Lee County hearing examiner reviews rezoning request for 601 Leland Heights Blvd W; staff recommends approval with conditions

Hearing Examiner Donna Marie Collins presided over a June 25 hearing on an application by Steven Guida to rezone 0.49 acres at 601 Leland Heights Boulevard West from RS-1 (single-family residential) to commercial planned development (CPD).

Staff planner Khalil Muhammad presented the staff report and recommended approval with conditions. "Staff recommends approval of the applicant's request," Muhammad said, citing consistency with Lee County's Lee Plan and the Land Development Code and noting that the parcel is served by potable water and wastewater from the Florida Governmental Utility Authority and that the traffic impact statement found sufficient roadway capacity.

The rezoning would allow a range of commercial uses listed in the applicant's schedule of uses, including small retail, medical office, indoor storage and a potential restaurant or coffee shop. The project team said the existing 1,238-square-foot structure and the parcel's half-acre size limit development intensity; the applicant indicated a likely short-term tenant would be a coffee operation.

Staff and the applicant described four requested deviations from code: reducing driveway spacing on the arterial from the 330-foot standard to about 187 feet (offset by recorded cross-access easements); narrowing required perimeter buffers (proposed 15 feet on the north and 13 feet on the east and west, in lieu of a 25-foot buffer) while meeting planting specifications; allowing buffers and easements to overlap with a minimum 5-foot plantable area; and permitting a 15-foot Type D landscape buffer along the south property line in lieu of a 25-foot right-of-way buffer. Khalil said the deviations respond to existing utility and access easements on the lot and recommended conditions that require stub-outs and recorded cross-access easements at time of local development order.

Examiner Collins questioned a staff condition that tied development to the percentage of open space shown on the applicant's concept plan. "By tying it to that number, you preclude redevelopment of the site," the examiner said; she said she would likely remove the specific 47 percent figure and instead require compliance with the Land Development Code's open-space standard at redevelopment. Muhammad said the 47 percent figure reflected the current concept but acknowledged the code-minimum (20 percent) would apply at redevelopment.

Because the site abuts residential properties, Collins pressed the team on potential operational impacts from a restaurant or drive-through and asked whether hours of operation should be limited. After a short off-the-record break to confer, the applicant and staff proposed interim hours to address compatibility, and the examiner signaled acceptance of limits intended for the near term: 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., seven days a week, with the possibility of administrative amendment if the corridor intensifies.

No members of the public attended to comment at the hearing. The applicant entered the staff report and the presentation as exhibits, and the examiner qualified engineer Adam Davey as an expert in civil engineering after he described his construction and land-development experience in Lee County.

The hearing is procedural: Collins will close or leave the record open as appropriate, prepare a written recommendation to the Lee County Board of County Commissioners in the coming days, and the board will consider the matter at a hearing likely scheduled in August after the board's July recess. If the board approves the rezoning, any existing residential use on the parcel would become nonconforming and would have to cease per code.