cell phones. With that, we will get started on our first case. All right, number one on the agenda is a county-initiated conditional use modification of case number CU-0816 for Polk County's Northeast Regional Utility Service Area Wastewater Treatment Plant to expand limits, add a second access, add government facilities, and upgrade the facility to 9 million gallons per day. The subject site is located at 200 Westview Road, west of Home Run Boulevard, west of U.S. Highway 27, north of Sunset View Drive, south of I-4, north of Haynes City, and Section 28, Township 30, Range 28. On June 7th, 18 mailers were sent to area property owners. Four signs were posted on June 6th, and a legal ad was published in the ledger. Staff has logged no responses, and Eric Peterson is your planner. Good morning, Planning Commission Eric Peterson for the Land Development Division. This modification to the previous CU is not so much to increase the capacity but to increase the land area to get to that capacity. This project is located in our northeast. It's our largest wastewater treatment facility in our most rapidly growing area of the county. The site is on the edge of the Green Swamp Core and surrounded by commercial uses. The expansion will include some new facilities. Now, to fit this on there so you could see it, I had to turn it to the side, so it's going north. You're looking east is up and north is to the left. The expansion will essentially go into the area that is currently below the grade of Home Run Boulevard. It's also adding a second entrance, but it's not a main entrance into the facility. It'll be an entrance for vehicles to actually work on this side of the facility since there won't be a way to get around these facilities. So these expansions over here will be accessed from this side for the vehicles that have to get there. This is looking at the expansion area. The real thing that the Planning Commission is making the decision is on the wastewater treatment plant. We anticipate using most of this area in the future for other government facilities that are currently administratively approved, such as government offices and things of that nature. There might be a fire station or some type of public safety facility there in the future. The additional access comes off of the South Frontage Road. There will be some improvements to it. It will go around the Theme World RV Resort. This is their entrance off of Home Run Boulevard. As you can see, it's very subtle. You really can't tell the sewage treatment plant is there because of how far it is below the grade of Home Run Boulevard and how subtle the things are. The large tanks that you see here and the new ones on the site plan are to hold reclaimed water. This facility is a fully enclosed facility that all the wastewater residual goes into the reclaimed water system and is distributed throughout the service area and is in very high demand. These are some other features. These are all below the grade, so you don't actually see them. Most people in the area who live there, stay there, work there, don't even know this plan exists, but it's our largest facility. With that, I'm recommending approval. This expansion will, for the most part, we estimate will cover the buildable area that's left in the Northeast Utilities Service Area and accommodate anywhere from 11,000 to 17,000 future resident homes, population of probably somewhere around 60,000 people. With that, I'll stand for questions. Any questions for staff? Hearing none, is there anyone here to speak for or against this case? Please come forward. Seeing none, we'll close the public workshop and we'll jump back to the applicant. Eric, anything else you'd like to add? Nope, just for approval. All right. Bring the item back to the board for discussion and or motion. Mr. Chair, I move approval of LDCU 2024-20. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Roll call, Mr. David. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalt, and I'm for the motion. Brooke Ignini. For the motion. Tommy Addison. Mike Schmidt. Motion. Linda Schultz. For the motion. And Adam Bass. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Dalton. All right. Next case, please. All right. For the record, E&S land development. Staff recommends approval of LDCD 2024-3, a request for a sub-district change from Business Park Center 1 to Business Park Center 2 on approximately two and a half acres. The subject site is located at 4815 New Tampa Highway, also known as US-92, west of Galloway Road, east of Craft Road, south of I-4, north and west of the city of Lakeland in Section 20, Township 28, Range 23. For the record, 13 mailers were sent to area property owners on June 7th. One sign was posted on June 4th, and a legal ad was published in a ledger on June 27th. Staff has logged no public input. This is a level four review with a board date set for August 6th. Here's a site where a roadside motel once stood, south of I-4 and east of the Polk Parkway, along US-92, where warehousing and distribution uses have been planned since the original zoning ordinance. When the comprehensive plan and land development code were adopted, BPC-1 was assigned to the commercial areas located directly along 92, whereas BPC-2 was placed on the properties to the north, which were originally zoned industrial. The result was these parcels being bifurcated by the sub-district lines. The applicant wishes BPC-2 to be assigned to the entirety of the subject site for consistency from one parcel to the next. Each sub-district is intended for warehousing, distribution, and light manufacturing, with the primary differences being between the two, or BPC-2 allows for outdoor storage and an increase in height from 75 feet to 100 feet. This is a closer look at the site. There is one non-conforming single-family residence to the east. All development in this location, regardless of this change, will have to adhere to Land Development Code Section 220 for compatibility, which includes 50-foot setbacks for all non-residential structures, outdoor storage, and loading facilities from the home. Enhanced landscaping in an 8-foot wall will be required if commercial vehicle drive aisles are intended for future use. Finally, a photometric plan is required that will ensure no light trespass on the residential site. As a result of these measures, staff finds this request compatible with surrounding uses in the general area. This is an ideal location for warehousing and distribution, with urban-level services available and near several ulterior roads. This change will not create any significant changes on the impacts of the roadways, utilities, or emergency services. The request is consistent with Land Development Code and comprehensive plan. Staff recommends approval, and I'll stand for questions. Any questions for staff? All right. Seeing none, we'll open up the public workshop portion. Is there anyone here to speak for or against this case? Please step forward. All right. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public workshop. We'll return back to the applicant. Anything else you'd like to add? Oh, I'm not the applicant. Oh, I'm sorry. Applicants are here, though. Thank you. If I have the applicant come forward, please. Please state your name and address for the record. Hello. My name is Andres Javive. And where do you live? I live in 311 Northeast, 194th Lane, Miami. Okay. Anything you'd like to add to the testimony you've heard? We are trying to build a fully automatic storage in these two different – it's the same parcel, but it's two different zones. And at some point, we wanted to join these two parcels and to build a better building in these two parcels. So that's why we wanted to use the same zone in the lab. Thank you. Any questions for the applicant? All right. Seeing no questions from the applicant, and we confirmed there's no other further comment from public hearing, we will now bring the item back to the board for a motion and or discussion. Mr. Chair, I move to approve LDCD 2024-3. All right. We have a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dolt, 9 for the motion. Brooke Ignini. Tommy Addison. Mike Schmidt. Motion. Linda Schultz. And Adam Bass. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously. All right. Thank you. All right. Next case, please. All right. For the record, Ian Nance, land development. Staff recommends approval of LDWA 2024-21, a request for a waiver to land development code section 705B, necessary to allow the issuance of building permits for up to eight single family homes on property that gains access solely via an easement. The subject property is located north of Gary Lane, east of County Road 37B, south of Sandland and Gulf Drive, east and south of Lakeland in section 9, township 29, range 24. It's a level four review with a board date set for August 6th. For the purposes of public notification, 79 mailers were sent to nearby property owners on June 7th. One sign was posted on June 6th and a legal ad was published in the ledger on June 27th. Staff has received four emails in opposition and two phone calls in opposition. The subject site is one of the last undeveloped properties in this area of the South Lakeland region. It is in a residential suburban land use district where lot size minimums are five acres, though the majority of residential lots adjacent to the site are much smaller and improved prior to the comprehensive plan and land development code. To obtain building permits in Polk County, land development code requires lots to have frontage or access to a county road. Sprankle Lane to the southwest corner of the site is a county unpaved right-of-way within the Highland South subdivision recorded in 1972. The applicant has completed a level two review to construct this roadway to meet county standards, which will give the property legal frontage. However, the owner wishes to subdivide the property into eight lots, and that frontage is insufficient for meeting the lot width requirements for all eight lots. So, their alternative is to provide for an easement. LDC Section 705B allows for access via easement through an administrative approval if the easement provides for no more than four lots, is less than a quarter mile long, is at least 20 feet wide, each lot can demonstrate legal access, and it's sufficient for emergency services. For subdivisions that exceed four lots, board approval is required to evaluate the suitability of this easement relative to the number of lots and whether there's a sufficient hardship that would necessitate the waiver. So, right now, with the completion of Sprankle Lane and an approved easement, the applicant could get four lots on these 40 acres through a staff-level approval. But this acreage is sufficient for eight lots, and that is the ultimate request. The proposed easement from Sprankle Lane will have a minimum paved surface width of 20 feet and navigate around existing wetlands. Public potable water will be provided to these lots, where houses will be built on the upland portions on the western side of the property. Staff finds there is reasonable hardship to allow this waiver. The property cannot develop to its by-right density without this approval. There is no other source of ingress or egress to this property, and Sprankle Lane was dedicated to the county through La Platt to provide access to this parcel. Eight five-acre lots will not overburden a paved private easement or create a burden on local roadways. Eight lots translates to a generalized estimate of eight peak PM trips, which are spread over three hours, which is how staff evaluates the impacts of traffic. In this instance, these impacts are minimal. Lots will be bigger than those that surround it, and staff finds no incompatibilities between those proposed and the existing surrounding single-family and multifamily units. Staff finds this request is consistent with a comprehensive plan and land development code and recommends approval. I'll stand for questions. Any questions for staff? Mr. Chair, I have one. Sorry, Mike. David, go ahead. Go ahead. Hi, Ian. Why does this not trigger school board concurrencies? Is that a lot count threshold deal? Yes, sir. Okay. What's that number? Just so I know future reference. Josh isn't here. I'm not real sure with the minimum. I think something like that. Fifty. Fifty? Okay. Thank you. All right. You said the traffic was eight? Yes, the peak PM. That's eight for a lot or eight for the whole? The whole lot. For how we assess, we have one peak PM trip generated by each lot during a three-hour span in the afternoon. One trip a day? Right. No, that's the three-hour time slot in the afternoon. Overall, it's eight times seven. Okay. What was the overall? Did you study that at all? I'm asking because all of these are seemingly coming in and out through this existing subdivision here. Page seven of your staff report says 62 average annual. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Ian, I got a quick question. You may have mentioned this. Are these lots going to be on septic or central sewer? Septic. And they're what size? Five acres apiece. Oh, okay. They're lot sizes. Thank you. All right. Any other questions for staff? Seeing no questions, we'll ask the applicant. Five acres. Sorry. Go ahead. It's a 40-acre parcel, and if you run it on GIS, there's less than eight acres of it that's up one. Sorry. Can you repeat that, Tommy? I didn't hear you. It's a 40-acre parcel, but if you look at it on the GIS, measure it out, it's less than eight acres of up one. Thank you, Tommy. Is the wetland going to belong to each property owner, I assume? I believe that's the intention, yes. All right. So with that, we'll call the applicant to please come forward, state your name and address for the record, and please state your case. Hello? So, Chad, Brookwood Traditions Engineering, address is 35 Don Polson Drive, Eagle Lake, Florida. I don't have a lot to add in. Covered most of it. I just wanted to reiterate, like you said, this is for eight single-family lots. The hardship is that three-quarters of it is probably wetlands and floodplains, so we're having to subdivide these things east to west. So all of the frontage in the houses will be on the west side of the property, which makes finding buildable area difficult. That said, the eight lots is, by right, allowed to be developed. The only difference between what we're proposing here and what would be normally required is a 40-foot right-of-way with a 20-foot paved road that potentially becomes the county's burden to own and maintain at some point. This will just be a 50-foot easement with a 20-foot road. That's the private property owner's and HOA's burden to own and maintain. So it alleviates the county's need to ever have to manage that. But the access onto Sprinkle Road, like Ian mentioned, that's a county road. That has already been approved through Level 2. Pre-construction meeting has happened, and we have started construction on that access road. That meets county standards, 20-foot wide, with all the necessary things for that. I did receive some of the letters of opposition, and I know the biggest point of reference was the increase in traffic. I wanted to, and you mentioned it as well, I wanted to talk about that. It's eight single-family lots, so that generates about 56 to 60 daily trips in and out throughout the course of the day. It's eight peak-hour trips. That's eight in the morning, eight in the afternoon, over a three-hour period in the morning, three in the afternoon. So you're really not generating much traffic based on this. It's eight lots. That's all it is. So I don't think that'll even be noticeable, really. So really with that, I'm here to answer any questions that you guys might have. Like I said, this is really just a, we meet all of the standards of the code other than the eight lots instead of the four, but we're providing an easement that's more than twice as wide as what's required, and we're still going to pave a 20-foot section of road. So the only real difference between what we could do by right and what we're asking to do is an imaginary line and what it covers and who owns and maintains it. So any questions you have, I'm here to answer them. Any questions for the applicant from the board? If not, we're going to go ahead and open up the public workshop portion of the meeting. Anybody here speak for or against this case, please come forward. Seeing none, we'll invite the applicant to come back up. Do you have any other closing comments or any thoughts you'd like to add? Just approved. Thank you. Thank you. All right. With that, I'll bring the item back to the board for discussion and or a motion. Mr. Chair, I move to approve LDWA 2024-21. We have a motion. We have a second. We have a motion and a second. Mr. Dalton. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalton, I am for the motion. Brooke Ignini. Tommy Addison. Mike Schmidt. Against the motion. Linda Schultz. And Adam Bass. Against the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes 4-3. Thank you. All right. Number four on the agenda. The applicant is requesting a planned development to increase the retail and commercial use in excess of 30% within an Employment Center X land use district in the Northridge Selected Area Plan for the construction of a discount tire store. The subject site is located east of U.S. Highway 27, north of Minute Maid, Ramp Road 1, south of Citrus Ridge Drive, west of the city of Haynes City in Section 20, Township 26, and Range 27. On June 7th, 120 mailers were sent to area property owners. Two signs are posted on June 6th, and a legal ad was published in the ledger on June 27th with no response. Melissa Celestine is your planner. Good morning. For the record, Melissa Celestine with land development presenting LDPD 2024-6. The applicant is requesting a planned development to exceed the 30% retail and commercial development cap in the Employment Center X land use district in the Northridge Selected Area Plan for the construction of a discount tire store that will be approximately 7,020 square feet. Staff recommends approval. The site is located on the corner of Highway U.S. 27 and Minute Maid Ramp Road 1. The subject site is approximately 2.91 acres within the Employment Center X land use district, the Northridge Selected Area Plan, the Transit Supportive Development Area, and the corridor of the Transit Corridor and Centers Overlay. The applicant is proposing a discount tire store that will be located on the northern portion of the subject site. While the proposed use is permitted via a conditional level 2 approval, the request requires planning commission approval because of the 30% retail and commercial cap at this location. If the proposed project is approved, the contiguous ECX will be at approximately 32%, and the project will be required to comply with all relevant sections of the land development code and comp plan during the level 2 review. Here is how the proposed project will fit if the request is approved. Many of the surrounding developments are either under construction or are awaiting a level 2 approval. Here is a close-up of the subject site. According to the submitted site plan, access will be along Minute Maid Ramp Road 1. Here is a submitted site plan, which will be freely evaluated for review for compliance with the LDC and comp plan during the level 2 review process. This is a site visit photo looking south on U.S. 27. Based on the submitted site plan, this is where the proposed discount tire store will be located. The proposed request is an ad-nated service that is typically permitted as a conditional level 2 in the ECS district. Approval of the PD will only increase the buy-write ECX retail and commercial cap by 2%. Staff finds the request to be consistent with the land development code and comprehensive plan. With that, I thank you, and I'll stand for questions. Any questions for staff? Are we only approved? Basically, this is only half of the site. So are we just approving this part? So if they wanted to put something else on this parcel, they'd have to come back in? I included the entire parcel in the calculations for this, so it just depends on what they're going to do on the southern portion will determine, based on the land development code, what the level of review would be. So just to clarify, you're saying that we're approving the whole site? Yes. And then based on the use for the other half, depends on what action may be in the future? Exactly. Okay, thank you. Any other questions for staff? All right, seeing no, we'll call the applicant forward to please state your name and address for the record and present your case. Good morning. For purposes of your record, my name is Tim Campbell with Clark Campbell-Lancaster Workman and Air at 500 South Florida Avenue, Lakeland, Florida, representing the applicant. Melissa has explained well the request. This is the employment center area on U.S. 27 that was envisioned to be kind of a larger, to attract employment centers and that type of business. It really has not developed in that manner. So I've come several times. I know other people have had to come several times to address this cap because that area has grown more of a residential area, which requires commercial retail services to be provided. And so we're just coming in with staff support to make this request. I stand available for any questions you may have and I respectfully request your approval of the request. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Any questions for the applicant? All right, seeing none, we'll open the floor to the public hearing portion of the meeting. Anybody here to speak for or against this case, please step forward. All right, seeing none, we'll close the public hearing portion. We'll back to the applicant for any final comments. If not, we'll bring it to the board. No, thank you. All right. All right, so we're back to the board now for a motion and or discussion. Mr. Chair, I move to approve LDPD 2024-6. Motion. Do we have a second? Second. All right, motion and a second. Mr. Dalton. Robert Beltran. For the motion. David Dalton, I am for the motion. Brooke Agnini. For the motion. Tommy Addison. For the motion. Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Linda Schultz and Adam Bass. For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, board members. Thank you. Next case, please. All right, number five on the agenda is LDCU 2024-12. The applicant is requesting conditional use approval for 35 townhome units. The subject site is located west of Spirit Lake Road, east of Kaylee Drive, north of Thornhill Road, south of Live Oak Drive, north and east of the city of Bartow, and section 2, township 29, range 25. On June 7th, on June 7th, 120 mailers are sent to area property owners. Two signs are posted on June 6th. An illegal ad was published in Ledger on June 27th with no response. And Aaliyah Ngleema is your planner. Good morning, Aaliyah Ngleema with Land Development, presenting LDCU 2024-12, the Spirit Lake Road conditional use. The applicant is requesting a conditional use approval for 35 townhome units. The subject site is located west of Spirit Lake Road, east of Kaylee Drive, north of Thornhill Road, south of Live Oak Drive, north and east of the city of Bartow, and section 2, township 29, range 25. The site is located in a residential for future lane use and in the transit-supported development area. This area is a mixture of single-family and commercial uses. Site-built homes are to the west and north of the property, as are mobile homes to the east. Adding the townhomes to the site will provide housing diversity in the area. Here is the proposed site plan. The applicant is showing the placement of 35 townhomes. Here is a view of the site, and here is the view from Spirit Lake Road. And the proposed request is consistent with the Land Development Code and the Comprehensive Plan. And I'll stand for questions. Any questions for staff? All right, seeing none, we'll ask the applicant to please come forward and state your name and address for the record. State your case, please. Hello again, Chad Brooker, Traditions Engineering, 35 Don Poulsen Drive, Eagle Lake, Florida. As stated, this is a request for a conditional use approval for townhomes on this property. We're not asking for any deviation from the code because the TSDA and the RL-4, we can get the density that we're proposing, and the use is a C-3 permitted use. We've met all the conditions of Chapter 3. I think this will be a good site for the area because it does provide some diversity, especially next to the commercial. So I look forward to hearing from you, and if you have any questions, please let me know. All right, any questions for the applicant? There we go. All right. Sorry. Any questions for the applicant? All right. Seeing none, we're going to go ahead and open up the public hearing portion of the meeting. Anybody here to speak for or against this case, please come forward. Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing. We're back to the applicant. Any other comments you'd like to add or any questions? It's that close to this time. No more comments. If you have any questions, just please let me know. All right. With that, we'll bring the motion, the item back for a motion and or discussion. Mr. Chair, I move to approve LDCU 2024-12. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. Mr. Dalton? Robert Beltran? For the motion. David Dalton, I'm for the motion. Brooke Ignini? For the motion. Tommy Addison? Mike Schmidt? Motion. Linda Schultz? Motion. And Adam Bass? For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously. Fantastic. Thank you. All right. Next case, please. The next case is a small-scale comprehensive plan amendment, LDCPAS 2024-4. Excuse me. It's a feature land use designation from residential low to residential high on 7.18 acres. The subject property is located south of State Road 540. Excuse me. Otherwise known as Winter Lake Road, east of Spirit Lake Road, west of State Road 640. 55, Wrecker Highway, and north of U.S. Highway 17. West of the Winter Haven city limits in Sections 25, Township 28, and Range 36. Property owner is Wilson and River Copal Family Trust. It's in the urban growth area. It's in the urban growth area. It's in the urban growth area. It's in the urban growth area. It's in the urban growth area. It's in the urban growth area. Staff is recommending approval. And in terms of the advertisement, 66 mailers were sent to area property owners on June 7th. One email in opposition. Four phone calls in opposition. Two signs posted on June 6th. A legal ad published in Lakeland Ledger on June 27th. And J.P. Sims is the case planner. Thank you. All right. Good morning. So, LDCPA-S-2024-4, as Shonda mentioned, is a request to change the land use from residential low 2 to residential high in the urban growth area on Winter Lake Road, State Road 540. So, we are in the southwestern part of the Winter Haven area, and Eagle Lake is to the south of that. So, the site is designated in yellow. Over here is a Publix Plaza to the west. This is Spirit Lake Road. And then State Road 540 runs along the northern site of the parcel. Getting a closer look at the site, you can see that there are things that are currently developed on the site. So, down here, you do have a residential development. Here, you have a tutoring center. And over here, you have a nursery. And then it does have surrounding uses. So, there is a Greek Orthodox Church down here, a Jewish temple over here, an assisted living facility directly to the west. And there is a mosque over here to the east. So, there is a variety of uses right there in that area. So, not primarily residential. So, currently, it does sit as residential low 2. But I did want you to see, I did a little bit of a zoom out. So, you can see that there are different land uses in the area. So, the residential high is not, is the only residential high in the area. But there are different land uses currently surrounding it with the institutional and the convenience to the west. And as I mentioned before, there is a Publix down the road to the west as well. And the residential that was directly developed to the north pinnacle point does have a little bit higher density than what was typically there from before. So, changing it to residential high, like I said, would be the only residential high in the area. But because of its direct access onto State Road 540, which is a minor arterial road, it does have water and sewer close by that they can extend the lines to the site. And it is in the urban growth area. It does have sufficient services available. So, changing it to residential high would be an appropriate use for this site. So, I included the utility line. So, you can see I measured that there is water and wastewater. So, water already runs along Bradbury to the west side of the site. Wastewater is only 180 feet away from the site. So, you could easily extend those lines to the development site and have it connect. So, looking east on the site. So, this is State Road 540. The site is over to the right. In front of me is that tutoring center that is currently on the site. On the other side of that is the nursery. And there is an access point that is already available there. So, you could turn left coming westbound on State Road 540. And that's over here. So, there is an entrance already set up to where you could turn left into the site. Looking down Bradbury, this was actually one of the things I mentioned in the staff report. That Bradbury Road currently is pretty narrow. So, it's not sufficient for, like, the increase in traffic. But primary access point would mostly be on 540. But if they did develop here, they would have to improve Bradbury Road up to county standards. So, this is standing on the sidewalk on 540 with my back to the road. Looking at it, I did mention there is a residential development currently on the site. And then behind that is the Greek Orthodox Church. Sorry. And then you have the tutoring and the tree lady nursery over here on the east side of the site. So, as far as impacts to school, this is what is anticipated if the development is built out at max capacity. Now, one of the elementary schools is currently showing over 100% capacity. But if one of the neighboring elementary schools is under capacity, then we can mitigate it through that method of moving kids to that school district. Otherwise, mitigation efforts have to be done during the level 2 process. There are parks nearby. There are emergency services nearby with sheriff and fire. And, like I mentioned before, you could extend the sewer line to the site for a higher density residential use. State Road 540 does have sufficient capacity available to add the increase of traffic. As I mentioned before, there is a close proximity to different uses, such as the publics, a couple of different religious institutions, and an assisted living facility. And the site, you did see there is a big chunk of it that's not being developed, but it does have the nursery, the tutoring center, and the residential development on the south side of the site. And with that, I will stand for questions. Any questions for staff? All right, seeing no questions for staff, we'll ask the applicants to please come forward. Please state your name and address for the record and state your case. Good morning. For the record, Sarah Case with Next Level Planning and Permitting. My address is 3825 South Florida Avenue, and that is in Lakeland. I'm here today representing the owner and the developer for the project before you. So, Jonathan did a great presentation before you, very thorough. I do understand we have some opposition. I have fielded a call as well. We feel this is a good fit. We approached staff doing a prerequisite pre-application process in the spring, and we were looking to do either RM or RH. Our intent is to build townhomes on the subject site. You're not considering that today. You're considering the land use, but I did want to mention I refer to the project as Winter Lake Townhomes. As staff indicated, we will be connecting to sewer. It is to the west of us in the grass median, closer to the public. It's about 180 feet away. Access has not been determined yet. We will have to go to DOT regardless if we are proposing access onto Winter Lake Road or not. However, there is capacity available in both directions on Winter Lake Road, and we do have that frontage on Bradbury Road. I would like the opportunity to respond to any comments that the public may have, and I would appreciate your consideration of approval. Thank you. Any questions for the applicant from the board? Sarah, will the preschool and will the nursery stay there? No, they will not. All right. Any other questions for the applicant? No. Seeing none, we'll open the floor for the public hearing. Anybody here to speak for or against this case, please come forward. Come on up. Yeah. And just cue yourself up in the middle. Good morning. My name is Katie Hayes. My address is 1811 Bradbury Court, and I'm speaking on behalf of my community, my neighborhood, and many of my neighbors that are here today. I know I've heard many times you guys are speaking about compatibility, and is this compatible for our neighborhood? The majority of our neighborhood is single-family, individual, large-lot homes. We all have children. We have family that have grown up on there, and the majority of us are family that live there. We already currently have problems pulling out onto Winter Lake Road since the new neighborhood across 540 was built. They built a median there where we can no longer cross over, so we have to turn right and go around and make a U-turn, and any of us pulling trailers or boats or even just pulling out during peak hours, we have to wait several minutes to pull out. There have been three school bus accidents since that neighborhood was built. I still have small children that go to school and ride a bus, and we've witnessed three school bus accidents that happen right there at that intersection. So I ask that you guys please consider this. This is a small community for us. It's a neighborhood. We've lived there forever. Our families have lived there forever. I live in my grandmother's home. I live next door to my aunt and uncle, and I live there so that my children can have a safe upbringing. And building townhomes to this magnitude in our neighborhood is just not a compatible fit for us. So please consider that while you guys are considering this. Thank you. A question? Ma'am? May I ask her a question? Yes, sir. I was listening to the mitigation plans for the schools who are already at 100%. How do you feel about having children sent to different schools? So I will be honest with you. We have a blended family, and one of my students is going into middle school. One's an existing middle school. We're leaving Lakeship Elementary, which is already overcrowded. That's the elementary school that you guys are speaking of. We didn't have a choice in elementary. We only have choice in middle school. In middle school, we are zoned for Westwood, which is not always the safest option for our children. And you have to put in for a lottery to be selected for a different middle school. So my son will be riding a bus to Lake Alfred Middle School. He's going to the Polytech next year. So if you guys are moving families in there, to find another school in the area is impossible. And our schools are already overcrowded. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Anybody else here to speak for or against this case, please come forward. Yeah, go ahead. Just once the person's done, move to the next person, come on up. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm hard to hear. Sure. No problem. I agree with Katie, what she just said. Name and address for the record, please. That's okay. Buddy Jackson. I'm 1917 Bradbury Court, Winter Haven. Thank you. Go ahead. You have three minutes. I agree with Katie with what she just said also, too. But also, because of the assisted living home being there also, we have emergency vehicles coming all the time on that single-lane road. And, you know, there's life at stake. So they park in the middle of the road, and I got no problem with that because that's somebody's life. But so we have to go around, and we have to go on the right-of-way many times, which I totally approve of that. So with this coming in, that would really mess that up also because that is assisted living, and there is regularly, you know, emergency vehicles coming also. And also, the speed limit on 540, there is 60 miles an hour, and many times, like what she said, many accidents come very close or happen there also because there's no slowdown lane Bradbury Road is just a very single-lane road, and many people don't even know what's there. And also, when we leave, like she said, we have to go down to King's Road and turn around and come back to do U-turns there. And King's Road is developing also, which is, I've got no problem with that, but it's making it harder and harder during peak times to do a U-turn there at King's Road. So we can't leave, turn right, like just going to Publix is a big ordeal because you've got to go down to King's Road and do a U-turn. So that makes it very unsafe also. So there's many other things too, but I'm just trying to keep brief with what we have right now. Thank you very much. Hello, my name is Chase Varner. I live at 1927 Bradbury Court, which is the road that's affected by this. I agree with everything they're saying. Again, with the emergency vehicles that have to park in the road, you have to remember this is a single-lane road. We only have a dual-lane access for probably the first 40 or 50 feet, which they utilize that area. So when we're pulling off 540, we're right there on them. As soon as we come off of 540, they're there more times than not. So we're having to use the right-of-way to get around them. We, as mentioned, we have two churches, surprisingly or not, on a one-lane road. So you have to account for that traffic as well. So when church service is coming in, we have an increased flow of traffic. One thing that I'll, and as far as the schools go, we have at least seven children in the neighborhood that are elementary school and below. As far as access goes, I don't know that it was adequately proposed. They said that there was a turn lane into the property on the left. But that turn lane accesses Bradbury Road. It does not access the property from 540. You would have to do it, if they don't put an access point on our street, you would have to do a U-turn and then turn into the property, which is already a big issue. Like Katie said, when they put the two neighborhoods across the street, they blocked off the access to our road. So now we have to, you can take a left into there. But to go out, to head towards Lakeland, you have to go down to Kings Road and do a U-turn, which is absolutely crazy. It's hard to turn there. You have too many vehicles coming in each direction. That's just an accident waiting to happen. And I think with adding another, you know, high-density residential area right there, it's just not the right thing for us right now. Thank you. Thank you. My name's David McCartney. I live at 4262 Shadowwood Lane, Winterhaven. We live approximately a mile from this site and have for 17 years. I am also the owner of ABC Tutoring Service, which is on the site, and I just wanted to bring up some of the information that was put there isn't complete. Can you adjust the microphone? It's hard to hear. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Some of the information that he gave out isn't complete. There are actually four businesses on that site. There is a cell phone tower company, which he said is a housing developer, or the housing structure there. That's actually the office for the cell phone tower company. And there's probably six or eight employees that work for them. ABC Tutoring has probably a dozen employees. And the sod company behind us, which he didn't mention, has probably four to five employees. And the tree lady, we're guessing, probably has six to eight, maybe ten employees that work for her. So four businesses and probably 20 to 30 families are going to be dislocated if this takes place. And also they mentioned the traffic patterns. As previous speakers have said, when they put the subdivision in across the road, they change the traffic pattern in the front, which greatly limits the traffic moving in and out of side streets. They have to go down the road, turn around, and come back. And to add more traffic to that would just congest that even more. And a mile down the road is the Spirit Lake Road and 540 intersection. And we just approved previously, we had approved two or three subdivisions going in down Spirit Lake Road. All that traffic comes up to that intersection as well. And we live just off that street. And we've seen traffic back up from that intersection a mile down the road during when school lets out to the, what is it, the All Saints School. We've seen a mile back up at the traffic light when school lets out. That's a lot of traffic. And to add more to that, a high density to that, that's just too much. That's too much for this area. There's probably a dozen subdivisions. If you drew a mile around this area, there's probably a dozen subdivisions that have gone in over the years, adding a lot of traffic. And we're not seeing places for business to go. We've seen this coming as the business owner, knowing that we may have to relocate. And we've been looking, everything's zoned residential. We're bringing houses and houses and houses in, but where do the businesses go? We're taking away the services that are available for the new homeowners coming in. Who's going to provide the goods and services if the business owners are pushed out? That's my question. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Next. Hi. My name is Leland Colville. I live at 1019 Bradbury Road. I'm sorry, I'm having allergies today. So I am the house directly affected because I live right across the street from this new development. So my biggest concern is that the assisted living facility at least two to three times a week has emergency vehicles. So that's blocking that area right there. And then they also have food service trucks. So oftentimes we have to just go out into the empty lot to get to the main highway, or you could be waiting 10 or 15 minutes for the emergency vehicle. I mean, you can't rush somebody that's having an emergency. So that traffic, as soon as that development goes up, we will have no way to get around the emergency vehicles, and it is just a single lane right there. So I understand increasing the road, but then that encroaches on the property. And he just brought up a really good point. The tree lady's been there 20, 25 years. Not that that's something that, you know, should matter as much, but, I mean, she's an established business, and she's looking for a place, I know, and has not been able to find something adequate. The other businesses, I've been there since 1993. And this was a place that I bought to retire. I worked my whole life to retire in this house. When they put the new development up across the highway, it increased the traffic out there substantially. We can barely, sometimes we have to wait five, I know it's not a lot of time, but five minutes just to get on the main highway. The traffic there, they say that there's adequate room to add traffic. There is not. That traffic is, the speed limit is supposed to be 65. They drive about 80. There's already been accidents. It's, since they put the big development in across the highway, the traffic is just crazy out there. It's for such a small area. So, I guess, the access, you know, we're, like Katie brought up, we're just established families back in there. I mean, it's just a small, quiet neighborhood. And to put townhomes, single family homes, it would even be more reasonable. But townhomes in there is just going to increase the traffic, the school problems. I mean, it just, it isn't conducive for our neighborhood. So, I hope that you take that into consideration. Thank you very much. Thank you. So, Pamela Jackson. I'm sorry, I'm with him. Name and address for the record. Okay. 1917, Bradbury Court. Our privacy is gone. Where is there to walk? Where is there to walk with the kids? Everybody in that apartment building is going to use our road. Where's our privacy? It's gone. They're going to want that road for their bicycles, their everything, their walks, everything. We only have one road. You're not going to walk your kids up and down the highway. Only that road. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Anybody else here to speak for? My name is Linda McCartney, and I live at 4262 Shadowwood Lane in Winter Haven. My husband just spoke on behalf of ABC Tutoring. I am the co-owner and the director of ABC Tutoring. We have been at that facility there on Winter Lake Road for the last 13 years, and we have been able to service hundreds and hundreds of students after school who need help with their academics, their math, their reading. We service students who have dyslexia, auditory processing disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, students who are really struggling in school. Currently, right now, in Winter Haven, there aren't a lot of tutoring centers. ABC Tutoring has grown tremendously, and we've added another facility on the other side of town, on the northeast side of town, because we continue to grow. As my husband stated earlier, we have been looking for another place to go since January, and it has been difficult to find and meet that need commercially with the amount of parking that we need. And so, if you have children who are currently at the school-age level, you'll understand the need for a tutoring service that provides consistent, reliable, outstanding services to our children and the parents of those children. They are very appreciative of what we do. And so, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your comments, and thank you for the work you do. Go ahead. How much does the location of your business have to do with your students that you serve being in that specific location? Rather than moving somewhere else, I'm just asking. That's a very good question, sir. About eight, nine years ago, we had outgrown this facility, and so we started looking for another facility that we could move to to meet our needs. And we purchased another facility, like I said, on the northeast side of town. And our conceptual idea was to take all of the students from this facility and move them to the other facility. But we quickly realized that we were meeting a very important need on this side of town with all of the elementary schools. There's Eagle Lake Elementary. There's Bartow. There's Auburndale. There's Lakeship Elementary. Pinewood Elementary. Those parents, when we presented the idea to them to move to our other facility on the northeast side of town, they said, no, we don't want to navigate the traffic. We don't want to drive an extra 20 minutes. And we're also servicing parents in Lakeland. And so for us to move all of our parents to that facility, we decided that wasn't going to work because those parents would drop out. We wouldn't be able to help them anymore. And so that location is a very pivotal and very important location for us. And as we're looking for a facility to replace that, it's very important that we stay in that area because we do have a footprint in the community, and we are very well known and very well established, and the parents trust us. And so to move to a different lake, even moving to Lakeland, we would not be able to continue to service the people that we're currently servicing in the Winter Haven area, like with Lake Ship and Eagle Lake Elementary and Pinewood and those students. So does that answer your question, sir? Yes, ma'am. Okay, thank you for asking it. Thank you. Any other questions? No. Anybody else to speak for or against this case, please come forward. If there's anyone to speak after this, gentlemen, please go ahead and cue yourself up in the middle. I live at 18. Can you pull the microphone down, sir? You mind pulling the microphone down a little bit so we can hear you? Thank you. My name is Rod Stubbs, 1819 Bradbury Court. I noticed that they based their square footage on all the neighborhoods across the road from our neighborhood. Our neighborhood was built with custom homes on one to three acres of land. Like they said a while ago, we built in there to retire. And I just don't think with the school problems, the road problems, and the value of our homes is worth these apartments being built. But, you know, the consideration, I hope, will be taken for the neighborhood that lives there, which does not show up on this screen. We show a Greek church to the south. We also have a Jewish church. We also have a nursing home. Well, the nursing home has all been mentioned. But, like I say, we all live on one to three acres of land in there. And I just don't think this 11,000 to 4,000 square feet is adequate data for moving into that neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you. Come on forward. Yeah, I believe so. No. Yeah. Adjust the microphone accordingly, please. Short stacked. My name is Bonnie Lazarus. I'm at 1019 Bradbury Road. The officer's going to. Whoa. Thank you. I don't know that it's been mentioned yet that Bradbury Road is a dead end. So we have about 25, 30 homes in there. And as it stands right now, it's already hard to get out to get on to 540. You can only make a right, by the way, out of that development. You cannot make a left. So when you make that right, if I understood this correctly, they want 70 or 71 townhomes. That could be approximately 100 and a quarter, 150 cars. So if Bradbury's already a dead end road and we're trying to get out and we have to work with all of those cars, it's not going to happen for a long time. So that's all I wanted to share. Thank you. Thank you. Any other body else here to speak for or against this case, please come forward at this time. All right. Seeing no other public comment, we'll turn the floor back over to the applicant to respond to all of the questions that were asked. Thank you. So I do appreciate all the comments from our neighbors. And I kind of broke it down into four areas that are of most concern. So the existing use of the site, compatibility, Bradbury Road itself, and schools. So as far as the existing use of the site, it is RL2 land use designated currently. The non-residential uses on site are not consistent with the underlying land use, and they do not conform today. So the property owner has specific rights within his property, and his intent is to sell to my client, who is a developer. I am not privy, and I don't get involved in any kind of lease agreements or whatever. But I did want you to know that the property owner authorized me to present on his behalf in order to have this case before you. So I'm not sure about the agreements that were there and the long-term businesses that were there, but I am authorized to act on the property owner's behalf. Bradbury Road is a local road, as indicated in your staff report, and it is substandard. So if we were to move forward with approval of the RH land use that's before you today, once we come in for level two review, that is your engineering construction plan review process, we would have to comply with standards for access and for roads to today's standards. So we would have to improve that section of Bradbury Road should we be accessing Bradbury Road, and that would be for the portion of our frontage on Bradbury Road. And same with DOT. You all are seeing this at the first step, which is land use. But all the agencies, we will have to go to include DOT to get permission to access DOT should we propose a driveway there. But, again, we don't have access and ingress-egress issues before you today. It's just the land use itself. As for schools, once we get to actually a level two review with the subject land use in place, that's when we would go to the schools and mitigate if a school is at occupancy. And we know that Lake Chip Elementary is at 102%, so there are mechanisms in place that we would work out between the developer and the school board and the surrounding zones and that type of thing. So there is a solution in place that will address any issues with schools being overcapacity. And as for compatibility, clearly throughout the staff report, staff has analyzed this and brought forward not only our information that we submitted for our request, but also their findings of fact as well. And staff has found that this is consistent with all policies in the Comprehensive Plan and the Land Development Code for Residential High, and it is compatible with the surrounding area. So with that, I will stand for any questions, and we would appreciate your recommendation of approval to the board of county commissioners. Any questions for the applicant from the board? Can you, we're going from RL 2 to 4, right? No, we're going from RL to RH is our request. Can I just make a general statement? Go ahead, yes. Just because of where I'm coming from. I used to do this man's job right here when I was at the school board for 10 years. He is the school plant planner. He is in charge. It was ironic that I just sat down here, and he was sitting next to me. So we started talking. Oh, man, this is really something. I used to be the guy that fielded all the phone calls from the parents when we would have to relocate children because the school was at capacity. And I'm sure he's not supposed to be here yet, but I just cannot help but consider what is going on when we've got schools that are already at 100% and we just make statements that, well, we'll just have to mitigate that, which means I know what that means. It means we're going to be moving children to different schools and those families whose entire life is built around taking their kids to school. They've got their tutoring or whatever figured out for their neighborhood. And I'm not here promoting the people's business. That has nothing to do with it. I'm just talking about the families that we just so easily disrupt by making the decisions that we do here. This gentleman made a statement to me when we first sat down here and was talking. He said, I have come to realize that this board makes more impact on the school board than any other board in the county, more so even than the county commission because the statements that went, I'm having my own allergies, dear. The statements and the decisions that we make just tends to impact the people that we're supposed to be representing. And I can't just sit here and just continue to vote for things that I know. If you want to know where I'm coming from when I speak and when I ask questions, that's where I'm coming from. And it's important to me that I think my fellow commissioners understand that. And I'm not here to promote a business or defend a business or anything like that. That's not it. And not for this specific one at all. But just overall, that's what I have to consider. Substantial competent evidence goes way beyond these people out here have their own substantial competent evidence. They're the ones sitting at the traffic light through four and five cycles trying to get out onto the roads. Okay? They don't have to be traffic engineers to understand what's happening in their community. And I personally just cannot sit here and just ignore all of those things, ignore the things that the people come up here and speak for those reasons. I hope I made myself clear. Thank you. And we appreciate it. Please hold the applause. This is a... Thank you. Chair, excuse me, since you haven't closed... Yeah, we haven't closed your portion. I had a couple questions myself. Okay, thank you. Just in response to Mr. Schmidt, I will say there's a reason that school and concurrency gets involved at this. It puts it on the horizon for us. We can't lock in anything with the school board, which would be binding at this point. But if you are considering all the evidence in front of you, the comprehensive plan was taken into consideration for that area. We are in an urban growth area. You can see where our site is in relation to and proximity to that intersection of Spirit Lake Road and Winter Lake Road. There's a reason that Winter Lake Road is a minor arterial. It's my understanding that staff has been approached on this subject site to consider commercial land use. A market area analysis would have been provided to present a land use amendment to you all for a commercial request. And a lot of it is based on the population. And as you can tell, this area is one of growth. We are intending to meet the need of the growth that is already occurring, whether this goes here or not. We need to provide options for housing for those that are coming here. And this seems like a likely area because it is a minor arterial and this can support the multifamily. And your staff said so themselves in the staff report. So I ask you to please consider that when you are considering your vote and recommendation to the board. Thank you. Elizabeth, go ahead. Yeah, just a few comments, Commissioner Smith, and to the whole board. School concurrency, like Ms. Kay said, is not taken into consideration at this point. It's done at level two. But just on, you know, the switching school boundaries, our interlocal agreement allows for that. So applicants can meet school concurrency even if, you know, this particular zone is at max capacity. They can look at the adjacent boundaries to fulfill concurrency. That's allowed by our interlocal agreement today. The second issue about tutoring zone and some of the other businesses on the property, that's ultimately a private matter. That's going to have to be worked out. That's not in this board's, you know, purview or discretion. So ultimately a lot of that testimony you heard, I would advise not taking that into consideration because it's not an appropriate land use issue for you all to consider. So thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? I have a couple myself. Any other questions for Mrs. Case? And let's limit to just questions at this moment. If we have more discussion, we'll do that at the board level. Any other questions for Mrs. Case? All right. I've got a couple quick questions for you then. Obviously there's a lot of concern with traffic and access. And I know you don't have your site plan. I mean, it seems to me that access would have to be off the main road. It wouldn't be off the side road or off the edge road, and that would be determined at level two. Is that a fair assessment? That is very fair, and that's when it will be determined. We have to meet separation requirements for driveways. We have to meet depth, as in throat depth, from access points, and that will have to be considered by your staff at that level. Again, you know, like you mentioned, we're not here to consider access, but that will have to work itself out, and we trust that staff is going to make those decisions based on the safest for the development that is being proposed. Okay. And then this question is probably more for staff, actually. On page 14 of the report, it says that City of Lake Wales would be providing water, but I think it's actually the county, correct? Okay, no problem. Just wanted to double-check that. And then finally, it seems to me, just looking at the map, again, just kind of hearing the evidence here is what we're talking about. A lot of the higher-density stuff, and it's what it stated in the report, is to the north side of the major road there on Spirit Lake. How does this – help me understand how this is compatible to the items below or south of Spirit Lake, or how does this neighborhood or approval of a residential high fit into the surrounding area south of Spirit Lake? Because it does look north of Spirit Lake. There's lots of density, high-density use that's been done. But south of Spirit Lake Road, at least just looking at the map, looks like it's lower density overall. So tell me how that all works from a transition perspective, from a planning perspective, and how you guys base your recommendation to approve for compatibility. This is really more for staff, Sarah, not for you. So as the applicant did mention before, this is part of our urban growth area. So you can see that with the residential development to the north, as you mentioned before, how does it meet with what's south of Spirit Lake? I mean, if you're looking at, you know, one-to-one, then the residential high and the residential low, there's a big step up from the residential low to the residential high. But like I was taking into consideration the fact that it is in the urban growth area and it does access the major road. So that's primarily what I was referring to when it comes to, like, access and compatibility. So what I'm hearing you tell me is that based on the fact that when it does get to level two, more than likely it will be accessed off the major road, and Bradbury Road won't necessarily be as impacted by this development. And then looking across the street and in the urban growth area, we are expecting higher densities in this area to occur. That's kind of what the urban growth area is supposed to do for us. Correct. So on the close-up picture right here I mentioned at the beginning, there is, if you're going west on 540, there is already a lane right here that you can turn left into this site. So for the sake of development, like my suggestion would have been, and Ms. Case brought it up already, this is not like any binding kind of thing. But if you're just looking at it, then my suggestion would have been put primary entrance right there because you've already got access from both directions off 540 to turn into that site, and that would help take any traffic off of Bradbury. But even so, Bradbury would have to be brought up to a certain county standard because it is substandard right now. Okay. I guess I'm a little confused. Bradbury is a dead end, I heard earlier. And so therefore I wouldn't expect traffic coming in from Bradbury or around Bradbury if your access is off Spirit Lake. Yeah, and there might be a secondary entrance over here off of Bradbury, but, I mean, you've already got turning availability off of 540 directly from right here. Okay. So that would make sense to me from a design point to do that. But, again, that's not binding. Yeah, I understand. We don't know until we get the site plan. That's just my opinion. Go ahead. If I may offer a couple of other comments. The transit supportive development area is on the north side. Of this road, so it's across the street. It is on the south side. Further west, there's a convenience center land use classification to the west. That is in the transit supportive development area. There's a bus route on the road, which handles, which is higher density is supportive of that. The other factors are there are non-residential land uses on the property today that could expand through a level 4 review, theoretically speaking, if that's approved, which goes to the board. There are other non-residential uses. Granted, they're not commercial. It's a religious institution, and those generate certainly not as much traffic, except maybe Wednesday nights or Sunday mornings. They can generate a considerable amount of traffic at those times. And the other factor is RH only permits 10 units to the acre outright. To get to the maximum 15 dwelling units to the acre requires a public hearing. Thank you. All right. Any other questions for staff? I know I've asked all my share. Go ahead, David. Mr. Chair, a quick question for staff. Did you hear anything in the public testimony that changes your view on the case? Well, these are things that I mentioned before were going to be the caveats of any kind of constraints for the development of the site. But no, because these are things I've already taken into consideration when doing things like my staff report. Okay. So as of now, you still recommend approval, correct? Okay. Thank you. With that, we'll bring the item list. There's no other questions for staff or the applicant at this point. We're going to close that portion and move it back to the board for discussion and or a motion. I've got a statement. Go ahead. Yeah. Appreciate staff. However, I'm just using my eyes here and looking from a compatibility standpoint. This, to me, appears, and being familiar with the area, understanding it's in an urban growth area, most of what's around Winter Lake has been developed already. It is what it is. It's not going to really change much. It appears to me like from a compatibility standpoint, you're putting an island of RH surrounded by residential low, and that doesn't seem like that's going to change in the near future. So I just wanted to make that statement. I appreciate your comment. Any other discussion before? Yeah, I've got one comment. Assuming that a motion for approval comes forward, I won't support it. In almost three years I've been on this board, I have never supported an elimination of commercial. It won't. This was an application to change this to commercial land use. I'd support it. But the whole purpose of land planning is so that you don't get down to the point to where you say, okay, whoops, we screwed up. Where are we going to put industrial? Where are we going to put commercial? You can't put houses everywhere. Plain and simple. Just for clarification, right now that site is zoned RL, is that correct? Yes, RL2. So the use that's going on there that's commercial, is that allowed use or not? I believe the commercial development occurred before the conference plan and land development code were passed. So it's grandfathered in maybe. That's why I said if they expand, it has to be level four because it's considered a legal nonconforming use. Thank you. All right. Any other discussion items before we take any kind of motion? All right. With that, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to approve LDC-PAS 2024-4. All right. We have a motion. Do we have a second? All right. Hearing no second, does that mean the motion dies? All right. Make a motion to disapprove the proposal. Okay. So you make a motion to disapprove or against staff's recommendation. So we have a motion on the floor. Do we have a second? All right. We have a motion and a second. Mr. Dalton, please call the roll. Robert Beltran. I'm against the motion. David Dalton, I'm against the motion. Brooke Ignini. For the motion. Tommy Addison. Mike Schmidt. For the motion. Linda Schultz. I am abstaining due to an ongoing business relationship with the property owner. And Adam Bass. For the motion. Mr. Chair, the vote is 3-3 with one recused. Oh, yes. Yeah. So 3-2 with one recused. All right. So the motion passes. All right. So the motion for denial passes as passed by the board for everyone, for the audience, just to be clear. So the motion was, or the applicant was denied and the next process goes for. It's a recommendation for denial and the board will ultimately make the decision. Thank you, Mrs. Foster, clarifying for me. August 6th. All right. No clapping, please. Just exit quietly. We have other hearings or other items to attend to here. Next case, please. Next case is another small-scale conference plan amendment. LDCPA S2023-29, the Grove Avenue CPA. It's a future land use designation change from residential Suburban X to residential OX and from suburban development area to urban growth area on 10.76 acres in the Southeast Polk Selected Area Plan. The property is located south of State Road 60, east of County Road 17B, west of Hamlin Street, north of Hunt Brothers Road, surrounded by the city of Lake Wales limits in Section 7, Township 30, Range 28. The applicant or the property owner is Shiv 109, LLC. And in terms of the advertisement, 25 mailers were sent to area property owners on June 7th. 25 revised mailers were sent to area property owners on June 13th. And no response by the public was received five signs posted on June 6th. Legal ad published in the Lakeland Ledger on June 27th. And J.P. Sims is the case planner. Good morning. J.P. Sims, the land development. So LDCPA S2023-29, we are requesting, or the applicant is requesting to change 10.76 acres from residential Suburban to residential Low. As you can see, this is in the Lake Wales area. And it is completely surrounded by the city of Lake Wales city limits. To the north, you have the Orange Grove Shopping Center up here. State Road 60 is to the north. Now, even though these areas were taken in 2023, it actually does not show the substantial development that has already begun to occur surrounding the site. That's something that you'll see in my site pics. So when you go closer to the site, you can see that a lot of this has already been platted out because there are currently several developments that are underway that are going there right now. So this land use change from residential Suburban to residential Low would then match the low-density residential that the city of Lake Wales has already approved for the surrounding developments. So we are going, like I said, from residential Suburban to residential Low. And that would be to match the density that is currently going on with the surrounding developments. So this was kind of a wide shot that I put together using the platted developments that have already been approved that are currently underway. So Hunt Club Grove North has already begun construction. And that one is the 3.56 dwelling units per acre. This land use change would allow them to get around four units to the acre. So the density would be very relevant to what is already approved. Jewel Ridge, Hunt Club Grove South, Bellevue. These are all projects that have already been approved to the city of Lake Wales. So this density would be compatible with those developments as well. So just recently I was out there taking the site pics. The site is off to the left in this picture, me looking north towards State Road 60. So Hamlin Street, this is the new construction they've already developed on the street. Hunt Club Grove North is to the east of the street. You can see it's already nicely paved. So looking south down Hamlin Street, again, off to the left, you can see that there's a lot of development already occurring. And then if you're looking down Grove Avenue, off to the right, you can see there's nothing currently developed on the site. Grove Avenue is not freshly paved, but that's something, if necessary, we can talk about later on. But it's a Lake Wales road, so we don't really have a lot of jurisdiction on that one. And then, again, looking west down Grove Avenue, again, you can see it's undeveloped, and there are single-family residential houses on the north side of Grove Avenue. And then, as I mentioned before, there's nothing currently developed on the site. It's an old grove. As far as assessment is concerned or any impacts, I do believe that there was sufficient availability. Yeah, there's sufficient capacity in all three of the schools surrounding the site currently. There are parks nearby. There is sufficient availability for emergency services, fire and sheriff. And there is water and wastewater availability, as was confirmed by a Lake Wales employee. So I did speak with someone who works in Lake Wales Utilities, and they did let me know that water and sewer is available in that area, and they do have availability for this site. So justification for approval, like I said, the density that's being requested would be compatible with all the approved projects going in around it. There is access to water and sewer, which is why we're recommending upgrading it from the suburban development area to urban growth area, because it does have that availability of utilities. And then, as I mentioned before, you can see that Hamlin's already been repaved as well, so the road's nice and fresh. But other than that, it is consistent with our comprehensive plan and land development code, and with that, I'll stand for questions. Any questions for staff? I've got a question. Understand we're not voting on this today. The question I have is just from my knowledge, to be quite frank. It looks like it's an island within the city limits of Lake Wales. I don't have a problem with the land use change, but my question just becomes, is there a... Why not annex? Yeah, why not annex. Yeah, exactly. That's something you'll probably have to ask the applicant about. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for staff? Seeing none, we'll ask the applicant to come forward. Please state your name and address for the record in your case. Morning. Morning. Robert Walker with Dave Schmidt Engineering, Lake Underhill Road, Orlando. We represent the owner, developer. Red Staff's report, we're in agreement with it, and basically, we have the legal counsel here, too, for the applicant, or the developer, so I'm just here to answer any questions you may have. All right. Thank you. With that, we'll open the floor to the public. Sorry. It's fine. I'll get to him. We'll come back to you. We'll come back to you in a minute. We're opening the floor to the public. Anyone here to speak for or against this case, please come forward. Seeing none, come on back up. We've got a quick question for you. Yes. Why not annex, and also, maybe back to staff, too, if roadways are put in, whose responsibilities to maintain would those become? So, Grove Avenue is currently under jurisdiction of Lake Wales, so they already own that road? Yeah. My understanding is, Lake Wales, this was all part of the hunt club. This was stage five. We've changed that. We stayed in the county for obvious reasons, so it's simplicity. Also, I believe later on when this came up in Lake Wales, I think they wanted rear-loaded lots or something along those lines, so the developer didn't prefer that type of development, so that's why we stayed in the county. And just to further clarify, understanding the existing roads, but if any additional roads are put in, those would be the responsibility of an HOA to maintain, or would that become a county burden? Okay. Any other questions? Let me just comment. Those are level two issues. Understood. I don't want those to be used as a case. I apologize. For voting no on a case. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Ms. Voss. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. All right. With that, we'll bring the item back to the board for discussion and or a motion. Mr. Chair, I move to approve LDC-PAS 2023-29. We have a motion. Do we have a second? We have a motion and a second. Mr. Dalton? Robert Beltran? For the motion. David Dalton, I'm for the motion. Brooke Agnini? For the motion. Tommy Addison? Mike Schmidt? For the motion. Linda Schultz? For the motion. And Adam Bass? For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes unanimously. Thank you. Absolutely. The next three cases will be presented at the same time by the case planner, Mr. Robert Bolton, but I'll read all three as well into the record. Thank you, Ms. Bennett. The first is a large-scale conference plan amendment, LDC-PAL 2023-10, Alderman Road, BPC. It's a large-scale conference plan future land use designation change from agriculture, residential, rural, and residential low to business park center on 101 acres of a parent tract that's 166 acres. And a text amendment to appendix. And a text amendment to appendix 2.135 in the comprehensive plan, adding a reference that the subject site has development conditions in appendix E of the land development code. And that is a related case that you're hearing this morning, LDC-2023-23. We commonly call these conditional CPAs. And a sub-district change from business park center 1 to business park center 2 on 67 acres, LDC-2023-13. The subject property is located on the north side of Swindell Road, east of North Alderman Road, south of Musket Drive, and west of Swindell Road, north of Lakeland City Limits, and section 18, township 28, and range 23. Property owners are Keith D. Knight and James E. and Noel Morgan Kelso. So the land use change tracked is 101 acres. The sub-district change is on 67 acres. But the text amendment is going to be applicable if approved today or by the Board of County Commissioners, I'm sorry, ultimately on the full 166 acres. The property is in the rural development area, which encompasses the agricultural residential rural portion. And the residential low is in the transit supportive development area. And then it's also in the transit corridors and centers overlay. The nearest municipality, which will be providing the water and sewer, is the city of Lakeland. And I won't read into the record, the request on the other pages. I think that covers all three of them. So I'll go to the advertisements for the conference plan amendment, LDC-PAL 2023-10. 248 mailers were sent to area property owners on June 7th. 13 emails in opposition were received. Two letters in opposition and two phone calls in opposition were received. 15 emails in support were received. Six signs posted on May 20th and a legal ad published in the Lakeland Ledger on June 27th. For the sub-district change to the Business Park Center to LDC-2023-13, 248 mailers were sent to area property owners on May 7th. 13 emails in opposition, two letters in opposition, two phone calls in opposition, and 15 emails in support. Six signs posted on May 20th and a legal ad published in Lakeland Ledger on June 27th. A text amendment to the Land Development Code, LDC-2023-23, 240 mailers were sent to area property owners on May 7th. 13 emails in opposition, two letters in opposition were received, two phone calls in opposition, 15 emails in support, and six signs posted. On May 20th, a legal ad published in the Lakeland Ledger on June 27th. And normally, text amendments don't require all that notice, but we go ahead and reference all the cases with these kinds of conditional CPAs. And with that, Robert Bolton is the case planner. Good morning. Robert Bolton with Land Development, presenting the three related requests. LDC-PAL 2023-10, a request to change the future land use designation on approximately 101 acres from agricultural, residential, rural, ARR, in the residential development area, or the RDA. And residential low one, or RL1, in the transit supportive development area, the TSDA. And within the transit corridors and centers overlay the TCCO's center of that to business park center. LDCD 2023-13 is a sub-district change request on approximately 67 acres of the BPC-1 to BPC-2. And LDCT 2023-23 is a development code text amendment on approximately 166 acres, which includes the BPC districts and the remainder of the ARR and the RL1 districts. We find that this is not consistent with comprehensive plan and development code. Staff is recommending denial. This is a level four review with a BOCC transmittal hearing set for August 6th and an adoption hearing set for October 1st of 2024. The site is located on the north side of Interstate 4, on the north side of Swindell, and the east side of Alderman Road, approximately a half mile east of County Line Road, just north of the city limits of Lakeland. This is a 2023 aerial context map. To the west of the subject site is an area of lower density residential development with the Eagles Landing warehouse distribution building adjacent to the county line. Northward of the subject site are the country class subdivisions and the Itchapac-Assassin Creek development farther to the north. East and south of this site is an area of developed acreage residential lots, primarily on the west side of the stair-step portion of Swindell Road. On the southern side of Swindell Road is the city of Lakeland, with an older warehouse development along South Alderman Road. The primary warehouse district in this area is located south of I-4 in both Hillsborough County and Polk County. This is a closer view of the subject. West of the subject is the residential area I mentioned previously, with the Eagles Landing just west of them. Accessing Alderman Road going north is Giant Oak Road, one of country class developments. As can be seen, there are no similar BPC-type uses that abut the subject property. It should be noted that the parcel on the south side of Swindell Road in the city of Lakeland has been approved by the city for development of a warehouse distribution building. However, the northern and eastern portions, two-thirds of the portion of the site, are deeded conservation and stormwater, with the development happening down in the southwest corner, fronting I-4. This is the existing land use districts within the immediate area. The red outline represents the area that is the request for the BPC-1 and BPC-2 land use changes, and the sub-district change also. And both the red and blue outlines represent the area that has the request for the development code text amendment. The request for LDC-PAL 2023-10 is for a future land use designation change from ARR and RL-1 to be changed to BPC on approximately 101 acres. The request of LDC-D 2023-13 is for a sub-district change on approximately 67 acres of the BPC-1 to be changed to BPC-2. One of the main things with the BPC-2 is it allows for outside storage. As seen in the proposed future land use map, the request bifurcates the RL-1 district, with the western portion being sandwiched between the city of Lakeland, Eagle Landing development warehouse, and the proposed subject site. The request would also extend the BPC district significantly farther north than the city's industrial area or the BPC area further to the east. The requested land use change extends approximately 3,950 feet or approximately three-quarters of a mile north of Swindell Road. This is the applicant's map C or their site plan that they have provided at this level that has been overlaid on a 2023 aerial. The map is represented of several stipulations that are within the LDCT 2023-23 text amendment and ordinance. The lower boxed hatched area is for the commercial support development that would be allowed under the revised limited BPC-1 uses. This diamond-hatched area here, while not geographically described in the text, is the location for the typical BPC or warehouse development. This area is constrained by wetlands. This cross-hatched area here contains a lot of the wetlands and floodplain, which also covers this area here. But the wetlands are located more in the central and eastern side of the site. And due to the wetland and future design needs for stormwater retention and floodplain compensation, the development of the site will concentrate the warehouse development to the western side adjacent to the residential acreage lots. This strip of diagonal hash mark here, which does not appear to scale, is a portion of the enhanced buffer that will be discussed in a few more slides. The commercial area down here is located on the first 850 feet north of Swindell Road, with the warehouse restricted to the northern portion. For context, this depth right here represents approximately two-thirds of the developed depth of Eagle's Landing. Also for context, the BPC district includes the area west of this yellow line. So really, they're only using about half of the BPC district. Access to the site will be prohibited from Alderman Road and will be solely from this approximately 313 feet of frontage on Swindell Road. This is a recent aerial photo looking southwest. The greater text amendment site is outlined in red with the proposed BPC district shaded. West of the site is Eagle's Landing. A small warehouse area within the city of Lakeland is south of Swindell Road, with the main distribution warehousing districts south of I-4 in Hillsborough and Polk counties. This is another look of the site looking northwest, and you can see the site is just surrounded by large acreage residential lots with no similar BPC type uses. The LDCT 2023 text amendment, the full proposed ordinance is included in your packet, includes limitations and enhancements to the development site. These include a limitation of the total development size of the building, both in square footage and in height, enhanced buffering, limiting access only from Swindell Road's approximately 313 feet of road frontage, enhanced setback requirements for the northern site adjacent to the residential use district, limitations to loading, unloading, limitation to operation of refrigerated trucks at overnight periods, and limitations to the use tables of BPC1, BPC2, ARR, and RL1. The text amendment will limit the site to a maximum of 685,000 square feet, 640,000 square feet of warehousing, and 45,000 square feet of commercial support as allowed by the revised use tables. On the north side of I-4 are the two Eagles Landing warehouses buildings. One is just over 152,000 square feet. The second is just under 156,000 square feet for a total of about 308,000 square feet, about 48% of what they're requesting billed out for the proposed site. The next largest warehouse north of I-4 is the National Power Sports auction property. That's just under 142,000 square feet. South of I-4 and going along County Line Road on both sides of Polk and Hillsborough County, is where the largest distribution warehouse is in this area. Warehouses have increased in size substantially over the past 20 years, as you can see by a number of these newer warehouses in the area. This text amendment also limits the height of the building to a maximum of 60 feet. In a BPC1 district, BPC1 allows a maximum of 75 feet. BPC2 allows a maximum of 100 feet. As with the warehouse sizes in the previous slide, this information came to the Polk County property appraisers' parcel records for structure characteristics. Within the area, the typical height is between 32 and 38 feet height. Three buildings or portions of these buildings exceed this height range. The Publix Warehouse addition is at 50 feet. The Southern Wine and Spirits addition is also at 50 feet. The third is the new Amazon facility located at Lakeland International Airport. This building is 60 feet and represents the tallest warehouse or light industrial building in Polk County, not just this area. This is a picture of Southern Wine and Spirits taken from Old Tampa Highway. It's right there near Polk Parkway. The left side of the warehouse is 32 feet high, with the right side being 50 feet high. This row of bushes is approximately 400 feet from the warehouse. This aerial, taken the same time as the other ones, is Southern Wine and Spirits. This is 32 feet. This is the 50 feet. This is the row of bushes right here. It's 400 feet away. That picture was taken. The Texaman establishes a setback from Alderman Road right-of-way of 165 feet. This line of trucks, the back of the cabs, is approximately 165 feet from that warehouse. That's the setback from Alderman Road for context. Within the staff report are use tables with strikethrough. Strikethrough is the prohibited uses. These are allowable use tables for BPC-1 and BPC-2. These are the allowable uses in ARR and RL-1. This is a depiction of the location of the enhanced buffering provided by the applicant. Most notably is the enhanced buffering starting 850 feet north of Swindell Road. It will be 70 feet wide with a 6-foot earthen berm with a typical 20-foot Type-C landscape buffer with the additional 6-foot high PVC fence. Along this northern portion here against this residential, it will also be 70 feet wide with a typical 20-foot Type-C landscape buffer with a 6-foot PVC fence, but no berm. The remainder of the property will have the standard 20-foot Type-C landscape buffer per the land development code. Part of the land use designation change request is looking at what the current site is. The subject is currently ARR in the RDA and RL-1 in the TSDA. The site is also within the center of the TCCO, which allows for higher intensity and density of development when located within the TSDA. The TCCO allows for residential density of 12 dwelling units to the acre within an RL district. However, the development must still adhere to the current development standards and use code for that land use district. If the development needs relief from the LDC, whether for lot widths of less than 50 feet, reduction in setbacks, or any other standard, it will still be required to go through a PD process. To reach a density of 12 dwelling units per acre, multifamily may be required. That is not allowed within the ARR, and it's a Level 3 or Planning Commission approval within the RL-1 district. So a public hearing is going to need to be held. While the application is not for residential use, a lot of discussion has been had on the potential residential development of this site if the land use request is not successful. Recently, the Florida County Commissioners adopted a plan development locational eligibility score matrix. This is the location of the eligibility score matrix for the subject site. It scored 14 points, placing it into the 3.5 maximum dwelling unit per acre category. While this matrix is not required for development at densities allowed in the TCCO and TSDA if they can do it without any accommodation, it does reflect the maximum development load that the land development considers could be the site could support given the proximity to the various infrastructure items that are needed for successful residential development regardless of what land use district it's in. Looking west, this is a picture looking west along Swindell Road with the site to the right. This is looking north from Swindell Road. Looking south along Alderman Road toward Swindell Road. Looking north with the site to the right. This is near the end of Alderman Road. Looking northeast at the site and also looking southeast. The site is serviced by public services and will not impact schools. The applicant has a water and sewer commitment by the city of Lakeland. Much will be talked about the wet, flood, and drainage conditions of the site and surrounding area. This area has significant history with the attempt to moderate these issues. This is a 1941 aerial of the site from the Polk County data viewer, showing the historic wetlands and drainage canals that were already started prior to the 1941 aerial. On the right is the same area in the most recent 2023 aerial with floodplain and wetland layers turned on. No matter what is developed on this subject site, warehousing, or residential, the development will be required to meet the same policies for stormwater management, wetland protection, and floodplain compensation. With the anticipated wetlands, floodplains, and general groundwater levels in the area, it is anticipated that significant portions of the site will need to be dedicated for floodplain compensation. The subject's three requests, LDCPAL 2023-10, a request for future land use designation change from ARR and RL1 to BPC1 on approximately 101 acres. LDCD 2023-13, a sub-district change request on approximately 67 acres of the previous 101 acres from BPC1 to BPC2. And LDCT23-23-23, a development code text amendment, adding conditions for development on approximately 166 acres, are not considered to be consistent and compatible with a comprehensive plan and land development code. The site would bifurcate an RL1 district developed with large acreage residential lots and intrude into an ARR district also developed with large acreage lots. The intrusion into this area would be approximately three-quarters of a mile. The requested BPC district is not contiguous with another similar land use district and is not compact. The requested text amendment is not considered to provide adequate buffering from this intrusion. Staff recommends a denial on LDCPAL 2023-10, LDCD 2023-13, LDCT 2023-23. Each of these items are going to require a separate action. With this, I'll stand for questions. Thank you, and just to clarify what he just said, we have three items we're going to be looking at. They're all brought together. We'll need three different motions and three different votes on that. And it's staff's recommendation for justification for denial. Any questions for staff? Seeing none, we'll ask the applicant to come on up, name and address, as you know, and present your case. Good morning, Commission. While I'm getting my PowerPoint presentation going, my name is Bart Allen. I'm a land use attorney with the Peterson and Myers law firm. My address is 225 East Lemon Street, Lakeland, Florida. And I am here on behalf of the applicant, Stalwart Equities. And this is regarding the Stalwart Business Park. Staff's given you an overview of the case. But before I get into kind of talking about some of the merits, I wanted to get a little housekeeping out of the way. I want to introduce a few folks. First, I have from Stalwart, I have Mr. Sanjay Amin. He is our applicant and representative. I've also got three experts here with me this morning, which I don't always do. But, you know, given that we knew we were going to have a recommendation of denial, we brought our team with us today. First, I'd like to introduce Ms. Diane Chadwick. She is a principal planner with Stantec, Inc. She is an AICP with 47 years of experience in planning and has done a number of projects in Polk County, including working on the Clear Spring Sector Plan. She worked on the FedEx distribution facility, the Walmart distribution facility, and the New Course Steel project as well. So I would like to introduce her as an expert. I also have from the engineering side, I have Mr. Mark Wilson and Justin Hamm, both from Kimley Horn. Mark has 35 years of experience in land development and civil engineering. Y'all have seen him here on many occasions. And we also have Justin. Justin is a PE as well with eight years of experience doing various residential and non-residential development throughout Central Florida. I'd like, I have copies of their resume for purposes of the record. I would respectfully request all three be admitted as experts. And if anybody would like to ask them questions regarding their credentials, we will make them available for that as well. Okay, so we'll just take a second. Do we have to take a motion? Yeah, we'll need a motion to accept them as experts in their respective fields. So we'll give the board a second to review resumes here, Mr. Allen, if you don't mind. And I just want to add. See if there's any questions. Yes, and specifically to Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hamm related to drainage and their experience with civil design, drainage permitting, and things of that nature. I just want to reiterate their credentials there. As you look at the resumes, if you have any questions or if you have any questions before you look at the resumes, as far as they're experts, if not, I just need a motion or we can give you a couple minutes if you guys want to look at the resumes. Just for clarification, Mr. Hamm and Mr. Wilson are testifying on the same item. That's correct. They've both been involved in this project. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I'd like to make a motion to accept them as experts. Do I have a second? Second. Motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you. Appreciate that. Congratulations, guys. Mr. Hamm, congratulations. Mr. Wilson, we know you're an expert. So just to kind of bring some of this back, there's a lot to talk about in this case, so we're going to try to be mindful of everybody's time, but there are a lot of things that we need to cover. So just from a high level, I'm not going to go through a lot of the nitty-gritty detail that Mr. Bolton just went through, but there's a couple of things that we really need to talk about. But from a high level, this is 165, 166 acres, more or less, site that we are proposing to develop a business park center on. And a lot of work has gone into preparing that site plan and to developing these conditions of approval. This has not been something that was haphazardly done. There's been several meetings with the staff. There's been DRCs. We've had community meetings with residents of the community, and we've incorporated as much feedback into creating what is one of the best sets of conditions and the best set of restrictions for a project that really I've presented to this board. And we can even compare that to some of the other things that have been approved in the county and may do that as we work through the project. But for this site, what I think is important to recognize is that this is an expansion of an existing industrial corridor. Looking at this sub-district change and the mapping request here, this solely focuses on Polk County, just to highlight it. Within the 165 acres, I think it's important to recognize that when you distill it down to what is being proposed to be developed with the restrictions in place, the 70-foot landscape buffers, all of those things, we're really only developing 65 acres out of this 165-acre site. So that's a really conservative approach to this project, trying to be respectful of the surrounding properties, but also mindful of what's going on in the area. And we can't ignore what is happening to our west, which, based on staff's presentation, there was a hard line and nothing happens west of County Line Road. But it's important to recognize what's happening west of County Line Road. It's important to recognize what's happening south of I-4, as well as up and down the I-4 corridor. This is one of the hottest spots for these kinds of developments in the country, and I think we've all seen those reports. We are looking to establish this as a combination of a BPC-1 and a BPC-2 district. Again, we've already kind of talked through some of those issues. When you look at the 685,000 square feet that is limited, that's a hard number in our conditional policies, a hard number in there. You're looking at a floor area ratio of only 0.12. That is extremely low when you think about intensity of development. Again, in the transit corridor overlays, within the transit corridor centers, these are the overlays that are policies of the Polk County Conference of Plan that have been adopted by the board that direct these types of developments within it. There was, and while Mr. Bolton went through a very lengthy discussion about plan developments, when you look at the comprehensive plan, what the policies are for the TSDA and the TCCO, and there was an administrative determination issued in 2023 by this county that recognizes that the intensities, those intensities are already allowed. You may have to go through a PD to get your site plan approved because you may need some deviation from a lot size or a setback, but based on that interpretation by the Polk County in 2023, the intensities aren't in question. It's what the site plan looks like, and I think that's an important distinction between what we just heard from Mr. Bolton. On a conservative measure, based on staff's report, 875 homes between multifamily and single-family could be permitted on this site. I think we heard a lot about residential development earlier today and those impacts. I'm not going to reiterate that conversation, but what this site does is limits it, the intensity limits the off-site impacts, it limits the infrastructure, won't be putting trucks on the Alderman Road, things of that nature. So I think that's really important for us to kind of keep in the context of the conversation. To reiterate that, to our northeast corner, immediately adjacent to the site on the northeast corner, that was approved, but for a PD a couple years ago, it is getting ready to go into development. That was around three and a half dwelling units an acre. That was the Walker Road PD on the Cary Dairy site that we handled several years ago. So that's moving forward. In addition, I presented a case to this board. It ultimately stopped, for market reasons, just to the east of here that was on our western boundary was the east side of part of Swindoll Road. I have heard, not my case at this point, that it just came in for a sub-district change consideration to RL4. So that site is looking at developing into residential at that four dwelling units and acres. So what I'm saying is that there is a residential pressure in this area, but there's also an industrial pressure in this area and desire. And what we have presented to you is a, what we will present to you is a very good case. I've already talked about the TCCOs and the TSDA overlays, so I'm not going to reiterate those and the incentives there. But I'm going to ask Ms. Chadwick to come in and talk about compatibility, because it seems that using staff's language of intrusion, in the RDA, in the comprehensive plan policies, business park centers are allowed. It is specifically listed as an allowable land use within the RDA. It's very specifically listed in the TSDA as well. So there's no, in my view of the comprehensive plan, nothing that would prevent this land use from being assigned to these parcels in the manner that we're presenting it to you. But I'm going to ask Ms. Chadwick, since she is the expert here on planning, to speak a few minutes on those issues. Good morning. Diane Chadwick, for the record. I'm just going to touch on a couple of the comprehensive plan policy issues. BPC, future land use, does encourage industrial and ancillary commercial uses when it's in proximity to arterial roadways. We're on Swindell Road, and we're a half mile from the interchange of County Line Road and I-4, which is very significant. We do have utilities available to us through the city of Lakeland. We're proposing to set aside quite a bit of land. Bart talked to you a little bit about that. We have at least 60 acres of land that would be open space, wetland preservation, stormwater facilities, and floodplain compensation areas. That's a minimum of 60 acres. This is a context map. It kind of helps you see more of the greater area of what's going on out there. You can see we have a close proximity to the interchange. I-4 has become a very popular industrial corridor from Tampa all the way to Orlando. I'm sure you guys have driven that route many times and seen that. Plant City has approved many different projects on their eastern edge, as you can see in the crosshatch here. They have a proposed site right in this area for industrial. This is the Blue Steel Industrial Project that was just approved a few months ago by the city of Plant City, and it's north of Swindell Road, and it's right on the county line, and it was approved for 1.6 million square feet. Also down in this area is a proposed truck stop that's being constructed by FDOT because they recognize the amount of industrial development on this corridor and the need for additional truck parking opportunities for the trucks. But as you can see, both the city of Lakeland and Polk County have approved a variety of business park and industrial designations in this area. The comprehensive plan discourages urban sprawl in the creation of low-density development. This is an industrial hub that exists today and continues to grow. The comprehensive plan calls for the protection of neighborhoods as part of this application, as you've been hearing. We have proposed Land Development Code text amendment language to provide for restrictions on building heights, enhanced landscaping, greater building setbacks, restrictions on hours and types of operation, and allowable uses. The comprehensive plan recognizes the need for commercial and industrial uses for economic growth. This project will create commercial and employment opportunities for the surrounding area. The site meets the comprehensive plan locational criteria for being within two miles of an intersecting arterial. Again, we're a half mile from the interchange. And in addition to that, we're also mitigating for perceived adverse impacts. We agreed to dark sky lighting, providing additional building setbacks, enhancing buffering along the west and north boundaries. The comprehensive plan allows for commercial activities to support the PPC with restrictions on size. As Bart told you, we're proposing only 45,000 square feet of commercial that would serve both industrial users and the surrounding neighborhood. There is a cap of a flow rate ratio of 0.25, and as Bart mentioned, we are proposing only a 0.12, and that's over the entire site. And the reason that we're allowed we can keep that low is, of course, because we have so much preservation land for open space, floodplain compensation, stormwater facilities, and wetlands. Policy 2.113-B-4 calls for industrial uses to limit outdoor activities. The proposed BPC on the western edge will prohibit outdoor storage. It also limits hours and types of operation. The comprehensive plan directs that land be allocated for future industrial uses to allow for a viable and diverse economy. Policies also encourage the clustering of major industrial uses. And as I showed you, we have those type uses around that interchange, and this is quite the industrial hub at this point. Comprehensive plan policies require designation of BPC to encourage industrial uses. This part of Polk County, in addition to Plant City, has evolved into a major industrial hub due to its availability of land and its proximity to the I-4 interchange. We did work extensively with Mr. Bolton and Ms. Bennett on restrictive language that we could apply here. There was a lot of back and forth, but I think we came to something that we can all get along with and be okay with. But the restrictions are for that 640,000 square feet of industrial building space and a cap of the 45,000 square feet of commercial, which, of course, would definitely serve the whole area there. It does restrict access for the parcel only to Swindell Road. It particularly prohibits access to Alderman Road. Absolutely no access there. And as you've heard, and I don't think you've heard the actual dimension, but the BPC-1 designation is 400 feet wide from our western boundary towards the east. And we did that on purpose to make sure that we caught what we have as far as a concept plan at this point, that we caught the back end of the buildings to make sure that these extra restrictions applied to the backside of those buildings. And, of course, that's part of the enhancement for the adjacent residential uses. Also, some of what you've heard is on the western boundary, we are proposing an enhanced buffer at 70 feet wide. I believe your code calls for 20 feet, so we're more than three times bigger. We're doing a six-foot berm with a six-foot fence on top of that, along with landscaping materials. North boundary would have that same width of 70 feet and with the same width, landscape materials, but a six-foot fence. The other areas around would be determined with the level two site plans just because most of it is up against either agricultural areas or it's not being proposed for actual development area for us. So, in addition, you know, we have building and loading setbacks being increased. We have restrictions on hours and type of operations. We have restrictions on the use of refrigeration trucks, restrictions on outdoor storage. The ARR and the RL1 area to our east, which is a very large part of the project, that would be restricted under the ARR. It would be restricted to only open space, floodplain compensation, wetlands, and stormwater facilities. The RL1 would have those same restrictions, with one exception, is that it would allow for one dwelling unit, and that's because there's one dwelling unit sitting there today. So, it acknowledges that use. And so, this is a cross-section of that buffer, and I know you can't read the dimensions on there, because I can't read the dimensions on there. But we do show the 165 feet from the property line over to the face of the building as a minimum. That's a minimum dimension. And that includes that 70-foot buffer with the 6-foot berm and the 6-foot wall. And then if you go further to the west, you have a 30-foot right-of-way for Alderman Road. And then the homes on the west side of Alderman Road also have their own setback from Alderman Road. So, you're looking at probably 200-foot or so on average in that area to probably at a minimum, I should say, not an average, that would be in that position. And at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Mark. Do I have any questions for Ms. Chadwick while she's standing here? I've got one. I just had a real quick question. The building height there that's shown on the cross-section is how high? 60. That's a 60-foot high? Okay. Yes. I'd like clarification on that. Is the arrow that says Industrial Distribution Facility, is that the 60-foot or is the actual depiction of the building 60-foot? The depiction of the building is 60 feet. So, this is all in scale. Excuse me. If the setback is 70 feet, I don't believe that's a 60-foot tall building. Agreed. Well, you have a point there. It does look a little out of scale, doesn't it? We'll take a look at that and make sure that I confirm that. Yes, ma'am. Just saying. I appreciate that comment. That's the height of a truck is 30 feet. That's why I'm asking. Yes, if the truck is 30 feet, then you're... Got some overpass issues. Yeah. We don't want that. All right. I'm going to ask Mr. Wilson to come talk about the drainage analysis and the stormwater analysis for the site. Good morning, Mark Wilson. For the record, 109 South Kentucky Avenue in Lakeland, Florida with Kimmy Horn and Associates and a professional engineer. A little bit more detail I'll try to dive into and maybe just touch on drainage, which you know is a critical issue in this site or any site, quite frankly, whether or not you're doing land use zoning that you're going to develop in this corridor and when you have a flood plan on your property. But we tried to provide a little bit more definition to the site plan that you see here. So kind of touching on what, you know, everyone who's spoken before me has told you about, the level of development and level of open space, I think you get a little better visual picture here of what's going on. So maybe explain a little bit that the green areas are wetlands. And we show some of the wetlands off the site just for perspective and to see how the site fits together. These blue areas are actually just surface waters, a different class of wetlands, if you will. And then the light blue is what's mapped as floodplain. And the floodplain out here has a detailed flood study. It's been completed by the Water Management District. So we know the elevation based on the flood study here. It's been defined and it's been mapped accordingly based on that expanse of floodplain that comes back here from Inchipack of Sousa Creek. And then the yellow area, which is not on our site, just in case you're wondering what the yellow is, it's floodplain as well, but it doesn't have a detailed study that's been completed to define an actual elevation. So that kind of explains what's going on with the map. We took the time and effort on our site to actually go out and flag with a biologist and stake the wetlands and make applications of swift mud for wetland determination. So we've done some work to actually get these defined. We do have some small impacts out here proposed, but our impacts are really surface water impacts out here, which are really just ponds and low quality. And we're preserving roughly 50 plus acres of the wetlands on our site. So we're not impacting this, the green areas we're maintaining, and we're maintaining the flows to these surface water canals and ditches that are out here. I believe it was touched on as well that approximately 65 acres we're developing, and it's probably a little bit less than that because the 65 includes the fact that we're doing a landscape buffer here. But 65 out of the 166 acres, I think this gives you a better visual of the fact that these are stormwater ponds, so we're counting that as development. So our stormwater ponds are part of the 65 acres, so 100 acres are really either going to be undisturbed, the canal system remains intact, wetlands stay intact, uplands, some upland areas are going to stay intact, we're not disturbing. And you get the single-family house here as well that's not being changed. And then the areas we are disturbing, we're disturbing for flood compensation. So we're going to come in and we're going to dig these areas out. We had geotech data out here, so we know where the seasonal water table is, we know where the floodplain elevation is based on the detailed study. So we've taken the time to actually do some calculations, and we know that whatever impacts we're having in here to do this development in these floodplain areas, we can come in here, we can dig these areas out. So they're not stormwater, they're just areas we're excavating out to provide cup for cup. So if we have this much impact, we're going to provide this much compensation to match. So we're not doing modeling, we're not trying to hold back additional water to try to say we're going to meet it. We're going to, whatever we're impacting, we're digging out an area that's equivalent or larger to make sure we match it. Now, we are going to be meeting all the standards like anyone would have to for stormwater management to go through Polk County and Swipmud. And, of course, we're going to meet the 25-year event and also the 100-year event as well, and we're going to discharge less rate and discharge less volume. So we feel confident when we go through the level two, we're going to do that. We did take the time, as I noted, to, you know, we didn't just do a conceptual, hey, can we make this drainage work? We actually took the time and did a drainage model. So this is what you see here before you, which is really what the plan was I just showed before, but it shows that we've taken time to go do some real calculations to make sure we can confidently tell you that we're going to meet the standards and we can get through the system and we can be compliant with the rules and regulations and we can also be compliant with the floodplain compensation impact. So I think this gives you a little bit, you know, different picture of what I was showing in the previous slide, but it shows, you know, the compensation areas, all the conservation we have, and the fact our development, you know, is really limited to this western side of the property more in a linear fashion. And we have a significant amount of open space available out of the 166 acres. Again, 100 or more are going to be either conserve, conservation, wetlands, compensation. Any questions I'll ask if you have, answer if you have them? I got it. Well, go ahead. Sorry. Mark. What impervious area, how much impervious area are you creating? So of the, I don't have the exact number. We've run it, but I just don't have the number. Well, actually, you know, I may have the number with me here, but it's significantly less than 65 acres, obviously. All of it. Yeah. So it's in the 30-acre range or less is what it is. It's maybe not even half of what we're proposing to develop at the 65 acres. Now that counts building and that counts paving. So it's going to be less than the 30 acres because we have stormwater ponds as well within the 65 and buffers within that. Mark, let me ask you a question. If Swindell Road had to be improved, is there sufficient right-of-way to do that? We will be dedicating right-of-way, and we're going to have to make some improvements on Swindell Road for our access. We have completed a transportation study, so there's adequate capacity there, but we will be on our access off of Swindell. We'll be dedicating right-of-way on our side, and we will have to make improvements according to county standards for that access. I mean, if it had to be improved back towards county line or back towards the I-4 interchange? We don't expect improvements to go. It's just at our entranceway here, we don't foresee that we have any improvements coming back at the interchange or further back to the west. I know the development that Mr. Allen referenced that's on the Hillsborough County side, they are going to be making some improvements at that interchange and that intersection because they're extending county line road to the north, and they're going to be making some improvements at that intersection. So it's likely what they're doing is just going to make the roadway system better, and it's going to help us. We're going to piggyback on the improvements they're making. What is the traffic in and out of here? What's the anticipated traffic load, trucking and everything? And I understand you're not coming out on – you're not ingress-egress on Alderman, but you can't stop trucks from going that way either once they leave your property. Or is there restrictions to the road that would not allow that? Well, and as you've heard before, there's no access to Alderman Road. Alderman accessing – a truck accessing Alderman Road is not going to really get you anywhere. So we have done a traffic study. Bart's looking up what the trip numbers are. And it's not logical, I guess, for someone to come out on the Swindell Road and then try to make a relatively quick turn and go down Alderman. So the traffic that we've done, it's going to be on Swindell, and it's either going to go east or west. It's likely it's going to go west because that's where the I-4 interchange is, right, which is a more significant interchange on I-4 at County Line Road. You know, those of us that are familiar with Polk County, we understand that County Line Road and that I-4 interchange is a pretty significant interchange. To answer – to be a little bit more specific to that answer, based on the square footage and the traffic analysis that we have had done, it looks like it generates around 4,100 trips on the daily basis, which triggers a type 4 intersection for this area for the project. 4,100 a day, is that right? Make sure I heard you right. Yes, sir. Okay. All right, any other questions for Mark? I know Mark's not finished yet, right, or do you have more to say? I have a quick question. What's the age of the flood study that we're using for this area? It's a study from the Water Management District. I don't have the exact year they completed it. I know they're currently in the process of updating the flood study in that area. It's expected delivery dates, 2025, but they're kind of on track. They're gathering data right now. I believe it's 2025. Justin's nodding his head at me, yeah, because we've dug into that. So – and the current study from the Water Management District – yeah, so we're – Justin just said 2011 or 2012. So it's not really old. We're still in the 2000s, but what's that, 13, 12 years ago. So, yeah. Old enough. I guess in the stuff they're doing right now, have you guys talked with the district at all? Do you anticipate any changes in the flood elevations coming? We have talked to them, but we don't have any feedback on expected changes. We know they're gathering data, trying to get a more accurate study with everything that's changed in this area. We are, you know, prepared that if the elevation does increase, that we can still manage it with what we're proposing on the site here. We don't – I would be surprised if it's a significant jump from the current 115 in the location that we're in. And, you know, the flood study, you know, changes as you go along down the Ajpec-Issessa Basin as it goes back to the west. Mark, I think I heard you say this, but I just want to verify. You're going to do a cup for cup. You're not doing any modeling of no rise on this. Correct. And I think you can appreciate that as an engineer that, you know, we're not doing modeling efforts here. We are doing cup for cup. And I think that's pretty important in what we're proposing. So, yeah. Okay. Thank you. For purposes of the record, basically the report that Mr. Wilson was talking about where those exhibits were generated, this is a copy of the full report just for purposes of the record. Any other questions of Mr. Wilson? Mark, could you put that 4,100 number in the context? Are you talking about at the intersection? Well, so it's 4,100 average annual daily trips, I believe, which you kind of swag that out. That's probably about 410 peak hour trips. And a lot of times when you're doing a roadway, you don't focus too much on the average annual daily trip, just more about the peak hour trips when it comes to intersection, turn lane improvements, and what impacts you may have. So I think maybe to put it in perspective, 410 peak hour trips, I mean, it's an exorbitantly high number, but it's still an impactful number. But the roadway is built and has capacity to handle that, and the intersection has capacity to handle that. And we believe it's going to even be improved further when the county line road extension comes through and that project comes through and even does further improvements to that intersection, that location. What is your peak time that you're speaking of? So it's peak hour. It's roughly a three-hour window. I mean, but when? PM. So generally PM, and I believe our PM is going to be the higher. Usually on these types of developments, PM is a higher number than AM would be. So even though you do both of them, AM is going to be less. So other questions, Mark, just real quick, you said you designed the site for a 25- and 100-year storm event. Is that correct? That's correct. This is a volume-sensitive area? It is a volume-sensitive area, so we're going to be matching well below what's allowable volume discharge, but also the rate discharge on both of those events. Thank you. So just to kind of wrap up, those are really the big issues that we wanted to touch on in the case in chief. We know there's some folks here to speak. I believe there's some folks here in support as well as opposition, which is unique. But one other thing that before I kind of wrap up the closing comments I wanted to touch on, Mr. Bolden referenced the development to the south and that there was a 20-acre conservation easement on that piece of property. Well, he's right, there is, but the reason for that is that they are going, it's a 30-acre site, and they are wiping out for stormwater ponds and development 20-some-odd acres of wetlands on that piece of property. So the mitigation for that and the stormwater ponds and things like that are covered by that conservation easement. So that's why there's a conservation easement. It's not the conservation easement in the context of the land doesn't get touched. It's a conservation easement for purposes of development and mitigating the wetlands that they're impacting on that site. I have a copy of that permit and the easement for purposes of the record. Bart, do you have anything else? No, I just, what we've talked about here, I think, you know, when you look at the site as a whole, you look at the proposed development as a whole, you look at the area, the growth, the development immediately to the south with the industrial that's coming. There's development, a piece of land just transacted in the past 60 days just immediately to the west of this that will be developed for business industrial-type projects. You've got existing industrial development moving further west into Planned City as well as completely south as you look through. This is compatible. We've addressed all of the issues from compatibility's sake as it relates to visual screening from limiting hours to dark skylighting to just limiting the overall intensity of development. And we believe that this is a project that would be approved or should be approved. And I don't always jump into the, what I call my rebuttal slides, but I think it's important for context when you look at what happened. This is just further south on County Line Road. These four different cases were recently approved into my knowledge with the exception of a couple little minor things. They were all fairly supported by staff and ultimately approved with the exception of the setbacks around the residential where they set the fit. Were you not supporting that one? So these have all been approved with a 50-foot boundary around this existing residential. That's a 50-foot strip that remained ARR for setbacks, and we're substantially greater than that. And I think that's extremely important. Our landscape buffer in and of itself is 70 feet wide. Thank you, Bert. Thank you. Any clarification on the cross-section, or do you want to come back with that? I'll do it on rebuttal. Okay, thank you. I'll check on that. All right, so with that, staff, you're good, and we're going to move forward to the public hearing unless you'd like to say anything. All right, so we'll open the floor to a public hearing at this point. Anyone here to speak for or against this case, please come forward. If you're here to speak, and we have multiple speakers, if you can cue yourself in the middle aisle, we'd appreciate that. You'll have three minutes to name and address for the record, please. Good morning. My name is Edward Leonard, and I'm president of the Country Class Farms Homeowners Association. I've heard a lot today. One thing I do understand, you can get an expert to say anything. You can get statistics to say anything, but the real truth right now is this is not compatible. That's the first thing we heard, that it's not compatible. And then we are here to let you see the human side of what they're trying to do. This project is bounded on three sides by residential areas. The only open side is on Swindell Road. This is all residential. When you come in and you want to put a warehouse, it's like putting a warehouse in the middle of your yard. That's what they're trying to do. It's a land grab. So we're not experts. We're just normal people, just like you are. But the staff said it's not compatible. You can bring in 50,000 experts to say what you want it to say. It's not compatible. It is not compatible. And we know we're not dumb. I spent 20 years in the military, so it's not dumb. I know experts say what you pay them to say. Listen, you guys have an important job. Just like you said, it's very important what you do. We're people just like you. I'm retired, so this is where I live. Make the decision with the rules and with your heart. You know what's right and what's wrong. This is wrong to put a warehouse in the middle of our yard. The houses on, I live on Giant Oak Road, 805 Giant Oak Road, Edward Leonard. The houses there are $500 to a million dollars right behind there on Giant Oak Road. Our house values will be going down. I mean, that's not really important. The important thing is, thank you, Mr. Bolton, for saying it's not compatible. If you can keep that in your mind, it's not compatible, we would appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Hi, my name is Ronald Clayton, 835 Morning Star Drive. I butt up to the property, 120 feet. If you look at the northeast corner, you're going to see a tree line. On that tree line, we have what we call pink lichen, which is how scientists determine air quality. You put all of these semi-trucks coming in and out, 4,100 a day, what's the quality of the air going to be? Have we done a GSI study on all the layers, not just their layers, but all of the layers of what that is going to do and how it's going to impact everything? Thank you. Thank you, sir. Chandra, can we get a map on the... Good morning. My name is Elisa. Me and my husband own a home that I have an easement on Alderman as well as Swindell. So my front driveway is Swindell Road, butting up to the entrance of where the trucks will be coming in and out of. I am in support of the warehouse. To me, I'd rather have a set time that trucks are entering and coming out of the property rather than 1,200 townhomes being developed. I look at 1,200 homes being 2,400 cars, if not three cars per household, two cars per household. I just feel like you add in a lot more traffic. That puts traffic on Alderman Road. I also understand that beyond bigger people than us that Polk County is getting developed, whether we like it or not. I would love if Polk County stayed rural, but it is what it is. They're going to continue to develop. I-4, I'm sure, is going to get expanded right into my front yard eventually. So to me, I'd rather have a warehouse that... Right now, we have a warehouse on the other side. It's relatively quiet. They're in and out. I don't have any issues with it. I think that I would rather have that than 1,200 homes with 1,200 families that you don't know what you're going to get. It could be trouble. It could be not trouble. It could be great people. It could be craziness. I'd just rather have it be... One, you can also work with a business. If there's an issue, you can call the business. You can say, hey, these things are happening. We don't like it. You're going to get a little bit more further with that. Then you're not going to be able to call this neighbor and say, hey, would you stop doing that? Would you stop coming in and out this time? Would you stop making this noise? You don't really have control over that with homeowners. homeowners, so that is all I've got to say. Just real quick, can you give us your address for the record? It is 5021 Swindell Road. My backyard easement is on Alderman, and then my front yard is Swindell. Okay. Thank you. We've seen your name and address for the record. Thank you. Linda Swindell, I live at 202 Alderman Road, right across from the property. I agree with what Elise said. As far as we already have warehouses around, it's not affecting us. And most of the traffic on our road comes when there's an accident on Swindell, off of I-4, when there's been an accident, because everybody gets off there to go around the accident. So it's not really going to affect us in any way. We're already exposed to that. And I prefer it going warehouses than townhouses, too, because of the amount of people and how much more traffic. So I basically support the plan. Okay? Thank you. Thank you. Hi. I'm Rochelle McKinney. I live at 202 Alderman Road. I agree with my mother-in-law with the traffic issues because we have children and everything. And I just want to agree with the plans. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Jenny Fitchett, and I live at 4651 Swindell Road. I'm not for either one. Like he said before, I think it is in the wrong place. Another thing that bothers me is that this is wetlands, okay? I have been at my house since 1994. My husband has lived out in this area longer than that. We've had water all the way around our house, like an island. Because there's a creek running off of Winston Creek that runs down behind my house and several other people. This is all residential. And it comes down and runs that way. I know I am not an expert, but I know this. You mess with those wetlands, and we're going to have a problem. I don't care how many ponds. I've heard this all before. And you're messing with the wetlands. And if it gets backed up for any reason, if those ponds get too full and they have to empty out into that wetland area and the water has no place to go, I'm going to be drowning. It's a pack sasset. They depend on, I know you've heard about it, the flooding that they have. So it's not the right place. And it is rural and residential. And I know that you say, well, you know, there's other buildings and stuff around. True, but it hasn't impacted us yet that far down on this side, the northern side. We've had other people try where there was a while back, about a year back, that we were here again. And they wanted to put another warehouse in before the water would run off all these warehouses and come down into this little wetland area and hit the creek and then go down to there. Well, it was impacting us. And so everybody came out and fought for that. And that was not the right place for it. And this is the wrong place. And there's lots of warehouses that can be built where they belong. There's sites along the Polk Parkway ready to go, but it doesn't belong there. And that's why we're here. Thank you so much for your time. Good morning. David Leffler, 4455 Swindale Road. Boy, we've heard a lot today, haven't we? But, you know, I get both sides. I'm surrounded on three sides of it. The 88 acres on Walker Road, which is the Cary Dairy, that's 2,000 feet from my property line. This is 600 feet from my northwest line to their southeast line. It'll connect across about 600, almost 700 maybe. And then directly 50 feet across the road from me is going to be the housing development that we'll be back here talking about soon, which is the warehouse that was put down last year that Ms. Pitchett just referenced. We've got too much going on here, guys. Y'all, really, I'm asking you, please, come out and take a look, take a walk, take a drive. This habitat, this ecosystem, this neighborhood of Swindale Road in the stair-step area with Alderman Road, Walker Road, is a very unique area. Drainage runs odd here, right? They tried to improve it years ago when they added the Polk Parkway and the Clark Road and the North Frontage Road change up, and it affected a lot of people there. And that's where a lot of this water has come from. We have pictures from the last presentation when we were here last year with buildings with water this high up the wall where people should have been working, but they couldn't. So we're imploring, you know, asking you to please put a hold on this. Something needs to – look, we're not the subject matter experts. We don't know about all the land use codes, all the comprehensive plan, the transit corridor, and a lot of that stuff was made – those decisions were made years ago. What's on paper doesn't always work in the yard, and that's what we're asking. Please, don't do this yet. You guys, come out, take a look, take a walk. During the rainy season, take a look, take a walk. I'll bring you the coffee. We can sit on my porch and we'll watch the traffic. Because the 4,100 average of the peak time, and it was mentioned, if the I-4 is locked down and you can't get past County Line Road westbound, they all come on Swindell Road. They come on Clark Road, Walker Road, Highway 92, and it gets to be gridlocked sometimes. Alderman Road is a dead-end road. I know they said they're not going to have entrance, egress, egress, whatever those terms are, coming on Alderman Road, but it will be affected. There will be people that will get lost because their GPS is not pointing them in the correct direction. So, again, it's not conducive to this area, houses or warehouses. It is very intrusive to our neighborhood. It is protruding way north into rural residential area. I'm a third generation on my land. My grandfather purchased that land after he was discharged from the military after World War II. So thank you for your time. Y'all have a great day. Thank you, sir. Anyone else to speak? My name is Dennis Craig. I live at 5129 Alderman Road. My wife and I moved to Florida from New Jersey in 2010. We purchased our home on Alderman Road in 2007, and in 2010, when I retired, we moved there full-time. When we were shopping for our house, there were a lot of conditions that I wanted to have when I moved there. One of them was a quiet neighborhood on houses separated on large pieces of property in a rural neighborhood. Remember, I came from New Jersey. It's quite congested there. The zoning on that property when I decided to buy that house was very important to me, very important. And I looked at it, and I believed it. And I think anyone who purchases a house has a reasonable expectation that the zoning that exists when they buy the house is the zoning that's going to stay there. Otherwise, it becomes buyer beware. And that's not the way it should be. As far as traffic goes right there, Swindell Road and Alderman Road, it's a four-way stop sign. And as the gentleman before me told you, when traffic slows down on Interstate 4, which lately has been most of the time, the trucks get off and try to bypass it on the frontage road and Swindell Road. And that four-way stop sign will back up past Clark Road and all the way down the south side frontage road. The people who live on Alderman Road and Giant Oak Road, our only access to those roads is Swindell Road. We don't get on the interstate. We go shopping in downtown Lakeland or Plant City. So we need to come down Swindell Road and turn right on Alderman Road to reach our houses. If there's 4,100 trucks coming in and out of this development, that four-way stop sign coupled with the traffic backed up on Interstate 4 is going to create a traffic nightmare and make it so hard for us to get in and out of our homes, we're not going to want to leave, come or go, at all. Any other consideration as far as compatibility goes? This project, and it's been said before, it's right in the middle of a residential neighborhood. There are houses on all three sides. And the only frontage on Swindell Road is a very small, narrow flag area that all those trucks are going to come in and out of. Let me wrap up. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, sir. Anyone else? Come on. My name is Janet Benton, and I live at 5139 Alderman Road. I'm at the very dead end. You go down where the proposed property is, you make a sharp curve. I'm at the very dead end. We do have a problem with flooding out there. My husband and I have, we have a little pond on our property. We dug it out. It was a rainy season in 2017. We were already flooded out there. A pond was full. The neighbors, cow pasture behind us was full. The neighbors over here was full. Then Hurricane Irma came through. That water had nowhere to go. Overnight, after the storm, we had, we looked like a castle, even though I live in a manufactured home up in the air. It was like a moat around us, and it was just, it was scary. That's, we've been out there 30 years. We moved out there in 1993. We moved out there, Country Oak Classic wasn't even out there yet. So, you know, there's a lot of wetlands out there, as everybody knows. Back to the Hurricane Irma, it rose. Because we're at the, like, the dead end. Even the county has come out and dug the ditches. But everybody drains down on our property. It was that far from coming in to the bottom of our trailer. So, we prayed and prayed and prayed that it would go down to the Lord and let it go down. We had to get on to our neighbors, not Miss Toye, directly across from us. But there's a couple that has a home. They don't, they just have a driveway that goes off the dead end. And they were going fast. They didn't know what they were doing, but they were causing wakes. And we went out there. And my husband had to go out and say, please stop. You know, because we're trying to save the floor at our home. So, I don't know. I'm not an expert. But this is our view. And it's common sense. This is not good for her. I have nothing against the Knott family or the other family. I didn't know there was another family involved until we got a letter. So, I just pray and I ask for y'all to be conscious about this. I know we're zoned agricultural and residential. I would love it if some big farmer or cattleman would come in and buy and put a lot of cows out there. We love the cows and everything, the wildlife out there. It's very pretty out there. We raised our children out there, homeschooled. So, I'm just asking you to consider it. Thank you, ma'am. Good afternoon. My name is Dalton Wilson, 49050 Leno. This project will not directly affect my house. I do not live in that city limits. But I have been following this case pretty close. I find it interesting. I've known the Knights a little while. But I heard a gentleman talk about his plants and about it, you know, fresh air, all that, right? And he was talking about the diesel semis, right? Today's diesel semis do not. They are cleaner than any vehicle on the road today with today's standards, Tier 5 emissions. So, that won't affect his plants. It's more toxic at the moment the way electric cars are to drive an electric car today. In the future, electric cars will be the way to go. Today, diesel engines will not affect your plants. As far as going residential commercial, commercial is the way to go. Today's, try and keep it with statistics today. Find it interesting and all that. I like to keep my hands in everything. Foreclosure rates are rising. So, if you do residential, right, you may have one family that buys all these houses in that subdivision, okay? Now, then you're going to have to worry about just those, however many hundreds of houses go there. You have to worry about that family when foreclosures happen. You get a new riffraff in there. So, in my opinion, you go commercial. You have the same business owner coming there. You have business hours. Yes, there is 40-something hundred trips projected with these trucks. Now, if we take however many houses could possibly fit there, how many vehicles does everybody have at their house? At least two, right? Let's multiply that. You know, you have two vehicles per house. However many hundred houses can drive up and down the road 24 hours a day instead of designated trips at your peak times. That's all I have. Thank you for your time. Hello, I'm Joe Fisher at 855 Giant Oak. There are three things I think we ought to think about. One are the homes. If you see us, we wrap around the site. The other is the traffic. Right now, you're pretty aware of County Line Road. Well, what's happening, people are trying to figure out how to get on and off the highway because County Line Road and the Parkway stopped the highway. So, Walker Road has become the newest way. People are bringing trucks around, Publix trucks, all the trucks come around so they can get on to I-4 that way. So, the traffic has increased quite a bit, and this will, you know, continue to increase it. And I know we're not California. They're having building everywhere, but we don't need this in our area. And the other thing is flooding that you all heard about, and the lady talked about it very well. Giant Oak Road in 2004, you had to have a boat to get out, you know. The flooding, the water comes that way. And if you're going to put blacktop the size you'll need for trucks on that land, that water is going to keep coming and flooding more. Thank you. Thank you, sir. My name is Doug Metz. I live at 4325 Swindell Road. Heard a lot of talk about comprehensive plan. What is it? There's a dream or an idea, a vision, the way it's supposed to be. I commend them on their plan. It's a great plan. It's just in the wrong place. I'm not sure how you're going to control cup for cup. Really? What's the biggest cup that's going to happen, you know? You're basing this on information on a model that you've entered data. The model is only as good as the data. Put in what you want. Get out what you're going to get. The staff has denied, you know, they're recommending denial of this plan because it doesn't fit. I mean, that's common sense. Just look at the map. If you're on the south side of I-4, this is more in line with what's happening there. So I ask you, what's the comprehensive plan for this area? Because we, the landowners, are concerned about what this plan is going to do to our land. There's a number of things that haven't been spoke about, and there's a number of things that we're focusing on, you know, the flood and all that. It's going to happen. And you can't sit there and just deny that, okay, this plan is going to handle all the water from this point moving forward. But fundamentally, this plan just doesn't fit on that side of I-4. I'm surprised that we're even really at this level considering it. I mean, really. I mean, I'm not against them selling their land. I'm not against a developer coming in and wanting to do something. But when it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. So what is the comprehensive plan? Is there any way to get that information passed on to us, the landowners that have been there for 20, 30, 40, 50 years? There's deed restrictions on some of this land. Why is that being ignored now for this section of land? There's a motivation. There's a reason that I get it. You can sell your land. You can make some money. But if you've got to rezone it, what about all the restrictions that were in the past? Why are they just being ignored? What's the reason, the motivation for this to move forward in a direction that's different than what's been there for 50 years, longer? I'm not even sure what the timeline is on that. But there's a lot of houses. My house is 100 years old. This flood, when it changes, will come forward onto my land. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Any other comments for or against the case? My name is Bob Reser. I live at 4404 Muscat Drive in Itchapakasasa. I'm on the, my development is on the north side of this development that's being considered. I've ridden my horse on almost all that property north of this development. I've been through four or five hurricanes at my house. And generally speaking, I could probably talk two hours about what's happened in my 45 years at my location. Since 1980, I've owned the property where my house is, and I've seen the water go. I've seen the increases of the traffic in the area, et cetera. Again, I could talk two hours about it, and I've got three minutes. I've looked at this project. I've actually ridden on this land that's being proposed here for its utilization. And I think the project is taking almost everything that I'm concerned with under consideration. The biggest thing in Florida is we're moving a lot of dirt around. We can't ignore the fact that we live in a great state, and people want to come here. And people need food. They need commerce. They need support. We've got a good government that's trying to take all that in consideration like y'all are doing. I've looked at the project. I think that the water retention is more than adequately taken care of. I like the fact that probably roughly one-third or better than one-fourth of the land is being considered here as accommodating the wetlands and the runoff from these four warehouse buildings. I like the fact where it's located, most of the commercial traffic is going to go right towards County Line Road and go east or west on I-4. Most of the impact traffic-wise to my place where I live is from homes and people with cars. Most of that commercial traffic does not go down Walker Road. Walker Road has a bridge with weight restrictions, so I think this should be approved as far as the impact to me. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anyone else here in the audience speak for or against this case? Thank you so much. My name is Lynnae Luttrell. I live at 4708 Charlie Taylor Road in Plant City. I have been sworn in. What you have before you today is a proposal from a developer who wants to change a long-existing rural community into a warehouse district. You also have landowners who want to sell their land for top dollar, and I completely understand and support that. However, if a landowner in a rural community wants to sell, it is your responsibility to ensure that the buyer develops it in a manner that's compatible with the existing neighborhoods and your development codes. There are three major reasons why you should deny this change. It is not compatible with the surrounding rural neighborhood. Residents chose to live in this area specifically because it afforded us the space and protection of agricultural zoning. I built an 18-acre horse boarding business, and I depend on my pastures for my livelihood. Neighbors have invested our lives, our businesses, and our financial security in our homesteads based on your codes. It is irresponsible to change them in favor of a developer over your existing population. Number two, it's a wildlife corridor that must be protected. This area serves as home to many endangered and threatened species. I have seen most of these on my land. I have dozens of photos taken by neighbors that I could show you, but I simply lack the time today. Number three, it increases the risk of flooding for residents downstream. When you see my property and the project location, it seems outrageous that I would even be here today. But what you must understand is that water respects no boundary. This map shows the 100-year floodplain according to SwiftMud and FEMA. Notice that over half of their land is in this 100-year floodplain. Residents downstream are trapped by four roads, and we sit lower topographically. When it rains, water surges into this swimming pool and hits a choke point at the bridge under Knights Griffin Road. We've been shoved farther and farther into the 100-year floodplain due to overdevelopment with absolutely no improvement to the Itchipack-Assassin Creek watershed's functionality. Because of this, our insurance rates have skyrocketed. We're lucky not to be dropped altogether. To make matters worse, developers are swallowing up all available land surrounding our homes, despite the fact that SwiftMud has not yet finished their in-depth study of the creek. Until you have their accurate data, professional data, please do not greenlight this project. The cycle of blindly trusting developers must stop. No matter how engineers spin the data, water flows to the lowest point, and that will certainly not be their elevated warehouses. It will be in our pastures, in our barns, and in our homes. Please support your staff's findings and deny this project. There is nothing about it that is compatible with surrounding residents. And simply put, lions can exist with lambs, but lambs cannot exist with lions. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments? Y'all are going to have to excuse me. I've never been a public speaker. No problem. My name's Keith Knight. I own the property. I wrote down some. I need your address as well. 575 Alderman Road. Thank you, sir. My family's owned this property for over 100 years. I hear a lot about rural. That's funny. I can hear I-4 from where I sleep on a cool night. I used to play on Alderman Road. I used to have a, you know, set a block up and put wood and we'd jump and you couldn't do that today on Alderman Road. There's hundreds of cars that go back and forth. I mow my front lot every week in the summertime. There's thousands of vehicles that go on that commercial road they call Swindell Road. I stood up here in front of you and the Lord and I've heard a lot of lies. A lot of, you know, my house is flooded and I've lived there my entire life. I've worked that property my entire life. Ever since my father died, I get phone calls. I get e-mails. I get aggravated with people trying to buy the property and forever I said no. But here comes these guys and what they proposed was amazing. I hear a lot about flooding. Like, again, I've been on that property my entire life and I've never flooded. I lived right there on Swindell Road. I've lived in Itchapakasasa when the park was put in and everybody said, it's going to flood us. Nothing changed. Nothing. Itchapakasasa is a swamp. Should have never been built. But that's what everybody's, you know, crutch is. Itchapakasasa is going to be, you know, everybody's flooding Itchapakasasa. If Itchapakasasa wasn't built, those people wouldn't flood because they wouldn't have bought their houses. Rule. Rule, rule, rule. I keep hearing rule. That property in that area hasn't been ruled in 30 years. In 30 years. I've worked cattle on that property just to keep that property. My mother's worked cattle. I'm 46 years old. My father worked it for over 50 years. I worked since I could stand on that property. I don't know what else to say to you guys. I don't know what to do. I understand all these people. I understand. But my family owned where you guys live. And if it wasn't for my family, they couldn't be complaining. That's the facts. Everybody says they stand up here and say, I've been here 30 years and 40. I've been here 46 years on this property. 46 years. I'm about to turn 47. These people have been here 2007. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. My name is Kara Knight. I live at 575 Alderman Road. I thought a lot about this. I wrote down my thoughts so that I can be timely. So hopefully you guys won't mind me reading a little bit. Polk County is one of the fastest growing counties in the country. It's not a popular fact with many of the residents. But it is also something none of us can control. We have a really great place here. Development has been happening since Polk County was established. It's been happening since the neighborhoods surrounding our parcels were developed. And it was happening long before that. Our family is resilient and flexible. We totally understand that families need places to live and work. We understand that our close proximity to I-4 makes our area a perfect hub for people. Over the past few years, and Keith mentioned this, we've been inundated. Inundated with solicitation from developers and their representatives in an effort to purchase the property. For a long time, we just graciously denied. We even built a home on the property in recent years. We denied their inquiries. But ultimately, we came to the inevitable conclusion that we were ill-equipped to manage the constant calls. We made the decision to hire a real estate agent strictly to manage this for us, with the intention of only considering offers that make sense for the neighborhood. Due to the immense growth in the area and taking cues from our local government entities and what has been approved within our neighborhood and what the county's predetermined what is allowable with overlays, we decided as a family that the use of our property could really benefit from the evolving needs of Polk County. And worked to generate and build the infrastructure to meet the current and projected growth of the county and solve some of the neighborhood problems with water as well. I think it's fair to say that the area used to be rural, for sure. 20 to 40 years ago, when some of these neighbors built their homes, it could have been rural. But today, as my husband mentioned, we're not in a rural location. If I leave our property and walk directly south, I pass all commercially zoned properties, and the distance to I-4 is less than a quarter mile. Soon, I'll be able to walk west a quarter mile, pass multiple commercial properties, and if I want, I can get a shower and a roast beef sandwich at the pilot, if I want to save some money on water. If anything, our property is the rural component of the community, but it certainly does feel like similar to what Mr. Bass said earlier. We feel like the island in our neighborhood. We're surrounded by years and years of development. To ask this board to stop development now would be not hypocritical on your part, but hypocritical of the neighborhood to ask us to stop developing when they live on property that we sold them in order to develop. With all of that said, I just want to point out, when we were looking for buyers, our neighbors are very upset with us. Most of them don't talk to us. They throw trash in our yard as much as they can. We did look for a buyer that would improve and help make the improvements that the neighborhood needs. They're willing to build on less than 50% of what they're allowed to do. They want to solve the water problem for the neighbors by excessively creating retention, and they want to keep over 40% of the property. I just realized that beep is for me. I'm so sorry. Agricultural. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you. Any other? Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Christina B. Knight. I live at 575 Alderman Road. Sorry. I've lived there for 50 years, worked on that property, cleaned up everybody's trash on the side of the road that they're going to on a dead-end street, and they have to throw garbage out. I don't understand that it still happens. Anyway, my husband and I had a cow-calf operation. To have property like that, you have to have green belt. And I just had a birthday yesterday. I'm 75. I've had four operations to replace my knees and my hips. I can't do it anymore. But if you have cattle there, that doesn't stop you worrying. Is something going to get out? And there's coyotes and people's dogs that want to kill them. It's just too stressful for me. And I've heard several of these people say they're retired. I'd like to retire, too. I mean, you're guaranteed 70 years, but you don't know when your expiration date is. I'd like to enjoy my time left, not worrying about cattle and other people running into the fence to my gates, going looking for mushrooms. It's just, it's time. And I thank you very much. Thank you very much. Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Erica Sumner. I am the listing broker on the property. I reside at 924 East Jefferson Street in Brooksville, Florida. We've heard a lot about the family themselves, but I don't think we have stated how long the legacy is of this family on the land. They have owned this land for 101 years, the Knight family has. I met the Knights at a cattle branding session that we were hosting. My business itself does not traditionally participate in developing of ranch land. I like to sell the ranch land to cattlemen and cattlewomen. But the Knights and I saw each other in a different light, and they asked me to come to the land and interview for the position. I came in the evening. When the sun went down, it was still bright, and I could hear the vehicles from I-4. You are not in a rural area there. And my salt-of-the-earth, very amazing customers that have owned this land for a long time only desire to have back what they had over 100 years ago, which is no longer this area. I received, in the first five days on the market, seven LOIs and two written offers on this property. Several of those were national brand builders. Several of them were very, very local builders. And then we had the stalwart buyer that presented a plan from the very beginning that was acceptable to the desires of the Knight family, which were to be able to sell their property for the highest and best use of this land, but still take care of the community in which they have loved for 101 years. We've heard the human side, normal people asking for passionate support, so I'm asking you for the exact same thing for my customer. The ones that have been here, that sold the land, that did not come to one meeting, one meeting to go against any development that's gone around them because they believe in the private property rights of the citizens of this community. So I ask for your support, your human side, your compassionate side for my customers. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else here to speak for or against this case, please come forward. Good afternoon. I'm Josh Bridge. I live at 945 Country Oaks Lane. And I'm going to approach this a little differently. I've only lived in the area since 2017. But in that time, I run an HOA just north of that. I was voted in to represent the community of my area, and we started experiencing flooding. So historically, I had to do a lot of research, a lot of follow-ups, and a lot of hard work and try to find out where the problems are to the flooding issues. And what we've come down to is there's responsibilities for the HOAs, there's responsibilities for private homeownership, and there's also responsibilities for municipalities. And unfortunately, this area is governed by a crap ton of municipalities, agencies. I mean, basically, you throw something as like it's going to be somebody's responsibility. So that poses the problem for me is over eight years, we've seen growth in the area, which I'm fine with. And I'm not trying to stop these people from being able to sell out. It's nothing about that. It's about the policy. As we've got developers got information, you know, the last flood study was done, numerous, and they want to talk about trends and everything else. But the flood data they got that's most current that's being used is 2008. The next flood series of flood data that was just completed two years ago, 18, 19, right before COVID, it was in Plant City. And the changes of what has been developed in the whole area has drastically changed. I mean, you're talking about warehouses being built, subdivisions being built, but there's no updates of the infrastructure for the flooding. And that goes, and basically is what goes on here is determined by Hillsborough County. So historically, Polk County and Hillsborough County have always tried to work together, but nothing's ever been done to fix the issues. So we can mitigate everything we possibly can as far as engineering goes on site, but unless the municipalities and the codes and everything else start working together, Hillsborough County's got to work on a bunch of stuff to make our flooding situation better, which they're not going to do because there's not enough money involved. There are studies, bureaucracy, and everything else. This is like over just years and years of paperwork that, you know, I can go back to 1970 when they started keeping track records. I started researching other people that's been there, and they've all been retired, passed on, and everything else. The, you know, and the institutional knowledge that you guys have, you guys don't rely on. So we pay money for all these flood studies. Nothing gets done. 1995, the Army Corps of Engineers did an extensive study in the area, and they said that increased development in the area is insufficient, and mitigation, you know, leaving it the way it is, is in fact the best way for mitigating the flooding issues completely. So you've got studies that say this is bad, and this area is not buildable, and yet you still keep building on top of it. All I'm asking you guys, let's start working the problem, stop adding to it. Thank you very much. Anyone else like to speak for or against this case? Yeah, I think you already spoke. Yeah. So we're going to have to, sorry. Everyone gets three minutes. Thank you. All right. Seeing no other public comment, we'll turn back to the applicant. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to ask Mr. Wilson to come up and talk about drainage issues and related conversation there. This one or that one? I don't think I'm going to add anything new here. Maybe just touch on a couple things we talked about and some rebuttal with the comments that were made. I mean, we know this is a flood-prone area. We are using the latest data that's available from public agencies that have studied this in depth. We're following the standards. We're meeting the standards and exceeding the standards in some cases. And I think, you know, Chairman talked about it. I think we're doing, I want to say the best we can, but I think we're taking the best approach to this by doing the cup for cup. So we're not trying to go into detailed modeling and do some other discharge rates and manage it that way. And sometimes we do that. That is acceptable. But I think the clearest way to do it, the black and white way, is just do cup for cup. So we're going to be excavating out areas to compensate for the areas we're impacting. So we feel like we're doing the best thing we can do, taking the extra time to do it. And I think it's, I wanted the site plan up here, because I really do think it speaks volumes, and we've talked a little bit about it here, that, you know, approximately 100 acres are not going to be developed. And some of the people mentioned that. The people that mentioned in support of the plan that, you know, roughly 65 acres or less is being developed, and there's a significant amount that's being set aside in the efforts to make sure we're not having a negative impact on flooding issues. We're not going to fix them all. We know that downstream we're not going to solve that problem. That's a longstanding nature issue. We're not fixing nature when it comes to that. We're doing the best we can to make sure we're managing ours and not making it worse. I've got a quick follow-up question for you, Mark. You spoke a little bit about the roadway improvements on the County Line Road and that road being extended and potentially the intersection of County Line and Swindell being improved with that expansion. And as you look down Swindell Road, it goes, it looks like it's been widened or upgraded past that first or to that first Knight's Landing development. And then it gets back to almost like a two-lane road without the middle turn lane. Do you guys pick it up from that point if you were to build this? Or will there be a section of two-lane in between? I know you're maybe not all the way there yet. Just any thoughts on that? Yeah, that's a good question. And really we're going to have to meet with the Engineering Department in Polk County and go over those details. So the real improvements on Swindell Road have not been defined yet. We're going to have to do a detailed study, meet with engineering, and talk about what level of improvements are going to need to be made. Likely, our frontage is fairly narrow. And so I know why you're asking the question. It's a good one. Likely our improvements are going to extend beyond that, like you're describing. So I would suspect that when we go through the Level 2 and we have our pre-designed meetings, there's going to be a little bit more improvements on Swindell Road to make sure it's meeting current standards. Okay, thank you. Any more questions from the engineer siding of this? Yeah, all right. I'm just going to kind of wrap up at this point. I think, you know, we've heard a lot of testimony for, we've heard some testimony against, we've heard some emotional testimony. I'm certainly not going to dive into those issues. A couple of things that I do just kind of want to point out. One, Mr. Chair and Mr. Schmidt, you pointed out the question, I believe, about the building height on the, it is, we went back and got the people, it is a 30-foot building. It should be a 60-foot building. We are going to fix that, obviously. But in the presentation that staff put on, they made some points about other developments around it and things of that nature and what the other building heights had been. And it was like that 50-foot was kind of what the going target was. Speaking with my client during the public opposition, he is agreeable to limiting the building height to 50 feet. So reducing that 60-foot limitation, 10 feet to 50 feet, we're certainly agreeable to that because that seems appropriate. It fits with the development that's going on in the area and the market. So we're more than happy to do that. There were some other comments related to, you know, going in and impacting wetlands and different things like that. I want to be clear, and you can see it on the screen here, we're not impacting wetlands. We have the jurisdictional done. It's been approved by the district. We are staying out of wetlands. That's what the county requires. The county comp plan requires that. With very limited circumstances, can you impact wetlands? And we're certainly respectful of that. We're not going to be impacting any wetlands. As it related to the transportation conversation, I want to be a little bit more precise on that. The warehousing use will be around 1,000 trips a day, or around 100 trips, p.m., peak hour. And that's consistent. I got a little bit of clarification from our transportation engineer during the public comment as well. So that's what you're looking at from the 684,000 square feet of commercial. We have done an initial tube test to count the trips out there, and as of in June, it was around 4,200. So I may have been misreading some things. And sometimes that happens when I stand here at the dais. I read a number and trying to do three things in my brain at one time, and I may have misspoke there. So that's what we're looking at. And that's fairly consistent with the numbers that are in your staff report based on the IT generation. So I wanted to clarify that for purposes of the record, and I apologize for misspeaking, but it happens. Just as it relates to going back to the commitments that this developer has made, Stalwart has been, from the get-go, very sensitive to the neighborhood and the residents and the Knights, and I think we even heard that from the Knights today. All of our meetings, as it relates, I don't want to say every meeting, but a large majority of our meetings where we are talking about the project and how strategy and how we're going to handle this kind of development, we've had the Knights in the room. We've listened to the Knights. We've incorporated them in. I've had more meetings with the property owner on this project than I have on almost any project in the past 15 years. So I want to give some kudos to my client for being that sensitive. We've had community meetings. We've tried to incorporate that. We have established landscaping and buffering requirements that will screen the view, protect the neighborhood. We've pushed the development as far to the east as possible while staying out of the wetland. So we're really constrained on two sides. The development standards, the comprehensive plan, the conditional CPA policies and restrictions are absolutely appropriate. They're very similar in excess of many other conditional CPAs that we've approved. I mean, just off the top of my head, I can think about the Memorial Road project that had conditional CPA for this type of stuff to address compatibility issues with adjacent residential. The Saddle Creek project that we recently had approved had conditional CPA policies to address these kinds of issues. Those kinds of things show are good developers that show that they're being sensitive to what's going on around them, but also respectful of the comprehensive plan policies that says in the TSDA, business park center is allowed. In the RDA, business park center is allowed. On I-4 corridor within this proximity to these kinds of interchanges where, as you heard from the broker and the family, they get calls all the time. And it's ranged in uses from single family to multifamily to industrial, you name it, they've received calls on it. And we feel that what you have before you, while staff is recommending denial, and I hate being here in this position, I hate being at odds with staff. It's not fun. We believe that what we have proposed here is appropriate, it's consistent with your comprehensive plan, it's respectful of the existing community. You had testimony on both sides for members of the public, and with that, we'll stand for any questions, any additional discussion that may be necessary from the members of this board. But we'll request a favorable vote on recommendation for all three items, and I'm not going to try to spit off those case numbers now at this point in the day. I would really butcher those numbers. I appreciate it. Any more questions for Mr. Allen, and then we'll come to a board discussion. I have one quick question probably for staff more than anything. It seems to me that the case at hand, and Mr. Bolton, come on up if you'd like, really kind of comes back to compatibility. And I think, Mr. Bolton, in your slide you showed that the development kind of perforates or separates some RL and puts it in between two business park center areas. Is that the primary concern that we have here from a staff planning level perspective, is that isolation in the RL area? Or do we see, as we continue to grow, this business park area expanding as being shown here maybe in this proposal? A lot of it, yes, is the bifurcation, the whole RL around that area. There are areas where we have seen this, where it has come, we have approved this type of use, but there has been vacant agricultural land. County Line Road is a very good example of where it has just gone down County Line Road. That is agricultural land that was just taken over and gone by, gone by. And this, one of the points that I tried to make is that it has improved residential lots. I understand many, many years ago, the Knights owned it all, apparently. But today, in my staff report, I believe the average typical lot size surrounding, and I'm not talking just abutting, but taking, off the top of my head, I don't remember what the buffer was, is 1.8 acres per dwelling. That, if you're going to do an assemblage, and I'm getting a little off track from typical planning, and I apologize, but that is a huge undertaking from multiple different people in a development that is not very small. Appreciate the clarification. I've got a question for staff as well. Yeah, go ahead. I was going to ask any other questions. Sure. Sorry about that. Taking into account the reduction in height, 50 feet, do you still support, or do you still support your decision on that? Yes, I do. Thank you. Any other questions for staff, and then I'll bring it to the board for discussion. I just have a couple comments. All right. So we're now back to the board for discussion. Go ahead, Mr. Edison. I'm all too familiar with the county line corridor, and what probably a lot of people don't know, unless they already have a client to occupy these buildings, nobody's building spec buildings right now. The cost to do it is too high. The only sources of financing is institutional money, and they want to know if you build it, who's going to buy it, for how much, or if you're going to lease it, who's going to lease it, for what period of time, at what dollar. And there's actually, in Lakeland right now, there's over 4 million square feet of vacant warehousing. And the current absorption rate in Lakeland is about 1.2 million square feet per year. So you've got over two years, closer to three years, worth of available inventory right now. Thank you, Mr. Edison. Any other discussion? The only other thing I'll say is everybody's in the same bathtub. So whether you build this and everybody's in the same bathtub, it doesn't really matter. Thank you. Any other comments or questions or discussion before we start talking about motions? Mr. Chair, may I ask the staff a question again? Sure, go ahead. I've got one more question. What is the current zoning, what residential density would that allow as it sits today? Do we have that number handy? If not, no big deal, but I'm just curious. That is where Mr. Allen and I, we were discussing because of the overlays. And with the current overlays and everything like that, they can get up to, I believe it's 12, we're within to the core and the center. The math gets really complicated. But they have the ability to get to those 12 to 18 unit an acre type numbers. And the caveat that I possibly, possibly Mr. Allen did not understand is I'm not disputing that. What I'm saying is that to get there, he mentioned multifamily. That requires a level three review. Right. So, you know. As it is today, though. By my calculation, without having to go through a public hearing, I believe in my staff report, I came up with an estimation of about 240. That's what I had as well. I just wanted confirmation. That's what I came up with. Okay. Just to be fair, Mr. Allen, you're comfortable with what was just said in representing your opinion. I don't want to not give you the opportunity. Without a public hearing, given that it's R01 and ARR, I haven't done the math. But I certainly am not going to dispute that. I certainly disagree that that is what you can do on the site. And with a PD, I can easily reach the 800 to 900 units on this piece of property, even potentially without. Understood. I was just curious about today. Yeah. I get it. Yes, sir. I just want to make sure everyone has a chance to speak. So thank you very much, both of you. Any other discussion for the board before we entertain a motion? All right. Seeing no more discussion. Just for clarification, the recommendation from staff as it stands today is for denial. I'm entertaining any motions from the board for all three, and it'll be for all three, and we'll do one at a time. Do I have a motion one way or the other? Yeah, Mr. Chair, I'll move to deny LDC-PAL 2023-10. So just for clarification, you're supporting staff's recommendation? Correct. We have a motion to support the recommendation from staff. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. Yeah, motion and a second. Mr. Dalton? Robert Beltran? For the motion. David Dalton, I am for the motion. Brooke Ignini? Tommy Addison? Against the motion. Mike Schmidt? For the motion. Linda Schultz? Against the motion. And Adam Bass? For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes 5-2 in favor of denial. Okay. We have another item here on the agenda. Do I have a motion for item number 9? Mr. Chair, I'll move to deny LDC-D 2023-13. Okay, again, it's in support of the staff's recommendation? Correct. Of denial. Do I have a second? Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Robert Beltran? For the motion. David Dalton, I am for the motion. Brooke Ignini? I'm for the motion. Tommy Addison? I'm for the motion. Mike Schmidt? I'm for the motion. Linda Schultz? Against the motion. And Adam Bass? I'm for the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes 5-2 in favor of denial. Thank you. Third item for this one item we've been talking about here. Do I have a motion for LDC-T 2023-23? Yes, sir. I move to deny LDC-2023-23. We have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. Robert Beltran? For the motion. David Dalton, I am for the motion. Brooke Ignini? I'm for the motion. Tommy Addison? Against the motion. Mike Schmidt? I'm for the motion. Linda Schultz? Against the motion. And Adam Bass? For the motion. Mr. Chair, it passes 5-2 in favor of denial. Thank you very much. All right. Last item on the agenda. Last one. For the record, Ian Nance for Land Development. Staff recommends approval of LDCT 2024-11, a county-initiated text amendment to multiple sections of Chapter 9 of Land Development Code. For the record, a legal ad was published in the ledger on June 27th with no response. As this is a Level 4 review, two board hearings are set on July 16th and August 6th. This amendment addresses changes that have been needed to comply with state statutes on how development applications are processed by the county. These won't drastically change how the Land Development Division reviews applications now, but it needs to be formalized. So real quick, for staff Level 2 review applications, there will be a 120-day window to have these applications approved. For all Level 3 and 4 reviews, which the Planning Commission hears, this time frame is extended to 180 days. This will be same for Level 5 plat reviews approved by the board. One notable change, though, is that incomplete applications will be withdrawn after 30 days. These are applications where all the documents have not been submitted and will not sit in our system for forever, trying to chase down paperwork. This amendment will also codify a waiver process to longer time frames, which we are already using. Since this door was open to Chapter 9 changes already, staff has used this opportunity to address board-directed changes. Notably, this amendment will codify the recent decision of the board to allow legal ads to be published on county-approved websites in addition to the newspaper. The board also directed staff to clarify the outcomes of cases in the event of a tie vote during public hearings. In such instances, a tie vote will be deemed a denial without prejudice, and this applies to the Planning Commission and board hearings in addition to de novos. Finally, and of importance to this commission, staff will be directed, staff was directed to incorporate attendance requirements for Planning Commission members. If a member misses more than three hearings within a rolling 12-month period, beginning with their appointment date, that seat will be vacated, and a new member will be appointed. Additionally, two alternates will be required to attend hearings on a rotated basis, filling in as necessary. If an alternate misses three hearings within the same 12-month time frame, that seat will also be vacated and a new member appointed. With that, I thank you, and if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. Just real quick, Ian, if it's a 180-day period of review, Level 3 through 5, what happens if it doesn't happen? Is it automatically approved? We have to make a recommendation of approval denial, more likely denial. Okay, so then more likely it just comes as a denial. Yeah, I just know, like in other cases, when a permit, if there's no action by an agency, sometimes it's automatically deemed complete or accepted, potentially. So that's why I just wanted to be clear. Thank you. Any other questions for staff on this item? Was this included in our agenda sent to us? Yes, sir. I believe it was. I didn't see it. It was actually in last month's. Last month's agenda. It was moved to this month. But it was not included in this month's agenda. Well, it was only an agenda. It was just a line item, and that was it. I tried to open it. So you didn't have any backup information? It didn't have any information. I'd really like to have thought about that and considered that. I'm not sure what all that means right now. Let me just add, did no one receive the packet for this case? I would continue it to next month, then. They need to be able to read it and weigh in on it. Sorry. I just, I guess we'll need to continue it next month, then, if it did not make the agenda. We'll need it. We need a motion here. Let's go ahead and do a motion for a date certain for next month, August 7th. I entertain a motion. A motion to continue. Thank you, Mr. Bass. We have a second? Second. We have a motion to second for continuance of this item to the next Board meeting, to the next Planning Commission meeting, excuse me. Mr. Dalton? We can do it as all in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. Motion passes. With that, I think we're at the end of our meeting. Motion to adjourn, please. So moved. Second. Anything else? Tommy, you want to give me a second on that? As long as Tommy's providing lunch. All right. Thank you. Motion passes. Meeting adjourned.