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CCPC Minutes 09/04/2025September 4, 2025 Page 1 of 62 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE COLLIER COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION Naples, Florida September 4, 2025 LET IT BE REMEMBERED that the Collier County Planning Commission, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:00 a.m., in REGULAR SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: Joe Schmitt, Chairman Chuck Schumacher, Vice Chairman Paul Shea, Secretary (appearing remotely) Randy Sparrazza Michelle L. McLeod (appearing remotely) Charles "Chap" Colucci Amy Lockhart, Collier County School Board Representative ABSENT: Michael Petscher ALSO PRESENT: Raymond V. Bellows, Zoning Manager Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning Director Heidi Ashton-Cicko, Managing Assistant County Attorney Courtney DeSilva, County Attorney's Office Ailyn Padron, Management Analyst I James Sabo, Principal Planner September 4, 2025 Page 2 of 62 P R O C E E D I N G S MR. BOSI: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. Good morning, and welcome to the September 4th, 2025, Collier County Planning Commission. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Commissioner Shea, I believe, is joining us, so we will have to have a vote for Commissioner Shea. Is he on? COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yes. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: I make a motion to approve. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Do I hear a second? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Second. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Second. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. MR. BOSI: And, Chair, Ms. McLeod is joining us, I believe, from Spain, as well. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Is she on? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So we'll wait to see if she calls in. Is she on? MS. PADRON: She is on. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. We'll take the roll. Commissioner Shea, he will do it remotely. If he would take the roll, please. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Chair Schmitt? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Here. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Commissioner -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We lost you. Well, we'll stand by then. Okay. Commissioner Schumacher is here. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Here. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Commissioner Shea is on by phone. Commissioner Sparrazza? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Present. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Commissioner Colucci? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Here. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Commissioner McLeod, is she in? No? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: I'm here. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Oh, welcome. We'll have to vote for her to attend remotely. Do I hear a motion? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So moved. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Second? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Second. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I heard a second as well. All in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Aye. September 4, 2025 Page 3 of 62 COMMISSIONER SHEA: (No verbal response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No opposition. Welcome, Michelle. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Thank you, Chair. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Commissioner Petscher? He is not here. Commissioner Petscher has an excused absence. MR. BOSI: (Nods head.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And Commissioner [sic] Lockhart. MS. LOCKHART: Here. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Representing the school board. So we have a quorum. Excellent. Two by phone. Ray, are there any agenda -- addenda to the agenda? We have a request for continuance, which we're going to have to vote on. MR. BOSI: Yes. MR. BELLOWS: Correct. Items D and E have been -- requested a continuance. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And do I hear a motion? MR. BELLOWS: Those are indefinite continuances. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Indefinite. Do I have a motion to approve? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: So motion. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Second? COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Second. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Second by Chuck. All in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: (No verbal response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No opposition. It's continued. It's continued indefinitely. And this was at the request of the petitioner, of course. MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. We received an email from the applicant yesterday. They indicated that they're going to explore Live Local options and asked for an indefinite continuance. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. Well, that's certainly an option for that site. All right. The next meeting is on September 18th. And are there any projected absent -- any planning commissioners who project they will not be here? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: I will not be able to attend. September 4, 2025 Page 4 of 62 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: That's one. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Out of town. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. I will be here. And all the rest will be here? COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Michelle? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And, Paul? COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Both, here. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay, great. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yep. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Also an additional meeting September 24th at 5:05 to hear a proposed LDC amendment. You have how many; three? MR. BOSI: (Indicating.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Anybody project they will not be here for that meeting? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: I will not, Michelle McLeod. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. So we will have a quorum. And next item is approval of minutes. I didn't say any minutes in the agenda, so nothing to approve. Ray, BCC report? MR. BELLOWS: Yes. On August 26th, the Board of County Commissioners heard the LDC amendments for the housing initiative, so Mike will provide more detail. MR. BOSI: And the Board -- again, Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. The Board, initially they recommended approval of the 25 units an acre within activity centers as well the TOD development along transit lines. They did not support the conversion of commercial to residential with bypassing the public hearing; they did not support that. And they asked for a site modification to the density table as proposed, and we're going to bring that back to them at their next meeting -- or their second meeting in September, the 23rd of September. So more to come to the Planning Commission related to those housing initiatives, and that was the only items the Board heard. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. And the only thing I have for Chairman's report is we do have a meeting on the 18th, and that is the second item that was associated with Costco. And as soon as those documents are readily available, it would be great for the planning commissioners to get those so they can begin to review the market study that's associated with the separation of the service stations. How many other items are on the agenda for that day; do you know? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Quite a few. MR. BOSI: One second. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I don't have the -- MR. BOSI: I believe we have -- we have six items on that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: That will be a busy -- busy day, then. MR. BOSI: I believe it will be a busy day. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Nothing on the consent agenda, so we'll go to September 4, 2025 Page 5 of 62 the public hearings. ***And the first item is legislative in nature, and it's the rural agriculture zoned land LDC amendment. So with that, no need for disclosures or sworn in. So if you would -- staff would proceed with the first item, please. MR. HENDERLONG: Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Rich Henderlong, Planner III with the Planning and Zoning division. This is Petition PL20250005475. It's an amendment that is a Board-directed amendment to increase the written mail distance requirement from 1,000 feet to one mile when there is a change in land use in rural agricultural zoned lands. It also requires an amendment to the Administrative Code. This 1,000-foot mail distance requirement was recently recognized by the Board to be deficient in notifying the surrounding community and nine specific property owners for a specific rezone -- it is referred to as Sabal Palm project, which is listed on Page 4 of your packet under the accompanying exhibit -- I'll get into that a little further -- to change the use on the land for the 160 acres to rural agricultural. As a result, on April 25th, 2025, the Board directed the Zoning staff to prepare and publicly vet an LDC amendment that would extend and increase that distance from 1,000 feet to one mile for land-use petitions that require specifically a Growth Management Plan amendment, a rezone, or a conditional use in the rural agricultural districts. Staff undertook research of other Florida communities of public mail notice distance requirements and found they vary, and they are in your packet listed under Exhibit B. In addition, staff prepared Exhibit C, which is in your packet, to illustrate that for each of the commissioners' district there is an expected number of property owners that might be notified in the numbers of mailings that could be sent from these varying distances of 1,000 feet, a quarter mile, half mile, and one mile for five specific properties, and including the Sabal Palm property. So the DSAC under -- reviewed staff's analysis on Exhibit B, which is Page 10 of 1,882 of your document. And we noted on that document that there are several counties, in particular the one that was most restrictive or generous in mailed notices, was Seminole County, and it was based upon minimal parcel sizes -- a minimum number of parcels that had to be involved, very unusual methodology, and also varying distances from 1,500 up to 5,000 when it hit acre-sized thresholds above those acreages. And Miami-Dade had a similar one-mile requirement for use variances, special exceptions, et cetera. When you look at Exhibit C -- and let me scroll down to Exhibit C. Here. It's hard to understand. Okay. Exhibit C presents the mail distance notification study that we did for the five parcels. One -- and it's listed by the commissioners' districts. The top of the line is the subject property that triggered the consider -- the problem. And you'll note, for the thousand feet there were actually nine property owners that were involved. Nineteen mailed notices went out. The remaining 11 went to a particular singular property owner, and then there was an -- eight that went to others. That raised the basis for the concern by the Board. September 4, 2025 Page 6 of 62 As a result, we continued to use these different measuring distances to find out how many notices would be generated or have to be mailed based upon those varying distances. So the DSAC undertook this evaluation, and they looked at these columns. They looked at the half-mile column, and they selected that as a distance based upon the number of parcels and notices and property owners to be notified on -- in the objective analysis of those five other sites that were studied by staff. The Board's directive is if it's implemented and adopted and recommended by the Planning Commission is the one mile, and that is what the Board is seeking to get -- publicly vet and make our determination. So this amendment is before you today to get your recommendation and direction to the Board of County Commissioners. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Rich, I have a qu- -- the Sabal Palm project, is that the project, the conversion of the orange grove to the housing? MR. HENDERLONG: Yes, it is. MR. BOSI: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And that's the project that certainly has a lot of interest. As I read in the local paper, Mr. Mulhere made a lot of friends at the last meeting. MR. HENDERLONG: And basically, the objection parties came later at the 11th hour to the Planning Commission -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. MR. HENDERLONG: -- and they were unaware of that because the notice distance was determined by the Board to be inadequate. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, let me ask this: It's -- I'll take that project just as an example. It's 109 notifications versus 1,887. What's -- I guess cost is not an issue, but my curiosity is what's the difference in cost in that? It's almost -- almost a 70, 75 percent increase. MR. HENDERLONG: That was noted by DSAC as well, and they indicated that that's an expense that goes on the applicant. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yep. MR. HENDERLONG: And it does not fall as a burden upon the County. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So any other of my commissioners have any comments? I mean, seeing that the Board directed a mile, that's what -- I think what they're looked for us to approve. MR. HENDERLONG: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I personally -- I think it's -- a mile is excessive, but in this case if that's what the Board wants, and -- it's -- the burden is totally on the applicant as well as the cost. So any other comments from my fellow commissioners? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Yeah. I have a comment. As I look at the difference between a thousand feet, quarter mile, and a half mile, you can see you're at 4X, 5X -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: -- difference between what's currently being done and what is -- what is being offered or at least the data indicates to us for the half-mile change in the amendment. I personally think that when -- let's say you're out for a walk and you look at what a September 4, 2025 Page 7 of 62 mile is -- and we're talking about the outer edge of the parcel -- MR. HENDERLONG: Perimeter of the property. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: -- right, that's being reviewed? MR. HENDERLONG: Correct. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: So a half a mile -- would "radius" be the correct term -- all the way around that property? MR. HENDERLONG: Correct. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: If that -- to me, if that doesn't get enough information out to the public -- because the public's going to be talking with each other. We see that all the time. And to put onto the applicant, and probably the town, just the difficulty of looking up who is there, who's the rightful owner, how do we send this out, to me, seems quite excessive. I know the Board's looking for a mile, and what we say is advisory only. But I think a more realistic -- especially with the examination you did with other areas within Florida, I think a half mile is much more appropriate for all parties involved. But that's -- that's my statement. I -- has the Board seen this information yet? MR. HENDERLONG: Not the data that we've got here yet. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Okay. MR. HENDERLONG: It will go to them. They'll get that -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: With us. MR. HENDERLONG: -- with your recommendation. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: I would like to see them reconsider, for all parties involved, that a half mile would be a proper distance around the perimeter of the subject property. MR. HENDERLONG: Okay. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: I agree, Randy. I think a half mile will be -- I think a half mile is great when you're in, like, District 2 and 4. I think a mile is appropriate when you get into 3 and 5. Because when you get out to the rural areas, it's not the density like we see here. Like Pine Ridge and Goodlette, a half mile, you've got 963 served with notices. If you go to a mile, it's 5,680. That's a big jump. And it's the same thing, like, if you go towards the end of Bayshore. In the rural areas, you're trying to notify the public which are spread out much further than, like I said, like, District 2 and 4. I think a mile's -- I think a mile's appropriate. But I hear you and I agree with you on a half mile, especially when you get into the higher density areas. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Is that something that could be considered, or is it too complicated? MR. HENDERLONG: It can be considered, but I do want to note that where the one mile was originally coming from, Rural and Urban Golden Gate Estates, or the GM -- Golden Gate Area Master Plan is a one-mile notice. That is already established as a requirement, just so you're aware. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So this is strictly related to rural and -- MR. HENDERLONG: Rural agricultural zoned land. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Rural agricultural, okay. MR. HENDERLONG: Undeveloped. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. BOSI: And I could -- we can -- if it's the motion of the Board -- or of the September 4, 2025 Page 8 of 62 Planning Commission, the recommendation is to reduce it to one mile [sic], we can most -- we can most certainly put that as the recommendation from the Planning Commission, or if that -- if that's not the recommendation, if you're recommending a mile but maybe a consideration of a half mile might be more appropriate -- I'm not sure how you guys -- I'm not sure what the consensus is of the Planning Commission. But we can express, you know, the majority view as well as anyone who wants to provide an additional recommendation or a dissenting recommendation just to make the Board aware. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Logistically is it too confusing to say, as Chuck suggested, all right, for 2 and 4 it's half a mile, for 1 and 3 and 5 -- COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Five and 3. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: -- 5 and 3, it's a mile -- 1, 5, 3. MR. HENDERLONG: Being an old-timer since 1965 here, I would have a concern because you're tying it to a political commissioner's district here as opposed to an objective standard. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Okay. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: You're tying it to -- instead of geographic, because boundaries change. We change -- we change districts based on population. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Population. Okay. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: How about just everything west of 951? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I would -- COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: I'm not tying it to a district or commissioner. I'm just saying west of -- (Simultaneous crosstalk.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I would agree with that, anything west of 951. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: One would be half mile. Anything east of 951 would be a mile. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Paul, was that -- or, Commissioner McLeod, was that you trying to speak as well? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No. MS. LOCKHART: It might have been -- it might have been me. I was just going to comment on having a more fixed line, yeah. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. I think if you wanted to say one mile east of the 951 is actually the demarcation of the rural boundary, and the project that seemed to have raised the issue was the Sabal Palm. But most of the objection to Sabal Palm had to do with an attempt to save the orange grove when, in fact, the owner didn't want to save it. So we won't get into a debate there, but -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: And that is west of 951. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: East. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Oh, I'm sorry. East. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It's east. East of 951. MS. LOCKHART: So it would -- yeah. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: It would fall in the -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But I would say -- do we have a motion on the floor? COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: I'd make a motion for a recommendation to the Board to be -- anything east of 951 to be a half-mile notice and anything -- I'm sorry. September 4, 2025 Page 9 of 62 Let me amend that. Motion -- anything west of 951 will be a half-mile notice. Anything east of 951 would be a one-mile notice. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Do we hear a second? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I second that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: We have a second. All in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: (No verbal response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No opposition. THE COURT REPORTER: I didn't hear Shea. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I seconded it. THE COURT REPORTER: I didn't hear Shea. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Paul? COMMISSIONER SHEA: (Unintelligible.) You're not hearing it, I guess. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No, not hearing. MR. BOSI: And there's an -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: I agree. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: "I agree." MR. BOSI: And I know Commissioner McLeod also supported it as well. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Okay. MR. HENDERLONG: Thank you, Commissioners. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. I think that's a good resolution. MR. HENDERLONG: Very good. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: ***All right. Next item is PL202300 -- 0009958, Horse Trails [sic] Village. And with that, persons wishing to speak on this matter, please rise to be sworn in. THE COURT REPORTER: Do you swear or affirm the testimony you will give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? (The speakers were duly sworn and indicated in the affirmative.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. And I've turned it over to the applicant. Oh. Thank you, thank you. Disclosures. Amy? MS. LOCKHART: Spoke with the applicant when they were developing the original application, and text materials and staff materials. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Had the pleasure of speaking with both Mr. Yovanovich and also Robert Mulhere. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I spoke with Mr. Mulhere about this. I did not speak with Rich on this matter. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Staff materials only. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Michelle? She's getting feedback. September 4, 2025 Page 10 of 62 COMMISSIONER McLEOD: There's feedback happening. Yeah. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And, Paul? Again, it's not -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: Staff materials only. Can you guys hear me? MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, we're working on the IT issues. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Well, with that, we'll turn it over to the applicant who can present his petition. MR. YOVANOVICH: Mr. Chairman, are there any speakers online? Because I noticed there was nobody in the audience that stood up, and -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I believe there are -- right before the meeting we had three speakers online? MR. SABO: (Nods head.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Three speakers. MR. YOVANOVICH: All right. Thank you. Good morning. For the record, Rich Yovanovich on behalf of the petitioner, which is Collier Enterprises. Pat Utter is with us today from Collier Enterprises. Bob Mulhere and Ellen Summers are the planners on this project. Dom Amico is the professional engineer on this project. Lucy Gallo is our economic fiscal neutrality analysis individual. Norm Trebilcock is our traffic consultant. And Heather Samborski is our environmental consultant. The Horse Trials property is located at the intersection of Oil Well Road and State Road 29. It's 1,217.84 acres. And we're requesting to designate this property as a village within the Rural Lands Stewardship Area Overlay. As you-all are aware, villages are primarily residential with a diversity of housing types. It includes a requirement for affordable housing. It includes a requirement for providing retail and office and civic square footage associated with the project. We've done several villages over the years. You-all heard the presentation before. So we were doing a condensed version of the RLSA project or the RLSA program. But as you-all are aware, the intention was for the property owners to set aside lands that are more environmentally sensitive, and you would establish Stewardship Sending Areas. As you can see from this graphic, we are creating SSA19, and you can see where SSA19 is located adjacent to the SRA for the Horse Trials Village. It is here, and here is the SSA. We will be using credits from not only that SSA but two other SSAs to designate the village. The program has -- took a while to generate momentum, but I would say that momentum is finally here, and the eastern lands are being developed according to what was proposed probably 25 years ago at this point. We are in the open area, which is the pink area. That's where development was intended to occur, that's where Stewardship Receiving Areas are intended to be designated, and that's exactly what we're doing as part of this process. The characteristics of a village are a maximum of 1,500 acres, maximum of four dwelling units per acre. We have retail and office. I'm not going to read everything on this list, because you've seen this before. But the intention is for the village to, you know, almost be self-sufficient by providing the necessary services to the people who live there with the ultimate goal of changing the traffic patterns from people coming west to be served and being able to stay out east. And I think it's starting to work, and Ave Maria is a good testament to how the traffic patterns are changed. Not that people won't come west, September 4, 2025 Page 11 of 62 but it's not necessary for them to come west very often. As I said, we are 1,217.84 acres. We don't have any lands designated as a flow ship -- sorry -- Flowway Stewardship Area or a Habitat Stewardship Area. We have 560.20 acres in the SSA, adjacent to the site, of which 101 of those acres is a water retention area and are surrounded by the proposed SRA. We have five acres within the project that scored higher than a 1.2. As you all are aware, if you're more than 1.2, you're not allowed to develop lands that score higher than a 1.2. So those are set aside to not be developed upon. And we're not in the area of critical state concern. I'm going to let Bob take over after I go through this slide. We're asking for 3,205 dwelling units, which is 2.63 dwelling units per acre, which is under the four units per acre allowed. We are above the required open-space requirement of 35 percent. We're at almost -- or we're at a little over 49 percent. We have the required pedestrian bicycle circulation provisions within our document. We have more passive parks than are required. We're required to have 1 percent, which would be 12.18 acres, and we're at almost a little over 37 acres. We have three context zones. We have neighborhood general, we have affordable housing, and we have the village center. We have direct access to Oil Well Road and State Road 29, and we have a 25-foot-wide perimeter landscape buffer along Oil Well Road and State Road 29. I fibbed. I've got one more slide. The total credits we need to consume are 9,519.08 acres -- I'm sorry, credits. And you can see the breakdown and how they're coming from SSA14, 18, and 19, which 19 is going through the process of being established at this point. We're setting aside right-of-way for the County to acquire, and we are addressing providing stormwater management for the County as part of this process. And we are paying $835,800 to address our fair-share intersection improvements that are different from capacity-related roadway impact fee creditable commitments as part of this project. I'm going to let Bob take over from here, but we're fiscally neutral -- we're fiscally neutral. That's a requirement under the code. We meet that requirement. One of the little nuances that I think we address in a later slide but I want to bring it up now, under the affordable housing provisions of the -- of the code, we're required to set aside 2.5 percent of our acreage for an affordable housing site. As you're -- well, maybe -- the code specifically says that we don't have to account for those 305 units in our traffic -- transportation analysis, and we also don't have to account for the retail and civic square footage that are associated with those units. So I'm sure you've seen in the SRA document where we specifically say that the units and the associated square footage for retail and civic are not subject to the cap that is in our document. The intention was to not penalize the developer for providing affordable housing and the related square footages associated with that. That's a little different. I think this is the first time you've seen that in an SRA document, so I wanted to bring that up. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Bob and let him take you -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Rich, before you do that and turn it over to Bob -- or Bob may want to address this as well. For both my colleagues that are relatively new to September 4, 2025 Page 12 of 62 the SRA concept -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Sure. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- and to the general public, I think there's a misperception out there that this is a request for rezoning. MR. YOVANOVICH: Okay. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And could you -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Sure. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- from a legal perspective, define this is -- this is the Rural Lands Stewardship. It's already zoned. MR. YOVANOVICH: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All we're doing is going through the approval process of a village, town, or whatever. MR. YOVANOVICH: Yeah, sure. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So if you could just cover that from a legal perspective just so the folks understand that -- again, I received an email late last night asking us to deny this because of the panthers and impact of the panther on State Road 29 fully understand and concerned -- and have no issues with somebody raising the objection, but the time to have done that would have been 20 years ago when we set aside these lands for development. So if you could just clarify that from a legal perspective. MR. YOVANOVICH: Yeah. The way the -- the way the RLSA was established was the property owners came together and worked with the county to establish a program that would set aside the environmentally sensitive lands and focus development on the areas that were not environmentally sensitive. And what that program did was it created -- and I showed you the map. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, if you could go back to that just to -- there it is, yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: It created areas -- it created these areas -- the pink areas are called open areas, and that's where development is to occur. This entire area was zoned RLSA overlay, so it is zoned for the uses we're requesting. The process to get a Stewardship Receiving Area -- and there are multiple types. There's towns, there's villages, and then there's compact rural development. Those are the types of Stewardship Receiving Areas. Since the property's already zoned, we designate the areas as a Stewardship Receiving Area. The difference is if we were rezoning the property, and since that already occurred, the normal supermajority vote by the Board of County Commissioners to designate this area doesn't apply. It's a simple majority vote process to designate the Stewardship Receiving Area versus a supermajority vote requirement if we were actually rezoning the property. And that's a very important distinction to make, and that's why you heard me say over and over, "Designate, designate, designate," which sometimes even I slip because I'm so used to doing PUDs. But we're not rezoning the property. We are -- we are designating the property under the legal framework that was established I want to say in 2001 or 2002. Am I right, Bob? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And has been amended twice since. MR. YOVANOVICH: We've had multiple -- multiple amendments to the -- to the September 4, 2025 Page 13 of 62 project -- or to the Land Development Code provisions as well as the Growth Management Plan provisions applicable to the district. But it's a designation process. It's not a rezone process. There's -- you know, and Heather's here to answer any questions you may have about the environmental sensitivity of the lands. And we do a very detailed environmental analysis when we're actually going through the designation process to actually ground-truth the lands that we're going through. And that's when I said we had five acres that scored above a 1.2. That's -- that's the number where you're not allowed to develop, and you set those aside. If you have any lands in your Stewardship Receiving Area that score above a 1.2, you set them aside, and you don't develop them. But generally, the open area is the areas where there's not environmental sensitivity. We actually are -- you see this thing right here, a panther corridor, we're assisting with that process through the SSA19. So this project fully complies with and is fully consistent with the Growth Management Plan commitments applicable to the designation of SRA. Does that -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yep. That's a good overview. And all criteria that reflects whether it's a water resource area or stewardship area, whatever, those all are considered in the footprint and the design? MR. YOVANOVICH: Absolutely. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. Okay. Thanks. Thanks. Any other questions? County Attorney. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: I just wanted to simplify it just a little bit. It's a floating zone within the RLSA zoning district. So it is allowed to plop down based on what the owners are proposing, and your job is to make sure they've met all the criteria that staff has analyzed in the code, so... CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. MR. MULHERE: Good morning. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mr. Mulhere. MR. MULHERE: Thank you. For the record, Bob Mulhere with Bowman. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Oh, Charles. You had a question first. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Yeah. I think it's crucial for us to understand that this is not a rezone proposal. MR. YOVANOVICH: Correct, this is not a rezone. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I've got a couple of questions, maybe one's just curiosity. How does the size of this compare with Ave Maria? MR. YOVANOVICH: It's a lot smaller because it's a village. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: A lot? MR. YOVANOVICH: Ave Maria -- gosh, I've lost track. I think it's either 5- or 6,000 acres now. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. MR. YOVANOVICH: But a village cannot be greater than 1,500 acres. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. In any event, this is probably Step 1 to a project that's probably 10 years down the road to be completed; would that be fair? MR. YOVANOVICH: I would say it might be even a little longer before it's completed. September 4, 2025 Page 14 of 62 COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: A little longer than that. MR. YOVANOVICH: But this is the first step in the process for being able to go forward with the development of these lands. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: And the petitioner's setting aside land, I heard, for a potential fire station; is that correct? MR. YOVANOVICH: Bob's going to show you on the master plan where we have a fire station site, we have a school site. There's a lot of coordination that goes into putting together the master plan of a village and a town, and -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: All right. My last question would be, I'd like to understand a little more from your perspective and the school district's, what are the implications for schools and schooling of this proposal? There's going to be a lot of kids. MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, we -- that's why we set aside a school site is for -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- the required schools to allow Amy to teach our kids are anticipated and planned for -- Amy's entity to teach. She's not -- MS. LOCKHART: I don't personally. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- a teacher. I know. But anyway, yeah. So this process is very inclusive. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So you have land set aside for fire. You have land set aside for schooling. In the -- MR. YOVANOVICH: And utilities as well. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: -- interim, I also believe it will probably be a good idea for the current fire district to be funded for an extra engine. MR. YOVANOVICH: We pay impact fees that will go towards -- towards that, but we've set aside land for them to build a station. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: What about the engine, I'm talking about? MR. YOVANOVICH: That's part of their impact fees. They can buy engines with our impact fees. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah, they pay an impact fee. Every building permit -- I don't know how many impact fees we're up to now, 14, 15, whatever. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: And the county can use that as they see fit? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No, only for -- MR. YOVANOVICH: The impact fees -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- impact fees that are related to growth and the impact of growth. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Like a fire engine? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Like a fire engine, expansion of roads, other types of activity that would be associated with those various impact fees. MR. YOVANOVICH: Yeah. We pay impact fees to the fire district, and they use it to buy capital. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. Good. I'm still a rookie. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, it's a good question, because they would begin the budget based on what they perceive to be the revenue that they're going to go collect as homes are built in that area, and whether -- and then when they have to expand the coverage, the impact fees would cover both the building of a new fire station and staffing it. September 4, 2025 Page 15 of 62 MR. YOVANOVICH: And as Mike's going to bring up in his comments, we'll be working with the fire district to talk about -- we do an analysis based upon the end of the project and whether or not we're going to be fiscally neutral or not. The fire district has raised concern about, you know, an interim facility, and we're going to work with them to provide them space for an interim -- interim station till they have their permanent station within our project. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: That's a good overview, Mr. Yovanovich. MR. YOVANOVICH: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mr. Mulhere. MR. MULHERE: Yes. Good morning. Bob Mulhere with Bowman Consulting. I did just want to -- well, I know it's hard to believe looking at me, but over 25 years ago I was with Collier County as the Planning director when this whole process started, which it started in 1999. So it's been a long time getting to the point where there was sufficient market attraction for this program, which, as Rich indicated now, we see that happening since there's, you know, five villages, two towns -- maybe six villages now. So Horse Trials -- let's see. I think we already went over that. There we go -- has three context zones, and the RLSA were the allowable development areas, whether it's a town or a village, identifies context zones as sort of separate areas within either the village or the town, and it identifies two required context zones. That's neighborhood general and village center, but you can have other context zones. And so over the last four or five applications that have come in for this, we have created a separate context zone for affordable housing, as that has, you know, become very important and can be treated differently. So again, neighborhood general, prominently residential. It's got a mix of single and multifamily. In this case, there's a 30.05-acre school site within neighborhood general, a little over nine acres for utilities, 2.6-acre fire station site and, of course, there would be parks, amenity centers, and open space. And as required, the neighborhood general, the entire village, really, is pedestrian oriented with a multimodal design, interconnected street pattern, and sidewalks with a multiuse pathway. By now we have, you know, spent a lot of time understanding how to comply with the standards in the RLSA program. And the village center is 56.13 acres. That's mixed use in nature. It's required to be mixed use. And we will provide a minimum of 40 multifamily dwelling units, and we will have a minimum and maximum -- you may ask why is that in there? It's in there so that we identify that we'll meet the minimum, but we're not asking for any more than that amount. Of 169, 865,000 [sic] square feet of neighborhood goods and services in a village, the focus is on neighborhood goods and services. In a town, since it's larger, the focus is on community-level goods and service. We are required to provide a minimum of 32,050 square feet of civic, governmental, and institutional uses. Now, you know, obviously a school would qualify for that. We may meet that requirement with the school, so, you know... The affordable housing requirement in any village or town is 2.5 percent of the village land area at a minimum, and that has to be entitled at 10 units per acre. We have 30.45 acres, and it's being entitled at 305 dwelling units, 10 units per acre. This is the SRA master plan. It's probably a little bit hard to see. I'll see if I can September 4, 2025 Page 16 of 62 point out some of the sites that are important aspects of the plan. You can see the SSA, which runs north and south here, which is consistent with that panther corridor, there is -- part of the SSA is in here surrounded. All of the neighborhood general is this tan color. There is a lake system, which we've used pretty consistently to -- not only to handle water quality and water retention, but also as a deterrent to wildlife entering the site. This is the village center, which is right at the intersection of Oil Well and State Road 29 in the northwest intersection. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Bob, leave that up. Is there an interconnect between those two SSAs under the road or some type of -- MR. MULHERE: There's not -- there is an animal crossing, small. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: There is an animal crossing. Okay. Thank you. MR. MULHERE: It's a little bit hard to see, but -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I couldn't read it, but -- fine print. MR. MULHERE: I can't make it any bigger, but it's right here. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But I could see -- okay. MR. MULHERE: Sorry. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. MR. MULHERE: I was pointing out that the affordable housing sites are right here. You know, there'll be good pedestrian interconnection there. And it's close to the village center. And utilities site. And I'm just trying to point out the highlights here. Oh, well, there you go. I can see that now. Thank you, Ellen. Okay. That's a lot of easier to see. Thank you. Fire station right here. Excuse me. Utility site is here. This is an amenity center here. And I am looking for the school site. MS. LOCKHART: It's up in the top. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Up in the top. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Top right. MR. MULHERE: Right there. So from a transportation perspective, we have a trip cap not to exceed 2,429 two-way adjusted average weekday p.m. peak-hour total trips. That's a mouthful. But as you know, all of the rezones -- and this is not a rezone, but it's a designation, but we still provide a trip cap. And as Rich indicated, the TIS doesn't include the required additional commercial and civic square footage that would be driven by the 305 affordable housing units. And we already discussed the fair-share contribution. This is the connectivity, the bike-ability and walkability map. And you can see that we have a main link road and a main loop road, and then along the larger roads, a 10-foot multiuse pathway and sidewalks and paths along all of the roadways. And so we've developed a walkable, bicycle, multimodal system. We had two NIMs because this took a little longer than we had hoped. If you don't have your hearings prior to one year from the NIM, you're required to do a second one. The first neighborhood information meeting was held on June 24th. We had one participant who joined online. No questions or comments were raised. The second one was held on June 23rd, almost exactly a year later, with one member of the public in attendance, and that participant asked questions that related to potential development surrounding the project area and groundwater usage. I think he lived out in that area and September 4, 2025 Page 17 of 62 just was curious and asked questions. So finally, the staff recommendations, the staff recommends that the Collier County Planning Commission forward this application to the Board of County Commissioners with a recommendation of approval with two conditions; one, that the Sending Area 19 must be approved prior to or concurrently with the approval, which we understand; and the agreement to provide potable, water/wastewater, and irrigation utility services adopted concurrently or prior to an agreement that provides for potable water, wastewater, and irrigation, water utility services prior to the adoption, which we also understand. As Rich indicated, we will be working with the fire district to accommodate their request for an interim fire station site while they prepare to construct the permanent station within the village. I believe that puts us at questions and answers, and I want to just mention that we have a full team -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Bob, do you have a slide to go through the deviations? You're asking for several deviations. MR. MULHERE: We don't, but they're very typical to deviations that -- we can go over them. I'll just pull up the resolution. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I didn't see any objection by staff on any of the deviations. COMMISSIONER SHEA: No, they're standard. They've been requested in almost every village that's come through. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I see no questions from my colleagues. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Just an off-the-topic -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Randy. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: -- question, if I may, Bob. What does the panther corridor crossing look like? I'm just curious. Is it a bridge over the road or a tunnel? MR. MULHERE: Box culvert. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Box culvert. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Typically a box culvert. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Okay. So it goes underneath. (Simultaneous crosstalk.) MR. MULHERE: I'm not acting like I knew the answer to that question. I was provided the answer to that question. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: She gets the points. So it goes under that walkway. MR. MULHERE: Yes. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Under the road and then comes up in the second half of the SSA. MR. MULHERE: Yes. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Just curious. Thank you. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Online are -- we still have Michelle or Paul? Have any questions? COMMISSIONER SHEA: No questions for Paul. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: I think I wanted to hear the staff report first or -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Or the speakers, or I can ask my questions now. September 4, 2025 Page 18 of 62 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: No. We'll -- go ahead. Amy -- you can wait till after staff report, certainly. Go ahead, Amy. MS. LOCKHART: Okay. Sorry about that. I just had a question about the internal access for the school site. I wanted to be sure -- in our discussions it looks like it's a -- you have it marked as a pedestrian access, and I wanted to make sure that it was a roadway where there's a turnaround. It's not -- MR. MULHERE: Yes. MS. LOCKHART: Okay. MR. MULHERE: There is. There's a cul-de-sac right there, yes. MS. LOCKHART: Cul-de-sac, okay. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: With that, we'll open for registered speakers. Do we have any registered speakers? MR. SABO: Chairman Schmitt, there are four registered speakers. Art Marshall is first. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Are you on? MR. MARSHALL: Yeah, you got me? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. What -- name, please, for the record. MR. MARSHALL: Yes. My name is Art Marshall. I've been listening. Just heard about this project last week. I had a colleague of mine send me a photo of a sign displaying the Collier County Planning Commission meeting regarding this property. I just wanted to share my concerns as a lifelong Floridian and let you know that, you know, there is a growing movement of Floridians that are upset with seeing our Florida wild spaces developed. We're seeing it more and more ever since COVID our natural areas and green spaces are getting developed by these developers. You know, this property is three and a half miles north of the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge as well as Big Cypress National Preserve in the heart of the Florida wildlife corridor. This project will impact Florida panther movements from Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, Big Cypress, north to the Caloosahatchee River. I've been reviewing the listed species survey report that was prepared by Passarella & Associates, and it shows that there have been documented occurrences of, obviously, the American alligator, gopher tortoise, crested caracara, little blue heron, the Florida bonneted bat, Florida panther, as well -- as several listed plant species as well. I did hear one of the commissioner's comments earlier today saying that the time to object to this SRA process was 20 years ago, but I'll tell you I was 14 years old 20 years ago. I was not of capacity to make comment on an issue like this. So just hearing that, that there's, you know, nothing that I can do as a concerned Floridian regarding this project, it does kind of piss me off a little bit. But I just want to let you guys know that there is a growing movement to stand up against this nonstop development of our -- what is remaining of wild Florida. You know, I do have several additional concerns about this site. You know, I do see that you guys have set aside some areas -- I'm trying to think of the proper terms -- to remain wild. The applicant earlier had said that they are setting aside some areas for the wildlife corridor along the western portion of this property, but that's just a small sliver compared to the 1,200 acres that are planned to be developed. You know, the instance -- the occurrences of human/wildlife interactions if this village does get developed is just going to continue to be a problem with members of the September 4, 2025 Page 19 of 62 public interacting with Florida black bears and Florida panthers. So I have major concerns that this development will continue to hamper those populations of threatened wild. You know, we don't have many Florida panthers left within the state, and Southwest Florida is the, you know, heart of their population, and it just -- it just really upsets me to see that the Eastern Collier County -- the rural areas of Collier County are moving forward with development when we have such a, you know, precious resource with the Florida panther, the Florida black bears and its close proximity to the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge and Big Cypress National Preserve. I would urge the Planning Commission, if at all possible, to reconsider and maybe develop some areas that are, you know, closer to the urban center of Collier County further west in the county and leave these rural areas in the eastern parts of the county -- leave them be, let them remain wild to allow for the wildlife that people -- you know, ecotourism brings in billions and billions of dollars to this state. People come here from across the world to try and see Florida black bears, Florida panthers in Southwest Florida. So it sounds like, you know, given how everything is set up with the Stewardship Receiving Areas and the Rural Lands Stewardship Area zoning that there's not much that members of the public can do to stand up and oppose these types of developments. But, you know, I'm going to leave this meeting and kind of do some more research and see what we can do as members of the public to stand up against this overdevelopment of our state. You know, this is a wild area of the state. I know it was agricultural at one point in time, but still, agricultural lands do provide wildlife benefit. They've done bonneted bat acoustic surveys. You know, in those agricultural fields, and those bonneted bats and endangers species, they are using those open areas, and replacing those open areas with development and houses will remove those foraging areas for those bats, and then they'll have to go elsewhere. Before too long, they'll have nowhere else to go, and they will become extinct. So I just wanted to share my concerns as a lifelong Floridian that I don't believe that we should be developing these rural parts of the county, and I hope that we can work with the Commission in trying to find out some better alternatives. Thank you for the time, and I hope you have a good day. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mr. Marshall, thank you for your concerns. Just for your clarification -- and I would encourage you to study what happened 20 years ago -- there was a consent decree issued by the State which forced Collier County to develop this program called the Rural Lands Stewardship. And it's been amended by -- staff, I'm looking at -- probably three times since. The most recent probably two years ago -- two times with the most recent maybe two to four years ago, we had another amendment to this Rural Lands Stewardship program. But I appreciate your concerns, and certainly if you want to advocate modifications to the Rural Lands Stewardship program, I would encourage you to promote public input and provide that to the Commissioners, and it would be looked at again. But understand that the area is zoned, and what we're doing is just applying what has already been approved and codified in both the Land Development Code and the Collier County Growth Management Plan amendment in regards to the application of the rules and regulations in developing a -- in this case a village. So with that -- COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Chair? September 4, 2025 Page 20 of 62 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I'm going to -- yeah. Go ahead, Michelle. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: This is Michelle McLeod. If I may make a comment based on what that speaker just mentioned. I, too, understand his concern as a third-generation South Florida Floridian. So I do understand. I just wanted to make that point, but... And you, Chair, were mentioning a little bit about the history on where we got here today with the RLSA. But can we -- can we discuss, either yourself or Mike Bosi, explain one of the intents of the RLSA is to avoid urban sprawl based on property rights? Because I think that that would help the speaker in understanding a little bit of how we got here. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. It was clearly -- and I was part of the staff when this was put through as well. This was clearly an application of rules and regulations to prevent urban sprawl, one -- one unit per four [sic] acres, which is essentially what was happening throughout the entire Eastern Collier County. We -- and there was a couple of developments -- I won't say the names now -- but that sort of broke the camel's back in regards to how these developments were being built at one unit per four acres but to incorporate in sections of golf courses and -- one unit per five acres. Thank you. And this was a plan to prevent the urban sprawl, and it was the -- it was a plan that was to focus any proposed development on less sensitive lands and focus on Stewardship Sending Areas as lands that were deemed environmentally sensitive or through water resources or natural protection of wildlife to the lands for Sending Areas and Receiving Areas, but this was strictly a plan to prevent the urban sprawl. I can ask staff if you want to highlight on that at all. And Bob -- Bob knows as well, because he was part of the staff when this happened. MR. BOSI: Thanks, Chair. Mike Bosi, again. And, yes, you're correct. The entire 196,000 acres has been analyzed. Each acre has a Natural Resource Index scoring that's associated with that. And that really dictates what -- the areas that will be slated for development, and that will also indicate the areas that are the most environmentally sensitive and the ones that will be preserved from development. That's the entire concept. It's -- as described by one of our long-time planners, Mr. Week, it's a TDR program kind of on steroids in terms of how it works. But it really -- it protects the most environmentally sensitive lands and allows for the development of areas that aren't as sensitive. And going into the process, there was three major tenets that were trying to be attended: Environmental protection, agricultural protection, and property rights. So those were the three scales that were tried to be -- that were -- tried to find a balance between the three of them to make sure that there was equal weight and there was -- moving forward that property owners, you know, were allowed to utilize their land. Environmentally sensitive land was being preserved away from development, and agricultural could maintain a portion and a presence within the county. And those were kind of the overarching goals of what the program was supposed to provide for, and I believe it has provided for that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, I also want to clarify, this does not in any way waive any requirements under the Clean Water Act or the Endangered Species Act. They still have to go through federal permitting, state permitting, they have to go through September 4, 2025 Page 21 of 62 Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, Section -- is it 6 or 7, consultation. And certainly, bonneted bat will be addressed as part of the environmental review. Panther mitigation, panther habitat, there may be even PHUs, panther habitat units that will be required to be paid for this. And at the conclusion, I'm going to ask if your environmental consultant could get up and describe where they are in that process, but before we do that, the next -- go ahead, Bob. MR. MULHERE: I'm sorry. I just wanted to add a couple -- just very briefly. Number 1, I think people lose sight of the fact that it bears repeating that in Collier County well over 70 percent, probably 78 percent of the county is in permanent protection either owned by the federal government, the state government, or put into, you know, private conservation easements. It's significant, you know. And it's growing, and it's growing because of a program like this. So if you look at what is being preserved, it's 3,400 acres. That's not quite three times the 1,200, but very close. On average, it's between three and four times for these SRAs being put in preserve. But more importantly, or equally as important, a portion of that -- this SSA19 will protect a portion of that panther corridor, which is really important. And the other point that I don't know that we've made, this is -- or was made, but let me reinforce it; this is not within the Area of Critical State Concern. If you look at this map, the Area of Critical State Concern is east of State Road 29. It's shown in pink. Some of that area will develop, may develop, as an SRA. But you can see there's a major flowway here and a major flowway there, and you can see all of those SSAs that have been approved to expand the size of those flowways, which is critically important because of the historic flow coming down from north to south. So I just wanted to add that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. Next speaker, please. MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, next speaker is Filomena Wright. MS. WRIGHT: Hello. Thank you, Chair and Planning Commission. My name is Filomena Wright, and I am also a concerned citizen. A lot of my speaking points were the same as Art Marshall's. And I'm going to just kind of review as well as add to the concerns he already laid out. He touched on the gopher tortoise, which was found in the survey as being instantly identified and located within the range of this planned development. I would like to add to that an item -- an animal which was not included, and that is the eastern indigo snake which is federally threatened. And the eastern indigo is an animal that shares burrows with the gopher tortoise, and due to loss of habitat, the same affliction that is plaguing our gopher tortoises -- which is a Florida icon along with the eastern indigo -- is now plaguing, obviously, the eastern indigo because of loss of habitat, loss of burrows, loss of space. The bonneted bat -- Art commented on there's a few plants also listed in the survey. There were three plants listed which would be impacted which were found via the survey in the area planned for development. The bonneted bat helps with incidental propagation. So the bonneted bat is also federally endangered. And I want to comment, of course, the panther is a tremendous Florida icon. The numbers are dwindling. This is right in the heart of the corridor right alongside and impactful to the national preserve and panther habitat. And, of course, those animals are all Florida icons, ones that the public cares about immensely and would be, you know, devastated to lose. And the panther numbers, as you September 4, 2025 Page 22 of 62 all know, are very low. And so I want to emphasize the impact that development in general in an ecologically sensitive system would have across the board. You cannot impact one piece of a system without having detrimental impact across the board. And I did hear the comment regarding the, you know, areas that ranked at 1.2 or higher, and those areas being set aside as environmentally sensitive land. And I'm just -- I feel the need to comment and say there is no way that you can isolate pockets of environmentally sensitive land and surround it on all sides with development and not expect a greater and more detrimental impact to the isolated areas, because what happens -- and it's something that we've seen with the Florida scrub jay. The Florida scrub jay is struggling at this time. They have pockets a little further north of -- you know, it's endemic to Florida. They don't migrate. They have little pockets which we call cul-de-sacs, for example, of protected areas, and these poor animals are forced to stay in this little conservation range. There's no new gene pool for them to, you know, breed with, mix with. And the actual population declines over time. The same thing is happening with our gopher tortoises. Over time, as development -- proposals and development, you know, of the land that they are native to -- you know, we provide the option. Oh, well, you can move them. "You can pay this fine and move the tortoises to this conservation area." So we're pulling all of these gopher tortoises into these confined concentrated areas, and then the gene pool also declines. The indigo snake is nearly nonexistent, and I believe that that is why it was not found when surveying the land. The bonneted bat, all of these animals -- the panther, we brought in nine panthers -- well, cougars from Texas to give variety to the gene pool because it -- there's -- we're creating these concentrated conservation areas where the animals have no possibility of survival. It would -- it contributes to inbreeding, the decline of their gene pool, the fragility of their, you know, ability to survive. So I wanted to make that point because there -- in my mind, there is no way to separate and isolate conservation areas regardless of the rating, 1.2 or higher, or how many -- you know, 3,200 acres or any of that, you cannot surround an ecologically sensitive environment with development and isolate pockets of conservation and then pat yourself on the back and say, "We did a good thing." It is not a good thing. It is impactful to the environment. And the comment regarding, "The time to stop this was 20 years ago" ruffled my feathers as well, because what may have worked to prevent urban sprawl 20 years ago does not mean that it is what will work today. The time is now. It is within your hands, within your possibility of preventing further destruction to this very fragile, very sensitive ecosystem. There is no other Everglades. None in the world. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Ms. Wright, can I ask you to wrap it up? We're over five minutes. MS. WRIGHT: I'm over five minutes? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MS. WRIGHT: Okay. Well, let me state this: I heard future plans regarding the fire department. There's already, it sounds to me, an eye towards, "Well, if we need a second one, we'll build it." So my point being -- and I didn't even get to touch on this. My September 4, 2025 Page 23 of 62 biggest concern is the aquifer. The aquifer cannot support and sustain further development. It is ecologically fragile, and our -- Florida needs to preserve, conserve, and stop development. I'd beseech you all, Chair, Planning Commission, because it may have worked 20 years ago, does not mean that it is what will work for Florida today. That is all. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you for your input. Appreciate it. Charles? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Before I make some comments, I've been asked by another commissioner to get the address of the person that just spoke to us. Are you still there? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Ms. Wright? MS. WRIGHT: I am here. I am a Floridian. I'd rather not state my address publicly. I completed it on the form when I registered to speak at the meeting. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: I don't mean to interrupt you, Charles. I was just going to ask you, Ms. Wright, if you lived out in that eastern part of Collier County. MS. WRIGHT: I do not; however, like I said, I live close enough. I visit the Everglades at least weekly. And that entire area is area that I enjoy, I recreate in, I hike, and you know, it is very -- COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: No, I appreciate it, Ms. Wright. I'm not -- I'm not dumping on that. I was just asking if you lived out there, if you had driven by the property and seen it. Because it wouldn't be a hiking trail. It's private property because it's owned, and it's basically a farm, like a flat farm. MS. WRIGHT: Well, I mean, the -- it is far. It's the greater -- yeah, but the greater area that it connects with is -- like I said, it's all connected to the Everglades out and around the national preserve, and it is terrain that I do recreate in. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Okay. Thank you, Ms. Wright. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, thank you. If this commissioner wants to get the address, I'm sure we can get it off the paperwork you submitted. (Simultaneous crosstalk.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Do you have your question, Charles? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Yeah. I've got a -- I've got a -- I think, an important comment here. Personally I am not pro-growth, I'm not pro-environment, and what I try to do is balance the two, and I'm also pretty practical. I anticipated these environmental questions, and now I need some guidance particularly from Joe. Is -- it would seem to me the best way -- for the environmentalists, the best way to stop this kind of growth is to get the County Commission to rezone this area. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, that's the only way they would stop it is they would have to approach the Board of County Commissioners. They would basically have to rescind the entire RLSA program, and the difficulty there is you're taking away property rights -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I understand that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- which is -- we're balancing property rights with environmental issues and the stresses on development. So it would have to -- it would require a complete reanalysis of the RLSA. But the only way that's going to happen is a ground swell of public opposition to the continuance of the RLSA and an approach to the Board of County Commissioners to basically review September 4, 2025 Page 24 of 62 the entire process. We went through it about five years ago. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I make that -- I make that -- I ask that question -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: -- simply so the people that are objecting, which are mostly on environmental issues, understands that this commission can only approve or disapprove of the proposal given what the internals of the proposal are. We have nothing to do with zoning. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Correct. We are essentially approving based on the application of the criteria. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Exactly. Exactly. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: That's what we're approving. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So again, the best and maybe the only way for a ground swell of public opinion based on environmental issues to stop this kind of thing is a complicated rezoning by the County Commission, not by this commission. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Correct. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Well, let me proceed to the next public speaker. MR. SABO: Chair, the next public speaker is Hana Snajdrova. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Hana, are you online, please? I do not hear her. Is she still connected? Please take your computer off mute. MS. SNAJDROVA: Hello, hello? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. Go ahead. State your name, please. MS. SNAJDROVA: Hi. This is Hana Snajdrova, and I live in Collier County, in Naples, directly. And I am also a concerned citizen of Collier County because I care for the environment and nature. And I have a son who's going to grow up one day. And if he stays living in Collier County, I wish for him to enjoy the nature around us that we have, and I'm sure, you are, too, with your either children or grandchildren and for yourself, of course, because everyone loves nature, you know. So what I would like to start with first, and -- to understand the background and analysis of RLSA which is the program that's supposed to protect our rural lands, correct? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Correct. It's the program to protect the rural lands and to balance growth and development against the stress placed upon them through environmental concerns as well as respecting private property rights. MS. SNAJDROVA: Yes. So in 2002, the RLSA program was established to -- the goal was to retain agricultural activities, the incompatible uses away from lands, enable the conversion of rural land to other uses, discourage -- discourage urban sprawl, and encourage creative development and land-use planning techniques through incentives? So is this village considered a creative rural space, or is it an urban sprawl? I see it as an urban sprawl because 3,000 something -- 3,206 homes, do you see that as a creative use of a rural area? It's a question. Do you see that as a creative development of a rural Collier County? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I'm going to -- I'm going to defer to staff to answer that question and the applicant. MR. BOSI: Based -- Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. Villages and towns, based upon the construct of the RLSA, are considered compact September 4, 2025 Page 25 of 62 urban developments. They're based upon the principle of sustainability. The number of rooftops that are allocated within the village is corresponding to the number of commercial square footage required to support those rooftops as well as civic and institutional land uses to support those. So not only are there support services, but there are economic opportunities that are intended to be able to make these towns and villages to be self-sustaining. Now, 3,200 units are not self-sustaining on all areas of activity, but that, in combination of the other towns and villages that are being developed within the RLSA, will provide a variety of economic opportunities as well as goods and service uses to help support an internal self-sustainability to the entire RLSA district. So this proposed village is part of the principles that are contained within the RLSA to provide for sustainability within the development. Urban sprawl is considered when you are putting -- when you're putting housing in an area where you do not have adequate infrastructure, jobs, services, and support services to provide for those houses. The requirements of the commercial allocation, institutional, as well as civic requirements for square footage provides for that self-sustaining ability and those support uses to be in close proximity to where these houses are being proposed. So this is -- this is in spirit of what the RLSA is calling for. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MS. SNAJDROVA: So yes, this is the middle of nowhere, so how do people gonna have opportunities to find jobs and, you know, make -- basically get employment? They will have to travel somewhere. There's nobody opportunity for a -- like, a company to come and employ all these people, you know. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Such as Ave Maria. MS. SNAJDROVA: Ave Maria, that's shops and university. You know, there's -- COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: There's also Arthrex there as well, and there's stores and shops that self-sustain. That's the ideas is you have these villages, and they also have these activity centers as well. I know downtown Ave Maria you've got multiple restaurants. There's an insurance agency. There's a number of different businesses. MS. SNAJDROVA: It's low wages. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Can I ask you to wrap up your comments, please. MS. SNAJDROVA: No. I still have time, I'm sorry. Hold on a second. So next is that this area is actually adjacent to an Area of Critical State Concern which is on the east side -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Correct. MS. SNAJDROVA: -- and also a habitat -- hold on a second -- yes, Habitat Stewardship Area on the south side. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Correct. MS. SNAJDROVA: So how do you see this not impacting the nature? Which, you know, I agree with the two speakers before me, the environment issue. This is just next to those areas. How are you going to resolve this issue? This is going to have impact right on these areas. I mean -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MS. SNAJDROVA: This is another concern for me. Besides, also, another question. I mean, questions, but I don't know if you can answer those. You said there's September 4, 2025 Page 26 of 62 going to be low-income housing. You know, how much are those houses going to be costing? How much, you know, are you going to price these homes? I don't -- you know, plus, this development, this is just like words. There's no numbers. Like, how much are the housing going to cost? How many low-income housing units? How much those housing units going to cost? You're just looking at this, you know, okay, we're going to build this and not looking around what impact it has. Water, how -- the sewage and water, where that going to go? You know, it's -- And then you're going to create parks for these people to live there. It's going to be beautiful, but you're not realizing that you're actually taking the natural beauty of the environment and artificially turning it into parks and calling it a nature for the people to live there. I mean, come on. I mean, common sense and a little bit of love in your heart for our Collier County. This is getting out of hand. And like the previous speaker said, people are noticing that, and people are getting upset already. And when is this going to stop? When is this going to stop? So if you have the heart for nature, and put aside the money and, you know, the business and look at this as this is for us and for our future generations to stay and then for animals to have places to go. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you for your input on that. And I'll ask the applicant to address that when they have their closing comments. Next public speaker, please. MR. SABO: Chairman, next public comment is Jimmy Geraldi. MR. GERALDI: Hello? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Go ahead, please. MR. GERALDI: Hello. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mr. Geraldi, go ahead. MR. GERALDI: Hello, everyone. Hello everyone. I want to say thank you to the Chair and Planning Commissioners for giving me the opportunity to speak on this issue, especially remotely. So thank you again. And I want to thank Art Wright [sic] and Hana for taking their time to speak out against this. Again, just like the previous speakers I am concerned about the environmental impact and overdevelopment issues. I am a native Floridian, and I am against this proposed development of the Horse Trials Village off of Oil Wells [sic] Road and State Road 29. The location is crucial for the wildlife, such as the gopher tortoises being at the site, eastern indigo snakes, wood stork foraging areas, and especially the Florida panther that has been the decline. Building more homes in that region will add more traffic to the area, potentially increasing the chance of a panther getting struck by a vehicle. To date this year, 13 panthers, including cubs, such as what happened on August 7th in Collier County when two sister cubs had been struck by a vehicle and were killed. And recently, again, on August 28th, a two-year-old panther was killed in Hendry County by a vehicle collision. The estimated panther population statewide is just around 200 left. With other developments, such as Kingston, being underway building 10,000 new homes and erasing an essential wildlife corridor, as well as erasing further habitat range, the risk for further panther road fatalities will only skyrocket from here as the traffic will September 4, 2025 Page 27 of 62 be far greater in that region. With increased population, we are talking about thousands of new vehicles being added to the road daily. The panther population will continue to be greatly threatened in the region. The developers say they care about the wildlife corridor, but I saw what happened with Kingston. Despite the promise on conservation, they clear-cutted everything and are planning on replanting trees, but the issue is that trees take years to grow. The panther population can't wait for years, especially if you add (unintelligible) habitat enshrined with development and roads. I am asking no for the proposed development between Oil Wells Road and State Road 29. We cannot further threaten the species because of overdevelopment. There are already tens of thousands of homes for sale in Southwest Florida, with the state total being nearly 800 -- 180,000 homes already for sale. Additional housing inventory is not needed when the number of homes is growing exponentially, especially if building more inventory results in erasing thousands of acres of wild land. Apartments also not filling up. We are not in a housing shortage. We don't need to build more and take more habitat range. Also, it also increases the flood risk and gravely makes the evacuation routes more difficult in the event of a natural disaster -- which is the hurricane -- if we suddenly increase a population region that's infrastructure's based off of small town traffic, not for sudden larger population traffic. I am once again asking for the members of the Collier County Planning committee -- the Planning Commissioners to say no to this proposal for Horse Trails [sic] Village. It's nothing but an environmental disaster, because it only invites more future developments in that region. Please keep rural Florida alive. I want to thank the Planning Commissioners again for acknowledging some of the issues and concerns that were raised with this proposed building. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. Thank you. Next public comment, please. MR. SABO: Mr. Chair, there are no further public speakers. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Excuse me. Amy, did you have a question? MS. LOCKHART: I just had a comment. I've grown up in Florida, too. I'm a native Floridian. I grew up on two and a half acres of beautifully wooded -- it was right on the Caloosahatchee River. And all around me, as I was growing up, it was developing, and it was -- I so feel for and I understand where these people are coming from, I do, but there are public concerns of that -- that need to be addressed. One of the things that happened 25 years ago was all of this land was -- the zoning at that time was one -- allowed for one unit per five acres. Imagine Golden Gate, Rural Estates, all subdivided land out there extending out into those environmentally sensitive lands. You would have -- it would have been septic tank and well. It would have -- they would have been able to divide it one -- I mean, one unit per five acres, conceivably. This was an alternative. You know, I was around there. I worked for the County -- Collier development before I went to schools. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: You did. MS. LOCKHART: So I know this for a fact that -- you know, that a landowner September 4, 2025 Page 28 of 62 could sell his property, a builder could divide that, and have all of these different units out there. When it's impact like that, like they're doing now with the RLSA, and when they provide all these other components, infrastructure, all of the well and septic that you're worrying about goes away. All of -- you know, they have a -- they have public utilities. They have the road infrastructure. They have then also the school. They have commercial opportunities for work. And then they're pulling all of that right they could have used in those environmentally sensitive lands for the panther, for the bat, for all of those other precious Florida wildlife, we can preserve that. Maybe not in the glorious, great opportunity that we would have if we spent billions on buying that property, because that's the only way that you could preserve it is if you went to the landowner and said, "Public entity, Collier County, I'm going to buy that property." That would be a -- that would be a huge tax bill on our community. So just think about that. I think the community back 25 years ago, and each time it was reevaluated, has looked at these things. What is -- what is the appropriate balance of -- like Mike said, between -- between environment, private property rights, and being able to provide against -- or provide abilities to be able to avoid urban sprawl? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you, Amy. MS. LOCKHART: That's all I've got to say about it. I just -- I felt very passionate about what everybody was saying, because I do really truly believe in what they're saying. And another final comment, I think it would be great if we had maybe an education process on what the Rural Lands is and invite these folks that have been on the phone and -- to be able to maybe really get into the detail about what its intent is. Is it still serving its purpose? Maybe there's some tweaks that these folks could contribute to. So I think that would be a great idea to have a Rural Lands Stewardship, urban stewardship education. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, your key point is exactly right. The only way this land would stay as-is is if somebody bought it and left it as a preserve -- MS. LOCKHART: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- or whatever -- it's a farm area. But somebody would have to purchase that. It's private property. But I don't think there's any takers out there. I'm sure the developer -- or the property owner would sell it if the price was right, but somebody would have to pay the bill. With that, we're going to take a 15-minute break. After the break, I would like to have your environmental consultant discuss both the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the ERP process so that the folks understand that this does not circumvent, in any way, state and federal environmental regulations, and advise the public where you are in the application process. So with that, we'll take a 15-minute break. Thank you. (A recess was had from 10:31 a.m. to 10:44 a.m.) MR. BOSI: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Can I call the meeting to order, please. Where we left off, I asked the environmental consultant to discuss for the public's edification clearly where we -- where the applicant is at in both the federal and state process. September 4, 2025 Page 29 of 62 So if I would, please, your name for the record. MS. SAMBORSKI: Yeah. For the record, Heather Samborski, senior ecologist with Passarella & Associates. And Horse Trials is currently going through both the state and federal review process for this project. At the state level, we're pursuing an Environmental Resource Permit with the South Florida Water Management District, and we're expecting that permit to be likely be issued by the end of the year. As part of that review, the application is sent to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and they have the opportunity to provide comments and feedback on the application. To date, we have not received comments from FWC on the ERP application. And at the federal level, we are going through a review process with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That's the 404 Clean Water Act permitting that you had referred to. And as part of that review process, the application is sent to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and it undergoes formal consultation under the Endangered Species Act. So at that time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would review the project for many of the species that were mentioned, including Florida panther, eastern indigo snake, Florida bonneted bat, and they would provide their feedback and recommendations for the project at that time. We did receive some comments from FWC, actually, as part of the core review process, and one of their recommendations was to include the corridor -- or the crossing that we have incorporated into the site plan here connecting that internal piece of the SSA to the panther corridor. So that feedback has already been incorporated into the design of the project. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. For clarification, the Endangered Species Act, of course, and the Clean Water Act have been around for almost 50 years. So there's no circumventing any of these requirements. The -- and the intent, I'm sure, under Section 7, consultation -- I have no doubt because I'm very familiar with the process -- but the intent by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, especially in the state of Florida, is the protection of any threatened or endangered species, and then any species that is deemed to be of concern, and they'll rule accordingly whether there's an impact, and dealing with all of the issues that were raised, either the eastern indigo snake, the bonneted bat, gopher tortoise, wood stork, and even in this area, predominantly the panther. And the panther is going to be a big issue out in that area. And U.S. Fish and Wildlife will direct the applicant accordingly on how they're going to mitigate or compensate for the potential impact, so... MS. SAMBORSKI: Yeah, there will be a habitat compensation requirement for panthers, and we have provided an analysis to support that the applicant has enough land to generate compensation for impacts to panther habitat. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And with that, you would also, I would suspect, be required to develop a Habitat Management Plan in regards to dealing with bear population and any other impacts that it may have with bear/human -- MS. SAMBORSKI: Yeah, we -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- interaction. MS. SAMBORSKI: We have to prepare a Listed Species Management and Human/Wildlife Coexistence Plan, and that is sent to all -- all aspects of our permit review. September 4, 2025 Page 30 of 62 We actually prepared one for the SRA application as well. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. And for the public edification, the Environmental Resource Permit is the permit through the State Water Management, and it deals with the stormwater, stormwater flow, stormwater retention. And I've heard comments as well regarding water/sewer. That will all be -- there will be no septic. This is all on water/sewer system. So that's addressed as well. But thank you very much, Heather. MS. SAMBORSKI: Yeah. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Rich, I'm going to -- let me turn to staff and give their presentation. I'll give you -- you can rebut then. Staff? MR. BOSI: Again, Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. One second. Sorry. I just needed to -- I wanted to give you a little bit of context to the discussion that you were having earlier about the RLSA program, the history of the RLSA program, its intent, the times that it's been under review. It's been under review twice. It was 2008 to 2009, and then in 2019; it was eventually adopted and revised in 2021. But what I wanted to do is give it a context of how it sits and where it sits within the county. As you can see from the display, two-thirds of Collier County -- two-thirds of our land area are protected by state or federal parks. So we spend all of our time trying to figure out how to best deal with the one-third that we can impact. Now, the majority of our development is, right now, west of 951, but where we're moving is more towards the east. So think about this land area in terms of where the -- this yellowish, tannish color is, and then I'm going to bring up the RLSA overlay map that shows the entire 196 acres of how it fits within -- within the context, and specifically paying attention to where -- you know, where the habitat -- prime habitat for the listed species would be in terms of our state and federal protected -- protected lands. So if you remember the edge of Big Cypress natural -- and the panther preserve, it's shown down on the green. And you look at the RLSA, the 196 acres, which circles around here, we -- we essentially have created two, really, north/south corridors for wildlife and wildlife activity. If you look from the Lake Trafford area down to I-75, you see a series of SSAs. SSAs are Stewardship Sending Areas. Stewardship Sending Areas are where we send development away from. So that's environmentally -- that's protected. And that provides for large mammal corridor crossing being able to access these areas. And then if you look to the east of 920 -- or State Road 29 over here, you've got a series of SSAs, and then you've got ACSC, which is very prohibitive to development. Development is allowed within the ACSC, but there's restrictions in terms of how much you can impact in the -- it's not as rewarding as if you were impacting the open area. So that's another area where you'll provide for large mammal corridors and movement of protected species. And this is all connected to those federal and state -- the state lands. So this entire program is based upon the context of, okay, how do we allow for development in a limited fashion and how do we allow for the ag protection and the environmental protection we're looking for? The ratio -- and there's a cap right now. There's a cap. Forty-five thousand acres is all that can be developed for the compact urban development, and the expectation is -- will September 4, 2025 Page 31 of 62 be the other lands that are there can develop under the ag zoning. But for the most part, we're providing for compact, sustainable development that's going to be able to -- provides a level of self-sufficiency with the goods and services and the economic employments that are needed by the households that live in close proximity in a much tighter footprint than what could have been in a footprint that is -- that is correlated to the areas that have been preserved. So that is the long-term and that is the -- overall how it fits within the overall ecological strategy that the county has developed. The issue that I wanted to point out -- and staff is recommending approval of this proposal. Yesterday it was brought to our attention from Deputy Chief Cunningham from the Immokalee fire district that they do have concerns on the short term related to the provision of service for Oil Well -- or for the Horse Trials SRA. And how -- what -- why that is, is they currently have a station within Ave, and they currently have a station over on New Market Road. Their current stations, though, are roughly a 10- or 15-minute mile drive from those locations to Horse Trials Village. In the beginning, the first five years, as the infrastructure's being put in, as the houses are starting to get CO'ed, they're not going to have the economies of scale yet to justify the development of that 2.59-acre parcel that's being provided to them by the applicant for that fire -- for the safety service facility, for the fire station. And in the interim, they're going to have to come up with a solution for that to work with the -- work with the Immokalee fire. Now, our requirement is for the horizon year to be satisfied for the economic assessment, and they've done that, and we agree that they have proven that they are fiscally neutral. But we do recognize in those early years a solution is going to have to be identified. So before we get to the Board of County Commissioners, the applicant and the Immokalee fire will have to arrive upon a mutual agreed-upon agreement for how that shortcoming is going to be addressed. That is something I believe that the Immokalee fire district and the applicant will be able to address before -- and it will be -- it will have to be addressed before we will schedule it for the BCC hearing. But I just wanted to bring that to your attention. Like I said, the fiscal neutrality is out to buildout, and at buildout we have made the determination that with the allocation of the land and the impact fees and the operational costs -- and operational aspect, it will be fiscally neutral, but in the short term, that first five to seven years that there will be an interim need, and that will be what the applicant's burden and the Immokalee fire district will have to arrive upon. But I just wanted to give a little bit of context of the overall RLSA in terms of how it fits within the overall -- the county and then why that there is still one issue that needs to be addressed. And staff recognizes it's critically important, before that fire station does get built, how that interim arrangement's going to be provided for. With that, any questions that you may have for staff or within our staff report. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I see one. Paul, you still on? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Michelle, any questions? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Yes. Yes, I have a couple questions. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Go ahead. September 4, 2025 Page 32 of 62 COMMISSIONER McLEOD: And they're a little bit out of order, maybe. I think I want to first ask the big-picture questions, and that would go to Rich Yovanovich. MR. YOVANOVICH: That's me. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, is this -- do I -- I'll leave the public hearing open. Go ahead, ask your questions, because it involves issues with the project. Go ahead, please. Yes. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Is Rich at the podium? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: I am. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: He is. Hi. I just -- the big-picture questions that I have, of these eight stewardships, what is the timeline with these? Like, when are they breaking ground? What goes first? What goes next? MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, right now most of them are still going through the permitting process, so they will break ground as soon as we can get the state and federal permits. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Is there -- are they all ready to -- I mean, at that point, once you get the appropriate permits, are they ready to go all at one time? MR. YOVANOVICH: Oh, yeah. They're ready to go. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Wow, okay. And then with the -- there's an indication that the cost of land for affordable housing is priced at 22,500 an acre. MR. YOVANOVICH: Correct. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: How long is that price valid for? MR. YOVANOVICH: Ever. It doesn't go up. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Forever. MR. YOVANOVICH: It's a -- I need to -- let me -- Michelle, let me look real quick. I think on this one we're doing appraised values, not 22,5. MR. UTTER: We may have capped it. MR. YOVANOVICH: But let me look real quick. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Sure. MR. YOVANOVICH: Do you want to -- do you have any other questions while I'm looking? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Yeah. And so if this is different, why is it different? And then if they're all ready to go -- I'm specifically focused on affordable housing right now. If they're all ready to go, can we already make the decision as to who is eligible to buy this? Because in the staff report, it mentions a couple people; the developer may develop, the land trust. There's various people who could do it. So my concern is, well, if these are all ready to go or soon to be, can we already make that decision as to who can get that land? MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, the way it's structured is my client can elect to do it themselves -- COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Right. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- or then the County has the first crack at it, and then after that, it can be any -- basically, any affordable housing provider. But the County has the first option if we don't provide it. September 4, 2025 Page 33 of 62 COMMISSIONER McLEOD: And when will the developer make its decision whether it's going to do it or not? MR. YOVANOVICH: I don't know exactly when we will make the decision which way to go, whether we want to do it or not. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Is there a way that we can make these decisions sooner than later? MR. YOVANOVICH: Well -- COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Because there's a process. The developer has to decide. Then the County would have to decide. Then the end-user would have to -- or the next developer would have to decide. MR. YOVANOVICH: Correct, right. Well, you know what, we've got to get permits before we can decide to do anything. So once we have our permits and are in a position to move forward and make decisions, then we can start having a conversation about how quickly we need to be bringing the affordable housing sites on board. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. And so what is the next process after this? Once you get a determination from the Planning Commission, it goes to the Commission, and then are there further steps from there? MR. YOVANOVICH: Once we -- once we -- once we get designated by the Board of County Commissioners, we finish our permitting. And once we -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, then you have to go through the plat and plan process. MR. YOVANOVICH: I was just going to say that. Once we get our, you know, Water Management District and Corps permitting, we can then -- we then move forward to Site Development Plans or plat, and those are administrative processes that we go through, and then we can hopefully start building. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I mean, realistically -- realistically -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Realistically, what they're going to do is they're going to sell to multiple builders, and there will be multiple builders building within each of these villages. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Realistically -- and Heather, you still are going through Fish and Wildlife to comment. MS. SAMBORSKI: (Nods head.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I mean, actually -- and you know what it takes in Florida. You could be six to nine months before you hear something back from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, they're so backed up. So let's say six months. In another six months through the plats and plan process, you're probably talking a year before you'd start putting shovels to the ground out there. It could be earlier. MR. YOVANOVICH: God bless you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: You just got Pat so excited when you said a year. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Realistically it may be a little bit longer, Pat. You know that. You know what it takes. MR. YOVANOVICH: Pat had a brown hair when we first started working on Rivergrass. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So, Michelle, you're probably 18 months -- September 4, 2025 Page 34 of 62 COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- 12 to 18 months on an optimistic look. MR. YOVANOVICH: To just start moving some dirt. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Just start moving, yes. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. Well, that's very enlightening. Thank you for that timeline. And then my next two questions -- or actually -- yeah, two questions are for staff. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: And because I can't see the podium... MR. YOVANOVICH: He's here. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, Mike's sitting down. MR. YOVANOVICH: Mike's sitting down. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: He's sitting at his microphone. Go ahead. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Oh, okay. Mike, there was a question, there was a concern, I believe it was the second speaker, about concerns on the aquifer with all of those increased units being -- I've heard concerns about the conditions of the aquifers. Can you address that? MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. My expertise is zoning and planning, not in water management, but what I could tell you is this is -- as an existing -- as an existing agricultural operation, the amount of water that is being consumed by that existing -- by an ag operation compared to a residential development is -- is considerably different. The residential development will consume much less than what -- an ag operation. But I do have an -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. I would assume they already have a consumptive-use permit that allows them to draw significant amounts of water for irrigation on the farm, which that consumptive-use permit will -- stays with the property. MS. COOK: Jaime -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Go ahead. MS. COOK: Jaime Cook, your director of Development Review. Commissioner, you're absolutely correct. Additionally, as far as the public utility availability, they do go through a review with Public Utilities both at this stage as well as when they actually come in for their site plan or subdivision plat to ensure that the utility has capacity for the amount of development that they're -- that they are requesting. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And we're looking at Immokalee Water/Sewer District? MS. COOK: No. This will be Collier County. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Collier County. Okay. Thank you. MS. COOK: Um-hmm. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: And so, Jaime, what happens if the conclusion is that it cannot handle the number of units? MS. COOK: Then they -- then they cannot build and get COs if they do not have water and sewer available. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. Thank you. MS. COOK: Yep. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: And then my last question, Mike, is with regards to the deviations. There's so many deviations. Why -- why now? Why weren't they initially September 4, 2025 Page 35 of 62 asked for? And if we have concerns on some of the deviations, how do we work through all of that? MR. BOSI: The -- and Mike Bosi, again. This would be the only time that the Planning Commission would have the opportunity to address the deviations. This is the first hearing that they have sought for the proposal. So this -- when you say, "Why now?" this -- because this is the public hearing. This is the time that you would request deviations from our Land Development Code. And I don't disagree that the majority -- the majority of the deviations that have been requested are similar requests from already approved villages. And as you saw within the staff report, staff is supporting the requested deviations. But if you'd like to address any one of them, I think this would be the right time to do so. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Well, I just have concerns when it speaks to parking and setbacks, but I'd like to hear from my colleagues if there's any concerns there from anybody as well. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I'll speak. This is Joe. I really have no concerns with the deviations. They're pretty standard, and we've looked at these in the past. The issue is they deviate from when the villages were originally designed in the concept of mixed-use development and smart growth and all the other clichés, I'll use, that were back -- used back when this was going through the process, some of which, in practical application -- well, it wasn't practical, I guess, is the word I'm looking for. The parking in one, and a lot of them were looking for development closer to the road. That didn't -- it made sense for some developments, but some of these other areas where you're out along a major thoroughfare, some of those ideas didn't make sense from the standpoint of application. So that's where they generate a lot of the deviations. I went through all of them, and all of them staff did as well. They all have been approved. They're really not that significant. But, Michelle, if you want to address any of them right now, we'll -- we can -- we'll have the applicant discuss them. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: I'll just -- I'll leave it at that. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: I will go with the consensus on the deviations. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Hey, Joe? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Paul. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yeah, you can hear me? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. COMMISSIONER SHEA: I just wanted to follow up on one of -- Michelle's question on affordable housing. I know the way we deal with it in the Rural Lands area is different than the way we deal with it in some of the other areas of the county, but I want to make sure I understand what they're agreeing to do. They're agreeing to give -- to sell so many acres of land for $22,500, so for either them to build affordable houses, the County to buy the land and build affordable housing, or some other party to buy the land and build affordable housing. So what happens if nobody wants to buy the land and build affordable housing? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I've got to turn to the applicant to answer that. September 4, 2025 Page 36 of 62 COMMISSIONER SHEA: Because we don't have any guarantee that they're going to build affordable housing. We just have a guarantee that they'll sell us -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Oh, there's a guarantee. There's a guarantee. COMMISSIONER SHEA: They're going to sell us X number of acres, right? Who has accountability to make sure it's affordable housing? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: The County. And I see Cormac sitting in the back. It's his staff that's going to monitor this through the -- through the application process. MR. YOVANOVICH: Yeah. There are two distinct parcels set aside on the master plan for affordable housing. And obviously, if we build it, we're not selling it to the county for that and then we build it. Now -- so we obviously eat the land cost if we actually build it. The other option is then say to the County, "Do you want it? If you want it, pay us the $22,500." And if you don't want it, then we'll -- we need to find another affordable housing builder. We're not obligated to build it. We're obligated to set aside lands and entitle it with 10 units per acre. That's what our obligation is. COMMISSIONER SHEA: So it would just sit empty if nobody wanted it -- wanted to develop the project? MR. YOVANOVICH: That's true, but I could tell you from the historical application of this, it's not going to sit empty. There's a -- there's a demand for it right now from other affordable housing providers. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Chair? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes, go ahead. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: After Paul. I didn't mean to interrupt Paul. COMMISSIONER SHEA: No, I'm good. I'm good, Michelle. Go ahead. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. Along those same lines, my concern, if -- did you confirm, Rich, that the 22,5- -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Yeah. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: -- is set? MR. YOVANOVICH: It is set. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Or is it based on market value? MR. YOVANOVICH: It is set. I was -- I was thinking of a different provision where it's based upon appraisals. It's 22,5- for the affordable housing sites. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. That's good to know, because the more time we wait to figure all this out, the more expensive land becomes. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Right. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: But if it's set, okay, that satisfies that concern. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Anything else? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, let me turn it over to the applicant if they have any closing comments before I close the public hearing. MR. YOVANOVICH: Just in response to the comments from the public. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: What I don't think they understand is that this was actually a science-based program -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Correct. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- that had environmental groups involved in the process. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Heavily involved. September 4, 2025 Page 37 of 62 MR. YOVANOVICH: Heavily involved in establishing these regulations looking long term. So it wasn't something that was done in a vacuum by a bunch of property owners that was just foisted on the County. This was -- this was -- this was heavily worked upon and negotiated with the environmental groups at the table. And candidly, since we were in a moratorium, they were in a very good negotiating position in establishing these regulations. And I don't think people fully appreciate that you're talking a maximum of 45,000 acres -- which we'll probably never hit -- out of the entirety of this almost 200,000 acres is not a lot of land to be developed in that large of an area. And I think what people also forget, in Florida particularly, there are private property rights. And we lose sight of that, I think. And I guess that's my -- that's why I have a job is to protect my clients from people saying the government should just say no and basically get the land for free. That's not how it works. We have a program. We meet all of the criteria for having this land designated as an SRA. All of the competent substantial evidence in the record supports that we meet those criteria. That's one way of saying you really have no other option but to say yes to what we're requiring. I didn't hear any of the public speakers express any credentials as to what they were saying other than this is how they feel. And I have -- I've only lived in Florida for 51 years. I've been here long before probably -- I know -- long before the first speaker, because I know that person's, I think, 34 years old. And Amy's been here longer than me by years. I'm older than Amy. But anyway, this was a science-based program. We meet the criteria. We're requesting your recommendation of approval on the SRA. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. With that I close the public hearing. I open it up for commissioner comments. Charles. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, if there are no comments, I'm ready to make a motion. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. I need to note that the -- this is -- we're acting both as the Planning Commission and as the Environmental Advisory Council, the EAC, on this matter. Second is that if you're going to make a motion, this involves Stewardship Sending Area 19, which must be approved prior -- or concurrent with the approval of the Horse Trails [sic] Village SRA, so we need to identify that, and the second would be an agreement to provide potable water, wastewater, and irrigation. Water utility services will be adopted -- shall be adopted concurrently prior to the Horse Trails Village SRA resolution. And the third, we'll have to include that the applicant will meet with the fire district to resolve any potential shortfalls that will be identified prior to going to Collier County. Some those were the three -- three issues. Go ahead, Mr. Yovanovich. MR. YOVANOVICH: One correction. It's Horse Trials, not Trails. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Horse Trials, sorry. MR. YOVANOVICH: And second, as an FYI, the agreement you're referring to is scheduled to go to the Board of County Commissioners on their next agenda, the utility agreement. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. So with that, Charles, are you going to make a motion subject to the -- September 4, 2025 Page 38 of 62 COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, I'll try. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Go ahead. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I move that we approve PL20230009958 with two additions. Number 1 is the staff made two recommendations to be included. I don't remember what they are, but are they both -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I just stated them, yeah. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: -- what Joe was just talking about? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Stewardship Sending Area 19 and the water -- potable water agreement, plus the issue counting resolution of the short -- potential shortfall with the Immokalee fire district. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. I move that we approve the PL that I just stated with the addition of the three stipulations that were just recited by Joe. Do you have that? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I do, and we stated it on the record. Terri has those. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So that's the motion. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. We have a motion on the table. But prior to asking for a second, I just want to make sure -- I mean, I understand the concerns of the citizens. I certainly understand because I deal with environmental issues. I am the -- one of the two -- Paul and I both are the environmental chairs on the board, and my background and understanding as a former commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers district clearly understand the federal permitting process. I clearly understand many of the public speakers' concerns, but I also -- they also have to understand -- and we are faced with nothing other than to apply the rules and regulations as they exist. And basically, with the motion on the floor, what we're doing is simply codifying the fact that the application meets the criteria. It's already zoned. We're just stating that based on the staff review, comprehensive review by staff, that the application meets all the criterias established both in the Land Development Code and the Collier County Growth Management Plan. So with that, I turn to my colleagues if there's a second or any comments they would like to make. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: I'll second the motion on the floor. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. All in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any opposed, by like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I hear none. It passes unanimously. We'll take about a five-minute break here so Bob can get prepared for his next event. (A recess was had from 11:19 a.m. to 11:21 a.m.) MR. BOSI: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: ***All right. We're going to the next petition. This is September 4, 2025 Page 39 of 62 PL202300015039. This is called The Retreat MPUD. And with that, I would ask for any disclosures first. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I spoke with Mr. Mulhere on the phone. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Before that -- before disclosures, I'm sorry, any persons wishing to speak, please rise and be sworn in. THE COURT REPORTER: Do you swear or affirm the testimony you will give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? (The speakers were duly sworn and indicated in the affirmative.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Now closures. Chuck, you said -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I spoke with Mr. Mulhere. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. We'll go from that end. I spoke with Mr. Mulhere on this. Randy. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: I also spoke with Robert. MS. LOCKHART: I reviewed staff materials only. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Michelle? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Reviewed materials related to the item. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Paul? COMMISSIONER SHEA: Staff materials only. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Staff materials only. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: With that -- disclosures. And I turn -- now turn it over to the applicant, if you would give the presentation. MR. MULHERE: Thank you. Again, for the record, Bob Mulhere with Bowman. With me here -- still morning -- this morning, Nancy Tolan, who is Vice President with Vi Living. Terry Cole, who is the project civil engineer. He also works with me at Bowman. Aaron Denton -- I haven't met Aaron in person, so -- we've only -- we've only spoken over the phone, so I didn't recognize him. So anyway. Aaron is the landscape architect. Bethany Brosious is here, who's the vice president with Passarella & Associates, our environmental consultant. And Norm Trebilcock, whom you all know, was the transportation consultant. And we also have not one but two legal representatives, Ashley Lupo and Amy Thibaut from -- both from Roetzel & Andress. So I'll try to be as succinct, and all of the speakers will try to be as succinct as we can be, but there's a fair amount of information that we feel we need to get on the record considering what we perceive is a lot of misinformation that's out there. So I just want to have Nancy come up and speak a little bit about Vi Living. Thank you. MS. TOLAN: Thank you. Good morning. I'm Nancy Tolan, VP with Vi Living. MR. MULHERE: I got it wrong. MS. TOLAN: Okay. I'd like to just provide a few introductory remarks. Vi is an owner and operator of truly exquisite senior living communities serving nearly a thousand residents at Bentley Village and over 4,000 residents across the country at our 10 life-plan communities. Bentley Village provides resort-style senior living in a beautifully landscaped and September 4, 2025 Page 40 of 62 amenity-rich environment. This includes fitness centers and art studios, a golf course, salons and spas, as well as multiple dining venues, all of which support a broad range of programs, services, and experiences for our residents. We also have an on-site care center where we provide a full continuum of healthcare including assisted living, skilled nursing care, and memory support. This allows our residents to remain close to their spouses and friends should their healthcare needs change. You may be interested to know that 97 percent of our residents are from Naples and the surrounding area. Two of the remaining 3 percent who come to us from further away moved to Bentley Village to be close to their adult children who live in Naples and the surrounding area. Bentley Village serves the people of Greater Naples, you, your neighbors, and their families. Our opposition's recent correspondence implies that the opinions of Bentley Village's residents should not matter. Bentley Village pays its fair share of taxes. We have nearly a thousand engaged constituents of Naples residing at Bentley Village who matter, who vote, and who care about the amendment and the opportunity it provides for Bentley Village to continue as we have over the past many years rejuvenating the community. We are requesting the amendment because Bentley Village was originally developed in the '80s. Modernization now and redevelopment of our campus is required to maintain the community and honor our commitments to the people we serve, to meet the current building and hurricane codes, to meet the expectations of Naples seniors, and to stay viable in the future. Over the past 15 years, we have significantly reinvested in our community, repositioning our healthcare centers and amenities and incrementally, almost surgically, replacing nearly half of our residential units which now meet the current codes. Our request today is that we be allowed to continue our stewardship and reinvestment in Bentley Village as we have, revitalizing while maintaining its resort-style character. We are requesting a density increase to allow for prudent long-range planning to remove and replace our older remaining residential units incrementally through phased reinvestment over what may likely be a 20-year period. Please understand rejuvenating a senior living community is not like a greenfield development. It requires additional long-range operational planning. A planned occupancy decline is needed not only in the occupied buildings intended for replacement but also in our other residential buildings to create room for relocation of the residents currently residing in the buildings that need to be replaced and come down. Increased dwelling units will allow us to manage that process with reduced inconvenience to the seniors, grandparents, and great grandparents we serve in compliance with the amended PUD as well as incrementally expand as we replace buildings over many years. Our track record of implementing this type of renewal is a testament to our commitment to maintain and update Bentley Village in keeping with the character and ambiance of our community. You have heard from the opposition emotional, and from the correspondence, some misinformed statements. We will address these with facts today. We have offered to provide additional education sessions with our experts to the HOA on the facts and how the amendment, in fact, preserves the rights of their property, but we've been rebuffed. September 4, 2025 Page 41 of 62 Please know our team of experts, in concert with the County's planning and legal teams, have worked hard to ensure the proposed amendment is in keeping with the county's best planning practices and standards for development while carefully limiting the amendment's changes to only the parcels within the PUD that we own. The amendment does not change the rights of any parcel owned by others than the petitioner. Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to answering any questions you may have after the presentation. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So the guts of this is you want to upgrade or replace existing units, and you want to add 94 more units; is that the guts of it? MS. TOLAN: Yes. But only a little bit as [sic] a time, so we're going to remove and replace and reinvest. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. MS. TOLAN: And then at the same time, if it makes sense, at -- you know, incrementally, over a long time. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. Okay. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Can you make your last statement again on the record. You said this will not -- you had made a -- MS. TOLAN: The amendment does not change the rights of any parcel owned by others than the petitioner. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. And your legal team supports that statement? MS. TOLAN: As does the County, I believe. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: As the County. MS. TOLAN: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Even though we have documentation refuting that, there's -- we'll let the lawyers argue that somewhere else but not -- yeah, okay. MS. TOLAN: There's some -- there's some misunderstandings and misconclusions. We're here to provide the facts today. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MS. TOLAN: Yeah. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Excellent. Thank you. MS. TOLAN: Thank you. MR. MULHERE: You have no idea how many times I told myself, "It's pronounced Vi." So this is the specifics that relate to our request, as was stated, an increase of 94 units to bring the total to 834 units which is four dwelling units per gross acre. Also, to update the developer commitment, including a trip cap. Those only apply to Tracts B1, B2, and B3, and I'll show you that in just in minute. Revising development standards, again, limited to Tracts B1, B2, and B3, and we worked closely with the County Attorney's Office to make sure that we structured this properly so as not to impact Tract A. And again, I'll go over that in more specificity. We're also asking to clarify the existing floor area ratio of 0.45, which should apply to the ALF and related facilities. Also, I know there is a land code amendment. I don't know where it is in the system, but to increase that to 0.6, which generally has been approved for all PUDs for ALFs. So the County is looking at amending that to allow that higher floor area ratio in -- generally across the board. So I've worded that so that if that actually happens, we can also take advantage in the future of the 0.6 FAR. We are -- we September 4, 2025 Page 42 of 62 meet the 0.45 right now, and there's no reason to -- Vi just recently redid those facilities, so I don't think there's going to be any, you know, increase. But in the future, who knows? So that's why that's in there. We are also asking for approval of a proposed enhanced buffer. I'll show you the specifics on that. Documenting the existing native vegetation boundaries, which are in excess of the current requirements, and I'll show you that in detail. Allowing an existing temporary service drive located at the northwest corner of the PUD to be a permitted service drive, and it's -- the nature of that has changed quite a bit, and I want to show you some graphic examples of that. And requesting that several existing PUD conditions and allowances be memorialized for Tracts B1, B2, and B3. Staff recommends approval of this application -- approval of the Planning Commission to forward this to the BCC with approval. So here's where the property is located. To the north is Audubon Country Club. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I live right across the street almost. MR. MULHERE: And to the south is Village Place PUD. On the left-hand side on the west is Vanderbilt Drive. To the east is U.S. 41. The project has access to both of those. This is the Future Land Use Map with a -- got to hit this -- with a location, and that location is outside of or east of the Collier County Coastal High Hazard Area, and that's very important because density is restricted within the Coastal High Hazard Area. This is not within the Coastal High Hazard Area. It is in Section 9 there, you can see. So this property would qualify for up to five units per acre under the County's future land use element under the Density Rating System. It would qualify for four base units. As you know, that's the base density across the urban area outside of the Coastal High Hazard Area. Again, this is outside of the Coastal High Hazard Area. But the County also provides, within the Density Rating System, an additional bonus dwelling unit if a project has direct access to two or more arterial or collector roads. And this, again, has access to Vanderbilt Drive, which is a collector, and U.S. 41, which is an arterial. So although we could ask for up to five units per acre, we're only requesting four, leaving one dwelling unit per acre on the 209 acres still on the table. This is the zoning map. I already mentioned that on the aerial, but just, you know, Audubon is -- a country club is a PUD, and the Village Place is also a PUD north and south of us. So the original PUD was created in 1982 -- that's a long time ago -- and it was amended in 1997 by Ordinance 97-71. I mentioned where it was located. The PUD size is 208.5 acres. Presently it's approved for 740 multifamily dwelling units as well as an ALF skilled nursing and memory care facilities. There's a private club and restaurant. These uses are also allowed. And there is an accessory golf course within the site. So, you know, even -- even the development that occurred as of 1997, it's nearly 30 years old at this point in time. This slide shows you the history of ownership. The Retreat PUD presently consists of four tracts, Tract A, B, C, D, and the applicant owns Tracts B, C, and D. Simplified, the September 4, 2025 Page 43 of 62 application affects Tracts B1, B2, or -- excuse me -- Tracts B, C, and D. For simplification, we've changed the nomenclature to be B1, B2, and B3. And that's important because there have been questions raised as to some nefarious reason for changing the labeling on the tracts. I don't know what that could possibly be. So again, the total PUD is 208.55 acres. A hundred and seventy-eight units are allocated presently to Tract A; 562 units are allocated presently to existing Tracts B, C, and D, which we are proposing to relabel B1, B2, and B3. Those are the tracts owned by my client. This shows you the existing master plan. It's fairly difficult to read, for whatever reason. This is U.S. 41. You can see there's a large cypress head or -- and some other preserve areas. You can see that this legend down here shows the cypress preserve area and then an upland preserve area and lake areas. It's a little bit difficult to read the sizes of these, the individual sizes of these. But you can see that there are a number of smaller preserve areas depicted throughout the project. This is the current master plan, which is much easier to read. It shows the two existing access points here and here, and the proposed limited access point right here, which presently is a construction access that ran all the way across the north perimeter of the project, has been removed for about -- for about half of the project since redevelopment has occurred over here. It still exists to this point. We are proposing to realign that to come down to Bentley Drive -- and it will provide access to this maintenance facility here. It will not continue along here -- eventually. This is where you can see that we've changed the nomenclature to Tracts B1, B2 and B3. You can see that this exhibit shows native vegetation -- existing native vegetation everywhere on the property but does not show native vegetation, although it exists, within Tract A. And I will go over that -- basis for that in a little more detail as we move forward with this presentation. So we've had a fair amount of community outreach. We did have a neighborhood information meeting as required. There have been any number -- several, anyway, Bentley Village resident meetings, and there have been a number of meetings with Retreat master HOA. At the neighborhood meeting, which was held on April 23rd of this year at Orange Blossom Drive, we sent a notice to over 900 individual property owners within and surrounding, and several HOAs and property owners associations. At that meeting, six members of the public attended in person and 16 via Zoom. There were questions asked about the number of additional units requested and development rights and impact on Tract A. Traffic generation, building height, landscape buffers along the north property boundary. We did have a couple of residents from Audubon who expressed concerns about, you know, the buffer and the nature of the buffer and whether they would be able to, you know, see these buildings or could we enhance the buffer. Also questions about the temporary construction access and changes to the preserve acreage. The word "preserve" really at this point doesn't apply because there isn't any technical preserve, but there is native vegetation, so... And then a question about aboveground power lines. Some have been turned -- have been buried underground, and others will be through the continued redevelopment process, which is a benefit to everybody, but, you know, it's expensive. So that has to September 4, 2025 Page 44 of 62 occur as we do the redevelopment. And then questions about the HOA communication and history, particularly as it related to this application. So we met with just under -- well, actually, there are just under a thousand Bentley Village residents. And meetings were held on April 22nd, August 25th, and September 3rd. The residents' response was positive and engaged, and the residents appear to be happy with Bentley Village's reinvestment and rejuvenation, and they'd like to see it continue, at least in the majority. So I already went over these. I'll just repeat them very briefly. These only apply to the applicant-owned tracts to the increase of density of 94 units; updating the developer commitment, adding a trip cap, which is significant; revising the development standards; clarifying the floor area ratio; approving the proposed enhanced buffer; documenting the native vegetation and where that will occur to be preserved or retained; allowing existing temporary service drive to become a permanent service access; and addressing existing PUD conditions as they related to B1, B2, and B3. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Commissioner Sparrazza, do you have a question? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Just a quick one. Bob, thank you for your presentation. MR. MULHERE: Oh, I'm not finished. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: No, I said thank you for your presentation. Understanding this, your roughly thousand residents are in B1, B2, and B3. MR. MULHERE: Correct. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: That's all of Vi, correct -- or Vi? MR. MULHERE: Vi. Sorry, see? My fault. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: The folks that are giving opposition to what you want to do are in the bottom left-hand corner. MR. MULHERE: For the most part. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Tract A, for the most part. MR. MULHERE: Yes. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Okay. But you, or Vi, truly owns, what, 80 percent, 82 percent, whatever it is, of the property as far as front door head count? MR. MULHERE: Yes. And also -- and we're -- we'll go over this just a little bit, because there is also a -- Vi also owns the development rights as the -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: They were the founder. MR. MULHERE: It's a legal -- it's a legal question, but I'm going to have -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Right. But they were the founding -- MR. MULHERE: Successor developer. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: -- developer, correct? MR. MULHERE: Yes, yes, yes. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Successor, founding developer. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I understood the magnitude of this, that, as we said, it's a thousand residents within Vi, and 178 down in -- MR. MULHERE: Well, that's the number of dwelling units. (Simultaneous crosstalk.) MR. MULHERE: The residents is probably a higher number. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: I apologize. Okay. MR. MULHERE: I'm going to go over each and every one of what we understand September 4, 2025 Page 45 of 62 the objections are. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Okay. Very good. No. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't just the little section up in the top right-hand. MR. MULHERE: No. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: It's everything. MR. MULHERE: And when I get to the -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: B1, 2, 3 -- MR. MULHERE: -- I'll even show you where some improvements have been made. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Great. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Charles, do you want to ask a question now, or do you want to wait till the end of the presentation? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: No, he's -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I might as well ask now. I just want to ask a question about the upgrade/replacement of the existing structures. MR. MULHERE: Yes. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: My question is how is that being paid for? I mean, in my experience, it's two ways. Number 1, you have HOA reserves -- MR. MULHERE: Yeah. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: -- or No. 2, you have assessments, or No. 3, a combination of the two. So how's it being paid for, and is there any objection to how it's being paid for? MR. MULHERE: Well, I don't think so. In this case, it's -- all of those three tracts are under singular ownership. Vi owns those. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Right. MR. MULHERE: So -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, if there's assessments, there could be objections. MR. MULHERE: It's recouped by the market attraction and the return to that attraction as you develop these enhanced additional and replacing existing. Right now they have, like, for example, 8-foot ceilings. Well, we know in the marketplace, 10 -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I understand the enhancement, how that will make things better in the future. My question is, how's it being paid for? MS. TOLAN: Yeah. I think you're -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Name for the record, please. MS. TOLAN: Oh, Nancy Tolan. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. MS. TOLAN: Back up again. I think you're referencing the point that I made in the introduction that we have made improvements of the healthcare centers, the amenities, and residential apartments, just under 50 percent of those. And the cost of all of those is borne by the ownership of Tracts B, C, and D -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. MS. TOLAN: -- only. There are some shared amenities, and I think that's what you're asking about. That's not what I was referencing. But to clarify, yes, we also do September 4, 2025 Page 46 of 62 manage the upkeep of several shared amenities, including the roadway and some walking paths, you know, some fountains in the pond. But it's minimal, and that's not what the argument is about. So all of the development that we're talking about and that I was referencing in our history is Vi-only funded and on our parcels only. Does that answer the question? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So are you saying that there are no -- current residents don't have any out-of-pocket costs either from their reserves or assessments; is that right? MS. TOLAN: You're talking about residents of Vi or residents within the HOA as a total? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I'm talking about the people that live there. MR. MULHERE: Total. MS. TOLAN: Yeah. I'm not aware of any concerns regarding that specifically. You know, our legal team will talk about the fact that we've gone through re-approval process of our declaration, and there are rules about this -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So your current residents have no problem with how things are being funded? MS. TOLAN: The residents of Bentley Village have no problem with how things are being funded, and I'm not aware of any concerns -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. MS. TOLAN: -- about the other people in Tract A's concerns. But again, that has nothing to do with what we're talking about or proposing for the Tract B area that -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I was only talking about the upgrading and replacement of the existing structures. MS. TOLAN: Yes. So that's -- that is on Tracts B, C, and D, and, you know, that is funded predominantly by -- not the residents. The residents' monthly service fees cover some upkeep and maintenance and operations. But that is -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. I call that preserve or whatever. MS. TOLAN: -- funded by ownership. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: All right. Thank you. MS. TOLAN: Yeah. So separate. No concerns there. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: All right. MR. MULHERE: Okay. So I want to point out a few things. I know you know this, but there's been some confusion, and the County calculates the gross density for PUD based on the entire PUD, you know, residential acreage, so 209 acres. So when we look at 94 units, which brings this project up to four units per acre, that gross density of four units per acre is based on the entire PUD. That is not impacting Tract A at all. For some reason, there's been an allegation that we're taking density away from them. There's 209 additional units left on the table. You know, they can come in and amend the PUD to increase density in Tract A and ask for all of those units, if they so desire. I'm just looking to see. All those dwelling units may be distributed freely amongst the new development, the 94 additional, amongst Development Tracts B1, B2, and B3. So again, I already said that, but I'll repeat it. The amendment is structured to retain or not to impact Tract A owners' rights as they apply to this request. This table just shows you Tract A is 53.55 acres. It's currently approved for 178 September 4, 2025 Page 47 of 62 units. B1, B2, and B3, combined, 155 acres. Currently approved for 562 units; total, 740. Allowed, per the FLUE, is five "D" units per acre, DUs. If you total that up, that's 1,042.75. You can round up. That's 1,043 units. We are requesting 94, which would increase the total within this PUD to 834. Again, leaving 209 units on the table, consistent with the GMP, that somebody else could come in and amend this -- or we could in the future. But there are units left on the table. So, again, Tract A's rights remain unchanged. Right now they have 178 units, and they continue to have 178 units and the right to ask for more. As far as traffic goes, this is a senior housing project. It's a very low traffic generator. Norm Trebilcock is here if you have any specific questions, but the -- we are introducing -- the total new trips is 24 net two-way p.m. peak-hour trips. We are introducing a cap. And so as not to affect Tract A, we're not applying this cap to Tract A, again. But for Tracts B1, B2, and B3, there will be a trip cap of 415 two-way p.m. peak-hour trips. As you know, the county uses that as an overall threshold on impacts. But we don't want to impact Tract A, so we're not applying it to them. This shows you the two tables and how that was calculated. As you can see, the bottom table shows, you know, 391 total two-way p.m. peak-hour trips in the top table. With the new trips, it shows 415. Now, building height, the PUD does not presently actually limit the feet of building height. It is allowed three living stories over a ground floor of parking. So, you know, you could have 12-story [sic] floor-to-ceiling heights. You can have, you know, a fairly high parking structure underneath and then some other amenities. The point is it doesn't actually regulate building height the way that the county would normally regulate building height more recently. So we have introduced a maximum height of four stories not to exceed 52 feet zoned and actual height of 59 feet. That is really very close to what exists out there today. There's virtually no discernible difference in building heights between existing and proposed height. This shows you how that's calculated. Provides a definition of actual and zoned building height. They are measured completely differently. One is measured from the average elevation of the property in the context of the nearest existing roadway to the highest element in the building, and the other one is measured from the FEMA elevation to a midpoint or to the point where the parapet meets the screening wall -- screen wall. So they're measured completely differently, which is why we have to provide two different kinds of height. But this exhibit shows you, particularly in the bottom, the existing building height and configuration, and on the right side shows you the proposed building height and configuration. There's about a 6- to 8-inch difference. It's really not discernible. Let's talk about landscape buffers particularly along the northern boundary. You can see there are residences here, and at least two of those showed up at our NIM. This exhibit shows -- looks into Audubon from our property and shows you areas where the buffers in Audubon, for whatever reason, are not really very sufficient, and also right here. So there are locations -- this is the service drive that we talked about. There are locations, when you look into Audubon, where the landscaping is not -- is not very thick or certainly not opaque. Below here would show that a standard Type B buffer is required along this September 4, 2025 Page 48 of 62 property line when adjacent to the residential and no buffer is required by the code when we are adjacent to agricultural -- excuse me, to golf course or preserve. So let me keep going with this. So what we have proposed -- the perspective on the upper left is a standard Type B buffer which requires trees 25-foot on center, 10-foot canopy trees, and 60-inch shrubs four feet on center. If you move one to the right, you have our proposed enhanced No. 1 Type B buffer elevation, which has a larger tree, 12-foot, and which also provides for the 60-inch shrubs four feet on center. If you move over one more time to the right, you'll see our Type 2 enhanced buffer, which includes trees 25-foot on center. Those are 12-foot, larger that the code required; and then multi-trunk trees or what I call midstory trees and then 60-inch shrubs four feet on center. So you have a much more lush landscape buffer in both of these scenarios, but particularly in Option 2, so -- and on the bottom, it shows you a perspective looking from ground elevation. So we have proposed to include this Exhibit C, which is an enhanced landscape buffer. As you can see, this is applying to the -- approximately the western half of that north boundary. And right here this shows the locations in green and in purple where we will provide an enhanced No. 1 Type B buffer or an enhanced No. 2 Type B buffer. And the enhanced No. 2 Type B buffer is a more thick buffer. That will go where there's openings or slant -- or not as much vegetation on the Audubon side, so to provide opacity. Although you can see there's no buffer required to the right where the golf course exists, we have still -- we will still provide a buffer there even though it's not required. And here's an example. Further to the east now, starting from 41 and moving westward for about half of the project, of the existing buffer that has been installed in here and here, and you can see that that's a substantial improvement from what existed and is fairly opaque. And down at the bottom, you can see that we will be making plantings such as these even though no buffer is required there because of the golf course existing in that location. And here's a couple of other exhibits of the new improved structures as well as the landscape buffers along that area, which is down in this area here. Now, in this location here immediately to the right that's shown in light green, we are asking for a reduction to a 9-foot buffer. A 10-foot is required. That's commercial up here and institutional up here. So we're asking for a one-foot deviation here. And I'll show you the detail on that in just a minute. So I wanted to talk again about the preserve. There -- we've heard that there are concerns that we are impacting Tract A, the boundary of which goes around this lake and then comes back over, by requiring native vegetation to be retained within Tract A. As you know, the County requires us to show all the native vegetation and to require, at a minimum, 25 percent of that to be retained, 25 percent of the native vegetation. And so this exhibit shows all of the native vegetation on the site. It includes the Big Cypress kind of flowway there. It includes a couple other big chunks here, but you can see there is native vegetation here in Tract A. Here's the Tract A boundary in orange. And you can see there is native vegetation in Tract A; however, we do not propose to -- in order to maintain the statement that we're not impacting Tract A through this amendment, we do not propose to -- for purposes of meeting the County's 25 percent requirement or exceeding it, we do not propose to count any of that native vegetation that exists in Tract A. September 4, 2025 Page 49 of 62 We can meet the 25 percent requirement, which is 22.4 acres, or exceed it. As you can see, we're retaining 24.69 acres, by but doing so entirely with the native vegetation located on B1, B2, and B3; therefore, not impacting Tract A. This is the surface area or service drive that runs presently about halfway across the project, maybe a little less. As I said, it's been removed from the eastern side, being replaced with a landscape buffer and a pathway. And what we propose to do here is -- and you can see Vanderbilt Drive is right here, and here's the existing service drive running right here. What we propose to do is make this a permanent access for this service area here, and you can see it will come in and then bend down to Bentley Drive. So it will not run further, as you can see, as it presently does here, all the way across down to about this point right here. It will swing down right here to serve this service area and connect with Bentley Drive. These are the PUD conditions that we want to have memorialized that we've separated. We've left all of the conditions -- this is an older PUD. It doesn't meet the current nomenclature, but we left Tract A -- the language in place for Tract A. We're only amending these as they apply to Tracts B1, 2, and 3, and these already exist, but we've pulled them out separately to use the current system of requesting a deviation. And as you can see, one is for only having one -- a sidewalk on one side of a public or private right-of-way for -- basically for single-loaded roadways. There's only residents on one side. The second one is to allow a 50-foot right-of-way, which is a standard deviation. One day we'll change the code, but we haven't done that yet. And Deviation 3 is the 10-foot-wide buffers required were asked to go to a 9-foot-wide Type A buffer. I want to show you that. Here is that -- that area that we're requesting, which is right here. It's a relatively short area. And just to the north right here is this oncology office, right here. And you can see there's a wall and a substantial buffer and some mature trees. And here's an aerial perspective of that buffer. And this is Bentley Village structure, and this is the oncology, and here's another perspective here. So right now we only have nine feet there, and so we're asking for that one-foot reduction, which staff is supporting. So I do have to go over some changes that are not in the PUD document that you have. I did send these to staff about two weeks ago, but there wasn't sufficient time to get them into the document that you have in front of you. One is to add to the table of contents Exhibit C, which is labeled the North MPUD Boundary Enhanced Landscape Buffer exhibit. Now, I already went over that. I want to introduce that into the PUD. And then some text that relates to that on Page 9 in Section 4.4 under perimeter landscape buffers, we want to add that the buffer along the north, along the western half of the north perimeter boundary adjacent neighboring residential lots, tracts and lots, an enhanced-type buffer pursuit to Developer Commitment 10.3I and Exhibit C, okay. And so that's what the buffer will be that's required. Then on Page 15, Section 6.9, native vegetation, I wanted to add a minimum of 25 percent of the existing native vegetation shall be preserved in accordance with the applicable requirements of the LDC, and then the total amount of preserved native vegetation within this PUD may vary from the amount indicated on the master plan but shall not be less than 22.4 acres, 25 percent of the existing native vegetation. And the next September 4, 2025 Page 50 of 62 sentence says, none of the required 25 percent of the existing native vegetation or native vegetation exceeding the required 25 percent shall be located on Tract A. And on Page 29, developer commitments, similar language occurs relating to the native vegetation. This is the master plan. I want to point out two revisions that are not on the master plan. We clarified where the enhanced buffer will occur here and then, you know, where the Type A buffer would be reduced to 9-foot. And then in these two yellow boxes, those are the notes on Page 2 of the master plan. We've changed the preserve to 24.69 acres, and we've noted that in these locations. And this is Exhibit C that we will -- that we have included in the PUD document, though it's not in the version that you have, which shows the locations of the enhanced buffer. Okay. I think -- I'm sorry I took so long. I tried to be as succinct as I could. Ashley Lupo's going to come up and talk about some of the more legal aspects. MS. LUPO: Good afternoon, everyone. It's 12:08. My name is Ashley Lupo, for the record. I am the association local general counsel for Vi. I've had the pleasure of representing them for over 10 years and have been involved in the strategic, as Nancy explained, surgical redevelopment of some of the Vi areas that we've had over the last 10 to 15 years and have been involved in The Retreat master association communications over that long time period. And I wanted to provide some text with respect to the community and how it is developed, because it's a little bit different than you would normally see in Naples, given the nature of a continuing care retirement community. And so I wanted to provide that as well as explain what our communications have been with the HOA, especially over the past three years when we've really dived into looking forward for the next 15 years having completed the long-term strategic plan that we've had for the previous 15 years. So other than my slide, I thought it -- due to your question earlier about the -- about the residents and the finances -- and we do have a resident speaker here. She's actually the president of the residents' finance committee, so she might be able to provide a little bit greater context. But I wanted to explain a little bit of the relationship. So on this diagram, this, as you can see, are tracts what would be B, C, and D which are now going to be B1, B2, and B3. Those are all owned by Vi. They're not individually owned by any of the residents. They have a continuing-care contract where they have the ability to upgrade their menu of services as they age in place. And they can move throughout the community if they want a different unit and can upgrade their unit as we have newer accommodations available for them, and they can also upgrade to different areas like the ALF as they might need an upgrade in services, or as they permanently transition out of our community. So we'd redevelop around those residents. And so our redevelopment time frame is very much dependent upon where our residents are at any particular phase. And it flows naturally with the aging-in-place process. This -- these Tracts B, C, and D are not a subassociation. They aren't a 720. They're not an HOA. It is just one owner, okay. And the residents have contracts within that. The Retreat Master Association is a master HOA that governs common area and space that covers Tract A and Tract what was C and D which would now be B1 and B2. So this parcel here is not part of The Retreat master HOA. And so when we talk about The Retreat master HOA communications, we have the September 4, 2025 Page 51 of 62 two bigger lots as Vi, and we're communicating with owners, 178 voting units. Vi does own some of them, but there are -- among those, Tract A, there's a total of 19 lots. Sixteen of those lots redeveloped as Commons Associations, 720s, or condos, and within those 16 lots, you have developments of buildings somewhere between six and 12 units. And the case of smaller condo associations -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: What's the relationship between A and the rest of the property? I'm lost. MS. LUPO: Yeah. So this Tract A was developed by individual developers for individual condominium units that are also part of Commons Associations. So this is what you more typically see in an HOA. That is not something that Vi did, okay. These Tracts B -- or B1, B2, B3, are owned by Vi. They are not a community association. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. MS. LUPO: It's just our property. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. MS. LUPO: So when we talked with The Retreat Master Association and talked to all of -- which essentially is a landing pad that oversees all of the other subassociations, so it's a great central location. We talked to them about our common interests. We talked to them about roadway maintenance and lake maintenance. And over the last two years, especially in 2023 specifically, we negotiated with The Retreat Master Association to have a cost-sharing agreement or an easement, which is for 50 years. I mean, we're really looking long term here. And to address both -- to ensure, really, the maintenance of the landscaping, the roadways, the gatehouse entry, and the security, because we want to make sure our residents are safe and secure and they have first-class access to their accommodations, we entered into this agreement with The Retreat Master Association where we took over the operational portions of those areas that the master was stereotypically responsible for. And there's a cost-sharing agreement to that, a little bit of a higher burden on us, and the tradeoff is to make sure that it's done in a quality manner consistent with our requirements and the requirements under the code and under all surface water management system obligations, because we took over the operation of the surface water management system to ensure that was done properly. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I'm sorry for being so dense. Who owns A? MS. LUPO: A is owned by a compilation of a hundred and, I would say, 50ish different individual condominium unit owners within several different condominium and HOA associations. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Am I being too dense here? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: It's just a cluster of condominiums. MS. LUPO: Buildings -- yeah. It's just cluster of smaller condominiums. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Each condominium -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: It's owned, but it's not -- COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: It's not owned by Vi. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: It's not owned by Vi? COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: No, it's separate. MS. LUPO: Correct. We -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Is that the heart of the legal issue? COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: I think it's more than that. September 4, 2025 Page 52 of 62 MS. LUPO: No. I don't think that there is a legal issue. I was just trying to explain the relationship of the -- of Tract A and who was -- who was confused versus Vi, which owns these three properties and really what we were talking about -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. I'll back off and -- MS. LUPO: -- in the long-term development. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, there is a legal dispute, because we received a notice from an attorney -- MS. LUPO: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- representing -- MS. LUPO: One of the condominium associations with -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Only one of the associations -- MS. LUPO: One of the smaller -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- in A. MS. LUPO: -- condo associations within the larger Retreat Master Association, but yes, within Tract A. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And you reviewed that and refuted the points that were raised by Thornton -- MS. LUPO: Correct -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- Chris. MS. LUPO: -- we did, and we addressed it, and it's in your packet. And my land-use partner -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes, I read yours. MS. LUPO: -- Amy, is going to be going through each of them so you can feel comfortable in terms of the responses at this hearing. So -- and I don't know that we're going to move on to that just yet because I have two other points that I want to make very quickly. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MS. LUPO: After 2023 when we entered in this cost-sharing agreement, as part of that, we also entered into an amended and restated master declaration of The Retreat, which is the governing document that dictates the dirt that's in the overarching master HOA. And as part of that, we had agreements with The Retreat Master Association. The owners within Tract A, all of those little condos, voted on that, approved that, and as part of that declaration, The Retreat Master actually had an obligation to consent and endorse our land-use petitions. And although they're silent on that, and that's disappointing to us, we did want to point out that that was something that their ownership had agreed to. It also confirms our residual developer rights because we are the master developer. We did receive that assignment back in '97 when we paid for this land. And so we're only -- while we're only going in for 94 of the available 303 remaining density units, we do want to just point out where in those recorded approved voted-on documents we're entitled to use that even at this level. I know that private covenants aren't the purview of the County, but I did want to clarify that to the extent that some of those condo units just didn't understand that distinction. So I'm going to turn it over to my partner, Amy Thibaut, to go over the specific objections. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Before you do that, we're going to need to take a break. But I ask my colleagues what their thoughts are for a lunch break, or do we proceed with September 4, 2025 Page 53 of 62 trying to get through this? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Let's ask Terri. And how long do we think we need, including public speakers? How many public speakers, may I ask, please? MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, there are two public speakers; one in person, one on Zoom. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: It's the last thing on the agenda today? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: This is the last thing. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, let's finish it. MR. SABO: There might be three. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: We've got to be cautious with Terri. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, let's take a 15-minute break then, and we'll -- COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: And if you have not filled out one of the registration forms, please do so while we're on break, public comment. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: So we'll take a 15-minute break, and we'll try and come back and close this out. I think we can probably finish it probably within 30 minutes or maybe -- okay. Take a break. Thank you. (A recess was had from 12:17 p.m. to 12:28 p.m.) MR. BOSI: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. And I'll turn it over to petitioner. Go ahead, please. MS. THIBAUT: Good afternoon, Commissioners. For the record, Amy Thibaut with Roetzel & Andress. I have been sworn. As a quick introduction, as Bob and Ashley mentioned, I am a land-use attorney, so this is very much within my area of expertise. And we wanted to just quickly summarize the comments you've received in opposition to this project that -- as we've stated, we believe it's based on some misunderstandings, maybe some misinformation, and we just kind of want to summarize that and present the facts. So first, as a quick note, there was an objection to the property owners disclosure form that was submitted. Our team has provided an updated disclosure that meets the requirements of the Land Development Code. We did provide that to Attorney Ashton-Cicko, and we would like to formally move to enter that document into the record. Oh, here we go. Sorry. The second objection, again, stems from a misunderstanding. So there was an objection that the applicant seeks to rezone or somehow change the entitlement for Tract A. The only change to Tract A is the correction of a scrivener's error. In the 1997 document that was adopted, it stated that the 178 units across that acreage was allowed for density of 3.01 dwelling units per acre. It's actually 3.32 dwelling units per acre. So that's just correcting a scrivener's error. It's just a mathematical error from 30 years ago that we're changing now for clarity. There was also an objection asserting that this request is not consistent with the Comprehensive Plan because the allocated densities for Tracts B1, B2, and B3 would exceed four dwelling units per acre. So first, four dwelling units per acre is the allowable base density. It's not a cap. So an exceedance of four dwelling units per acre for this property is not inconsistent with the Comprehensive Plan. Second, as Bob mentioned, the County calculates PUD density based on gross density. So the density for the entirety of the PUD, which, again, here is four dwelling September 4, 2025 Page 54 of 62 units per acre, the base density allowed. There's also been substantial objection to this request on the basis that this affects the development rights of the Tract A owners. So first, again, no changes to their entitlements which means no changes to their vested rights. Two, the County staff who are experts have also confirmed that there's no change. We're not affecting their rights or doing anything that is not allowed here. And third, there are still 209 dwelling units that remain after the approval of this request by using the Density Rating System. And actually, even though, technically, the applicant does own those development rights, it is pertinent to note that 209 dwelling units exceeds -- applying those to Tract A would exceed a density of five dwelling units per acre for that, so there's still plenty of density here that can be worked out among the applicant and the Tract A owners as the parties desire in the future and as needed. There was also an objection that this would be a deterrent to redevelopment of Tract A, and that was specifically on the basis of affecting vested rights to reconstruct any of those condominium buildings on Tract A that might be substantially damaged or destroyed in a natural disaster. Again, they have the vested rights to reconstruct those units. Additional units can be allocated between the parties on a private basis. And finally, there was an objection that approving this request would grant the applicant some special privilege not shared by others in the community. The applicant has followed the codified procedure. They have implemented county standards, requirements, and best practices, and there is no special treatment here on any level. No special privilege. So to conclude, we are requesting this to allow for prudent long-range planning, as Nancy discussed at the beginning of the presentation, and as Ashley covered in her presentation as well. It is fully supported by the -- by county staff. Again, they are experts. It is consistent with all Collier County requirements. The criteria for approval have been met, as demonstrated by competent substantial evidence, and we've demonstrated we are not affecting anybody else's property rights. So as a result, for those reasons, we do ask respectfully that you consider recommending approval of this application. With that, I'll hand it back over to Bob. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, before you go. MS. THIBAUT: Oh. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Now, you're basically addressing all the issues that were raised by Attorney Thornton. MS. THIBAUT: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And towards the end of his document, he gets into a pretty detailed discussion about preserves and implementing new requirements for removal of exotics from newly created preserves. I didn't see any newly created preserves. I just don't understand where -- I don't know. I don't know where all this came from from the standpoint of the points that were raised. It also states the only -- the petitioner avoids the problem by obfuscating the fact that they're really upzoning Tract A. Again, I don't -- I don't see where they're upzoning Tract A. So I guess from your -- what you just stated, you basically refuted everything he September 4, 2025 Page 55 of 62 states. And, of course, he's not here today. In his letter he said he wasn't going to be here, but this is all going to come up at the Board of County Commissioners. I assume that you're prepared to refute every one of these points again. MR. MULHERE: Yep. MS. THIBAUT: Yes, we certainly are. MR. MULHERE: I just wanted to -- Commissioner Schmitt, I just wanted to point out, in all fairness, we may have -- with respect to the preserve issue -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yeah. MR. MULHERE: -- at the NIM I think we showed this exhibit that's on the screen before you. And we may have used the word "preserve" in that discussion as opposed to the correct term, which is "native vegetation retention," as far as the County's concerned. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. MULHERE: So you see that there is native vegetation on Tract A. And I went over this before, but I want to clarify. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. MULHERE: So in order to address that concern, we are not retaining any native vegetation as part of this amendment on Tract A. So that should go away. There's no preserve. There's no retained. We're going to meet it entirely on Tract B1, B2, and B3. So, you know, I don't -- I don't know what other thing we could do. So I think that should address that, and hopefully that will address it at the BCC as well. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, Jaime, what -- if there's exotic vegetation on existing native vegetation, it still has to be dealt with. MS. COOK: Again -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Is that correct? MS. COOK: Again, Jaime Cook, director of development review, for the record. Yes, that is correct. And their original 1997 ordinance speaks to both -- exotic removal both in the client's tract as well as in Tract A. MR. MULHERE: Yeah. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well, I give Chris Thornton a college try here, law school. Let's throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. And I could say that because I know Chris, but -- anyways. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: How widely held are these objections amongst the community -- amongst the Tract A people, or is this an internal squabble? What is this? MS. LUPO: For the record, again, Ashley Lupo from Roetzel. And my understanding is that Mr. Thornton represents one of the smaller -- one of the small condominium associations within Tract A and that there were maybe two dozen, a bit more, letters of objection that were "me, too" Without any other substantial additions to his objections. And then I think that it just stems from a miscommunication and not really understanding truly that there were 209 remaining units or there are five DUs available under the density matrix. And -- but I -- again, you know, we made ourselves available, and Vi has asked me, to reiterate to members of the community that may be watching that we are available to answer all of their questions, just to reach out to us. But we do not believe that these are widespread but perhaps just as communities do, "Me too" letters based upon an objection. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Well -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I'm anxious to hear the comments. September 4, 2025 Page 56 of 62 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: -- before I turn it over to Chuck, because Chuck just lit up his -- The real issue here is -- when I spoke with Mike yesterday -- was it yesterday, yes? And I know staff reviewed this, and I'm looking at the County Attorney as well. The points that were raised -- they're going to come up, of course, during the Board of County Commissioners meeting. But I didn't see anything that was in violation of the PUD or the PUD request. A lot of this, again, as they use the term, this is an internal squabble, and saying you can't take my density, there's -- I don't see any density being taken from anyone. It's the entire PUD, and you calculate the density based on the entire acreage of the PUD. It would be akin to I live in Fiddler's Creek, and we have numerous communities, and as those communities are turned over, they're turned over to either HOAs or condo associations. And then if the developer comes in and says, "Now I want to up-zone a portion of the 4,000-acre PUD," each community doesn't say, "Wait a minute, that's mine." I mean, that's sort of what he's saying here, or at least that's what the residents in Tract A are saying. "That's mine. You can't -- you can't take density that I think I own." MS. LUPO: Correct. I would agree with your assessment. And we trust that it's just a misunderstanding, and we've cleared it up by virtue of this presentation. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I leave it to the lawyers to fight it. Go ahead, Chuck. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Actually, Ms. Lupo, I had a question for you, if you'd come back up. Ms. Thibaut, thank you very much for your presentation. That was -- that was brilliantly executed there. MS. THIBAUT: Oh, thank you. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: I just had a -- and you, Ms. Lupo, could answer this. So the declaration was reinstated in 2023 for this master association. How many people -- how many -- how is the board representation on that master? What does it consist of? MS. LUPO: Yeah. So the board representation of the master is an alternating five-member board, three and two. Sometimes Vi's in control and sometimes the association/subassociation members are in control and elected as any HOA are on a master level. Vi does appoint its representatives. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: And this -- the access road where this landscape buffer's going in on the -- what would be the north side, is that used by all of the residents in the master association? Is that open for use by all of the master associations? MS. TOLAN: Walking paths -- once created, we would make that available to everyone -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Please come up to mic. I'm sorry. You have to state your name for the record, Nancy, and -- COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: So our court reporter can write down. MS. TOLAN: The walking paths are shared, and so as we create new walking paths, eventually it would become a walking path. It would be shared for everyone to use. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Shared for everyone. Does that -- does your master declaration require a vote of the owners to do that? MS. LUPO: You're talking about -- you're talking about the walking paths on the September 4, 2025 Page 57 of 62 Vi property, which we -- which we provide as a courtesy -- COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: As a courtesy. MS. LUPO: -- as a courtesy to them. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: And the landscape buffer as well that would be going in would also be a Vi expense as well, so it's not -- it's not the Tract A is all? MS. LUPO: Correct. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: I'm just trying to get down through all these objections that we're getting, and I'm trying to get to the root of what it's coming from, which seems like Tract A doesn't lose density, there's nothing being changed, there's no plantings being taken away. In fact, by removing their native vegetation, when you go for permit and have to remove your exotics, you're not even going to have to walk on Tract A, correct, Bob? MR. MULHERE: As far as I know, yes. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Correct. Okay. That's all. Thank you, Ms. Lupo. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Paul or -- Paul, do you have any questions? If he's still with us. COMMISSIONER SHEA: No, I'm good, Joe. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Michelle? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Nothing for me either. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Nothing for me, thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. With that, we'll go to are there any registered speakers? MR. SABO: Yes, Mr. Chairman, we have two in person, one on Zoom. The first one is Susan Goodwin. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MS. GOODWIN: Good afternoon, everyone. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Good afternoon. MS. GOODWIN: My name is Sue Goodwin. I live at Bentley Village, and I've lived there for 10 years, and it's one of the best choices I ever made in my life. I am speaking to you today on behalf of the residents of Bentley Village as chairman of the finance committee of the resident council, and we represent all of the residents of Bentley Village, assisted living, independent living, and the care center members, almost a thousand residents. We've met multiple times with management and had an explanation of this whole process. And they did an excellent job of identifying all that was unfolding and we've heard more of today. The leadership of the residents were very impressed, and I'm to convey our strong support of The Retreat at Naples MPUD amendments. Bentley Village serves its residents well. In particular, we've been very pleased with the dedication and really the strength of Bentley's leadership particularly as it involves the robust efforts to rejuvenate the campus, to replace and upgrade, to keep buildings code current, maintained, and really look to the future of what we will become. We're very pleased with our systematic planning. I've been there for 10 years and have watched much of the redevelopment recently. September 4, 2025 Page 58 of 62 New buildings for residents, an addition to the care center, an addition to assisted living, new dining rooms, new clubhouses. The residents didn't pay for those. Ownership did. And we are very grateful for their continuing support. Their track record of stewardship and beautification of this community really demonstrates management's commitments to its residents and to the neighbors in the community and really shows us how to rejuvenate and renovate and upgrade older communities in a systematic and capable way. So we think Bentley Village is a gem. We're very proud of it, and we think you should be too. We hope you will support the MPUD amendment as requested so that Bentley Village will have the opportunity to continue this rejuvenation program over the next 15 or 20 years. And we sincerely appreciate your listening, and thank you very much for your time. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Thank you, Ms. Goodwin. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Thank you. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Next speaker, please. MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, next speaker, Jeff Mason. MR. MASON: Good afternoon, Jeff Mason. I'm a resident of Audubon Country Club just to the north of the property. That's a tough act to follow there after that nice -- and I do agree, Bentley has been a great neighbor, quiet. Almost no sightline between where we live at Audubon. It would actually be helpful if somebody could -- could somebody pull up a map? MR. MULHERE: Yes. Aerial would be best. MR. MARSHALL: Aerial, yeah. Something like that, or there was one that showed a little further to the north even. That's good, yeah. MR. MULHERE: If you put your finger on that, it will show -- you'll have the yellow arrow, and you can show, you know, where you live or whatever. MR. MASON: So this is kind of the area that I live in, my wife and I live in. There's, you know, a dozen homes or so that are having kind of a rear-facing view of this Tract B1 of Bentley. So we have a nice, serene view over a pond, and there's a buffer there. There's quite a bit of construction traffic when they were adding buildings over here in this area, which are now complete, and along our sixth -- sixth hole of our golf course. Incidentally, those are quite a bit taller than the older buildings were. And if you go back over here, this is part of B1. When saying that the new buildings, 59 feet are not much different than the existing, I don't think that's true in this area, correct me if I'm wrong. This area's probably more, like, in the 30- to 40-feet tall. MS. TOLAN: Would you like us to clarify or wait till the end? MR. MARSHALL: Yeah. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Excuse me. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Wait till after. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: You can't talk from the -- MR. MASON: I'll let you clarify. MS. TOLAN: The height is similar to the existing structures, but they are a little bit closer to the property line. So the line of sight from your community and the golf course -- MR. MARSHALL: The community's here. September 4, 2025 Page 59 of 62 MS. TOLAN: Yeah, they appear to be taller because they're a little bit closer to the lot line within the allowed setbacks, but it just appears to be taller. But they're within the same range. MR. MASON: Okay. So anyway, I guess you get to the point of it, the main concerns -- and we do appreciate the enhanced buffer proposal. I think that was as a result of our attending the neighborhood information meeting, that they've taken our concerns into account. The issue is -- and I did the calculations. I think some of the other issues that came up about density, 740 units on Tracts B1, B2, and 3, over 155 acres, is about 4.8. Eight thirty-four, which is the proposal, over 155 is five four [sic]. So I think -- I know you're allowed to use the entire 208 [sic] acres, but the concern is all the residents will be in those three tracts not including the 50-some-odd acres of the Bentley Village, if you follow me. So we don't -- and the thing is, we don't know where they're going. So we could have huge towers, you know, in this acre, which is right in our sightline, or we could have a whole bunch of buildings over here or down, you know, B2 and B3. So there is no specifics. And I can understand is you don't know when these buildings would become vacated. But I guess there's a concern of just general aesthetics of the property is where are you going to concentrate all these new buildings? And the height is -- is the height going to be masked by that buffer? Those are kind of our main concerns at this point. So I think that's all I had. But do you kind of get where I'm coming from? I think when you say you can have up to five residents per acre -- for five units per acre, is that really the issue? That's 208 acres [sic], which doesn't include the 50-some acres of Bentley Village which won't be touched in Parcel A. So I understand what the law is versus what it's really going to look like on the property when you add density to a smaller -- you're adding density to three-quarters of it. It's going to be higher in that part of the property -- CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. MR. MASON: Thank you. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Thank you, Mr. Mason. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Next speaker, please. MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, the last speaker is Lance Horn on Zoom. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Mr. Horn, are you available? MR. HORN: Hello. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Hello. MR. HORN: Can you hear me? CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Yes. MR. HORN: Yes. This is Lance Horn. I'm a resident at The Retreat, otherwise known as Tract A. And unfortunately, due to the short notice of this meeting, as you mentioned, Joe, the -- Chris Thornton was not able to be present, and I doubt he has seen the rebuttal that has been given today. So I would just like the Commission to take that into consideration, that we have an opportunity to rebut what has been said today. Other than that, I will leave it to Chris Thornton to follow up and correspond with you. Thank you. September 4, 2025 Page 60 of 62 CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Well, I just want to clarify, you state the short notice. This thing was certainly duly noted. I turn to staff. All requirements for notice, advertisements, public hearings, and such have been fully met, and -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Including signage. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Including signage. MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. Yes, based upon staff's review, the signage was posted within the correct time frame. The advertisement, as well as the property letters, all went out within the correct time frame. So it has followed the same notification process and the timeline that's associated with any other PUD amendment. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: And just for the record, Mike, what's that time frame in between the meeting and the notice being sent? MR. BOSI: The notice has to be sent 15 days -- COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Fifteen days prior? MR. BOSI: -- prior to the -- COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: And the sign goes up? MR. BOSI: The sign goes up, I believe, 20 days. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Twenty. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Are there any other public speakers? MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, there is a question on Zoom. We're going to ask if Gerry Hawkshaw would like to ask his question. Give us a moment. He's on now. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Sir, state your name, please. Is he there? (No response.) MR. SABO: He is unmuted. He just -- all right. We asked him, and so far nothing. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. Well, we'll move on. Before I go to the applicant rebuttal, staff presentation, please. MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. As detailed within the staff report, the item -- the project has gone through a multidisciplinary review. Staff is recommending approval. We have -- we did receive some additional correspondence from the applicant as he had indicated within his cor -- in his -- that weren't incorporated with into the staff report, but we found them -- we find them acceptable. And if you were making a motion, I would say that you recognize that there was some additional information that was -- that was outside of your packet that was submitted by the applicant that you're taking action on as well. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. I'm confused. What -- MR. MULHERE: Yeah. That was the stuff I presented in yellow, the landscape plan and some minor changes regarding native vegetation. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. All right. MR. MULHERE: That's why I went over those very specifically so they would be part of the record. Mike's right. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. I understand. Okay. So with that, are there any closing comments from the applicant, please? MR. MULHERE: Extremely brief. Just in -- I won't call it rebuttal, but just for September 4, 2025 Page 61 of 62 clarification. The slide on there talks about the existing and requested height. We're looking at four stories, which is the same as what's allowed now, except what's allowed now doesn't restrict it in a numerical fashion. We're proposing to restrict it in a numerical fashion. There's no major tall buildings. These are typically known as mid-rises, not, you know, towers. And you can see from that slide that as long as we continue with the same design which, you know, is, relatively speaking, a flat roof meeting a parapet wall, there should be no discernible difference in height. And then let's -- we talked about -- I think it was the landscape buffer was the last issue. MS. TOLAN: Density. MR. MULHERE: Yeah. I mean, that's true. I mean, it's net density. Gross density right now is at four units per acre. Obviously, individual tracts can exceed that. There's still 209 units left on the table on -- that we are not asking for. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. With that, then I close the public hearing. I open it up to my fellow commissioners. Any comments? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Paul? Michelle? COMMISSIONER SHEA: No, I have no comment. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Nothing. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Nothing, all right. With that, I open it up to -- anybody want to make a motion? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I move that we approve PL202300 -- 2023 -- 2023001509 [sic], including the current updates made by staff. That's my motion. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Second. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I hear a second. I call -- all in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: (No verbal response.) CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Any opposed, like sign. (No response.) Hearing no opposition -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Did we get Michelle? THE COURT REPORTER: I didn't hear Michelle. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Michelle? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Yes, sorry. Yes, aye, I'm in support. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. It passes unanimously. So thank you very much. MR. MULHERE: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: And with that, any closing comments of staff? MR. BOSI: None from staff. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: I see no old business. September 4, 2025 Page 62 of 62 And just note that the next meeting is going to be a fairly lengthy meeting. MR. BOSI: But it will have to be done by 3 o'clock, because the Board of County Commissioners has their second board workshop. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: On the 18th. MR. BOSI: On the 18th. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: All right. Well -- MR. BOSI: We'll be efficient. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: We'll be early out that day. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: But let's -- since we've got Costco coming back, let's put them first, if you could. MR. BOSI: They are. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Okay. With that, I make a motion we are adjourned. Make a motion. All in favor? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: (No verbal response.) COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHMITT: Aye. COMMISSIONER SCHUMACHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: (No verbal response.) COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: We're done. Thank you. ******* There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 12:58 p.m. COLLIER COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION _________________________________________ JOE SCHMITT, CHAIRMAN These minutes approved by the Board on 10/2/2025_, as presented _X_ TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF FORT MYERS COURT REPORTING BY TERRI L. LEWIS, RPR, FPR-C, COURT REPORTER AND NOTARY PUBLIC. as Corrected ______.