Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We're going to call the meeting to order. City Planning Board meeting for Monday, February the 9th, 2026 at 2 p.m. If we can please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Any of you all with devices, if you could please turn off your ringers. Can we have the call to roll?

Ms. Carter? Present. Mr. Collins? Yes, ma'am. Chair Clemons? Yes. Mr. Whiting?

Here.

Mr. Edwards?

Yes.

Mr. Johnson?

Yes.

Mr. Kreisel?

We're going to... Move the consideration of absence a little further along. I think Mr. Kreisel may be coming.

He stated he would be in attendance. Maybe he got stuck by a train.

It does happen. Okay, we're going to move on to item number five for the approval of the minutes.

So moved. Second.

It's been properly moved and second.

Please call the roll. Mr. Whiting.

Yes.

Mr. Edwards.

Yes.

Mr. Johnson.

Yes.

Ms. Carter. Yes. Mr. Collins. Yes, ma'am. Chair Clemons.

Yes. Moving right along, we're going to come on down to new business. Item 6A, PZZA, M28250001. strive out first.

Madam Chair, we do have a conflict of interest that Mr. Collins is going to address before we get started.

Yeah, I spoke with the city attorney today about a potential conflict of interest, and I think it was decided in an abundance of caution for me to recuse myself from the discussion and the vote on this.

just the rule requires to disclose generally what it is I can do that or if you want to do that business interests potentially in the future with the with the applicant and I believe you filled out the 8b form with the clerk all right and so then you would just abstain from voting on the item The advice that I give to everyone, it's not legally required, but the advice we give, as well as every attorney I've ever seen address this, is to actually remove yourselves from the dais so that no one can accuse you all of doing anything improper. So I'll give Mr. Collins that same advice that I would anybody else.

Okay, I'll do that now.

For the record, Chairman Kreisel entered the meeting.

Thank you. Apologize for my tardiness. We're at 6 A.

And Ms. Driver is up to present.

All right.

Continue.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Board. On behalf of the Planning Department, we bring before a zoning amendment for Italian Castle, 4560 South 25th Street. The applicant is Dennis Murphy of Culpeper Interpreting Incorporated. Property owners is Megan Mobley, Italian Council of the Treasure Coast LLC. Parcel ID 243333300100006. In summary, there's a request to rezone the property zoning classification from the county's zoning AR-1 to the city's zoning E-1. Site location and area is 20.06 acres give or take. A little bit of background on the property and its zoning on August 19th of 2024. The 20.06 acre property was annexed into the city and it retained the county's zoning. 3.53 acres retains on in of County religious facility 3.47 acres retain the counties on in of County institutional in 13 point 14 acres retain the counties zoning of County agricultural as highlighted here. Here's a map of the zoning as it stands in the area where we see there are some zonings currently still. The map shows the city zoning as well as St. Lucie County zoning. And again, this is the property in question where it surrounds St. Lucie County zoning. According to the City Code E1 Single Family Estate Density Zoning, Deleted Information Section 125-188, it speaks of the lot size for a single family dwelling shall be a minimum of 30,000 square feet, minimum lot width 100 feet, minimum lot depth 200 feet, as well as it shows the yard setbacks, which is 85 feet from the front, 15 feet from the side, unless is on the corner which would be 20 feet and we have 40 14 feet from the rear lot coverage according to this city code no more than 25% of the lot shall be covered with the building. The proposed zoning for the city will move from AR of the county to E dash one, which is single family estate density. The land size again is 20.06 acres. Um, and the land size and square feet is 873,814. The proposed rezoning application meets the standards of the city code section 125-188. Therefore, staff recommendations for planning board to move the proposed rezoning amendment application for approval to the city commission with the proposed zoning designation. Alternate recommendations will be to one, recommend approval with conditions or two, recommend disapproval.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Dreber. You're welcome. Questions for staff?

Do you have another map that pulls away further so we can see more ground around the...

I can pull up a map if that's your request. Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, so here's the property area in question for rezoning. This is Divine Road, South 25th Street.

Is there something else you were looking for?

I just wanted to see, I mean, we're seeing a lot of residents around it. That's why I just wanted to pull back that. Sure. Well, seeing what's around it.

So I was wondering about, so it appeared that during the annexation process, the county zoning was retained. And just for clarification, the zoning atlas map amendment that we're discussing here is to bring the entirety of the property under a new single city zoning. Is that correct? That is correct chairman. So so all 3 the the the current zoning of the RFI in the air one will all be under the new city zoning even and under the provisions of the city zoning did that TRC find any. Issues with the current. Build on the property that are not in compliance with the that you want requirements.

No, sir. There was no, there was nothing, no concerns of the comments that came from TRC regarding the current, the existing structure as it relates to city code. Okay.

Any other questions for staff? Okay. I see the applicants here. Please come forward.

Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, for the record, my name is Dennis Murphy. I'm with the firm of Culpeper Interpreting here in Fort Pierce and here representing the Italian Castle. You pretty much, Mr. Chairman, pretty much summarized what the situation was. This was an annexation. I believe it was one of the utility agreement annexations, which automatically happens. And somewhere when that automatically happened, the actual zonings on the property and the land classifications on the property weren't changed properly. So this is part of a cleanup measure for that by the property owners. The AR1 zoning district, which is what the bulk of the property is under in the county, is roughly, and I'm gonna use it in a broad term, roughly equivalent to the E1. So it's pretty much a lateral change. There's really nothing changing at this point in time on the property. So I would appreciate a recommendation of approval to the city commission. And if you have any questions, I'll be happy to try and answer them. Any questions for the applicant?

Is there any future plans to develop the property?

there are future plans for the property but they do not include subdivision um i would i will be preview of coming attractions i will be back in front of you in a meeting in the not too distant future to talk about some more specifics on the property which i really can't go into now because they're still being all fleshed out but it is no additional density on the property anything else for the applicant

All right. Thank you for your time.

While I finish writing down my name.

Absolutely. If there's any members of the public that would like to speak on this application, please come forward. Seeing none, I will send it back to the board for any further discussion. Hearing none, I would entertain a motion at this time.

Move for approval.

Hang on a second. Do we have conditions on this one? Not.

Not. It's just a zoning Atlas change. Yes. Okay. All right.

Sorry One more time I move for approval.

Okay.

All right We have motion for approval by mr. Clemens second by mr. Edwards, please call the roll. Mr. Whiting Yes, mr. Edwards. Yes.

Mr. Johnson.

Yes.

Miss Carter. Yes. Miss Clemens. Yes chair Chrysler.

Yes Thank you I always appreciate these opportunities for us to clean these things up when they come about. All right. Well, we had a, and this was it on the agenda, right? That's it. Awesome. Well, we will move on to item seven. If comments from the public, if there's anybody from the public who wishes to speak to this board on matters generally related to planning, please come forward at this time. Seeing none, we will move on to our director's report.

Thank you, Chair. Board, just for background information, just as this previous application came forward with county zoning still in place, it was approved and accepted in the past for expediency to bring in properties that were under an annexation agreement with FPUA into the city and not cause too much disturbance to the existing uses on those sites by retaining their existing county designations. People are sometimes shocked that they signed an agreement and find out when we're taking action against that to bring them into the city that they didn't really understand what they were signing. So to ease that transition, what we have been doing is retaining the county future land use and their zoning here. There are a number of properties that went through that process. And so as we move, as people, property owners, identify that they are in the city and there may be options to develop or do something with their properties they will be coming back in front of you for that ratification of zoning and the applicant was correct this is the closest zoning that we have in the city to what already exists there so it doesn't create any non-conformities so everything is good So I just want you to be aware there may be others that come along in the future that will be in the same circumstances. We did submit the ear report and got a receipt for that from the state. The city commission did in... accept the recommendations of the planning board in terms of annexation language in that. So that was good. That went through fairly easily. We're waiting now to hear comments be returned by the state to staff. And if there's any amendments to that, we'll keep you informed. But those will go to the Treasury Cash Renewal Planning Council and they will advise us what we need to do to

make it right, if it does need making right.

Now, on the 19th of this month, we have a TLC meeting where we look at the first reviews of applications coming forward. And there are two applications on the eight items that are on there. I just want to bring to your attention because I think you might want to know if they go through their reviews correctly, you'll be seeing them sometime in the future. And so I want to just update you on some things that are going on around town. On Kings Highway in the Commerce Park, we have an application for Amazon One Grocery, which is like a distribution hub for whole foods or the natural food. retail outlets. So they want to build 1.1 million square feet of space out there, which a lot of that would be refrigerated. So that will be coming to the board once that gets through technical review committee. We also have quite a large annexation being proposed out on Gordie Road between, well, it's west of 95 and the Turnpike. So it's probably the furthest west that the city would go. And so I think there's going to be a bit of discussion on what happens to this annexation. 126 acres. It's close to 10 Mile Creek. It's close and adjacent to the previous Gordie Road development that you saw recently. So it's actually just to south of that. And we see a redirection by the city commission about residential and all that stuff going on. We'll be asking a lot of questions of the developer on this, aligning them with the city commission's point of view. So be prepared for that one coming forward as well.

That's quite a large development. What was the date on that TRC meeting?

That's the 19th. There are other, obviously another six items on there, but mainly minor and small scale things coming forward. With that annexation, there's also a plan development moving forward on the same meeting. So yeah, that's a big review going on at the moment. So Chair, that's my update for you.

Thank you, Mr. Freeman. All right. We'll wrap up here. Item nine, board comments. Anybody have anything?

No, but we need to do consideration. Well, we didn't have any absences. I was going to say, I postponed consideration of absences, but you're not absent. I appreciate that.

Thank you. A little bit of trouble getting out of the office today. So thank you. All right. Hearing no other discussion, I believe we can adjourn.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.