Planning board backs Saint Teresa multipurpose gym, agrees to enrollment cap change with neighborhood conditions

The Coral Gables Planning and Zoning Board on Jan. 15 recommended city commission approval of an amendment to Ordinance No. 2997 to allow a new single‑story, 19,123‑square‑foot multipurpose gym and to raise Saint Teresa Catholic School’s enrollment cap from 881 to 945 students.

The change would align the ordinance with the school’s historical enrollment and permit construction of an indoor gym, performing‑arts stage and supporting classrooms on the northwest quadrant of the campus at 2701 Indian Mound Trail. Suzanne Dougherty, attorney for the applicant, said the gym is required for accreditation by the Florida Catholic Conference and “will allow for all classes and performances to be located safely within the school campus.”

Board members and neighbors spent more than an hour discussing traffic, noise and visual buffering. Neighbors asked the school to keep noisy activities away from adjacent yards, limit weekend and night events and add a substantial landscape or wall buffer along Palos Street. Jennifer Garcia, Planning and Zoning director, said staff found the proposal consistent with the comprehensive plan and recommended approval with conditions including annual enrollment reporting, sidewalk improvements on Valencia and green‑building certification.

Board discussion focused on how to mitigate noise from athletic activity that will remain outdoors and how to ensure neighbors are protected if schedules or uses change. Board member Chip Withers suggested limiting rentals and Sunday organized activities; Father Manny Alvarez, pastor of Little Flower and applicant for the school, said events would be limited to Saint Teresa students and parishioners and there would be no Sunday sporting events. “We will not be doing any sports on Sunday,” Father Manny said.

The board added several conditions before returning a favorable recommendation. The motion (as recorded by the board) included: requiring that fields and the gym be used only by Saint Teresa activities, prohibiting night lighting and organized Sunday sports, requiring the applicant to meet with neighbors during the school year to address traffic and pick‑up issues, and installing a solid decorative buffer and enhanced landscaping along the Palos Street frontage, with height at the maximum allowed by code. The board also asked the applicant to provide annual enrollment counts to the city and to provide a covenant tying the project to the site plan shown to the board.

Architects and the applicant said the gym would move noisy basketball and volleyball into an enclosed space and shift soccer and less intense field sports farther from Palace Street; they also said there would be no field lighting and mechanical equipment will be screened. Michael Erling, the architect, described stepped rooflines and colonnades designed to “step down and scale down to the neighborhood.”

The Planning and Zoning Board voted unanimously to recommend approval, with all seven members present voting yes (Robert Behar, Julio Gabriel, Sue Kovalinski, Felix Pardo, Javier Salman, Chip Withers, Avi Isenstaedt). Staff will forward the board’s recommendation and the applicant’s covenant to the City Commission for final action.

The board’s motion preserves the ordinance’s other existing conditions while adding the neighborhood‑facing mitigations discussed at the hearing. Construction will proceed only after final city plan and building permit approvals and the applicant said construction timing will depend on capital‑campaign fundraising; the applicant estimated construction would last about 18 months once it begins.