Design Review Board - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. We are live and recording. Can you hear us? Good morning.

Recording in progress.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. We have Mr. Sabrata Basu. We have Chair Javier Baena, Vice Chair Daniel Guerra, Christian Rodriguez, Angel Lopez. And I don't see Mariano Corral. But we do have a quorum.

Thank you. Shall we begin?

Yes, yes.

Thank you. Let's call to order and start with the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, with one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Let's do a roll call. We'll start with the city staff. uh marcus lifewood and mark alvarez of the coordinate group are here thank you now uh let's do a board roll call i'm still here thank you thank you lopez here mr rodriguez thank you and javier bayern all right let's do this for your name

Good morning, everybody. I need everybody who's going to be providing a presentation or testimony to please unmute yourself and turn on your cameras. I see somebody in chambers. Mark Alvarez. Mark Alvarez. I see you, Mark. Is anybody from the applicant going to be providing a presentation? If so, I need you to please unmute yourself. And I'm going to ask staff if they could please ensure that any participants can unmute themselves. And turn your cameras on, please. Omar, I think you are unmuted.

Yeah, it's not letting me turn on my camera.

Oh, there you are. Okay, there you are. Then if anybody's going to be providing testimony, please unmute yourselves. Please turn your camera on and raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give will be the truth and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you very much. Mr. Chair, you may proceed.

Thank you. Let's start with the first applicant, please. So the first...

The first applicant, actually the only applicant, is DRB-2026-009. The applicant is Teamwork Construction Group. This is for the revision to plans at the property located at 5880 Sunset Drive. This item will be handled by Mr. Mark Alvarez. Thank you.

Good morning. This is Mark Alvarez for the City of South Miami Planning Staff. The application this morning is at 5880 Sunset Drive. It is for the new bank building, for the United Community Bank building. This was a previously approved building. It was DRB 25002 on January 21, 2025. This is a revision to the previously approved application. As you know, the building is under construction right now. The subject of the application is the revision, I should say, is an ATM machine on the front of the property facing the sidewalk. So it's basically the addition of a walk-up ATM. The property is located, it's the United Community Bank under construction. It's located just to the east of Dorn Avenue on Sunset Drive on the south side. The zoning is TSDD-TSDA sub-district. It is a two-story bank building. It's on an 8,625 square foot lot. And it is one lot of record. The change that's been brought to us on the application was actually made on May 7th of this year, was just to install the ATM machine in the front of the building as a walk-up machine. on the sidewalk. There is no other change on the building. This is the site plan. The yellow shaded, yellow clouded area is even less than that is really the area of ATM machine, which is on the wall of the building just to the right of the main doors. again in the elevation of the building we can see this is an ATM again there are no other changes this is the same application that went for the board in 2025 but now there is an ATM machine being added to it as a revision The original application in 2025 was under the hometown overlay or the specialty retail dash hometown overlay zoning district. We would normally go by the original application and the zoning code at the time of the application, and we are today actually. So there is, though, nothing in the Hometown Overlay District, which is Article 7 in our code and is still there for instances like this where we do have changes to existing buildings, but there is nothing in that code that has any criteria or standards applicable to a walk-up ATM. So with that it would be something that we could approve fairly easily. However, just to give you a little bit more Better advice. We also checked it for its first consistency with the tsdd Which is the current zoning on that property? Again, the TSDD does not have specific criteria to the ATM machine. However, we did look at a couple of things. One was how it affects the sidewalk and the clear pedestrian path on the sidewalk, as well as how it affects the Excuse me the fenestration and the glazing on the front of the project there are a few tables in your Package that go through this again as far as it's an impact particularly on the sidewalk and the area that People would pass by this this machine is recessed by about a foot and a half into the building past that sidewalk line past the property line and So it has we consider to have no negative impact on the on the tsdd requirements as well It also has no impact on the the prior approved Facade of the building the glazing is the same and in fact this building actually meets the tsdd requirements as well as the hometown requirements For the glazing and the fenestration on the building as well as the massing of the building in the front so with that The plan is sufficient it's um excuse me it's sufficient it's consistent with both codes and um procedurally that we have no issues beyond this other than the construction would be would comply with Florida building code and any comments or suggestions from the board thank you that concludes my presentation thank you Mark assuming the Homer has nothing else to add it's a minor stop right I'm sorry

There's nothing else. I mean, unless Omar wants to add anything, this is the end of the presentation, correct?

There's nothing from my end.

I don't have anything. I don't have anything additional, but I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Omar. Thank you. All right. Let's start with public comment. Anybody in chambers? I believe there's nobody in chambers, correct?

Yeah, there's nobody in chambers, but Mark and I.

All right. Let's do board members. Christian, would you like to go first?

You can call for me. Mm-hmm. No, I have no comments on this.

All right, thank you.

Subrata? Yeah, I don't have any comments, but I have a question. Is there a threshold? Why is it coming back? Is it because there's a change in elevation? Why is it coming back? Is there a threshold of changes? The ATM was added. Yeah, I know, but is that significant enough for it to come back to the board? I mean, isn't that something that staff can... It's a minimal change in the elevation. And there's no change in the circulation or anything. So I'm just curious as to, is there a threshold as to what brings it back to the board? Just for curiosity.

There's no specific threshold. We brought it back in an abundance of caution. This was approved in 2025. subsequent to the meeting of the DRB board and was actually approved by administratively because the board did not have a quorum that day. So again, we just in some caution decided to bring it back to the board.

All right. Yes, this is pretty much administrative approval item. So, but anyway, yeah, I don't have any comments.

Thank you, Sparta. Daniel, you have something to speak of?

Yes, thank you, Chairman. Well, two things. One, if the record will reflect that Mariano Corral joined the meeting prior to the presentation, so he is present and serving. And to follow my colleague Serrata's comment, if there is no objection from the board members, I would ask for a summary vote to move this along because I believe it is minor and taking up the time from the board and the staff So if there is no objection, I'd say, can we go ahead and vote on this?

I do have a comment. And before we do that, I just want to make sure that we also provide an opportunity for anybody who's participating in this meeting from members of the public, if they want to raise their hand in order to be allowed to speak so that they can have their opportunity to make public comment. That was addressed at the beginning.

I don't think there's anybody that wanted to speak on behalf. Okay.

I just want to make sure everybody who's participating in Zoom

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. River Corner. I agree with Anil. We can make a vote. This is really, to me, is a non-issue unless Angel has anything. I know Angel didn't have a chance to, but if you don't have anything, I think we can vote.

I also see, is there a new member of the board? Mr. Urban?

Welcome, Mr. Urban. Nobody has said good morning to you. Good morning. How is everybody? Nice to meet you all.

I didn't realize you were here. Good morning. Nice to meet you.

I do have a comment. So I'm going to disapprove this project because Omar forgot to put a tree in front of the ATM. And so that's a big issue for me. And so if I got up early this morning to listen to something that could be taken care of administratively, I might as well say a few things here. Omar, good to see you, man. Good to see you. So I agree. I mean, this is going to be handled administratively very easily. So no comments.

All right. So let's make a vote. Mariano, would you like to go ahead?

I... I would like to make a vote for approval based on staff comments and everybody else's comment. I second.

Second. All right. So let's make a vote. Arianna, yes.

Yes.

All right. Daniel was a yes. Christian. Yes. Yes. Urban. Yes. And Angel, yes. And I vote yes as well. Yes. Thank you, Omar. Sorry to bring you back.

No, no. I'm glad you woke him up. I'm glad you woke him up and brought him in.

Oh, I'm much earlier than this. No worries. Thank you all very much for your support. We're looking forward to welcoming Ms. Bank to the community.

It's a nice, clean building. We like it. So congratulations. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. So just two approval minutes for May 5th, 2026. Did everybody get a chance to... Review the minutes. Do we have a motion on the minutes?

Motion to approve.

All right. Do we have a second? I'll second that. All in favor say aye.

Aye. Hearing none, minutes approved.

Next meeting is Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026 at 8.30. Hold on.

I do have one comment. Gentlemen, this Sunday... A young man that I knew since he was 12 years old, good friend of my son, passed away at the age of 44. I had a massive heart attack. What I'm trying to point out here, guys, whether it's your children or yourself, if you feel bad, for God's sake, go get yourself checked out. It's very imperative that you do. We live in a very stressful society. And I think that it's incumbent that I mention this to this board because I care for all of you. We're all human beings. And so what I say to you, if you feel bad, anything that is out of the norm, go check yourself out. Okay? That's basically it.

Thank you, Mario. I appreciate the kind words and sorry for your loss.

Grow up. What can I say?

Okay. All right. I think this meeting is adjourned. Thank you all for being here. See you next time. Have a good day.

Take care. Welcome, Richard. Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye.