Variance Review Board - 10/13/26

city of tampa variance review board from my left the members of the board are brian frank aaron murphy tot fultz and also in attendance this evening we have from legal legal taylor bolt we also have from development coordination maria trochi garcia lisa middleton joseph turnak forrester examiner from development coordination there are some procedural rules we need you to follow when your case number and petitioner's name are called please approach the podium when you approach the podium please state your name address and confirm that you've been sworn in the petitioner or its agents will have 10 minutes to make a presentation all other persons participants wishing to speak will have three minutes the petitioner will have an additional five minutes for rebuttal if needed the time periods as stated will be kept by the board any information such as pictures or plans that have not previously submitted as part as of the petition and that you intend to submit for consideration in support of your petition must be individually presented and accepted by the board after acceptance by the board you must submit the item to staff for it to be entered and made part of the permanent record the board bases decision on competent and substantial evidence which is submitted and which meets the criteria required by the city code of ordinances please be sure to clearly state your hardship criteria during your presentation a majority of the board is needed to approve your variance for tonight we have a board of four if there is a tie vote your petition will automatically be denied we can once i'm done with all this we'll ask if anyone wants a continuance we're happy to do that and we'll move you to the next available board meeting the variance granted by the board will only be for what is shown on the site plan and we will be and will be in compliance with any terms or conditions stated by the board all other city codes will need to be met if the case is approved your variance will expire two years from the date of decision if your case is continued it will be continued to next month's vrb board agenda or the next available position on an upcoming vrb board agenda if the case is denied you may wish to have the variance review board's decision appealed by the city council you must file a petition for review of the board's decision within 14 days of the board's written decision you will not be able to pull any permits until the 14-day review period has passed your cooperation ensuring that this meeting runs smoothly is greatly appreciated can i have a motion to approve the meeting minutes from the september motion meeting second all all in favor of approval say aye aye aye any opposed the meeting minutes are approved at this time i'll ask legal staff to confirm whether there are any ex parte communications or conflicts of interest thank you chairman in reviewing tonight's agenda do any of the board members have any conflicts of interest with any of the agenda items thank you let the record reflect everybody is answered in the negative and then lastly in reviewing tonight's agenda have any of the board members had any ex parte communications thank you let the record reflect everybody has answered in the negative are there any changes to the agenda that staff wishes to address this evening good excuse me at this time i would like to ask a staff member to conduct the swearing in if anyone plans on speaking or participating in tonight's meeting please stand for the swearing all right as uh previously stated um if anybody would like to ask for a continuance due to us only having four members of the board here this evening um please approach the podium seeing none we will see her the first case good evening board marla tricote development coordination the first case on the agenda is brb 2699 the owner is kathleen mcwenny the applicant is jerry brit the property address is 4821 west san jose street the zoning is residential single family rs 75 the request is to remove one non-hazardous grand tree the applicable code section is section 27 284.2.5 permit for grand tree removal application required documentation standards and criteria for decision inspections petition for review here is the map and outlined in the red dash line is the property in question on san jose and the corner of occident street here is the site plan the tree in question is here in the rear with the blue and red radius and protection zones around it this is one of the site plans that the applicant submitted in this teal blue you can see kind of the proposal of what of the house that they would like to build and how the tree in the rear would be affected this is another alternative or another option for another construction of a home and the tree over here obviously in the in the rear and here was the second option of another proposed layout for the home and the tree in the rear the development review comments natural resources did submit and natural resources memo transportation waste water had no objections water no objections with conditions since the tree doesn't have any impact to water right-of-way storm water and no objections and tico no objections with conditions and here is the criteria for the variance review board which shall be evaluated that is it for my presentation i'm available for any comments or questions and we will have joseph the arborist present on this case as well good evening joseph cermak forester examiner for development coordination provide this in reviewing steven eister's objection to the variance i noticed that he had shown that uh in the reasonable reconfiguration options they had not presented using the administrative setback reductions it would be allowed 25 percent to the front and side yard one foot to the i'm sorry the front and corner yards and one foot on the side yard when those options were brought into play it comes up with a build area of about 4 240 square feet however that doesn't address the actual issue for the lot which is the canopy of the tree that extends over the existing home so in this instance overlaying that canopy onto the structure does show that that would still have an influence on that buildable area there are two tree canopies to look at in question here the red one is existing laurel oak to the side and rear of the house we previously have that tree on record rated as c9 hazardous and would meet the criteria for removal with that tree removed you begin to clear out a large portion of canopy the second tree the 50 inch live oak in the rear is the one in question for the variance if we utilize the setback reductions to open up the build area the space is available for putting in two stories of structure come to approximately 6476 square feet and then this would also reflect using a one-story garage underneath the existing canopy that would have a 20-foot driveway 24 by 22 for garage space since the garage doesn't require a seven-foot elevation to meet floodplain requirements it could work with that canopy there would also be options to do end weight reduction and directional pruning for the new proposed structure lastly another option that would exist would be as if the home remained to the front of the lot garage has shown previously however deck and pool area could be created that would be 31 by 24 completely clear of the tree protection zone or 31 foot by 9 foot in addition to that based on that falling within the existing structures footprint only a little additional information would be needed to verify that the roots have been deflected by the previous structure that would conclude the information i wanted to provide if you have any questions i'd be happy to answer them that handout is the same thing i'll be presenting from my name is jerry britt i reside at 618 columbia drive tampa and i have been sworn in so this is a request to remove a tree as it has stated is a non-hazardous tree we'll address that in a moment and it's so that the owner can sell the lot i do not own this lot there is a letter that was sent in yesterday from an organization uh tampa tree advocacy group making assertions that i must own this lot and so this is an incorrect letter that was sent in it says the developer knew that the tree was there it's due diligence i'm not that i don't own it i might buy it i'll get to that in the presentation uh but uh as indicated before the staff indicated all normal no objections you would expect from water sewer right away from a tree that's in the middle of the lot you wouldn't uh expect that to be any problem with any of those but there was an objection from the uh natural resources and i'll address that in a moment but let me lay out the options as i see it the property is owned by kathleen mclewaney miss mclewaney kathy has owned this property for 32 years it's been her home since 1994 until the flood surge storm surge of hurricane helene uh made it unlivable there i'm gonna try to zoom this in a little bit where is the i'd oh there make that a little bigger and i'll just work from here um but uh i stood before this variance review board only once before to remove a tree in the middle of a lot in the same west shore area i i turned my own 1300 square foot home in davis island into a large garage after hurricane helene flooded it and built a house on top of it but using the existing home as a garage isn't an option here because of the canopy the canopy actually extends 37 feet over the house that was a good picture that he showed us to show how far this tree goes out and it also extends beyond the rear property line it's about 50 feet in all directions except to the west where it was abruptly cut off by the builder building the house to the left this is a tree that's not in distress if it was we would just have an arborist letter per florida statute 163045 and i wouldn't be here i'm here because the tree is not in distress my arborist said it's not perfect but he could not write a report saying it was hazardous allowing its removal i could have kept searching for an arborist until i found one who said it was hazardous but i chose not to do that i chose to follow the rules and be here this is a picture from the side the back of the house you can see the canopy exists sticking out over where the garage is now uh and uh the it's the garage or the house ends where that arrow ends not where the edge of the roof of the garage in so again it's 37 feet across there from the back of the house where the canopy goes so it would take quite a bit of pruning to get even to be able to put anything under it i know that the uh essentially the the the city attorney's office will advise that you can't let flood damage way into your decision but i will state that if it hasn't been changed since hurricane alene that happened from the last time i was here it needs to be changed because the flood damage is the reason miss mcelenny has a hardship her house was livable until then and she lived in it until then but because of fema she cannot rehab it and so we now have a lot that is unsellable because of that and this this next picture just aside showing the canopy extends out beyond the property line and into the right of way a little bit on that side these two pictures show how close it is to the back of the existing house and also show some limbs that don't have many leaves that 23 protection zone it's that's coming up on one of my slides too we'll be able to run right by because uh mary already showed it is that it is a uh if you go out the 23 feet you have to protect it and then you have the canopy beyond that if you pruned it back to the 23 feet you'd have a bunch of sticks and very few leaves the the branches at the lower level there's hardly any canopy that has leaves on it down at the low portion of the house and here's just a couple more pictures that show some of the limbs that are not carrying much greenery this picture shows the house behind it and the tree canopy almost touches that house if nothing happens it still needs to be pruned back there and this is where it was abruptly cut off this line right here is a little more than six inches through and i don't see any permit where the neighbor got a permit to prune that tree while they were working in their yard but cut our tree or her tree it's not mine kathy's tree off this house was under contract to sell to 21 property group a wholesaler based out of st pete in march and they presented it to me and to several other builders my company builds new homes in this and other tampa neighborhoods they're one of the more respectable wholesaler groups and they were unable to find any builder who would buy this property because this tree would prevent building a house of a suitable size for the neighborhood later kathy and i spoke and she understood i'd stood before this board before and asked me to do this now and once you grant the request we're asking for i do have first right of refusal to buy this house from her so i might buy it and i might be the guy building it but i'm pretty busy right now i might not be either but one way or the other we need it to get cleared because as of right now she's unable to find anyone who would buy this house because the obstacle the tree presents i realized some options have been presented i'll speak about those in just a moment but builders have spoken and said not going to buy it because i can't build the right size house here i'm just trying to help her get this lot to where it is sellable there is no practical use for this address but to build a new fema compliant home this home cannot be rebuilt we're currently building another home less than a mile from this one on longfellow where we're saving a 47 a 35 and a 34 inch oak and we had permission to remove two of those but we saved them we were able to build the house around them we like to save trees this tree cannot be saved so this is the survey of the property and you already saw the survey with these circles overlaid it i shaded the circle since i've turned that in before and the canopy is bigger than it was when i turned that in three or four months ago so this is a approximate representation of where the canopy is today and this is the one you saw with a footprint of about the size of the house we'd like to build the tree that joe referred to that is over here that is damaged and could be removed is the only tree that needs removed if we get this clearance to remove this 150 inch tree all these other trees back here are small enough we'll be able to keep them and save every other tree in the backyard this proposal we saw saw this allows for about a 1200 square foot house to not affect the canopy at all this proposal shows where you'd cut into the canopy but not but stay away from the tree radius but there's even a flaw with this option this only allows about a 1600 foot footprint it would only allow for about a 3 000 square foot house with a garage and the houses in this neighborhood are five to six thousand some even larger but there's there's no new ones being built less than 4 500 square feet most of them are five to six so the only thing remaining is to consider that objection from natural resources i've included that in my presentation you've already seen it too but the crux of the letter is this for the sole purpose of preserving the grand tree setbacks and height modifications can be made the back the last two don't matter it's the 25 reduction on the front uh and the one foot on either side they matter mr eicher asserts that using these setbacks you could have about a 4200 square foot footprint allowing for a garage i was glad to hear what mr sermac said he didn't come up with quite that same number when you looked at the canopy as well that's that was my argument in here that i don't have to make you can build a house there you can't build a size of house that suits for the neighborhood but even if you did have that 1600 or the 21 by 32 he references only 750 square feet approximately allows you to build a 1500 square foot house in a two-story that's not suitable for this neighborhood either but even if you figured out how to build a four or five thousand square foot by using all those setbacks three problems remain the house would be closer to the road than every other house on this street and look out of place making it harder to sell there'd be no room for a pool i saw one design for the first time tonight that showed how you could do a pool over here where this one tree been removed but you would have to put the pool back behind the perimeter of the tree which is 50 feet away from the back of the house and then there's only 11 feet from the protective perimeter on the back of the tree to the property line and you got to stay off the property line so there is no place to build a pool after you build a four or five thousand square foot house here and without a pool in this neighborhood a new house would be next to impossible to sell this house was already actively on the market and presented to several builders and not one of them would buy it and the objection was the tree and the restrictions it would place on the new house so even if mathematically you could somehow make a house fit the proposal of mr eister's didn't address a pool mr surmack did show one way for a pool i didn't haven't had a chance to study that design but the pool is an expected feature in this neighborhood but the builders have already declared this unsellable many builders were presented with this lot and no one wants to buy it and everyone's objection was the tree makes it impossible to build a house that's appropriate for this native neighborhood that is the hardship for miss mckelwainey and this letter that came in just yesterday said you know it's a builder's hardship he's self-created it's not self-created miss mckelwainey's owned this house since the 90s and and she's the one who's at hardship and cannot sell this lot after her house flooded but if the tree is removed she will have a property she can sell so my last thought on this i know staff has said hey there's other options well if the staff was the final say this board wouldn't exist because last year in august i came here to present to remove a tree virtually in the middle of a lot and it was approved but everything about the staff said it should be approved so i shouldn't have even had to come to that meeting if the staff was the final say but since the staff can't grant the final say i'm appealing to you that even though staff presented another option that i that i'm asking you to allow miss mckelwainey to remove this tree so she can sell this lot that has proven to be unsellable it is a house that crowded to the front of the street with no room for a pool will not sell quickly at all so builders are not willing to take a chance and buy this house from this mckelwainey zero thank you thank you is there anyone else to speak for or against petition seeing none i'll open up for the boards for questioning sir the one question i have to start off with is she still currently not able to live in the house so it is yes it is uninhabitable and and is and because of the depreciated value fema would not allow it to be rebuilt she was renting somewhere she has now bought another house in south tampa and so she's planning to sell this house but she's been unable to do you know what flood zone is um whatever the worst one is it's five feet the dirt is five feet above sea level so so that a new house has to be up seven feet uh because i'm building in the neighborhood so probably a i'm not sure that i know the exact zoning but i know that it has to go up and i the idea of the garage under the canopy is one way that you can get part of it done that way you cannot raise the house steven eister and i discussed that before that there was no way to even raise a build one story house because of the canopy but the garage could stay under the canopy i would just say this while i i totally understand that the tree is is clearly yeah um making a selling a property so i just want to clear that those so making i i i understand about the pool can i finish yeah sorry um so making those claims outside of what the real situation place thing place um it does is of no you know what the hand that she yes so you know what's suitable for one neighborhood what's suitable for another neighborhood is not a hardship i just want to be very okay i understand that that the house is uninhabitable and the lot is unsellable that's the hardship yeah we're i mean we're we are we are bound as a board by the hardship criteria for tree removal and you know the the major hardship for this would be if it was unreconfigurable to have any sort of suitable home built um you know even if this at the lower end of what i was reading is a 4500 square foot home i i don't see how a 4500 can be built there i i heard that proposed but i don't see i i think that with what has been brought here without any sort of design plan or any other plan to work around the tree and not even utilizing the additional percentages that you're allowed to use it makes it very difficult for the board to even this case effectively i would i i absolutely agree with that because everything that you presented and you presented i mean present a good case but all of the there's a bill they have that they have dropped out of house that they are and i asked if i needed to and was told i didn't need to so apparently i got bad advice but this is it's a lot of guesswork and and when i stood here in august of last year i had a similar thing with drawings but there's reasonable configuration according to what we've received from the city but anyone else may okay yeah and the one i heard build on that lot the one i heard tonight with the one store and garage and pool that had that had never been put in front of me but you could build on this lot correct you you could build a 1600 square foot house on this lot without messing with the canopy that's it yeah without messing with the canopy 1600 is it the math's in here if you look at the every i didn't read every word in my presentation that's if you build that's a 600 square foot first floor well that's if you don't mess with the canopy you only have about 1100 footprint to work with and so that 1100 and change footprint that you have to work with allows for a garage some house on the ground and some upstairs so you you can't get up to a 2 000 square foot house without messing with the canopy now i'm not saying you can't mess with the canopy you get you can't mess with the property protective perimeter correct but you could cut back the canopy but the canopy is if you cut it back to the 23 foot perimeter you would be looking at nothing but sticks at the very top there's greenery right again not a hardship right so you look at well it's a tree that would die so that's a hardship well can i um what is the gentleman's name yes yeah could i ask you a question sir yes would they be from um i mean the standards for canopy pruning are all related to ansia 300 strictly speaking by code anything four inch or larger needs an arborist report to approve it the goal in this case my recommendation would be end weight reduction removing live growth from the outer edge of the canopy the spring effect that you get from taking that weight off of the tree can cause it to pop two or three feet up there would also be directional pruning to turn some of the branches so that future growth wouldn't be towards a new structure but would continue in a new direction because this is you would say this is an exceptional arch it is and it's a low growing canopy and that is definitely a granted here but it could be it was trimmed uh for a two-story underneath it no it would any two-story portion would have to remain outside of the canopy area that was shown in the diagram even a one-story underneath it only the garage you can't raise it seven feet to get above the floodplain and not grow well into the canopy but the one-story garage under it does make sense okay what's the setback on the front side of the side of the property it has to be the front the side the side because the garage is on the side correct the front is to the yeah the front um i got the survey here i can get my reading glasses i can tell you uh it is 27 feet two inches from the front of the existing house to the property line that's the existing house with the setback i think you we would we would be allowed to reduce your setback to 18.75 and the side yard down to six feet yes yeah so you get one foot wider than the template that i put and you could get uh nine feet closer to well yeah about nine feet closer to the front than the template that i put yes that is possible i mean the good news is because the existing house there won't be a lot of roots that you have to deal with so you're not going to have a problem with that in the root zone is there any kind of construction they can do to inside the roof zone is they can they put anything knowing that there's not any roots there because there's an existing house on top of it are they allowed to use the original footprint on some of that for the first story they definitely could it usually requires an air spade report to be submitted just to verify that the roots were turned away by the existing foundation foundation but typically either in cases like that you could go back in with a continuous footer if there were roots found they've been growing underneath then you could do isolated footers and appear in lintel design so an elevated floor that would allow foundations in i would have very low concern about where existing structure was since that was existing garage for another garage to go back into that area i actually wish the owner were actually here it would help me with part of what my concerns are that would have been helpful i'm sorry i i would have wished that the owner herself had actually been here because i think that would help me with some of my questions okay yeah sorry she asked me to represent her but she's she's tried to sell it and no builder will buy it that's the hardship that she's encountering she she has a lot that's in theory worth six to eight hundred thousand and it's worth nothing i think nothing's a stretch i think that's a stretch too well but if it is a stretch there it it's 21 property only properties don't only get sold to builders well i understand but but whoever buys this house is going to have to build whoever buys this is going to have to build a new house on it i don't have any more questions got any other questions sir you have some rebuttal time if you would like um all i say is whether it is a builder that buys it or an individual a new house still has to be built here that that is the issue at hand and this canopy is extremely large and extremely low and yes cutting some of the canopy off it might raise it a little bit but there uh steven eister and i did have this discussion before i even prepared a presentation to make the appeal in the first place not tonight's presentation one even to turn into the city is that there isn't even room to build a one-story house under the canopy because you have to come up seven feet to get above the flood plain so the so with that with no ability to build anything under the canopy that's where the restricted area was now in that conversation he didn't bring up anything about you can use the variance you know come to the front build closer to the street but a every house on this street is built at about the same spot off the distance off the road as this house so if we bring this house 10 foot forward you have a house that has a tiny front yard compared to all the others and as a result again no builder wants to buy it i agree doesn't have to be a builder buys it but somebody who builds a house has to buy it and she has tried to sell it and been unable to sell it and everyone's objection mine included as a possible buyer has been the tree so without the tree removed she remains with the property that she's unable to sell you have to read do you happen to know how low the limit um i i do know that the limbs when i walk around the yard i can touch the tree almost everywhere not that it couldn't be pruned and fix some of that but over the garage most of those on that picture that i show are touching the garage so this that sounds a lot more like this picture right here most of those limbs are touching the roof of the house now granted this is a picture i took a year and a half after the flood and no one has lived there during that time so i'm sure the tree is in a little worse condition than it was so in theory the house right now is do you know what what elevation the house is at right now it's it's got to be at about five feet above sea level because i'm building in the same neighborhood and there's one that is five oh the land well the survey says 5.4 okay yeah so yeah back to this so it's going to have to go up to 11 at least 12 is what the city is going to require it's 11 plus one so yeah okay so you're going up yeah so if you're you're going to write you're going to raise it seven feet yeah and the house across the street is being raised right now so but it's being raised about 15 feet just i get it i'm just saying if you build a new one story house you try to build the same house back in this space i know that's because you're not you can prove it up to a four inch but those are not four inch limbs i'm just so part of what i'm saying is if you look you know again i'm looking for a hardship as well and not being able to build a one-story underneath there is a hardship not being able to build six houses per feet is not a hardship i understand and the and the city would not allow not that this is what anyone would propose but the city would not allow you to rebuild this exact same house right now this house is too close to the tree i understand that's what i'm saying you want to build the same footprint back again and slide it where it fell a lot and allowed it to be within the you know could you even do that i don't think you could well female wouldn't allow it either right see well no we have to bring it up seven right yes the same exact works if it's split into two lots you can remove the tree under the uh permit my my thing is i actually do see a hardship here i see a hardship in somebody who lived in her home for over 30 years and she would probably still be living in her home she would if it wasn't for the hurricane damage making her home uninhabitable so then she's in a position where she can't fix it and she can't stay in the home that she's in and so from my standpoint i'm seeing a hardship imposed on her by circumstance beyond her control because she's lost her house that's how that's how i'm hearing it that's why i said i really wish the owner was actually here so i could actually hear what she was articulating and what she has faced and what effort she has tried to do to see if she could even repair her existing house should we close the public hearing if we're going to do our discussion i don't think we should we're still having a conversation yeah and and and she she cannot rehab it i i heard you say you know if she could fix it up it's not it's not fixable because of fema regulations that after colleen happened you know used to be you bring in a quote so i can get my house fixed for this much and you have to go back and forth and the city set this 64.85 per square foot and you apply that to the portion that has to be worked on you apply that to the depreciated value on the tax record you can go apply for a appraisal if you want to try to prove your house is worth more than the tax record says but her repair cost by that formula of 64.85 a square foot was 90 of her depreciated value today on the fact sheet at hillsborough county property appraiser it shows zero depreciated value which is what happens after you have to evacuate it because of the flood my own house showed zero after but she was unable to rebuild it there was no way to say oh maybe if i didn't do this or that fema would not allow her to rebuild this house or she would have she had lived there for since 94 and didn't didn't want to move let's walk down the path of rebuilding the same house you bet okay so in order to take it out of the protection zone it's currently 11 feet off the according to your drawing 11 feet off of the back of the house is 11 feet off of the trunk of the tree yes that is correct so it would have to move nine feet to the front and i think it's 23 feet and for this size of tree you know the what is the protection i'm pretty sure the protection the maximum is 23 and i'm pretty sure this qualifies for the maximum i think anything over 46 inch tree demands a 23 foot protection radius the tree protection radius is 20 feet from the face of the tree so if we were to take it from the center in this case it would be just over 22 feet away okay okay so so then your math is very accurate yeah so you're adding 11 feet to it that's correct yeah what you're showing here so you would have to move forward 11 feet we can only grant you another nine feet of frontage so you couldn't even even with us granted you couldn't even build the same house without the problem without the problem with the camp so now you can't so someone's house is destroyed by flood they can't rebuild the same house no well the other thing too honestly that i'm looking at that the next door neighbor didn't care lopped off the canopy and built a two-story house yes i not my tree yes that he didn't care i if i if i wanted to have the same disregard for the rules i'm sure i could have found an arborist who would have told me this tree was damaged and then we could have removed it under that florida statute that allows that again i i don't do it that way i play by the rules so realize we're trying to find a hardship i understand and i can't tell you what that hardship is you have to tell us well that yeah the the hardship that exists is she's been kicked out of her house it's uninhabitable and unable to be repaired even if she were to try to lift it seven feet and bring it forward we could trim some canopy and she could lift it seven feet and bring it forward it would still be too close to the tree she cannot rebuild this house or lift this house and keep it inside uh the regulations since we reopen the questioning portion do you have anything else you'd like to say in rebuttal i don't think so thank you for your time and let me make the case i will uh close the public hearing we did that i did it prior um sort of close public hearing and for motion conversation listen it took a little work to try to figure out the hardship but that's if she could rebuild the same house i would say that you don't grant it but it's not practical to even build the whatever square foot house that was existing there again and even bring it not to mention the center of the canopy the seven foot up into the canopy but you can't even bring it forward like it's not it makes this lot unbuildable for the same lot yes could you put a poster size house on there you absolutely could could you bring it forward and put a reasonable size house maybe the canopy is going to quite it's a very big hardship you know there's i don't care about the value of the lot could sell it but you're going to sell it for a lot of that i don't care about that the hardship to me is you want to rebuild the exact same house and building it whether you do or not if you want to do that you can't do it there's no physical way to do it i think the difficulty sometimes presentations there's so much someone doesn't say hey this can't be rebuilt it can't be this for me i understand what right and and that's kind of what i was hearing because i was tuning out all the extraneous things because listen i like trees i'm not going to do something just to make a developer happy what i heard in your presentation but i was hearing it from you without her present was just the idea that this woman had been forced out of her hopes it wasn't like hey i want to sell my house and i want big bucks and they want to be able to put a pool in she actually experienced an actual loss for this regardless of whatever the you know the impact of getting a developer she's the one that lost a home that she had made her home for 30 some years and that to me i heard that early on in this but you're right brian it was getting clouded in we can't build a pool and we can't build 4 000 square feet and all that stuff so i mean to me i think she has a hard share i agree i think that if this home was not heration would do some hurting and put a two car garage but we have a very so desirable nice home and i don't and i don't argue with that she's the one that suffered as a result of it and all the bureaucratic constraints i can't make a motion fair enough hi guys all right and if i make them i butcher them all right i move that the variance for advanced request for case vrb 26-99 for the property located at 4821 west san jose street be granted as depicted on the site plan present at the public hearing from google grand tree based upon the petitioner be the burden of the proof bird of proof with regard to the six factors for determining street tree removal as set forth in section 27-284.2.5 t4 of the city code for granting tree removal specifically the evidence provided showed that the existing house was flooded out and cannot be rebuilt in the location it was was and we cannot grant a large enough setback reduction in the front to rebuild the same house second we have a motion and we have a second all those in favor aye opposed congratulations motion passes okay thank you gentlemen i've learned tonight i'll make my presentation shorter if i ever have to do this again all right the next item on the agenda is brb 2687 this is a continuance the owner is 4130 gandhi boulevard llc the applicant is addie mentry the property address is 4132 west gandhi boulevard the zoning is commercial intensive ci the request is to increase the building signage from zero to 4118 and 36.36 square feet the applicable code sections is section 27-289 building signs for multi-occupancy parcels one building sign shall be permitted for each establishment with a main door entrance which faces a public street in a multi-occupancy parcel establishments located at a corner shall be allowed one building sign for each side of the establishment which faces a public street and the size the maximum allowable signs surface area for each building sign shall be one and one quarter square feet per linear foot of building frontage abutting a public street excluding parking garages that abut a public street unless otherwise specified in article 3 division 2 special districts or article 4. the previous actions as bld 260526255 building sign and bld 260525792 for windows here is the map and outline in the red dash line is the property in question here we have the site plan displaying uh the property and outline in red are the buildings and this was the signage uh breakdown that had been submitted by the applicant showing the square footages for each building and the total square footage requested the development review comment so natural resources transportation wastewater water and right-of-way no objections stormwater uh no objections with conditions and tico no comments as of july 27 2026 of here are the standards for and criteria for variance review board and uh staff we're recommending that a condition is placed uh if it were to be approved as like a master sign plan to ensure that the square footages will be distributed evenly amongst the buildings um additionally i do want to show that there was a building permit that was issued and granted in error but i did want to show a picture of the sign that was approved so you guys can have an idea of what it would look like so this one was already granted that concludes my presentation i'm available for any questions that you may have good evening addimentary one three two six six bird drive odessa florida three three five five six i have a presentation okay can you see that on your screen have you been sworn in i have been sworn in yes okay so um we were here in august uh i appreciate the board's willingness to an opportunity to continue the case um there was at the previous hearing some understandable concerns about the overall square footage that we were requesting um particularly without kind of a clear representation of what that signage which would actually look like on the building um so we heard those concerns and since in this updated presentation i will show you kind of what the signage uh in real time would look like as it stands with the request on the table we still are moving to or requesting uh the signage breakdown that was requested last variant which is on your screen so just for uh to refresh your memory there are three buildings here building a b and c uh and we are requesting that each of the frontages that front the private roads in this development be treated as if they were public roads and those square footages would be based on the standards of the sign criteria or code in the land development code so that formula is 1.25 square feet times the building frontages those building frontages are broken down here we're also requesting um address numbers and logos at 48.36 square feet they go above the i think four square feet that are allowed in the actual code so they have to be taken into account with regular building signage so that total requested amount is 40 uh 41 18.36 square feet um and here is just uh to refresh your memory the site plan and we're talking about the three buildings in the back of the development so these don't directly sit on gandhi or pearl um and i'll get into later what the dimensions um of that look like but the building closest to gandy is building c in the middle building b and the vertical building building a so just building a um it has 654 for the front uh for the actual front elevation and then 192 feet on either the side elevations and then building b and c are identical uh their front elevations uh which have the main tenant entrances is seven 721 feet and 194 feet on the sides so here are some mock-ups on just 2d elevation renderings that are on the corner lots so i did get a question last meeting about how many tenants would be here they have they have drilled this down to three to four tenants per building so these are 250 feet and you can see they're stacked future tenant and everything is combined that's to ensure any dead space is combined that we're counting everything that we would need to here is in the middle if there was a third building this is 315 and like i said this would be maybe channel letters um like uh illuminated channel letters for a tenant and that would take up say like a middle tenant portion and then here's the same thing just with a cabinet so those others were channel letters this is a cabinet sign so that's what these would look like on just the 2d elevations and then here is some elevations with say the top one is three so this is what they would look like for the full elevation as you'll see in the photos it's hard to get a full elevation because these are just such large buildings but here's what they would look like and then two of like some larger signs on the larger portions of the building if two tenants took up a building so here is some actual real life photos so you can see on the left or the right hand side of your screen there's that weathertight window signage and we'll go through the portion of like what that looks like what the signage is in the square footage and then from this distance here would be like a future tenant sign and a cabinet and then we just mocked up some like signage uh just to show you but this is like a really like a square linear a square instead of a linear cabinet sign in the middle and then one down here you know there was a lot of questions about the side elevation last presentation so on your left this is uh traveling north uh this is the corner of building c which is which faces gandhi um so as you can see this if you're driving up if you've entered the site from pearl and you're driving north to a building that fronts gandhi the the side elevations are going to be your first exposure to the businesses that are on that site and this is what those would this is what that would look like same thing driving south if you entered from gandhi and you were going to building building a this is what a sign would look like on that building here is a panoramic elevation of building b so this is what these would look like from this vantage point stepped back this is building a this is the only building i could get into one photo but this is what signage would look like on those buildings if we had three tenants so two on the end caps and then one in the middle taking up the entire um uh facade blocked facade and then i did want to show if there was say a tenant that wanted to take up one building and they wanted a larger sign uh they could put it in i know there was a discussion about one giant sign you know being able to be put on these i wanted to show you that to kind of show you what that would look like um but this is the the facade uh section that this is on is the largest section of the frontages because these elevations are designed to be dynamic and dimensioned so it's not a linear frontage we couldn't just slap an entire cabinet over the building because it wouldn't fit and then here's what that would look like if it was a cabinet sign uh and i wanted to point out that so building c from gandy when you enter to building c is 421 feet so it's a setback a significant portion from the right-of-way and eventually we'll have commercial out parcels in front of it and then from pearl building a is set back 391 feet so we're talking about proportion and letter visibility there is a letter visibility that is readable from from when you enter say at 450 400 feet of around around 42 inches a letter has to be 42 inches to then be you know readable to have maximum impact of that sign which then generates a sign that is larger because of the readability and also just the proportion of these buildings um i did want to i know um marla brought this up but there was a a sign permitted for weathertight windows which is technically non-conforming i don't know if taylor can speak to any of what it means for this um but there is the building number it is already up it's already installed inspected and completed and this sign this sign is 210.75 square feet which is equivalent to the sizes 250 to 350 that we're putting on the elevations to show you so it's 210 square feet the height of the letters are 33 and 35 and a half inches respect respectively and you can see it's proportionate to their tenant space it's proportionate to the facade that they put it on um and so i think this just shows a real life example of what you know these signs could look like and while they're larger signs the proportion and size of the building really allows them to be seen um especially from from gandy where you know you need to enter from um and then i went over the the variance criteria last time i think we're really here to have like a real life experience um i also want to uh echo marla in the fact that we totally agree with a master sign plan i think we talked about a condition last time of putting that on there the intent of this is not to have 4100 square feet as a pool of signage to just take from the intent of this is to have the buildings act as themselves and act as this would be fronting a public road and they would just get whatever if if these were counted as public roads this is what the formula would be and there will be three to four tenants in these buildings so they will split um split these square footages so um i'm here to answer any questions that's the end of my presentation all right is there anyone else here to speak for against the petition seeing none open up the board questions my question my question still centers around i i don't understand how you count the side access road as a public right away i i understand the front totally understand how that's even though it's a private road that would be considered the frontage if this building was on any was on gandy then you would have that frontage but even if it was on gandy you wouldn't have the side road coming down it that still wouldn't be you're not there you're not close enough to it to one of the there's no side road coming down there so um i don't see the sides being part of that calculation especially because they're not you can't park along the sides um for two of the buildings um you can't drive you know they're just drive-bys and there's no even if there was a door you'd have to walk around the side of the building to get in there and you wouldn't be a practical yeah so my answer to that is if we're going to count the front elevation of the building as that's technically an access road it's a private road it's an access road if we're going to count that then what is limiting the side elevation like or what is limiting the side access road which is also a private road i think that visibility wise if you are driving north or south and you are first coming to a site that you need to see that that counts as their tenant space it counts on a private road for visibility for their site if we moved this building up to the corner of what is that if we moved it to the to this corner to this north west corner if they did that they would have like that elevation would have a sign that elevation would be allowed to sign because that's that's but that's a public road that people drive down right but if we're going to talk about the front being a private road or if we're going to talk about the front of building b right like the front of building b you would say is just a service road what eliminates then being able to calculate the side as also a front edge i mean i don't think they're different part of this is also way finding for people to find their way in from where they park to walk into the space so i guess which ones i can't see on my thing which one's a b in the top two so uh no that's b and c so c is the one closest to gandy b is in the middle and a is the vertical okay so looking where you have parking a range on these sites you would want to have the front you would want to have park you won't have signage in the front that's working with these establishments why do you need to have parking why do you need to have signage on the side i think like if you're coming so if we're talking about are you talking about all of the sides because we're talking about coming off of c for instance that's the one that's in the front that's along gandy where it's 400 feet back from gandy why do you need signs on why would you need signage on either side of that if i'm going to the site uh somebody who's trying to find a site i would like to see a sign on say if i'm entering from pearl street and i'm going to a building like on the left so this is building c at faces gandy if i'm entering from so now you want me you're taking the if you're entering from pearl street i realize that there is an access from pearl street right how many people are actually going to be driving from it's not a practical it's not a practical request so you could say maybe the bottom side of building what is that building a in the bottom that pearl street you could say that's a frontage okay maybe okay i'll buy that for that building but how does that so what about so if we're talking so what about if you're entering from gandy and you're driving here or you're entering i can't remember what this street is called i'm sorry if you're entering here and you're going down to building a we would not count this as a frontage i mean that's the first time that you're seeing signage for building a and you have to come around b and you won't see signage until you get over here i just i if we're talking about wayfinding that is i'm assuming that you're going to have some kind of blade sign off the main entrance that's going to say all these locations are back they don't say tenant names they say addresses so it's 40 41 32 41 34 and 41 36. so you have no blade sign no podium sign no other sign what's on the building they say the addresses of the buildings that was the client's request so that if they're having rotating tenants just based on how they're built um i think i may have let me see if i don't see how you can count all three sides and sorry i was trying to find a if i had a photo of because they're in the the directional signs are in sorry yeah so it says like 41 32 this way 41 36 or 40 yeah 41 36. can you go back to your photo showing the side in cap this one yeah so respect those so those are approximately 240 square feet yes like 250 because i mean right now you're baffling it gives you 240. i'm just looking at like this the size of the building you know the number seems so massive but looking at this photo it just at scale is not that egregious so i understand what you're saying but that's not it's not an entrance it's it's not a it's if this was a walmart you wouldn't want to put a walmart on the side of it if it didn't if it was an access for it on the side there it wouldn't be you know there's if you look at a zoomed out picture of this you've got a sam's club around the corner and you've got a home depot over there you just have the signs in the front you've seen the signage on walmart it's all over it's massive yeah yeah and you know it's a walmart you don't even need signs but it's on the front also right but that whole building is totally i'm totally for allowing them to have signs on the front and that granting them just the frontages and all that would still be 2600 square feet i just todd can i can i can you explain further why counting the front access roads because these are they're all private roads they are all roads but private can you explain to me your thought process of how we're counting one access as like one private road as a frontage and we're not calculating the others like if we're taking these and we're saying that they're private roads and we're going to calculate them as public and what is allowed in the sign code how are we then saying this can be this but this it can't be this so the to me the sign code is for people on the street or in the parking lot in the front trying to find their way into the business that's way finding so people don't get confused they know where to go abc right but if it's a corner but if we're taking the intent of this variance which the intent of this variance is for these private roads like if these were not private roads they'd be public and i wouldn't be here i just would be allowed to have signage so if these were private roads they could have signage on all of these so what i don't understand is the intent of this because if you put this at a corner like they would be allowed to have all of those signs i i know what you're saying i know that you understand the elevation the frontage but we're not just talking about the front of the building if you had a sign on four corners in this code i could have signage on all four elevations because those are calculated as straight frontage elevations so you could take any big box retail strip mall center that's in there and they have a road to get around the back so the trucks can get around the back right right now that road would be but you're saying that that that should be because it's even though it's a private road that should be counted as a public road because that's what you drive around the back side well no i'm not i'm not suggesting that the back side no what i'm suggesting is that i don't i don't know what the process was when this was redeveloped it what if it was i don't believe it was rezoned but i don't know what the process is to take public roads or take private roads and make them public like when this was re this it was a macy's redistribution center when this was reconfigured to be this out parcel and and tenant i don't know what that process looks like but if this was done through that process and these side if these private roads were public they would be allowed signs on that i'm not talking about like the back of a building but legit like the legitimate because we're not asking for signage on the back of the building like in a strip mall where where trucks would come through we're not asking for that we're asking for the frontages that would be calculated as public roads but you're saying that these buildings are big enough to be considered a city block and they're not they're big but they're not a city block so you would not in a regular block size you would not have both sides they might be on a corner so that one side and one front would consider the be on a signage on roads but the other side would be just the alley to get back to the back side so in most the buildings are big but they're not a city block size they're not that way but because you put access roads or you want to call them access but they're transitory roads that go from the front to the back to get to the other buildings they're not frontage to that building the act like sign code is supposed to limit it to limiting so we don't just have signs everywhere they're just on the front end of the building that faces the road so you can actually see from them so i see i know you said when you're approaching on pearl well if you're approaching from pearl to the side when we had the same question come up with even with like a mcdonald's and where you if they're not actually on both sides of the road you can't actually have something on that side that's not what the signage code allows now you can ask for variance but i don't understand why we would consider both of those short sides for the variance i understand what you're asking for a variance and i'm supportive of the frontage and i could even probably talked into maybe one of the sides being that okay but all three sides of it i think is egregious and it's asking for too much and i don't think when you start looking at the size of the weather type you have right now it's 210 square feet if you have four tenants that's 840 square feet per building for that building but right now just in the front you're already getting 817 that's granted to you if we give you just the front so you're pretty close to what that is already and those are big signs and that's someone's already demonstrated that that is a nice big enough sign for what their space is renting another 480 square feet for that building he seems egregious and that's if you go to three then you've got three bigger signs and if there were 210 square feet you could have them all they'd be 275 square feet that's a lot of signage there's plenty already granted of what you're asking for i think you're asking for in my opinion i respect my understanding as it was when you right is that the only difference correct if the public road road where that white car is right now was a public road you would not be sitting here before correct you could put that so i don't look at that as egregious i look at you and saying hey please treat this as though it's a public road if it was i'd be able to put that sign up there regardless whether we think it's egregious or not i'm you're you're basically saying to us you know these are a lot of public access back there roads that are not that are not public just extend us the courtesy of doing the same thing if they were public because people still need to find their way that's what i understand you're not putting it the publics are behind normally get weren't it's nothing outside of you could you could do it and we could not like the fact that there's that many signs but but the the law says you could yes you're just asking us to give you a variance to us to assume that it would be like a public road that's all you're asking yeah and i mean when this when the obviously when the the project first came to me um i wasn't sure how much signage we thought it was going to be you know eight tenants which is a lot of signage even for a building this big and so i know he's not here tonight but i had significant conversation with steven eister and we went through a master sign plan first and it went through everything and he said this would be allowed it will be okay and then in the review process with eric cotton it came back to a a variant so even staff on the onset even though their private road said this would be allowed because we would just be doing what the frontage was per the sign code so none of these access roads are gated correct this is all open anyway no yeah it's all open yeah i guess i'm still coming back to the issues that i had the last time and i think it's a false equivalency to compare private road to a public road for purpose of sign ordinance simply because on a public road people are driving 25 35 40 miles an hour to see it nobody's going to be coming back on this private road and whipping through there like they're on a public street so therefore the visibility argument that you're making and wanting it to be treated equivalent to a street sign i don't see it and i don't see it as hardship okay expound all that because in that's also now a precedent right it not be kind of sort of so the the fact that there was the signed permit that as you know marla had previously mentioned was um approved by a area of staff and it is now non-conforming so for the purposes of tonight's hearing before the variance review board what the focus is is that they currently do not have a right to sign and she addy is here on behalf of the property owner making that request the authority that this board is bound by as the criteria set in 2780 which talks about hardship so because there is this permit that is not necessarily related to tonight's proceeding and the board's decision on whether or not to approve the variant should be based on the 2780 hardship criteria what i'm here for yeah please yes on the site itself if the people are entering from pearl are there two access areas off of pearl or just one just one just one would it be on the east side of the west side of that the east side east side of the pond yes sir so if they're coming up the east side of the pond they are going to be on your main thoroughfare i guess which would be up the east side of the pond to some parking areas and i'm guessing 10u east to those other parking areas they're coming from dale mavery coming down and around i'm just trying to see if there if there was a more strategic traffic pattern discussed possibly reducing some of the the sides but looking at it i mean that that building if you're coming down for dale neighbor you're coming down here and you're turning into here and here if you're coming up pearl you're coming up here and you're coming either around this way or over this way you i mean there's there it appears to be traffic pattern that would to me would you be interested in making an offer of some what what you think would be non-egregious so we're looking at is it building a is the one on the south side yes i see your argument for all three sides of building it okay i think you're actually probably provisible to do the south side already because it sort of does face pearl well we're not because well i mean there's technically technicality you could have yeah but i could but staff would say no staff would say they're the 10 the retention pond is in front of it and you have an access point in front of it so that doesn't like pearl wouldn't count it that's just that's just what staff is in that argument that you would say the two sides of retention ponds will also qualify for that because the roads are on the other side of the retention see that again i'm sorry that buildings c and d or c b and c there's a retention pond between the road and the side of that building so i mean the practicalities are that side of you i understand what you're asking for and i'm not saying you couldn't put some signage on there but you'd have to reduce some of your signs on the front to put it on the side i don't think you should be granted we're already i'm in full support of granting you a lot of signage because i think the building's needed and i don't have a problem with that it's just adding these extra sides to it to me seems too much is it the so it's the two sides on building b and c that's what it is i mean i think that's i think i'm building b and c i have a hard time with both sides i'm building a i think both sides actually qualify because you've got parking on the front of it on the top the bottom side is where you possibly could enter up pearl though i doubt yeah i mean just traffic will come off you know that doesn't matter did i do i did not do a good job i'm i must have missed that in my here so i think also that's why i think so this i think i think this is this side this side here i'm trying to find abby a pathway forward and give her some structure to what we're looking at so if if what we're looking at is reducing by two of the sides that's 480 square feet and this on this side so that would be the reduction are you trying to say you want both of these i do agree that this side i think it's going to have the least amount of traffic here it does but that's a very small entry and one of the other things this one is also trying to this is probably a traffic light i want to set a precedent that says every everybody that builds a retail development can now get the two sides of their street so you're driving down there maybe you can see them from the corner they do but but that's but that's something that it shouldn't be just an easy yes here you go because those are private drives as well and there there's a reason the side could exist for i think that kind of at least for me i'm in the same spot i was in august don't see the need to include the side i think with the calculation dimension you still have a lot of space on the buildings to sign for signage and i don't want to treat it as equal traffic you're not going to drive in there driving like driving down gandy um and that you know two months ago taking the sides off was a fair call and i do appreciate the working up of life but i don't see really any addy do you have any i don't i don't think the client has any traffic studies of how now obviously if i would assume yeah it's up to well okay so that yeah considerably the amount of traffic and again how many businesses 12 12. mm-hmm the client be accepting to a condition where it was the front and one side for each building whatever that told them to be because i can look that if the reason for my reasoning is i can see where the building a building like this would be sitting on a corner you'd have both of those sides and that would be realistic but again i go back to it wouldn't be an entire block you wouldn't get can i can i make a quick text because that was not the direction that i got from the client um but maybe if we're here you can get a quick text i'd bring you 34 29 36. would it are you choosing the side would it and it would be the frontage and one side of buildings b and c and we'd get all three of a would it test to me is it in one side of each of the building i don't think i could do that for a i mean the direction yeah not for a i couldn't do that because the because the north side is the first point of of way finding that you see and the south is the the um i think that's up to the tenant if they really want to have something on the north side i'm not saying you can't put something on that north side but they would have to take it off of what they have in the front to put it on the side then we have to take off 20 square feet to put a sign on the front you're not getting very much on the north side it's separated by two buildings you're going to be driving by looking up at the side of the building as you come across it's not you're not talking about a giant run through there most people i believe are going to come down the right side of the point anyway the east side but that's up to you guys to wait find out where to direct to me like we talked about the left side of the west side of the plan is really more of an access road to get the trucks down to the building a so they're going to be seeing the whole frontage not that north side i mean there is a directional so up in this corner when you come off of this road there is a can you see my mouse yes okay um there's a directional here so that is a point and there's so there's a stop sign here and a directional here and if you're going to those addresses they'll be sent down this road so this is the first point of wayfinding for these tenants and i don't if we're looking at the building and we're taking square footage from the front that then the the sign code is designed to ensure that the signage is proportionate to the tenant space that we're talking about so then we're taking tenant space square footage from the front because we don't want to approve the site then if you're saying that then you're also you want me to believe that people are going to come down there and you're going to get a whole bunch of people coming from pearl street so the pearl you're going to get on the back side that people are going to see that side i mean again i think it's when you came two months ago i was dead set on i would only approve the front long face of the buildings i think that was fair i can understand where you'd say that these buildings could be and they probably would be on a corner somewhere if they're out in the middle of whatever okay fine but to say both sides are they're private roads you don't that you don't have a right for signage i think you need signage but there's a certain amount of compromise in there that we don't like if if a tenant really needs to have signage on that corner on that side then you know out of their 250 square feet allotted to their one their side of the building take 20 square feet and put another well i mean 20 square feet is not adequate for that building and this is this is 200 i mean this is 200 square feet and this really to me i mean it's proportionate it's proportionate in width but that's 250 so we're gonna this is only 210 so we're gonna minimize that from 400 feet away that's appropriate from standing underneath it in the parking lot or driving by it in the parking lot where you're 10 feet from the building it's not appropriate it's too big it's too tall you're never going to see it but that but the intent of like adding these as wayfinding is because people are driving it's not because they're standing in front of you're driving between building a and building b the north side of building a how far away from the building you're at one parking space 12 feet away from the building i can't answer 16 if it's you know if you're kind of sidewalk it's not okay so what what is the what is the condition or the compromise on the table i would be willing to even make a motion to support the front and one side of each building so that would be a total of you've got 2620 in frontage and right now you're asking for 1378 in and sides and i would cut that in half it would be 33 of a nine total and then have it equally divided between the three i can't speak for the other board members obviously do we uh right i mean i'm getting i'm getting a sense of the vote so well i will say that the way the variance is written by the way it's it's it's a private so it's a pool it's not specific to there's a condition yeah there would be a condition on the table that would not correct yeah and we're we're okay with i mean obviously like if it gets approved there would be that condition and that i you know apologize for writing it like that that is not the intent and that is why i specifically put this this square footage breakdown so that you could see the intent is to have this square footage breakdown as it is i know that the total requested looks like a pool but it is not this is the intent of the variance we had discussed with addy about you know if it were to be approved having like that condition of the master sign plan even tied to the exhibits that the applicant has brought in today to show the actual sizes of those signs if you guys would be willing to approve it just so that way yes thank you um one question are you i'm sorry if i didn't hear this correctly are you choosing the one side are we choosing the one side i'm not telling you where to put it it i'm telling you so it has to go on the building unfortunately in each building but i wouldn't care if you want to put it on both sides half the side half on each side is fine i'm just trying to limit your overall signs in your face like this is in vegas so then i i have a question then because i think this there also needs to be wording in there because we wouldn't be allowed a sign location there with that like we we're not traditionally allowed these sign locations so i just want to ensure that if we're saying you're taking square footage from one side and the front that we are still able to have a sign it's just not counted as square footage it would be what's presented on your site plan which you've already picked all three sides it would just be building a would be 10 57.5 building b would be 11 20.75 and building c would be also they have to do a master plan they have to do a master plan so when we when we condition this we would have to say side square footage for building a of 240 square feet can be used on either side they just don't want to be bound to one side yeah and i would condition it on either well and basically say you have 240 square feet to be used both sides yeah and i i just want to make sure that like permitting wise we're okay because i'm not traditionally allowed to have a sign on that side so if we're saying it's only going to be one side and the front then i wouldn't even traditionally through permitting be allowed a sign so i just want to make sure they're like where you could have 120 right right so i'm not saying i'm not refuting the square footage yeah i was just saying so if if i may um thank you um what what i will say is you know i'm understanding the conversation about being creating the the square footage amount but also ensuring that they're you know from what i'm hearing not necessarily limit to a side if that's the board's intention uh my recommendation would just be to make that clearly worded in the motion not only the square footage that is being allowed but whether or not it is being allowed on all three sides or just specific ones and being specific when you make that motion todd i would be comfortable if you're saying we're allowed 224.5 square feet cutting that on both sides if if you're if the square footage is the issue i'm happy to calculate that and be able to put like put them on both sides you have half on both sides or all on one side yeah i would be okay um it you're you're more generous than i would be but i would live with that compromise and i would accept that compromise as something i would go with what you've presented us for the record because i think it's agreed sound like you guys have got some stuff going on you have rebuttal time should you need it all right so are you okay with that compromise if if we put it yes so that would mean like if we're looking at this we're doing a total of the 816 so for building b the 816 and the 240 for building b the 901 and 224 and that building c the 90125 and the 220 or yeah buildings are the same i believe yes yeah so that's what we're we're looking at okay thanks i will open it up for a let's do board discussion first you guys tell me i understand you're i'm i'm kind of with brian on this one i think that these buildings are just so gigantic and especially now that we're seeing the images that they brought in i just don't think i have a huge problem with it i think the sign code is dramatically outdated for the amount of signage that they allow on buildings amen so amenable to taking a reduction and looking at what the square footage on building c would have been 900 one square feet their current sign up there is 210 square which if you put four that would be bigger if you put three would be the same size so three of those which the elevation you got you would have 210 on one side two and ten on the other you have 420 giving you another even if they have one bought the whole building one to put 450 and 450 it's such a huge building i don't have it i agree but 450 450 equals 900 and i'm okay with that where they're adding adding now is another 220 they want to add another 500 so that's that's where your motion comes into play because that's only going to be on this only on the correct and i don't have a problem with the front and i've said that from the beginning i don't have a problem with that front the front because i think that's appropriate for the size it it's within the signage code if it was on the front you can get big enough signs i think that works you've already proved it out with the time they put us the signs i think that's a problem that's but it's a fair compromise right but if it was correct but i don't think you would have public on both sides i understand that but you're talking about egregious signs right so you don't like you wouldn't have a choice if it was a private road but it would be weather tight it would be it would it's got the fascia so if they put weather tight on this side of that corner and this side of that corner to me it's just not that like her in this but again i can't make the size of the sign is not not being a bomb it's for the distance and i i really feel it's heat the sign ordinance in this city is so old outdated and we're approving signs for shopping centers where the buildings are three three miles to the back of the building and we're like you need a sign because nobody can and then these folks are basically saying look we just want to do what we normally do if we just were not anything for anything above and knock us down i don't know i will agree to whatever gives them their signage right now because this is just much in the ridiculousness in my opinion but i give them their signs i i'd be happy to agree to that and this is frustrating it's very frustrating because i think we're just we're making i understand this isn't a 7-eleven but bigger than a walmart and and they're being granted they would have like a walmart what was on a corner they have two sides and you two sides it's not big enough to be on it's not a city block this isn't a city block building to me since there's not anything entitled anything there is a plus but i've also gone through a couple complexes that are big warehouses like that and i don't see the enormous signs because you know what i'm up too close to see them at jumbo signs that i'm not going to be seeing these from gandhi even if i drove down gandhi at five miles an hour they're too far back even at this size what they're there for is to help somebody in there and i think that this is a compromise i mean i could i would support the compromise you know and if we can have three on a compromise the variance request for a case vrb that's right 26-87 located at 41 30 gandhi boulevard 41 32 west gandhi boulevard it's pictured on the site plan presented at the public hearing for a increase in signage from zero square feet to um zero square feet to 3 357.36 square feet i just to be broken down as follows building a the front of tenant spaces will have 817.5 square feet and both end caps will share 240 square feet building b the tenant facing side will have not actually building b and c the front tenant spaces will have 901.25 square feet and the end caps of each building will share 224.5 square feet respectively and then the address number logo will be 48.35 square feet yeah that said variance as condition as i stated be granted based on the applicant presented competent and substantial evidence in the public in the record and the public hearing of necessary hardship or practical difficulty when considering five hardship criteria set forth in 27-80 city code specifically that the whole project is built back with private roads and we're trying to grab what would normally be out a little second thank you for working all right so the next item on the agenda is vrb 2696 the owners are carrie and craig paplinski the applicant is zachary peas the property address is 4631 west longfellow avenue the zoning is residential single family rs 75 the request is to reduce the rear yard setback from 20 feet to 12 feet for the construction of a swimming pool exceeding 12 inches from ground level the code section is section 27156 c table 4-2 schedule of area height bulk and placement regulations the rs 75 district setbacks are 25 feet from the front 20 from the rear and seven feet on the sides previous actions on this property vld 26052 4046 for the pool permit and vld 250512451 for the new construction of the home so here we have the map and outlined in the red dash line is the property in question so here is the site plan and the area of the pool is here in the rear have a close-up of it right here so in the red dash line is that 12 foot setback that they are requesting you can see that there's also like an area right outside of it that would be the like the infinity basin but that is not above the 12 inches above ground so they didn't that wasn't included in that request so that it would just be where the actual wall of the pool that where the 12 foot dash line is at and for development review comments natural resources no objections with conditions natural zoning natural resources has no objections with conditions at the time of construction additional natural resources changes and requests can be made to ensure all other applicable sections of chapter 27 in the city of tampa tree and landscape technical manual are met transportation and wastewater no objections water no response right away no objections with conditions on stormwater has objections site larger than the 10 000 square feet and it has exceeding the 50 impervious areas and the site must retain half inch of rainfall and provide detention for the entire site and must meet the stormwater technical standards tico no response as of september 2020 26 and here we have these standards and the criteria for the variance review board and i'm available for any questions please state your name address and if you have been sworn zachary pease of uh 5401 south uh dale mabry and yes i've been sworn in and i'm here uh representing my clients carrie and craig peplinski with respect to the experience review application of which i brought you a clear site plan that you can see hopefully uh hopefully this one will be a somewhat of a layup for you uh compared to the last one but essentially my clients have uh purchased this lot and uh started constructing a new home uh yeah on the lot that they purchase uh existed two grand trees of which they uh they uh work diligently on their house plan to preserve those uh in the intention of meeting of the two seven one five six uh requirement that would reduce the rear setback uh for really the main dwelling ultimately their intention was to reduce the main dwelling setback and the allowance for a swimming pool as you know swimming pools are subject to a rear setback of five foot and a side setback of five foot to water's edge typically in the zoning district however when it goes above 12 inches above grade it's now subject to the main dwelling dwelling setbacks and in this case those would be uh 20 and seven from the side uh ultimately uh what has happened here is as a result of that and given the shape of the lot and then obviously the intention to preserve the the grand trees they have now designed themselves a home uh tremendously limits the the installation of the swimming pool here that's meeting of the criteria of keeping it on grade uh this is kind of uh kind of a three-fold situation here when you take a look here uh at the grand tree that they preserved over here and you look at the protective radius associated with that it essentially infringes on what would be a possible alternative design space for what is really a very lackluster and small swimming pool however that lackluster and small swimming pool would be meeting of the side and rear setbacks you know uh however uh it would also be placed essentially in the corner of the lot uh away from view from anywhere uh up on their existing lanai and also ultimately insulated from there these folks have small children um mom is not uh not thrilled about the idea of the kids basically swimming around the corner and any basically 85 to 90 percent of the area that she would be in is blocking the view so ultimately what that does is hinder this placement in addition there was a existing oak tree that was removed here of which if you were to look at this little little line i've drawn here this essentially would outline uh the likely root system of that tree in the in the area of alternative we played with this and you know myself and the design team played with this several different ways trying to come up with alternatives that were satisfactory of which we had a very difficult time you know this is coupled also with the rear property line of which has this diagonal shape essentially creating like a v shape to the property line uh and essentially impinging at its closest point you know that those setbacks and everything greatly uh greatly reducing the ability to kind of fit something in there that looks appropriate and kind of fits with that and that brings us to the shape of the swimming pool right now again the shape of the pool is is almost a mimic of the property line and we're not asking for any more than what the the section 27156 would allow even for the main home so uh in practical theory uh the dotted line that you see here would be suitable for them to construct the entire home out to that property or out to that setback line uh by the by that section of code however they're not looking to do that they're just uh and i'd almost further that case by potentially saying that they can might be even it might be able to even build a swimming pool inside of that home by this by this uh i don't know legal might be able to speak on that and i'm only i'm only kind of bringing it up to state kind of some of the gray area that lies in this section of the code is essentially you know you could build your home out that far up to two stories or three or up to thirty feet basically and that would be an observation of this however my homeowners aren't looking to do that they're looking to put a swimming pool that essentially is above the 12 inches of grade and can essentially connect properly with the existing lanai space this this home happens to be located in ae so it's dramatically elevated above the ground which kind of brings me to my third hardship criteria when you when you elevate these homes as far up as you do and then you're essentially trying to create staircases that can cover that that tremendous distance you see it in the front of homes it greatly affects the design in the front of the home more so in the rear because ultimately you're trying to fit a staircase in the front that you can connect to a driveway in the rear we're trying to build a swimming pool and have a usable and functional outdoor living space of which the trajectory of stairs when you're looking to cover a distance of eight foot can dramatically you know infringe or impact into the usable area before you can essentially start building your pool so my team came up with this design essentially uh its intention is to be compliant with the main setbacks that would be required for the main dwelling under that code and and take full advantage of the homeowners you know diligence and and uh you know designing their home uh to preserve these three or these two grand trees uh on property and allow for the meeting of that uh that requirement you know um essentially essentially uh some of the some of the agreed upon uh things that would be kind of considered in this uh this is this green space here is uh intended to be a tall landscape buffer uh with approved trees to essentially block out any vantage uh that you would see from the swimming pool however it's not so far above grade that uh it would be any any higher than say uh traditional fence height at six foot or so you know uh so but as a in an abundance of caution as to what could affect adjacent properties they intend on putting a privacy buffer there a landscape privacy buffer that could insulate that uh and essentially that could be the only uh you know the only thing that i could see that could be objectable in this but ultimately we think this is the best design for the situation we've played with alternative designs they're dramatically limited for the reasons i've mentioned and we do believe that this is meeting of of the criteria from the hardship standpoint certainly uh with respect to the grand trees that are on site that affected the uh ultimately the architecture of the home but more importantly the shape of the oblong shape and the rear of the property is something that uh you know 22 years of designing resort outdoor living spaces you don't encounter these very often and this is kind of has one of the more dramatic effects uh just given the fact that it essentially changes in both of those planes are ultimately not square to the rear of the property or the other lines of the of the home so essentially squaring pools up and squaring uh other geometric shapes up become difficult uh especially when you're trying to essentially sync that up with the rear of the property line and of which the rear of the property line has these setbacks that start to impinge and bind on the uh on the ability to do that so uh so it's kind of with that and uh we are kind of asking the board to consider this 27156 and the fact that the home itself could be built out to the area that we're proposing this swimming pool to uh and it's already uh been allowed for that you know ultimately we're looking for that reduction of setbacks similar to what the main dwelling would be uh already granted in having uh in the observance of kind of creating a swimming pool that works with the existing and adjacent lanai area uh keeping that pool in full vantage of of uh that lanai area for the safety of small children and uh ultimately uh this this is what we've come up with and we think it's also uh fitting of the caliber of the home which is again an important consideration when you're designing these so that kind of concludes my uh presentation i think it's like it said most of which could be kind of right here on the site plan but i have other information should you need uh or have so all right thank you sure is there anyone else here to speak for or against come on up yeah hello we have your name address and have you been sworn in uh i've not been sworn in all right uh we'll swear you in is there anyone else here that's going to speak tonight that's not been sworn in please stand i do my name is ryan feinberg i'm at 4625 west longfellow which is two uh doors down on the to the east um i am a builder and i'm also the owner of this uh of this property uh i'm against this variance uh because i don't want my uh potential clients to have to see these people or um the uh the owner of this property who's proposing to raise the pool above the flood plain uh to six feet of uh over their fence um i also think this has considerable flood issues they have also um they've also pushed the front of the house into the setback uh deep into the setback because of these trees and they're also now pushing deep into the rear setback uh to squeeze this pool in um so i am against uh this variance i have a couple more notes here um i think that it's not a true um hardship in my opinion because they could easily put this pool at one foot above grade like all other builders in the area are held to like myself um so that shouldn't be an issue at all i'm building a house two doors down and i'm putting a pool in and we'll be one foot above uh existing grade as uh all houses in the area and the neighborhood um are held to um also i think this creates a cascade of precedence for the whole neighborhood because now i could ask for the for the same thing i'd like the neighborhood to be consistent and on the front and the rear of the property and that is um yeah that is all for me thank you anyone else to speak for or against open up for some board questions so i i was a little confused when you were speaking so do you understand that the 12 foot setback that you're requesting was already granted for the for the house it was yes uh so in the in two seven uh one five six uh there is a provision in there that allows for the reduction of the rear setback of the rear setback of the main dwelling uh uh of eighty percent of whatever that is is my understanding uh in uh and it's with the preservation of grand trees so it requires so not just everybody can go and ask for this variance and be meeting of that section it requires the preservation of grand trees to allow for that because ultimately the preservation of grand trees can affect the architecture of the home if you're trying to do so and it can lead to some of these ramifications i understand that you can be granted that variance have you been granted that variance well no because it hasn't been asked for because the main home it that the home was designed with the intention of utilizing the variance so what and i was just going to note that what for rs75 which is the zoning here for a corner lot the rear setback would be 12 for the principal structure so rs75 because it's for the rear setback and on a corner lot it would be 12 for the principal structure for the house is it a corner lot yeah oh wait i'm sorry i'm sorry no no no it's 20 it's 20. okay yeah it'll be 20 20. and then what's the allowable reduction in setbacks for saving of a grand tree versus removal of a grand tree so that would be no right so it's section 27 156 and it's footnote seven and it would be up to a 40 reduction for rear yard 40 so was there a variance granted for this house when it was built due to the grand i'm not certain i i'm not the builder are you the builder sir no i'm not building okay okay you're the owner of what i'm a builder and you know they don't need a variance they automatically yeah so the whole purpose of the reduction of the setbacks is to reduce the number of grand trees being requested to take down and to come to us so if they say that that's a staff level they save the grand tree then they do get the reduction of the setbacks it's like an administrative uh it is uh and additionally uh you know this this uh criteria have you know ultimately has to be met with with the preservation of grand trees which was done in this case which is you know why we feel that uh why we feel like that our request is kind of inbounds with respect to that being that the whole home itself could be built up how tall is the pool the pool is going to be up so essentially your finished floor of the lanai is you know set essentially six foot above that of which we're looking to lower the swimming pool approximately a foot below the existing lanai to prevent any uh any ramifications from line of sight from the from the neighboring property so essentially call it five to five and a half above grade as it stands right now which is essentially and you know as said and you know it can be built at 12 uh you know 12 inches but it can also be built at 12 inches out to the five foot rear setback so it's a unique situation that i think is would you be accepting to a condition put on this that it not exceed five feet or five and a half feet uh could you make it to six just because i'm not sure how the you know i'm not sure of essentially the finish uh material that the builder has spec for the lanai or where he has landed with respect to his uh but but not to exceed six i think is completely satisfactory there's a big difference between five and six yeah about five and a half i think five and a half is reasonable it puts the uh pool height below uh fence heights around the perimeter and prevents any uh any potential uh you know impact on line of sight from neighboring properties just so i understand that the patio that's shown here the porch yeah that already exists it does so that's already under construction here and this this outline here is to show where the patio is and essentially and that finish that finished floor of the patio is already at six feet so there's already people standing on the patios correct it's essentially at 11 uh so at 11 uh foot is the is essentially the current porch so 11 foot above flood of which the rear grade is at 5.2 uh as it stands right now right maybe five and a half so i'm a little confused so sure i'm a little confused because you said that the current elevation is six foot right uh so six foot above grade and it's really you know so the site conditions prevent me from really nailing that uh accurately um but what i can say is essentially here on the builder's you know site plan here he has a uh a finished floor elevation of 11 of which here at the you know furthest point from that in the rear it shows a 5.2 according to the topographical so that would suggest six foot of difference of which i know that we're dropping our pool one foot from the current lanai height so you may you may only be able to drop it seven inches say again you may only be able to drop with seven inches as a step correct yeah so essentially uh our plan is to put one step down to the edge of the swimming pool which would be seven as a our max that we like to use for the uh rear however we could be seven inches cannot be higher than seven inches but whatever i want to make sure we can't think if we just give them the variance you can make it 30 of course you could you wouldn't want to do that but that you know that would definitely be it's already it's already lower looking you could also put a 10 you could step up into the players well you could yeah unfortunately yeah you're already looking but if we conditioned it to be just below the porch height the current porch height would that be acceptable yes yeah that would be acceptable i'd also entertain uh conditions that require uh privacy buffers uh present you know view from adjacent properties um one one solution that could satisfy uh our frontier situation as well as like make this uh unique to the property in the sense that it has to be meeting of these criterias in order to of these finite criterias oblong rear lot uh things like that so uh so this gentleman doesn't run into what i've been running into for 22 years of building in south hampa so could satisfy everybody all right that's all the questions i don't think so because we're not ours so um you guys have any other questions all right uh you have some rebuttal time should you need it no i think uh i think i get where we stand appreciate it all right then i'm going to close the public area and open up for board discussion or a motion i think it's difficult uh you know you already have a patio at six feet above grade which is as tall as a fence um it's just it is a strange scenario where they could just build it all indoors and put a big piece of glass there and they wouldn't need the variance so i you know so to me this is and i i'll be surprised if we don't either get a change in the code or after all the flooding no one wants to put their pool on grade anymore because it's just going to flood and get destroyed and it floods better possibly is a fencing uh code change and the problem is in these ae areas we're talking about houses that need to be six seven eight feet above grade and our fences are only allowed to be six feet above grade so therefore everyone's kitchen windows are just looking right into the neighbor's backyard but the it's interesting though that the setback on this is only because of the basin right uh no the setback on that is due to the saving of the right what i'm saying is they're only requesting this variance because of the base correct no the faces only told yourself yeah the the if i may the the the stairs seven and top to bottom you hear yeah push it all fence this is just all the multi a lot of things i see a hardship my seat oh yeah is there any other conditions or anything else you guys want me to add i think just the the height is all is that being and taylor is it okay if we condition it as being a minimum of seven inches below the slab the porch slab yep i understand the question um yes i would just say just make sure to be specific specific in the motion we're referencing the heights and the questing for that all right i'll take another complicated one here we go i move that the variance request for case vrv 26-96 uh located at 4631 west longfellow avenue as depicted on the site plan presented at the public hearing for a reduction in rear yard setback from 20 feet to 12 feet for construction of a is elevated above 12 inches from the ground and be conditioned with the following i'm sorry with the following conditions that the height of the pool be no taller than seven inches below the patio which is being built in the back and shown the site plan as 11 feet above 11 feet that said there it's as condition be granted based upon the application presenting competent substantial evidence in the record of the public hearing of an unnecessary hardship for practical difficulty when considering the five hardship criteria set forth in section 27-80 of the city code specifically that the house would already qualify to be at this exact thing because of the saving of the granite oak trees and elevation of the pool for multiple safety factors including flooding and safety and uh just be able to get stairs down to it is impractical second we have a motion and a second all in favor of approval say aye aye aye opposed seeing none thank you all right so the next item on the agenda is vrb 26101 the owner and applicant is david newyan the property address is 4402 west lancaster street the zoning is commercial neighborhood cn the request is to reduce the corner yard setback from 20 feet to seven feet the applicable code section is 27156 c table 4-2 schedule of area height bulk and placement regulations the cn district setbacks are 20 feet from the front 10 feet for the rear inside and 20 feet for the corner previous actions on this address lnd 26 000095 for a lot split su 2659 special use for single family semi-detached and det 2681 which is a dining design exception for transportation for a driveway the map here depicted in that red dashed line is the lot in question on the corner of lancaster and manhattan here we have the site plan and highlighted in yellow is the seven foot setback being requested a close-up of it development review comments uh natural resources no objections no objections with conditions zoning natural resources has no objections with conditions at the time of construction natural resources changes and requests can be made to ensure all all applicable sections of chapter 27 the city of tampa code and the city of tampa tree and landscape technical manual are met transportation wastewater had no objections water no objections the proposed BRB doesn't impact any of the existing water infrastructure right away had no objections storm water no objections with conditions they must meet the tampa stormwater technical standards uh antico had no objections so here is the criteria for the variance review or section 2780 open for any questions all right good evening gentlemen um so we are here to discuss the hardship at 4402 west lancaster please give your name address if you've been sworn yes yeah my name is anthony panghouse i have been sworn and i reside at 10338 imperial point drive east in largo all right so looking at the uh the property here at 4402 lancaster um this is a pretty excuse me this is a pretty easy one um the hardship we're asking for a reduction of the setback from 20 feet down to seven feet um 24 feet of that eastern boundary was acquired by the county for the right-of-way in 1959 so we're only asking for half of what was taken you know as a side reduction uh in the quarter setback um you know they're based on a 50-foot wide lot dimension in that area and this lot's 38 feet wide this hardship is not shared by other lots in the area because they did not have their their side taken by the right-of-way but i do have a few show you here so this is the existing home that was on the property you can see it sits uh well within that that seven feet the existing home is about three feet so we're proposing to build one further than where that one currently sits and i've got another one to show you it kind of overlays the existing home with the uh the proposed structure and you can see even given the the setbacks you couldn't build that home that was currently there given that 20-foot corner clearance requirement i think that's about all i've got you guys have any questions um what i'm looking at on the screen here it says it's 76.46 feet wide along lancaster and i believe earlier on i heard there was a lot split and then you mentioned it was only 30 38 feet wide 38 feet yeah once you split the lot so what we're looking at here you've got there's actually two lots here it's not just one um not yet it's currently one currently one currently one yeah those previous actions have not been completed they're dependent on this vrv approval on the variance so this is going to be a town home uh duplex townhomes along those lines you know for now we're we're going to work within that footprint that we've decided we're not 100 certain um you know we've got that su1 in there that hasn't been approved yet so this is still commercial you know as we stand here now so if this was not split in half trying to envision where the was it 20 feet still pretty substantial the original home that was there was built in 53 and then in 59 they took that 24 feet which is a that's a big chunk right i mean you can keep this you can keep the original home there uh you know i don't know i understand yeah i'm messing with you um do you know how far the distance is from the proposed envelope to the right-of-way or to the asphalt of manhattan uh it's about uh you know what i've got it written down here 23 plus five plus seven that's correct it's about 35 feet 35 yeah and there was a sidewalk in there somewhere is the sidewalk kind of what i'm looking at that's in between the dark dotted line that's correct yes seven feet from the sidewalk i'm just thinking for the first safety reasons you know it's important to have space for firefighters you know to get around police officers stuff like that sure and it's congruent with the property across the street the property to the north on the other side of lancaster is you know equally uh setback is that an easement is that an easement or is that it's just right away right away yeah so is it it's taken care of by this property uh or is it taken care of by the city taken care of by the city um do you guys have any other questions honestly we didn't have too many questions for you but you have rebuttal time if you'd like i think we're all set i think that concludes my presentation good i'm gonna close the public hearing and open it up for uh board discussion um i i feel like i definitely see a hardship here i see a more than standard five foot side setback for safety reasons 35 feet to the asphalt is a pretty long pretty large distance for cars to park or move off over headway if they need to so he's moving the building back he's moving building further from where it currently is so you know i don't see too much all your calculations question um as i'm trying to look at this um i'm i'm hearing this splitting lot part and are we talking about the access being off lancaster or if this is going to be townhouses needing access to manhattan no you're you're correct the access is on lancaster your your parts closed i apologize we can work off the site plan that we have and the site plan we're looking at does have the dual driveways coming off lancaster okay not making sure i understand okay i'm gonna the variance request for case brb 26-101 for the property located at 4402 west lancaster street be granted as depicted on the site plan presented at the public hearing for a reduced corner yard setback from 20 feet to seven feet for new construction based upon the applicant presenting competent and substantial evidence of the record and at this public hearing for an unnecessary hardship or practical difficulty when considering the phi hardship criteria set forth in section 27-80 of the city code specifically that the uh the current home setback um is actually closer than the new building would be that in 1959 the county acquired a portion of this which literally created this um problem needing to this variance we have a motion in a second all in favor of approval say aye aye aye aye opposed you're done graduate all right thank you okay next the next item on the agenda is brb 26102 the owner is dylan candles and sarah lauren the applicant is robert foster the property address is 401 south royal point sienna drive the zoning is residential single family rs 75 and the request is to reduce the corner yard setback from 15 to 15 feet to seven feet and reduce the rear yard setback from five feet to four feet the applicable code section would be section 27-290.3 for swimming pools the location swimming pools may be located within side or your yards but shall not be allowed in front or corner yards as follows in ground pool pool deck and water level designed to be at or within 12 inches of the finish grade swimming pool shall be located a minimum of five feet from any side or rear lot line and no closer to the corner lot line than the corner yard setback established in section 27156 table dash 2 for the underlying zoning district as measured from the water's edge our 75 required corner setback is 15 feet previous actions for this address is bld 260519500 for the new construction and spr 25003612 for the site review for the new construction of the home so here we have the map uh and outline and outlined in that red dash line is the property in question on point sienna and evelyn drive here we have the site plan and depicting the pool here in the rear here we have a close-up of it to show the the setbacks that are being requested the development review comments uh natural resources had no objections with conditions the pool conflicts with multiple ficus hedges along the property line at the time of construction root pruning may be required if the ficus hedges are going to be removed an affidavit from the neighbor would be required transportation wastewater water right away stormwater no objections tico no response as of september 28 2026 here we have the criteria for the variance review board and i'm available for any questions please state your name address and if you've been sworn good evening my name is robert sample my address is 5103 west platte street and i've been sworn in so i'm here on behalf of my clients dylan and sarah mccambless they were unable to attend tonight but i'm the builder i'm a custom home builder in tampa and we've designed the house to go on this property here at 401 royal point sienna these clients lived here before and and flooded and similar to what was shared earlier were unable to renovate the house or bring it up you know fix the house so they're kind of forced into rebuilding and um as as the home design has evolved they decided that they would like to put a swimming pool in the backyard um and she had a better you know view of the site plan that was a little closer up i've got one that may or may not be helpful but i do have a overview of the property here where you can see that the you know island there was kind of divided into three pie pieces if you will and so the the angled rear property line is really what's creating the the challenge of fitting a reasonably sized swimming pool in the rear yard there um so in an effort to uh kind of accomplish two things one of which is to have a more more of a rectangular rectangular shaped swimming pool normal shaped swimming pool um that was where we were requesting to uh reduce the setback from 15 feet to seven feet and slide it a little closer to the to the property line there and then um also in in reducing the rear yard setback from five to four uh really it was more of an effort to get it a little further away from where the steps from the house come down uh create a little bit of a safer landing at the base of the stairs um so yeah i think that that pretty well covers it i think that the only other thing that i would say is that if you know if if this were any of these other surrounding lots that you see on the overview here that are rectangular we wouldn't even be having the conversation it would all fit uh at the 15 foot setback line but the angled rear property line is really what kind of necessitates it moving uh a little closer to the to the fence there um this is going to be on grade so it's not going to be creating any uh drainage problems for the neighbors or anything like that i i live a block away and i've seen i've seen some other builders put in pools that have created disasters when they're built up and not drained properly so i really have no interest in uh in dealing with that obviously and um and uh this also will not include a screen enclosure so it'll be behind a six foot privacy fence um you know won't be visible from the road or anything of that nature so but i think uh it will not have any adverse effects on the neighbors in the public utilities storm water etc i think that about covers it very good thank you um is there anyone here to speak for or against seeing none i'm gonna open up for board questions you brought up a very valid point uh the screen enclosure with where i see the pool designed if you they do decide one day they want them you'll be back here again because there's no space for it sure all right um it is a very strange block configuration i got to give that to you um was that was there any thought about pulling the pool in one foot so you don't need the side setback i'm sorry is there any possibility of pulling the pool in one foot so you don't need the additional foot on the side for the side setback up against uh points you're gonna drive on the well the the side is where we're looking to go from 15 to 7. 15 to 7. there's five to four or sorry the rear yeah that's the angle line yeah um yeah you know we that was originally where it was designed and and that in the kind of skinny shape of the pool or the skinny section of the pool that makes it like five how wide is the way it's drawn currently is about six six and a half can you pull up a picture of the pool okay six without the variance it would make it uh seven can you pick it up can you go to the picture of the pool i've got one here i don't know how much that helps that works we can zoom in so there's your stair the stair problem yeah because you got to have the stairs to get down to the pool pushes the pool he could elevate it yeah look at all the stairs yeah that's good and kind of that pretty much answers all my questions any other questions just sample you have a rebuttal time should you need it i'm all set then i'm going to close the public period open up for a motion discussion it seems simple enough he's ready i'm trying to you want to do it you want to do it right yeah i i usually put your home so you guys can correct me um i move for the variance request for vrb case 26-102 for the property located at 401 south rural ponciano drive be granted as depicted on the site plan presented hearing a reduction in the corner setback from 15 feet to seven feet and the rear yard setback from five feet to four feet for a swimming pool upon presenting confidential evidence in the record this public hearing of an unnecessary hardship or practical difficulty when considering the five hardship criteria set forth in section 27-80 of the city code specifically the irregular lot the fact that the elevation is such that it limits the ability to put in the out raising significantly so to afford them this creative solution to this hardship second the second all in favor of approval say aye aye all those opposed hearing none congratulations thank you guys all right so the next item on the agenda is brb 26104 the owner is ea mmp2 llc the applicant is braulio grajales the property address is 3639 south manhattan avenue the zoning is commercial general cg the request is to reduce the minimum required off-street parking from 50 parking spaces to 43 parking spaces the applicable code section is section 27-127-283.7 number of off-street parking spaces previous actions on this property is de126-0000172 for a rear landscape buffer so here we have the map and outlined in the red dash areas the property in question on manhattan so here we have the site plan that is being proposed so this would this parking would be like the ground level floor and the offices would be up top for the development review comments natural resources no objections with conditions natural resources has no comments on the reduced parking the variance does not waive any landscaping standards transportation wastewater and water no objections right-of-way no objections with conditions please update the survey and site plan to show uh vacating ordinance uh 7842a recorded in official record book 3905 page 1340 this alley vacating reserved a utility easement and that utility easement must be shown um object stormwater had objections there's standard um kind of comments and they have to comply with the stormwater technical standards and tico had no objections with conditions uh here we have these standards for the variance review board section 2780 and i'm available for any questions thank you yeah you're going to use the production no we have a presentation oh do you have it on a usb we give it to them oh they they have it if you have the thumb drive you can put the thumb right right here uh good evening braulio grajales with highpoint engineering in tampa uh 5005 west laurel street and i'm here to present together with my colleague um and i have been sworn jaime rojas 5005 west laurel street with hyper engineering and i also have been sworn in thank you so we're here to uh present brb 26 104 this is for a proposed mixed use commercial office development in south tampa the address is 3639 south mahatan avenue see if i know how to okay okay so um this slide shows a vicinity map the purple rectangle is the property in question is located on the west side of south mahatan avenue just about 150 feet north of west euclid so these three pictures that we have on this slide the first picture is facing south it shows the existing one of the existing buildings on the property used to be a auto change auto repair building the picture in the middle is across from south manhattan facing west it shows the two properties the tall blue building again that's the auto repair and the white building is a uh a gym that uh waiting lift uh that is no longer in uh in business i believe and then the third picture is facing north just showing you know the corridor the commercial uh characteristic of the uh the area so excuse me project overview um very straightforward this is a small property it's about 0.47 acres it is located again in south tampa it's so on cg commercial general the proposed development is about 110 120 square feet the developer is proposing and the owners are proposing to have two uses on this building about 5 000 square feet will be medical office the other 5 000 square feet will be like a non-medical wellness spa we went through the whole process as required by by the standards by the rules we had a preliminary plan review meeting with the development coordination on may 11th the application number is on the screen and the project has also previously received approval for a design exception one to reduce the rear landscape buffer along the west property line from 10 feet down to excuse me from 15 feet down to 10 feet apologies for that this is a slide that shows the site plan that you have received on your packages just to emphasize the salmon color the pink color is the footprint of the building is a one-story building podium style building and is with parking underneath this is a rendering provided by the architect this is how the building is going to look like if you're driving on south manhattan avenue again one story podium building with parking underneath the requested variance as you as you already know we are requesting to reduce the parking from 50 spaces down to 43 is a reduction of seven parking spaces which is an approximately 14 reduction the condition of approval it gets approved the condition that we receive is that we obviously need to comply with the code of ordinance and any technical standards again the development review comments natural resources transportation wastewater water right away and tico did not have any objections some some had objections with some comments stonewater has some objections and i wanted to make sure that i bring this to the board that all these objections are representative of conditions that will be met during design and comment number two the reviewer asking for a location of the pond so the next slide we just resubmitted the plan indicating that we're going to use an underground drainage system due to the lack of space to you know provide upon on the property if we do upon then we will even reduce the parking even furthermore you know further down to where we're proposing uh now you so as mentioned before the uh proposal is to have two separate uses of medical office and uh wellness spa so for uh these two uses the required parking uh is considered for each of those so for the medical office uh the requirement is six spaces per thousand square feet and for the wellness spies four spaces per thousand square feet this is gross for area uh this adds up to 15 spaces our proposal uh is seeking for 43 parking spaces therefore a 14 parking reduction the parking demand for the non-medical uh wellness spa has been evaluated uh per the city of tampa land development code uh with the four spaces per thousand square feet of crossroad area but the parking demand for the medical office space has been evaluated with the use of the it parking generation manual six edition for land use of medical slash dental office building the uh based on the it uh six generation the average weekday peak parking demand is estimated at 13 spaces or 2.63 spaces per thousand square feet for the medical office and uh also per the it that 85th percentile weekday peak parking demand is estimated at 21 spaces or 4.28 spaces per thousand square feet the proposed medical office will provide 23 spaces or 4.6 spaces per thousand square feet this proposal is uh we're proposing an overall reduction of the total impervious area of the site and additional parking on the site cannot be provided without compromising internal site circulation parking minerability landscape buffers and other land development code requirements the proposed parking layout currently has been maximized and the parking has been maximized and i wanted to also highlight that we've already taken advantage of the uh maximum compact spaces requirements from the city of tampa which is of 65 percent uh it's also relevant to mention that all parking spaces will be shared between these two uses and they're not there's not going to be spaces assigned to each of uh issues i wanted to talk a little bit about the uh operations so the proposed medical office uh will operate as a branch of an existing cardiology practice and no echocardiography services will be provided on this location uh patient visits will be scheduled by appointment only and then as far as the wellness path the proposed uh spa will operate as and also an appointment based and it's a concert style facility so we're looking here for uh more quality treatment uh not volume and the average time for appointments is between one hour and they may last up to two hours then talking a little bit more of that compatibility and uh with surrounding properties so uh we we are adjacent to south manhattan avenue which is uh it's a two-lane road it's currently under improvement does not provide on-street parking opportunities adjacent to our property and then the closest residential street is east royal palm circle which is on the rear uh it's approximately 0.11 miles west of the project site and there is no continuous or direct pedestrian connection between israel palm circle or uh to our site and so given uh this separation distance to israel palm circle and lack of convenient connection connectivity and appointment and appointment based nature of the proposed uses parking overflow into surrounding residential neighborhood is not anticipated and uh to close our presentation um so the applicant uh respectfully requests your consideration to approve uh this variance br b26 104 to reduce the uh parking from 50 spaces down to 43 seven parking spaces reduction which is equivalent to a 14 percent this is all based and justified using it parking generation manual six edition and we are here to respond to any questions you may have thank you very much for your time and your attention all right uh do we have anything else that would like to speak for against the petition seeing none we'll open up for some board questions um my only real question was the numbers previously talked about the edition six of the parking manual um is that just for uh patients or is that patients and staff it is uh described as a medical office and it described medical and dental uh office it doesn't uh it doesn't uh and it's uh the equation that is provided whether it's average or 85th percentile or uh any other ratio that is provided in the manual is per uh gross floor area every thousand square feet it doesn't differentiate between patients uh or employees if that's the question it should take both into account it does and the combined for that was 26 so the combined so it is uh it is what what we're the point we're trying to bring across is that the average is 2.63 spaces per a thousand square feet so just uh to give you obviously some context uh the code land development code city of tampa land development code requires six spaces per thousand so that's a large difference right but the average being 2.63 when you equate to just the medical office portion of the project which is 5 000 square feet that requires only 13 spaces correct and then we as engineers we focus more on what is a little more conservative and we try to use always the 85th percentile the area the 85th percentile has a ratio of 4.28 which is about 21 parking spaces for the 5 000 square feet what we are proposing is 23 spaces which is a ratio above that 85th percentile which is 4.6 spaces per thousand square feet leaving alone the medic no no medical non-medical wellness spa which is still meeting the uh city of tampa land development code parking ratio of four per thousand which is even more which is more stringent than what we're currently looking at right and then we have a total combined of 20 and 23 of 43 three spaces very good thank you i think that was the only question so you have some rebuttal time should you need it back to you all right thank you for your time and your consideration we'll close the public hearing and uh open it up for motion or board discussion i agree with you um and i'm glad to hear that they've worked the storm vault out and um being that it's a concierge type medicine building with appointments they can definitely control the parking issues so i don't see any huge issues here come on you're getting good that the variance request for case brb 26-104 for the property located at 3639 south manhattan avenue be granted as depicted on the site plan presented the public hearing for a reduction in the minimum required off street parking spaces from 50 spaces to 43 spaces sorry um that the applicant upon presenting competent and substantial evidence in the record at this public hearing of an unnecessary hardship or practical difficulty when considering the five hardship criteria set forth in section 27-80 of the city code specifically it is on a commercial road they are um constrained um they have built out everything according to the site plan that they've shown and their medical um use there they have projections about what they can actually realistically serve and it should not impose a hardship on the surrounding neighborhood we have a motion in a second all in favor of approval say aye aye aye opposed seeing none congratulations thank you very much thank you all right so the next item on the agenda is brb 26105 the owner is tampa bay hunger relief center inc the applicant is the applicant is addimentary the property address is 3624 causeway boulevard the zoning is industrial general ig the request is for an additional 112.7 square feet of wall signage on the west elevation the applicable code section is section 27-289.3 allowable signs previous actions on this property of brb 22-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-7-3 to reduce the percentage of tree retention brb 2383 for additional square footage and signage on the south and west elevations brb 2460 for additional signage on the west elevation bld 2505-13584 for the signs on the west elevation so here we have the map and outline in the red dashed line as the property in question have the site plan and in red is the location of the proposed sign and here's a close-up of it for that sign location right here on that west elevation development review comments uh natural resources transportation wastewater water right of way storm water had no objections seco had objections with conditions uh zoning uh comment the site has a past history of variances dating back to 2022 brb 2273 to reduce the minimum percentage of retained trees from 50 percent to zero percent and to remove five non-hazardous grand trees to construct a non-residential use brb 2383 a signage variance for identification on the south and west elevations request an additional 163.18 square feet and four sign locations on the south elevation requesting 155.3 square feet and two additional sign locations on the west elevation elevation does not face a traditional road classification and arterial local or collective road brb 2460 requesting additional square footage of 27.3 square feet for the west elevation from the 155.30 square feet that was approved via brb 2383 the increase of 27.3 square foot would bring the total square footage on the west elevation to 182.6 square feet the west elevation does not face a traditional road here is the criteria for the variance review board and i'm available for any questions we're gonna make this one quick okay addimentary 13266 bird drive odessa florida 33556 i have been sworn so we are here today to request additional wall signage to address unique visibility hardships created by continued development in the surrounding corridor i will walk you through the site the previous approvals the proposed sign and importantly the physical conditions that necessitate this request feeding tampa bay's primary distribution and community hub is located along causeway boulevard in the southeast uh in southeast tampa this location serves as a regional destination with visitors volunteer service partners and individuals seeking assistance from across the tampa bay region here you can see the overall property configuration this is a large campus consisting of approximately 18 acres with a building of more than 173 000 square feet the property accommodates a variety of functions including distribution operations public facing community service and educational programming it's important because this site serves many different users it's not simply warehouse employees or commercial delivery this is the public coming here for food distribution community resources and educational opportunities it is zoned ig in industrial general and is located within the predominantly industrial corridor the proposed signs are compatible with both the scale of the facility and the surrounding development the specific request we are here for is for an additional 112.7 square feet of wall signage on the west elevation this elevation requires this because it does not traditionally face a classified road roadway which creates limitations under the sign regulations the proposed signage is to provide identification for motorists traveling eastbound on causeway boulevard where visibility of existing signage has been compromised by adjacent development we're not simply requesting signage for additional business or like advertising it really is for identification and wayfinding from the existing facility i do want to acknowledge the variance history specifically for signage because the board has previously approved relief for this facility in 2023 we brought forth and you approved an additional identification for the south and west elevations and for the west elevation the 155.3 square feet in 2024 we asked for an additional 27.3 square feet which was approved and that brought the total of the square footage or the signage square footage to 182.6 square feet with tonight's request if this is approved the 112.7 square feet that total would increase to 295.3 square feet i think that's important number to put into perspective because the west elevation while it does not face a road it is it does face the frontage of causeway and that frontage encompasses approximately 31 584 square feet of facade area with a total of 295.3 square feet of signage this would represent just 0.94 of the overall elevation less than one percent of the building facade so while we recognize that this property has received previous variances the overall amount of signage remains excuse me exponentially modest relative to the scale of the building and importantly it does address the visibility hardship created by the subsequent developments in the neighboring properties so we're not seeking greater advertising exposure but seeking to restore the effective identification that has been lost due to changing conditions outside of the applicant's control here's the site plan as marla showed uh the southwest elevation the sign is on the west but the southwest corner of the site is where this sign would be placed this is the proposed sign the ftv local logo it consists of internally eliminated letters that maintain the organization's existing branding and the sign is identification only and design integrated into the building architecture this is the elevation that demonstrates the sign scale relative to the building here is the photographic rendering of how the proposed sign would appear on the actual building which naturally fits into the architectural features and consistency with other signage that has been installed now i wanted to take you through some uh signs or some photos um so this is traveling east on causeway so the sign uh the photo on your left is about three 1300 feet from the site you can't see the building at all you can see the existing um development that has perpetuated in uh the corridor that has a physical obstruction to the visibility uh and on your right that's 950 feet from the site as we continue along causeway boulevard you can see the effect of those buildings so you still can't see the sign um of the development and then on your right that's 400 feet from the site the site starts to come into view and then here's 200 feet from the site as you're approaching the signal that was added for the development um and on your so on your left is what is current and then here's a view on your right of what the sign would look like as it was installed on the site okay uh we've included the u.s sign council reference to illustrate the relationship between letter height viewing distance and the amount of time uh motorists have to recognize and read signage uh putting this into perspective for causeway boulevard that's a divided four-lane urban roadway with 45 miles per hour also according to fdot average annual daily driver traffic which is in the bottom right hand of your corner this accommodates approximately 35 500 vehicles per day at 45 miles per hour a vehicle travels approximately 66 feet per second that means even a few seconds of lost visibility can significantly reduce the opportunity for somebody who's traveling here for needs to identify the destination so when we consider the roadway conditions the photographic evidence and the skill of the facility we believe the request addresses a genuine practical difficulty resulting from the circumstances outside of the applicant's control um i'm going to just walk you quickly through the criteria um first it addresses if the unique is hardship uh the hardship is unique we believe it is um it's a combination of several site specific circumstances like an exceptionally large building footprint the orientation of the existing elevation that doesn't face a road the location of the facility relative to causeway and the construction of substantial buildings um immediately west to the building the second requires if the hardship is not self-created um we believe that it is not feeding tampa bay did not construct the buildings that now obstruct the existing signage and how the building was supposed how the building was laid out in this industrial plaza is relative to how every warehouse is built and those developments occurred on neighboring properties outside of the applicant's control health safety and public welfare is the third criterion we believe that the proposed sign will be mounted directly to the building and not encroach into any setbacks pedestrian areas or vehicular uh circulation it is consistent with the existing architecture and more importantly it provides improved identification benefits to the people who are accessing this important facility five um additional public welfare concerns um just want to emphasize that it's a community service component to our region it's a destination for individuals accessing essential services that are very much needed in our economy um community resources educational opportunities um so not it's not just people who regularly go here there's new visitors there's new people who need these services it's important we believe it's important to have recognizable way finding um for the site if it's in harmony with the code and the comprehensive plan we believe that it is it supports a fundamental premise uh purpose of providing effective identification while maintaining compatibility with the surrounding developments it's appropriately scaled integrated and limited to the organization's identification for wayfinding purposes and then substantial justice we believe this represents a reasonable balance between the city's interest in regulating signage and the practical hardship experienced by the applicant it provides a practical solution to a documented visibility problem so in closing uh i want to leave the board with three points one this is a unique physical hardship resulting from development on neighboring properties second the proposed sign is appropriately scaled even with this additional request the total west elevation signage is one percent of the facade and the feeding tampa bay is more than a distribution warehouse it is a community destination serving individuals families volunteers and organization organization throughout our region um we're just simply maintaining effective identification and accessibility so we respectfully request your approval and i'm here to answer any questions thank you anyone else like to speak for against the petition see you can open this up for board questions mr entry i just wanted to say because i know the only time you met me is augusta tonight and i know i gave you a lot of grief about the sign ordinance but i also like to do my homework when i get these packets at a time so i absolutely have no issue with this because i drove that and quite frankly it's very hard to see where the facility is unless i want somebody smashing into my rear end on causeway boulevard um and you know of course for me i'd be coming down out of ebor across the causeway so i'm just saying i'm not always going to be picking on your signage i appreciate robust conversation well addy you're not gonna be happy with me because i don't you know i would i kind of anticipated yeah well you know i just i guess the whole thing is uh if you can put the picture back up on of that side of the building currently please uh where you're proposing the building yes yeah so or this okay so you said that the uh construction of the the additional buildings have inhibited being able to see this one so the side of that what other signage is on the side of that building that's the west elevation uh-huh uh there is the feeding tampa bay logo that's above the entrance doors and that is uh how far down here so this building is 679 so i'd say 200 square feet it's recessed in and so you can't you actually couldn't see it even without the buildings but this is their entrance um so it was important to have identification over the entrance so let's go back to the um the one okay so here's my here's my problem with this you guys have come before us with a lot of these various requests with and and every time it's adding a sign you just said that the sign that's midway down the building is not even visible even if the construction happened so and then i look at this side of the building and i see obviously somebody's name at the top that you know paid to have their name on the side of the building but there was no consideration aside from their name to put you know the causeway center of feeding tampa bay so i feel like these decisions are being made and they're not being made um in a way that's really what you guys want coming back right so to me that's a lot of signage on that corner it just really really is and i just i was like how much more is gonna you know oh gosh they you know a tree grew and uh we can't i don't know i'm having a tough time with this one i understand um as signage consultants we always i never like to come back to a board because i think that boards don't ever really like to see us come back right um here was um some decisions out of my control um if we're looking at this i mean this went through we i came before in 2023 this came this was i mean a year that we constantly redid the signage and we initially did have a feeding tampa bay sign here on this elevation and ultimately decisions were made in the organization that caused them not to want to do that so as a as signage consultants like we put that forward to them and we understand i do think that there is a portion that things evolve like visibility does evolve if there's development that happens in the corridor um i think it makes sense to have a sign here i i agree i don't disagree with you that having three signs here is a lot um but the visibility is just not doing you know it's just not it's they're hearing that it's it's a problem people are not getting there people are not seeing that this is the building there's other larger buildings that are around where you know where's this one is it one of the other ones and so this was the solution that we brought forward we had obviously limited space to put it and we wanted to keep it realistic right i didn't i mean technically we could have put you know asked for a large sign on the other panel and we at least wanted to keep this proportionate and smaller because you know we're coming back for a third time so i understand i mean i guess i'd buy the visibility things if this thing didn't exist with the gps attached to it in carplay yeah um you know i i just don't believe because they can't see it i i i mean we're just i'm just it's a tough one yeah i'm just giving you feedback that you know and i appreciate it you're very well prepared you do a great job i just this one's time can you show me a picture from the road from causeway looking that way i mean you were the 400 foot uh these uh so these so there's 13 9 and then here is closer so this is the building is that the closest one you have uh two i have 200 so here so this is the can i zoom i can't zoom in here so this is actually feeding tampa bay actually i was wrong brian you can kind of see this but with i think with the trees and with the other development it's obstructed now so this sign here is that recessed sign that says feeding tampa bay so what i see on the right is some small palm trees that are growing and they're going to cover up this brand new sign i mean it's not crazy that somebody wants a sign over their entrance i mean that is that's the entrance i'm actually supportive of it for the reason it's a big it's a big road you're trying to drive by it's curving into this you know as you're coming along there's a lot of reasons for that i honestly think you'd be better off with a blitzel sign i was going to say the same thing a what a pedestal or a like a blade sign a monument like a yeah oh a free standing sign so so we because of the i think what is their utility wise a free stand the reason that we're we have building signage is because a free standing sign we don't have the even like with the width that we have i think the utility there we don't have enough space to put a free standing sign and that's why we're relying on signs and that also just puts it like a little far back i just we also i remember looked at that i haven't in this iteration looked at that with them again but i remember in 23 and 24 we also looked at that option before we brought the variants back do you have to get it you would have to get it no but i think that we like physically how the site is built with utilities and things i don't even physically think it's possible even if we asked for like a setback variance or anything like that um i don't believe that we could have one which is why we're relying on visibility from the building signs there's probably a right-of-way line in a utility easement yeah yeah you can't put a big old sign on the roof like they had like the floridan that is that is prohibited by the sign code yes and that is a historical sign that has been grandfathered in and that is not allowed i actually contrary to what you what i think maybe you all believe this is one of the better sign codes in florida i work all throughout florida this is one of the better sign codes tampa yes i mean take that with you know what you will rick did you have a question the one thing that i would say because i tried looking both east and west visiting yes sir um i'm actually surprised because when you're traveling east i can find you when i'm traveling west i'm on top so while you're asking for more visibility maybe i would see that so that's why i was like oh this looks very reasonable yeah but i would say that if you've got people coming from the other direction this isn't going to solve your problem right i think that i mean the majority like if we're talking like i don't want to bring up last case but like we're talking about traffic impact i think we looked at that and the most traffic that we're having is from the east is traveling east on causeway which is why there's such a big emphasis on that and the like warehouse portion is behind like trucks and things are behind some some of these decisions you know i'm not in the organization so i can do my best to consult as a signage consultant and expert and some of these have to be rung up the ladder i understand i'm not hearing any more questions uh you have a few minutes for rebuttal should you need it i i i don't think i do very good i'm gonna close the public hearing and open up for a motion chairman if i if i may my apologies um just want to bring one thing to the board's attention as it was mentioned a few times in the hearing there have been a number of variances that have already been granted on this property typically courts when looking at properties that have multiple variances on them treat a variance as granting relief from the specific hardship that they were previously requesting upon obviously they're back here again you know my recommendation to the board is when you do make your motion please make sure you are specific in the reasoning that they meet the hardship criteria okay let's see what i could do here y'all can have fun with it um i moved that the variance request for case vrb 26-105 look for the property located at 3624 causeway boulevard be granted as depicted on the site plan presented at the public hearing for an additional 112.7 square feet of wall signage on the west elevation upon the applicant presenting competent and substantial evidence in the record at this public hearing of an unnecessary hardship or practical difficulty when considering the five hardship criteria set forth in section 27-80 of the city code specifically though the applicant has been before four for signage requests clearly the quested signage has not been adequate considering additional construction and vegetation that obscures the sign creating a hardship for a needed public motion and a second all in favor of approval say aye aye aye opposed seeing none congratulations we'll see that this is a learning opportunity for them i will see that this is a learning opportunity for them thank you all right so the last item on the agenda is vrb 26107 the owner is teresa lewis and the applicant is juries barbie the property address is 41 11 east hannah avenue the zoning is residential single-family rs 50 the request is to reduce the rear yard setback from 20 feet to 8.78 feet the codes applicable code section is section 27156 table 4-2 schedule of area height bulk and placement regulations the rs 50 setbacks are 20 feet for the front yard 7 feet for side and corner yard and 20 feet for the rear previous actions on this property uh cmp 230015814 for work without permits for the addition uh and after the fact permit bld 250513591 for the after the fact addition so here is the map and outlined in red is the property in question here we have the site plan and in the rear in the shaded area is the addition um being requested for that setback showing the 8.8 request reduction here here we have a close-up of it for development review comments on natural resources had no objections with conditions the addition was constructed without permits since palms have a three foot protective radius natural resources has no objections at this time transportation waste water water and right-of-way had no objections stormwater has their objections with conditions their standard conditions that they have to meet the stormwater technical manual and tico had no objections with conditions they had a memorandum and zoning no objections standard for the variance review board criteria 2780 global for any questions i have both so i just have a little presentation here and i'm going to try to keep it brief as well um and then you know it'll be iterative if you guys have any questions um and i wouldn't go back and forth um for the record my name is jaris barbie um i'm an aicp certified planner um i represent miss lewis my address is 10117 kingsbridge avenue tampa florida and i have been sworn so just to to kick off things um the this necessitated from miss lewis um getting the code enforcement violation which she subsequently filed for a building permit and then received comments that you know the the building did not in fact meet setback standards which she was unaware of and improperly guided in the first place by the person who built the addition but i'm not basing the argument here of that being the hardship so i want to completely separate that i'm basing the hardship here being the fact that the structure was i'm going to also pull up the site plan if that's okay too i'm basing the fact of the hardship being that the structure as originally constructed in 1955 was set back much farther than the front required setback would allow now i'm not sure what the exact setback was at that time but due to this also being a corner lot there are certain corner clearance separation requirements that you have to look at when accessing in and out of a corner cleared property so it does make sense that it is setback slightly farther but in this situation i believe that it was set back much farther than maybe it originally needed to be so she has has looked to try to add a reasonable addition to her house to age in place essentially and to take care of her aging mother as well which is why she's proposed to add this small livable area to the rear of her home which i've identified here in in this shaded area this does also account for the roof overhang since that that does go past the setback as required by the code as far as the justification here is it being unique and singular the property was constructed in 1955 substantially farther from the front property line than being currently required at 20 feet the building was placed at 38.8 feet which is 18.8 feet farther than required as a result the available building buildable area without alterating altering the existing character of the existing residents and the the view of it from the street is unique and substantially reduced when compared to other properties combined with this and it being a corner lot in its existing configuration the historic home placement restricts opportunities for reasonable expansion as mentioned this doesn't directly result from miss lewis as it was constructed in 1955 and miss lewis has only resided there since 1999 this doesn't cause any substantial interference or injury to any other neighboring properties it will not injure the health safety or welfare of others whose property would be affected by the allowance of the variants we've measured the approximate distance from this to the edge of the home to the south and it's approximately 37.53 feet between and even if that home were to be expanded to the permitted rear setback line there would still only be there would still be 28.78 feet of separation and this would demonstrate that the variance continues to provide substantial spacing between the principal structures thereby preserving the intent of the rear yard setback requirements as they relate to light air privacy and neighborhood compatibility for harmony with the land development code and comp plan granting this requested variance is consistent consistent with the general intent and purpose of the tampa land development code and comprehensive plan as mentioned setback regulations are intended to promote orderly development preserve neighborhood character provide appropriate appropriate appropriate separation between structures and protect the health safety and welfare of the general public although the addition extends into the required rear yard setback substantial separation between residences is maintained and the improvements remain compatible with the established character of the property and surrounded neighborhood and we have identified comprehensive plan land use policies 9.2.1 9.2.2 9.2.2 9.2.5 9.5.2 and 9.5.4 as well as hsg policies 1.5.2 and 1.5.4 which support neighborhood compatibility and the rehabilitation of existing housing stock for substantial justice the requested variance represents the minimum relief if necessary to address the constraints created by the historic placement of the existing residence denial of this would request would impose a substantial hardship to provide a meaningful expansion to the home without without a fundamental alteration of the character of the home and its established orientation character and appearance of the street conversely approval of the variance produces no adverse impact the public or surrounding properties and substantial separation between the residences will remain and the addition does not adversely affect neighboring properties or infrastructure and the improvement remain consistent with the established character of the of the neighborhood on balance substantial justice is achieved by granting the limited relief as requested as the hardship imposed by strict application of the setback requirement outweighs any public benefit of requiring strict compliance where the underlying purposes of the setback continue to be maintained and based on the substantial competent evidence that we believe that we've submitted and provided and these responses as identified above for the criteria contained for ldc section 2780 we respectfully request that the board you know approve the variance for brb 26107 to reduce the required rear yard setback from 20 to 8.78 feet subject to any applicable and reasonable conditions thank you yeah no problem is there anyone else here to speak for against the petition no we open up the board question sir I have a question because one of the things you said in terms of making your case for what created the heart what was the hardship is you pointed out the distance from the back of this illegal edition and pointed out the distance that the eight feet plus whatever the neighbors distance is on the other side of the fence if they were to do the same thing if they were to do the same thing that the applicant has done how would that still have that breathing space in other words doing something here well if the other person did the same thing then you now have the two houses being basically 15 feet apart I don't I don't believe that the residents to the south has the existing unique um and historic placement as as far as the distance from the street to the front of the home as this property does so that is the unique thing that I'm mentioning as far as the hardship is the the distance that the existing home was placed from the front property line adjacent to hannah avenue right but it could also have been the addition could have been built to the front of the house could it not have well as far as um in order to just simply meet front setback standards um could it have possibly been done yes to to maintain corner separation and clearance requirements for driveways etc not to to my knowledge for it to be a reasonable um expansion and and maintain the existing safety um for someone coming in and out of these driveways so you know it's much harder to go back out onto hannah avenue than it is to exit off of her property onto the neighboring side street um and that's the config configuration that the existing home was built in um so in your presentation you stated that the um the hardship is doesn't result from the applicant's actions um because the home was built in 1955 and uh in a setback that was further back than other homes in the neighborhood and further back than what you would consider common um but this addition was put on without permits understood so she built this addition correct she did build the addition but but i am not arguing that that that is the hardship the hardship is is the placement of the home had she been properly properly directed she she might not have ever had this problem and tried to see what could physically physically happen or avoid the expansion altogether if it were not feasible okay but you understand though that the that the applicant is responsible for what they do and do not do to the house no matter who does it for them correct but you hire somebody you hire somebody that doesn't that ill ill advises you that doesn't negate the fact that that she is responsible for the addition being on that home unpermitted and basically creating the hardship herself i understand where you're going but i do not agree that that is the complete hardship that's faced on this particular property she created her i mean no matter who builds it whether she builds it or hire somebody to build it she built it it's it's it is self-created yeah so we're looking for a hardship we can't approve anything without a hardship and the hardship cannot be so created understood and that's that's why i've tried to frame the historic placement of the home and this being a corner lot and and how it's uniquely accessed and egressed that necessitates that hardship but i don't think anybody's arguing with you that the setback of the home is odd right nobody's arguing that but the physical the physical ability to put something onto a home without getting the proper permits was created by the person that owns that home not because of where it sits because you can choose to add something or choose not to add something correct understood okay she chose to add something onto her home no matter who did it without proper permits and therefore because of her doing that she created the hardship and she created the i do not agree well i'm sorry you don't agree but i mean has this has this board not also voted on this is not about what else on other variances that were similar in situation where uh something has been an after the fact permit and they have granted some type of variance i'm not talking about the exact thing but you know chairman if i may please so the board's decision making is based on the 2780 criteria and each application is viewed individually because each based on the 2780 criteria a property owner needs to show a unique and specific hardship that is singular to their property and not shared with others and was not self-created so by that definition every case that becomes before the board is unique in and of itself because of the hardship criteria i understand looking at the uh site plan um it's kind of hard to read a mine's real blurry and my eyes are not really great um what is the since it's a corner lot these are always kind of confusing for folks to take a look at especially since she seems to gain access and grass egress off of 40 second with her car and there is area to come off of hannah what's the side setback for this lot so in this situation this lot has a front setback a corner setback a side and a rear okay so the side setback is the seven feet identified to um the west here the corner setback is the setback to the east in this situation which has a required seven foot setback so basically the side and the corner have the same required setback of seven feet and this is calling the rear on the south side correct is where the 20 comes in and i do i do think having the corner lot and the setback of the home is a hardship for this property you know i'm trying to look at this as if there had been no addition completed and i wanted to say you know would this be a variance that is an approvable variance with the conditions of the existing lot location home location stuff like that understood and that's that's trying that's what i was trying to frame up as well but we are still acknowledging what is ongoing as as it was presented by staff that that those two actions were there so it's not like we're trying to hide and run away from it i'm trying to help the property owner go through this and properly get this done you know as as if it didn't exist and i'm trying to frame the hardships would you mind scrolling down i was just going to ask if you can scroll down yeah no problem sorry my apologies feel free to direct me no problem i just wanted to make sure you know with uh health safety welfare such i want to make sure with the ac units and stuff like that there is uh area for mobility for fire safety police and that kind of stuff and and if we need to um if if there needs to be any like larger gate placed or something that would help facilitate some type of access behind there um other than the existing gate that is on that side you know we would be happy happy to look at any kind of conditions that might go along with that um i have this on the elmo here that shows the existing gate that goes to that side yard oh it's not that's not the fence i was envision i was envision a six foot water vinyl fence okay yeah these fences are all this size um and they were existing but you know if if we need to propose anything above and beyond that you're thinking about to enhance compatibility we we would be willing to do so with things like that as well um to go along with this that's what this picture helps thank you yeah no problem on your site plan that you're showing it shows a shed in the rear of the lot there corner yes sir does that shed meet the separation requirements um separation requirements for for fire yeah i believe it does i do not have this dimensioned on this plan um but the everything that is shown existing here uh was taken directly from the survey um but that is something that i do not have dimensions um i can try to give an approximate dimension no sir just looking at the the rear setback uh concrete slab it was an existing concrete slab that was already noted to be there on the property on the survey and we figure any of those other things you mentioned would definitely get highlighted in the building permit review as far as the building permit review no comment to that nature has been made about the placement of the shed or or fire separation or anything of that nature um to date uh site review pardon my handwriting is terrible um site review approved 4-2-26 building review approved 3-13-26 uh the zoning comment was what necessitated the filing of the variants and uh natural resources approved with some comments about mitigation and possibly penalty trees and then i began helping the um the homeowner in june and july so you're saying that the building the addition has now gone through the permitting process they've expected it approved it no the this is just the building permit number so it's been going undergoing review and these are the departments that i mentioned that have reviewed um and subsequently approved it so if if this were to go forward we would continue with this building permit review and have everything properly inspected and verified uh have engineers submit all the proper documentation for to document the structural and its structural integrity so on and so forth could i ask you a question when you were giving us um past activity on the property did you say there were two unpermitted work issues there was the cmp was the the violation case for the addition and then that bld permit number which is the application they submitted for this building permit that has not been issued yet okay so those comments that what he mentioned were comments from that building permit review it hasn't been issued yet because they identified that it needed the variance for the setback and and sir do you know when the addition was actually built um i do not have that direct information um i i could ask um the property owner to comment on that if i don't i don't know if she i can ask her and just tell you okay i believe it was uh around the first half of 2022 and then the code enforcement violation came in in 2023 that's from the ward uh you have some rebuttal time should you need it um i i stand by my statements as identified and in my submittal and uh what i've said here regarding uh ldc section 2780 the hardships that i've identified uh were being the original structure being built in its historic placement at as now um seen on the property there and the the fact of it being a corner lot and all of the other statements i stand by and attest to is it not being injurious to the public or causing any problems with health safety or welfare and do make a statement that if there are anything any kind of conditions that we could agree upon that would further help public health safety or welfare as it goes to any potential access to the rear of the property for any potential fire liabilities or what have you or any potential screening we would be happy to you know to work with the board on on that fact and we appreciate your time thank you this time i'm going to close the public hearing and open up for uh motion or board discussion we'll see looking for me looking at this profit this wasn't here don't see any access or nobility do you see the fact that you have a 55 home yeah i'm just trying to separate the work out the work out would we have approved it yes they don't before i probably would be thinking otherwise but that's only because i'm thinking of the location 42nd street has no traffic there's more problem getting around the hannah and 40th street roundabout than there is getting in and out of any place on hannah on the east side of 40th street i'm more the hardship is that the setback and so oh well that goes without saying i just i'd much rather have somebody come like you know what instead of you know before this is a hardship not created i mean it is a self-created heart right would we have approved it probably if they come to it's the after the just you have to remember that it's the actual now if someone does come up i spit a bunch then that's it that's a problem but yeah there's i think this this specific case and in this specific scenario hardship the way it's set up and we approve corner lots all the time having double side yards you're right and so to me the hardship is upsetting i can separate but they're not just ignoring it they're trying to get it done right oh yeah and they've been working on it for three years a variance request or case vrb 26-107 for the property located at 4111 east hannah avenue be granted as depicted on the site plan presented at the public hearing for a reduced rear yard setback from 20 feet to 8.78 feet based upon the applicant presenting confidence substantial evidence of the record at this public hearing of an unnecessary hardship or practical difficulty when considering the five hardship criteria set forth in section 27-80 code specifically that when this house was built considerably deeper bridge this addition being on approved it at that time had they requested it second we have a motion in a second all in favor of approval say aye aye all those opposed aye congratulations your variance passes have a nice night thank you for your time gentlemen you have a blessed night do we have any other matters to discuss i just wanted to um comment that next month's meeting november is november 10th and that wednesday is a holiday i just wanted to make sure so that we have quorum just wanted to let you guys know that's up with all that i will close the hearing thank you