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CCPC Minutes 11/20/2025November 20, 2025 Page 1 of 48 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE COLLIER COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION Naples, Florida November 20, 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: Chuck Schumacher, Vice Chairman Paul Shea, Secretary Randy Sparrazza Michael Petscher Michelle L. McLeod Charles "Chap" Colucci Amy Lockhart, Collier County School Board Representative ABSENT: Joe Schmitt, Chairman ALSO PRESENT: Raymond V. Bellows, Zoning Manager Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning Director Heidi Ashton-Cicko, Managing Assistant County Attorney Ailyn Padron, Management Analyst I James Sabo, Planner III November 20, 2025 Page 2 of 48 P R O C E E D I N G S MR. BOSI: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Good morning. Thank you. Welcome to the November 20th, 2025, Collier County Planning Commission meeting. Please take a seat. We're ready to start. Before we go into our roll call, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Great. Roll call, Secretary Shea. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Commissioner Schmitt is absent. Vice Chair Schumacher? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Here. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Secretary Shea is here. Commissioner Sparrazza? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Here. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Commissioner Colucci? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Here. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Commissioner McLeod? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Here. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Commissioner Petscher? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Here. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Am I saying it right? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah, that's fine. COMMISSIONER SHEA: If all these -- I figured I better ask you. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah. It's Petscher. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Petscher? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah, Petscher. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Sorry. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: That's okay. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Ms. Lockhart? MS. LOCKHART: Here. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Sir, we have a majority. I assume Joe has an excused absence. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I'm not going to question. Moving on, Mr. Bellows, any addenda to the agenda, sir? MR. BELLOWS: For the record, Ray Bellows. No, we don't have any changes. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Planning Commission absences. Our next two meetings would be -- Mr. Bosi? MR. BOSI: The 4th of December would be the next meeting. We have two petitions scheduled for that. They're both LDC amendments. I think it's probably going to be a pretty short meeting in that regard. And then the 18th, we haven't had any petition, so we have reserved that as canceled. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. And absences for December 4th? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Yes, I will not be attending. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Will not be attending. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: So that's minus two. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Family's in town. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Anyone else? (No response.) MR. BOSI: And, Chair, just for your planning for January, your first meeting in January is January 1st, so obviously that will be canceled. So there's only going to be one meeting in January. It's going to be the 15th of July -- or January, sorry. November 20, 2025 Page 3 of 48 CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: So we're pushing January to July. Got it. Thank you. That will work. All right. I guess -- I guess for that one on the 4th we're going to have to see if the Chair will be here, then. I'll be here. I mean, it will work. The 18th -- no, the 18th we don't have any petitions for right now. MR. BOSI: The 18th is canceled. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: The 18th is canceled. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Oh, it is canceled? MR. BOSI: Canceled. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Great. Approval of minutes. Would that be last month's? Everybody had a chance to review? Questions, comments? If not, entertain a motion to approve. COMMISSIONER SHEA: So moved. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Second. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Second. All in favor? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Aye. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: BCC recaps. MR. BELLOWS: Yes. On November 10th, the Board of County Commissioners heard the Sabal Palm Road PUD, but that was continued to the January 13th Board of County Commissioners, and then the Horse Trials SRA and SSA, those petitions were continued to December 9th. Then the -- there were two LDC amendments on the summary agenda, and they were approved. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: All right. No Chairman's report, no consent agenda. ***That brings us into our first item. PL20230012851, Golden Gate Worship Center -- Golden Gate -- 5890 Golden Gate Parkway along -- we're doing this as a companion, correct? MR. BOSI: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: PL2023001050, Golden Gate Worship Center. All those wishing to testify or speak on this matter, please stand 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 SCHUMACHER: Disclosures. Start with Mrs. Lockhart. Start from the right today. MS. LOCKHART: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Mr. Yovanovich. I talked to him on the phone. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Staff materials and site visit. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Staff materials and spoke with Mike Bosi. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Mr. Yovanovich, you have the floor, sir. MR. YOVANOVICH: Thank you. Good morning. For the record, Rich Yovanovich on behalf of the petitioner and applicants for both petitions. It was easier when we just used the visualizer. With me today is the pastor of the church; Mr. Arnold; Jim Banks is our traffic consultant; and Marco Espinar is our environmental consultant. November 20, 2025 Page 4 of 48 You have before you two petitions pertaining to a parcel of property located on Golden Gate Parkway. Because this property is within the Golden Gate Estates, if you go to the Land Development Code to rely upon what you're allowed to do on the property in the Estates zoning district, you're going to be in trouble because the Land Development Code says in Estates zoning districts churches are conditional uses. Unless you practice in Collier County and know that there's a special provision that applies to Golden Gate Estates applicable to churches that basically say you can only have churches under limited circumstances in Estates-zoned property, you're not going to know that you have to do a Growth Management Plan Amendment. And unfortunately for my client, they received a zoning verification letter from Collier County -- you have it in your backup material -- that says, "The property is zoned Estates. You need to do -- you need to get a conditional use for the church." They bought the property. Came to me. I said, "I'm happy to represent you. I'll do it pro bono, but guess what? You need a Growth Management Plan Amendment." So we were a little bit surprised that they were not allowed to move forward under the Growth Management Plan. They had to also do a Growth Management Plan Amendment. So we're here today for a Growth Management Plan Amendment and a conditional-use application on this piece of property because of a policy -- and you read that in your staff report -- that says basically along Golden Gate Parkway, no more conditional uses. So when you look at the staff report -- and Mr. Arnold will get up here and take you through the site plan -- it's not a compatibility issue. It's not an intensity-of-use issue for the property. It's purely there's a policy in the Growth Management Plan that basically says no more conditional uses along Golden Gate Parkway in this area. Otherwise, staff would recommend approval but for the policy. So it's a policy decision, and you're to make a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners, on this piece of property does it make sense to waive the policy prohibiting conditional uses on this piece of property. Now, Golden Gate Parkway, we all have traveled it. We travel it a lot. It's evolved over the years. It's now basically a six-lane road. There already are a number of nonresidential uses on the properties right near us. In fact, we have the Able Academy immediately to our east. We have a single-family home next to us. That individual, I think, is here and is in favor of the petition, and we have a host, as you can see, of other uses in the immediate vicinity of what we're proposing to do. So from a -- from a compatibility standpoint and other uses in the area, I think our proposed small church makes sense as a limited application of waiving the policy. Now, I know people will accuse me and others of "once one petition is approved, that sets the precedent for others." I'm sure Heidi will tell you that's not true. Each petition is viewed on its own merits. Just because a church goes here doesn't mean you have to give a church on every piece of property that's located along this corridor. So what we're asking for is a very limited small-scale Comp Plan amendment for this particular piece of property to allow for a church on the site. It's already been determined to be compatible by your staff. It's already been determined to be not too intense by your staff. We're just here because of the change we need to the Growth Management Plan. We're -- this is the Comp Plan language where we're adding that this particular piece of property is allowed to have a conditional use for a church. That's the Comprehensive Plan language that you're going to be considering. It's a 6,000-square-foot church and 4,000 square foot -- what's that? -- fellowship hall. Now, initially the church is going to simply modify the existing residence for the church uses. This is -- we don't want it to have to come back in the future should the church ultimately get to what they hope to be their full potential and have to come back and amend. So we're asking for all those uses now. But right now the intention is to just modify the existing residence for the use. They're already worshiping in Golden Gate City, but they want to be November 20, 2025 Page 5 of 48 in a stand-alone facility near where their worshipers reside. That's why this location was chosen for the church. These are the existing Future Land Use Map designations. We are in the Golden Gate -- the Urban Golden Gate Estates future land-use district on the property. I think we have an exhibit that Wayne will take you through that will show you pretty much all -- I'm going to go back -- all of the commercial that's near here. If you go to -- you're all familiar with the corner of Santa Barbara and Golden Gate Parkway. You have commercial on the northwest corner, you have a church on the southwest corner, and you have commercial on the northeast corner, and you have commercial on the southeast corner. We're not far from that intersection. I don't know -- if you've driven on Golden Gate Parkway, I don't think you -- I think you would agree that a single-family home on that road now is probably not the best use of the property. There are single-family homes, obviously, on Golden Gate Parkway, but my guess is they were there when Golden Gate Parkway was a very different-looking road at the time. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Wayne to take you through the site plan and more of the details. And at the end we're going to ask that you recommend approval of the Growth Management Plan Amendment as well as recommend approval of the conditional use. Those are the general overview comments. And if you have questions of me, I'm here to answer them; otherwise, I'll turn it over to Mr. Arnold. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: You have one right now, Mr. Yovanovich. Commissioner Colucci. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: What was the rationale for the Growth Management Plan not allowing any more conditional uses? MR. YOVANOVICH: I think in the old days, back when I was a young assistant county attorney and after that, it was difficult to get conditional uses approved in residential urban areas, and the easiest thing to do was to go out to Golden Gate Estates and, thus, you could see that there's a number of conditional uses on Golden Gate Parkway. And the concern was that Golden Gate Estates became the area that conditional uses were going to instead of going through the process of dealing with these changes in the urban area. There was also a cost factor for land associated with all that. So the Commission said, you know what, we don't want Golden Gate Estates to be the only area where these are going to be located. So they put this prohibition in the code to prevent conditional uses. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So that area right now, that small area, is pretty well urbanized right now. MR. YOVANOVICH: Yes. And I think it's changed quite a bit. I think this policy predates the interchange going into -- but I may be wrong on that, or it's around the same time that the interchange -- I know they prohibited commercial at the interchange, but I think -- I think -- MR. BOSI: And, Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. And Rich is right, the proliferation of nonresidential/churches to conditional uses in the Estates is what -- is what was the motivation to put the restriction -- the location restrictions upon where conditional uses can go very tightly. But on top of the entire universe of the Rural Golden Gate Estates, it was also that interchange, the Parkway between Livingston Road and Santa Barbara which the interchange is in the middle of. There was a restriction upon no new nonresidential uses being allowed, and that was specifically because we didn't want your traditional commercialization of the interstate interchanges along that corridor. So it's not only Golden Gate Area Master Plan that has restrictions upon conditional uses for the entire master plan, but this specific corridor has also some restrictions upon nonresidential land uses as well, and that has -- and it's to keep the traffic flow and the ingress/egress around the interchange to be as free flowing as possible. So there's a number of different things that kind of have contributed to the inability to seek a conditional use on its own but needing a GMP associated with it as well. November 20, 2025 Page 6 of 48 MS. ASHTON-CICKO: The County staff works closely with the residents when they go through the Golden Gate Area Master Plan studies, and they're reluctant to make changes to the Growth Management Plan because they want an opportunity for the public and the people around it to testify and be able to speak. So that's why they really haven't made too many changes to the Growth Management Plan, you know, since its original inception. MR. ARNOLD: Any other questions before Wayne comes up? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Mr. Arnold. MR. ARNOLD: Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Planning Commission members. I'm Wayne Arnold, a certified planner with Grady Minor & Associates, and here representing the congregation. And Rich did a good job summarizing, and I think what this comes down to is really is this an appropriate location to make a policy modification for allowance of a church. And this slide, I think, says a lot. And when you look at all that's going on, immediately next to us is Able Academy. That's a school for special-needs children. We're showing a future interconnect to them on our site plan. So on our plan, access will continue to be from Golden Gate Parkway shifting the access. If you made a site visit, it's kind of an awkward turn, and what we would do is relocate the access point father east to the property utilizing a turn lane that already exists for the Able Academy, in part. We're showing a future stub-out to Able Academy. We did meet with them early on in the process. We talked about sharing their access that's existing and then connecting at the same location here for us. They were reluctant just not knowing exactly the function of our church and the hours of operation and how it might interact with them, but they were open to us having a future interconnection, so that's why we've shown that. There's an existing 2,100-square-foot home on the property today. They would utilize that essentially as it is, retrofitting the interior and modifying the exterior, and I'll show you some -- a little bit of those modifications. But like Rich said, this is a lengthy and costly process for a small congregation church to go through. So we've made provisions for them to grow the building up to 6,000 square feet. We originally proposed 7,000, backed that down to 6,000, and then we made provisions for an outbuilding that exists today. It's about a thousand square feet. That could be utilized immediately as meeting space for them perhaps or a small gathering space, but we would grow that to potentially up to 4,000 square feet for a fellowship hall. So you can see we've got a lot of grass parking shown, as allowed to do for churches, that help soften everything. Staff asked us to provide, instead of the 15-foot-wide landscape buffer that would otherwise be required, a 25-foot-wide enhanced buffer. So you'll see that as one of our conditions of approval for the conditional use, and we agreed to do that. So that would include additional vegetation to shield the neighbor whose home is aligned approximately, you know, almost immediately due west of us. They do have an outbuilding toward the rear of the property, and we propose nothing but some grass parking and maybe future overflow parking and something back there. But the site, as it sits today, will function very well for the church. They're proposing a 200-seat-maximum sanctuary. And again, that is the site plan we're proposing. Here's a proposed floor plan. You can see that the main entrance to the house exists in this vicinity today. They would do interior renovations, put in a small stage area, pulpit, and then obviously some maybe pews. It may be chair seating, but depicted there. One feature, there's a pool that exists today that could be used for baptisms, et cetera. It may get filled in in the future, which would allow them to grow the building footprint to the south. Very modest renovations needed for the exterior. These are all four sides that they had a contractor help them develop. So again, the front elevation is this one. You can see that it's still November 20, 2025 Page 7 of 48 very small in scale and looks very much in keeping with the home that's there today. We have conditions of approval, 10 of them. Pretty standard. I'm not going to go through each one of them, but we have hours of operation. We have a lighting condition. No outdoor amplified sound permitted, no private daycare or school outside of the care of children during congregation services. So I think, as Rich mentioned, this really is a policy decision. I think if you read staff's conditional-use staff report, they recommend approval subject to these conditions except for the fact we need the Comp Plan amendment as well. The Comp Plan amendment, we would say this is a soft denial because staff is using the policy that exists today as the basis for not supporting it, and they're leaving that to you and the Board to make that decision. I'm going back to the other slide, because, again, this one -- we're a low traffic generator, off-peak hours, six-lane highway. They're going to bring in water service from the Naples Bridge Center that's immediately across the street. On that, we did a conditional use, and they also were given an exception to expand their facility a few years ago. I'm not sure any of you were on the Planning Commission for that. But I represented the Bridge Center and brought them through that process so they could expand and modernize their facility. So that was one of the exceptions to the same policy that was adopted by the Board. Across the street, and very much under construction, is the David Lawrence Center mental health facility -- sorry, right there. And if you've been out there, I mean, they're moving fast, and it's under construction. And I have a slide I can put on the visualizer that's just a photograph of the construction activity that's occurring. But again, so when you look at these, I mean, I think the horse is already out of the barn with regard to conditional uses. And I do appreciate Mike's comments about the nonresidential, and I think that was really driven by the fact that the County Commission did not want this to be a commercialized interchange. I think Rich may have represented them at one time, but RaceTrac gas station was very anxious to build a facility here, and they've been living with that policy, and it's never been the right time to try to amend that policy to allow a gas station, but we think that's certainly different to allow a 200-seat small congregation church to be on this location. One of the other things that we've looked at, and your staff asked us and said, "With all the facilities that are available in Collier County, you mean you can't find another church location?" So the church today is located in Golden Gate City. They're in a strip plaza. There's no outdoor recreational space. There's no space for a fellowship hall. There's no space to grow, so they're looking to grow their small congregation that's 100 people up to maybe 200 people or 200 per service at a 200-seat facility. So they looked at several sites. And the pastor happens to be a real estate -- Realtor. So he knows the market and knows how to look at a transaction. But commercial sites on Rattlesnake Hammock Road, they're outparcels to a shopping center. I mean, they're back in the same situation that they were. They looked off of Sabal Palm Road near the Sabal Palm Road project that you-all have heard by the orange grove and determined that, one, it was too far, too remote, and too costly to develop because the site had some wetlands on it. There are other sites in the Parkway near the interchange. There's -- but that site was really too small and didn't allow for any growth of the existing single-family home. That's on the northwest quadrant of the interchange. There's an old model home that sat there, but now it has a frontage road and also part of the ramp for Golden Gate Parkway interchange. It's squeezed in terms of its ability to grow anything, so we just determined that it was too small. There was another site that you-all recently approved in the past year on Collier Boulevard at 13th. FP&L bought a portion of that property and created a new substation expansion, but you-all approved that site recently for an indoor self-shortage facility, and that's under construction. So a lot of the sites that they looked at are not viable and available. Staff also produces and has published this exhibit. It's in one of your Golden Gate Master November 20, 2025 Page 8 of 48 Plan exhibits, and it highlights all the locations that are potentially available for conditional uses. So I went to every one of those sites and analyzed them for the church, and just the one I would highlight, again, is the one I pointed out, the one at 13th on Collier Boulevard. That's supposedly permissive for a conditional use, but it's going to be a self-storage facility. So this map was produced and hasn't been updated for well over 10 years. So in 10 years a lot of has happened in Golden Gate, and most of these sites don't work. And it's a little bit complex because we have three different plans for Golden Gate. We have the Urban Estates, we have the Rural Estates, and we have Golden Gate City, and they all carry with them some distinctions. But in this area you can have conditional uses that are in an activity center. You can have some that qualify because they're adjacent to certain other uses, or you can have others that are considered transitional. And there are criteria with them. And when I started looking at a lot of these sites, to qualify for a transitional conditional use, for instance, you have to have a 50-foot-wide buffer on some of those sites. Well, some of those sites are 75-feet wide. You can't put a 50-foot-wide buffer in and still develop a 75-foot-wide site. So we did this analysis, and I think staff concurred with us that from these exhibits that have been produced by the County, there are no sites that really qualify for -- that could be suitable for a church unless you came through some other process, because I can't ask for a deviation or a variance unless I file separately for a variance, and that comes with it a whole separate set of requirements. So, you know, we're here saying that we've really done a good job analyzing this. And of all of sites that we've found, this one seems to make a lot of sense. I think unless the neighbors changed their mind in the last 24 hours, the neighbor has been supportive. The buffering is good. The scale of this building's going to be small. In the Estates you're limited to a 30 feet height limit. We've put in a buffer that's larger than is required by code, and we think those other conditions will safeguard our neighbor and still make this a very compatible use. Jim Banks is here. He did the traffic analysis. It's a minuscule amount of traffic generation that occurs with a 200-seat church, and especially when you consider that those are off-peak hours. They'll have an evening service during the week. They'll have potentially a Saturday or Sunday service. Those are all off-peak hours, so you don't really have additional impacts to Golden Gate Parkway. So for those factors, we think that this all makes perfect sense to allow the exception in this one location. So with that, I'll be happy to answer questions. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Mr. Arnold, if I can just ask you a question. When you say there's no other properties available, there is a church property that is available that's stuck in between two churches. That would be one that we did approve a couple years ago that's now up for sale. It would be right between No. 13 and 26 along 951. It would be subject -- let's see. You've got an "E" marking on. Was that property not considered? MR. ARNOLD: I did analyze that one. And I believe that that carried with -- it's one of those requirements where it had these large buffer requirements. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: So it would be too small? MR. ARNOLD: It would be too small. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Okay. Thank you. I just want to make sure we're dotting all of our I's and crossing all our Ts. I don't see any questions. Anybody have any questions? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: I've got a question. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Go ahead. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: A couple questions. I don't see anything about your lighting, parking lot lighting. What kind of parking lot lighting are you doing? MR. ARNOLD: We don't have details -- we don't have details of the parking lot lighting, but we do have a condition that's condition number -- it's No. 3. So at that time we're going to November 20, 2025 Page 9 of 48 illustrate that the lighting will reduce light spillage beyond the property lines. Parking, outdoor area lighting should be required to utilize cutoff fixtures in order to reduce glare to the neighboring properties. If the parking lot lighting is located within 100 feet of an existing residential dwelling, the lighting shall be limited to 15 feet in height and shall use full cutoff fixtures. MR. YOVANOVICH: That's your -- commonly referred to as the Dark Skies standards pretty much. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah. I mean, I would just -- I would just say that I think all the lights should be limited to 15 -- because it's in a residential area, all the lighting should be reduced to 15-foot in height and 3,000 K bulbs to be lighting fixtures. MR. YOVANOVICH: Okay. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: And my other question is: It looks like the Able Academy has a turning lane onto their -- onto their property. Is there any way of extending that turning lane so you guys could have more -- so there would be more of a less disruptive stop going into the church? MR. ARNOLD: Yes, we think that the County, when we get in for the Site Development Plan review, they will probably -- we'll do a more detailed traffic analysis, and probably that will tell us we need to extend that turn lane at least across the frontage of our property. It extends partially across our property today, but it would be extended to the west to accommodate traffic flow. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: No further questions. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: No other questions? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Staff? MR. ARNOLD: Thank you. MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. As mentioned by the applicant, staff is not supporting the Growth Management Plan based upon the prohibition of the no new nonresidential land uses. Staff does recognize, and it was mentioned that this policy has been breached before for the David Lawrence Center recently as well as the expansion of the Bridge Center. So there have been projects that have been deemed -- that provide enough public benefit to provide the justification before. Staff wasn't -- staff didn't feel a church of 6,000 square feet was that communal public benefit that was going to be provided to go against the existing policy for no new nonresidential land uses; therefore, that's why staff is recommending denial on it. And another issue -- and I just want -- there's another -- I just want to show an example of another reason why we are not in 100 percent support is related to -- there's more than one -- there's more than one zoning district that allows churches, and every one of the site locations that were focused upon were the Estates zoning district. And Estates -- and any residential zoning district within Collier County would allow for a church as a conditional use without the need for a Growth Management Plan. One of the things I wanted to point out within the staff report, I believe it's -- I'll get down to the page. The -- Golden Gate downtown commercial subdistrict, this area here, which is only about a mile -- a half a mile to a quarter of a mile away from the existing site, allows for a church, a church within -- a church within this proximity here, and there's a PUD as well, a commercial PUD that has commercial uses if they wanted to sit a church there, which is all vacant parcel. If they wanted to sit a church there, they could go through a comparable-use process, and they could show from a traffic standpoint, from an intensity standpoint their church would be a comparable use to the commercial uses that are allowed for; therefore, they can move forward. And further to augment that, to show you in terms of where the R -- that downtown subdistrict is all along Golden Gate Parkway from Santa Barbara to the canal. And as you can see -- and here's the area I really wanted to point. These parcels here, empty parcels, those are Residential Multifamily 6, RMF-6. A church is allowed as a conditional use. They could come in November 20, 2025 Page 10 of 48 and seek a conditional use at this location. So there's other options -- there's other options available, staff felt. Now, there could be pricing issues. There can be -- there can be availability issues. Staff does not look into that. Just wanted to point that out. That, in combination of the Growth Management Plan restrictions, were the motivations why staff is recommending denial. Staff does recognize that if the Planning Commission feels there's enough public benefit provided for it, that the church being proposed is of an intensity and a density and an impact to the surrounding property owners that -- or surrounding property within this area that's very complimentary, would not be a -- burdensome to the infrastructure or, I think, incompatible with any of the adjoining uses. The church use as itself is relatively benign. It has -- proposing services on Wednesday evening as well as Sunday morning, areas of nonpeak traffic, which -- when they will be active. So the impact from a transportation standpoint is de minimis. The impact from a compatibility is de minimis as well based upon the relatively benign use and the limited activities that are associated with the church. But because of the policy, we are recommending denial. If the Planning Commission does recommend approval related to the Growth Management Plan and feels that there's enough public benefit, you'll see staff has put a -- suggested a number of conditions with -- the applicant has agreed to, because we feel if we can get past the issue of the policy decision, that this church would be something that would be sitting relatively compat -- not relatively -- very compatible with the surrounding land uses within the area, and it would still be in line with the restriction of not adding commercial. Now, this is a nonresidential use because it's considered institutional, but we're not adding conditional uses -- or commercial uses, which is really where the individual subdistrict -- or restrictions between Livingston Road and Santa Barbara on Golden Gate Parkway, those were the uses we really wanted to restrict, new commercial uses, because we wouldn't want the traditional commercialization of an interchange. So for those reasons, staff is recommending denial, but if you do -- if the Planning Commission does recommend approval based upon the presentation and the overall de minimis impact of the church to the surrounding property owners, staff would recommend, and as the applicant has agreed, to the conditions of approval related to the CU within your packet. And with that, staff would answer any questions that you may have. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Before I go to you, Commissioner Sparrazza, I'm going to ask -- actually, you go first, because I might follow up with some -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Mike, thanks for that explanation. If in a year or two or three or, really, any amount of time down the line the church is doing amazingly well and they wish to hold other meetings on other times that are not designated here within this policy, Wednesday night and Sunday mornings, if they wanted to have an AA meeting on Tuesday nights or another sermon on Thursdays or Saturday mornings, are there any limitations to what Mr. Arnold is asking, Mr. Yovanovich is asking, and what the County will allow? I also would like to kind of just say within reason. We don't want a carnival to be held there, but if they wish to expand to help the community with other meetings that would be beneficial to the community, are there any restrictions? Just trying to look ahead and to make sure no one is boxed in. MR. BOSI: There is -- one -- as a church, as a nonresidential land use, they would be available for temporary-use permits for events such as that up to 52 times during the year they would be eligible for a conditional use or for a special-use permit. For -- in terms of if they wanted to add, like, daycare outside of the church at times, that would be something that would require a modification to the -- to the existing conditional use. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Right. I guess I was more concerned with them allowing more services to help the community, as I said, another evening, extra service. I won't quite call it a club but a gathering to continue to help the community. November 20, 2025 Page 11 of 48 And, Mike, I apologize. My carnival was a joke. I wasn't -- wasn't meaning that. MR. BOSI: But they would be eligible for -- I mean, churches have those as fundraising activities. They would be eligible, and those -- a conditional -- or a special-use permit requires coordinating with all the safety-service providers, coordinating with transportation. There's a lot of different restrictions that are placed upon it to make sure that there's safety that's composed with it. But as it is -- as it's proposed now, any official events and activities beyond the hours that they're providing for operations, they would not be able. Now, if it was holding a -- MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Could I jump in for a second, Mike? It's silent to renting it out to, like, the Boy Scouts or AA or any of those organizations. So it would -- I think it would be interpreted that it's allowed during 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. because there's no prohibition or limitations. MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, the hours of operation are actually Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Yeah. MR. YOVANOVICH: So I agree, Boy Scouts could come use the facilities between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. That's a typical -- most -- I shouldn't say -- the churches I've attended have also had Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Some of them have AA meetings. Those are typical uses of the facilities, but they're always during the normal church hours. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Okay. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Let me interject. They also rent them out for special events. You can rent them out for Quinceañera, you can rent it out for a birthday party, wedding, those type of uses, too. MR. YOVANOVICH: Okay. The churches I've been affiliated, if you're a member of the church, yes, you can do those things, but typically they don't -- but -- I'm not saying others do, but that's not -- the intention is not to turn this into -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Revenue center, I get that. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- a convention center, I mean, to make money. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I just wanted to open it up and say -- MR. YOVANOVICH: This is -- this is going to be a church. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Item No. -- let me see here. Item No. 5, 6,000-square-foot church, 4,000 related structure. Table A shows church at 11,000 for both structures. So that's just a typo. That's on I think it's Table A in Wayne's presentation that went up. MR. YOVANOVICH: Of the presentation? Well, it's 10-. At one time it was 11-. We must not have corrected that. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: It was seven. It was seven and four. Now it's six -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Seven and four. It's six and four, yeah. If we missed that, I apologize. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I'm just proofreading for your next meeting, Rich, that's all. MR. YOVANOVICH: You're going to have to send me where that is, because I don't see that in the draft resolution, but I'll take your word for it. It may have been somewhere in an earlier rendition, but -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Got it. MR. YOVANOVICH: -- we'll make sure it doesn't carry forward. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Go through it. No outside -- so Golden Gate City has gone through a lot of transition in the last few years, especially after COVID when a lot of people were buying houses sight unseen. Golden Gate City had forever been known as a walking town. So my question to your pastor would be is how many of his parishioners are walking there versus driving? Because I do have some concern with the location is outside of kind of Golden Gate, and you've got them crossing a six-lane highway. You're either on one or two sides to get there. November 20, 2025 Page 12 of 48 MR. YOVANOVICH: Right now it's not limited -- there are, obviously, members that live in Golden Gate City, but it's not limited -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: You're anticipating more of a clear traffic versus -- MR. YOVANOVICH: We have people driving now, yeah. It's not -- it's not the typical, you know, walk to a church. There are people already driving to the church. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Okay. That answers my questions for right now, so -- the one question I did have for staff is did churches qualify under the Live Local Act, that you could convert a church into single-family or into multifamily housing as long as it was for affordable? MR. BOSI: Not the Live Local Act that is advertised for the commercial or industrial land -- or land uses for the conversion if you have affordable housing, but there is a provision that if you have a religious institution, you can -- you can -- a jurisdiction, Collier County, must consider the allowance for residential development if they provide a portion of that residential development for affordable housing. MR. YOVANOVICH: But it's not a matter of right. It wouldn't be a matter of right. It would be through a public process. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Can I ask the County Attorney? Is that correct? MS. ASHTON-CICKO: I believe that's correct. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Okay. That answers my questions. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Is there any public speakers? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: That's what I'm getting into next. Public speakers, please. MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, we have two, Elizabeth Block, and she has been ceded time from Cindy Brown. Is Cindy Brown here? (Raises hand.) MR. SABO: All right. Elizabeth Block and then Maria Rosas. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: That was five minutes, so you've been ceded 10 minutes. MS. BLOCK: I'll do my best. I'm kind of nervous. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I'm sure you will. I'm sure you will. Don't worry about it. I do a horrible job up here twice a month, so... MS. BLOCK: I appreciate the questions you all asked. And when I'm finished, I would really appreciate if we could hear what those conditions are if this property was restricted to less development that Mike had mentioned. We didn't hear what those conditions are that they would impose if you were going to approve it. I have to say that I have a really great relationship with Jean Paul and his family and the people that I've seen on that property. And when they bought the property, they were talking about a small, low-intensive use of it. And I have no problem with it. I'm the next-door neighbor. I'm -- I abut this property on the western side. I do have some concerns for my own protection. Water on that property has been a problem. I bought my house in '98, and at that point in time, their property would flood four to six inches deep on the back end of it. I know that because we were riding horses back there, and -- so we were very aware of what that property did. The guy that they bought it from tried to put in an agricultural use and started bringing in roughly 50 dump trucks worth of fill so that his plants weren't getting flooded when we had our torrential rains, and then what happened is my property now has literal waterfalls coming over onto it when there's a lot of rain from the property that the church plans to build on. So if they're going to have to raise things up, bring in more fill, I need to have some kind of protection where they retain their own water. The only thing that the prior owner was able to do is he put a big pump in at the back of his property and at the middle of his property and sent the water to the swale at Golden Gate Parkway, and then Code Enforcement came along and said, "You can't do that." I liked him doing it because it stopped flooding my property from his property. November 20, 2025 Page 13 of 48 So this year we haven't had the kind of torrential rains that we had in the past, so I wasn't able to show Jean Paul, you know, what actually happens. But I have a real concern about that if you're building this kind of development on that property. That property has a ton of water that it holds, and the more fill that's come in there, the more it's being dumped on my property. So I would ask that you somehow protect me with conditions for that. The light pollution, thank you for asking about that. I love walking outside and seeing the stars. I just want to make sure that whatever goes in next door isn't taking that away. I don't know how this would impact my property value, but I have no problem with their first intent to build and remodel and a small expansion, but when you're talking 6,000 and 4,000 square feet plus parking for 200 people, I don't see how that's going to work. There's very little parking available there right now. Maybe 10 cars can park there. I just -- I don't know what that's going to -- this is going to do to my property value. I would hope that they would have to come back to ask for the 6,000 and 4,000. I have no problem with the expansion they want to do right now where they're fixing up the house of 2,000 square feet and using the shed that was built with agricultural zoning, so it didn't go through the permit process. But they want to take that and put stucco on it and turn it into a fellowship hall. I love the idea. I think it's great for them. And I have no problem. They've been very respectful neighbors. But when you start going 6,000 and 4,000 square feet, it's a massive change on that property, and I just don't know that it's fair to put a reservation in now for something you want to do in the future, because who knows who's going to end up owning the property at that point in time. If it's them, I think we'll have a good working relationship, but what if somebody else ends up owning the property and wanting to change the use? You mentioned something that I didn't even know about that some of these properties can be converted to multifamily housing. That's a really scary thought. Water, you guys addressed it, would be coming from across the street at the Bridge Center. Sewer was -- what's the deal with sewer on this property? I would love it if maybe Mike could address that later. Electricity, how are you going to power these buildings? Are you going to start putting power poles down the property between me and them, or how do you provide electricity to something like this? That wasn't mentioned in any of the meetings that we've had. That's about all I've got. I just -- I want to say they've been great neighbors, and I would welcome them to have their church there. I just don't think it's fair to reserve the possibility of expanding without restriction at some point in the future. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you for your comment. You did great. MS. BLOCK: Thank you. COMMISSIONER SHEA: She's been here before. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Commissioner Shea. COMMISSIONER SHEA: She's been here. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Oh, okay. Commissioner Shea. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Just an easy question. You're on the west side adjacent. Who's west of you? MS. BLOCK: West of me is a private property owned by Mark Fields and his daughter. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Okay. There's another church on that side. Is it farther down or some -- MS. BLOCK: If you're continuing to go west toward the interchange, you have a vacant property that is owned by the church that is one property west of that, so you have -- so next to this property you have me, Mark Fields and his daughter, a vacant property, and then the church, Manantial de Vida, and then you're at the intersection of 60th. November 20, 2025 Page 14 of 48 CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. And we'll dig into your questions when we get into rebuttal. MS. BLOCK: Thanks. Appreciate it. MR. SABO: Next speaker, Maria Rojas. MS. ROJAS: Hi. My name is Maria Rojas. I'm in the neighborhood of where all this changing is being done. I'm back and forth from the East Coast and Naples. I live in 63rd Street close to the 75. And I was in Bosta (phonetic) when I saw a letter saying that it's -- in Golden Gate Parkway they're going to turn two and a half or three acres into multifamily home. It's affordable housing. I got scared, because I'm building a house right on Golden Gate Parkway, and it's Button Lane and $3 million home. And I was -- and I get approved all the plans, and then now it's going to be another church over here. And I own a property in 64. I think Arnold mentioned is in -- right next to 64 is a church. I wonder if this church is moving to the new facility that they're going to be open on Golden Gate Parkway, or is this a different church? MR. ARNOLD: It's a different church. MS. ROJAS: It's a different church. So the church that I have in there, I'm going -- I think it is vacant for a while. I don't know what is the future of that. Is somebody allowed to have one, two, three church, or if that license for that church is going to somewhere, are they going to sell it, or what they're going to do with the property? And when I saw the map, I thought this church next to me and 64th is the same one -- the same owner they're going to build on Golden Gate Parkway and I guess, is that -- no. Okay. So that was -- and I thought, too, there were -- I came for the meeting. I thought there was a meeting, too, for the multifamily housing that they're going to be in Golden Gate Parkway because I have not knowledge of what's going on, what is the plan. MS. BLOCK: That was last week, a neighborhood information meeting. MS. ROJAS: Yeah, just -- it's information. Nothing's going on yet. So that's why I say I'm going to stay until everything is going on in here. So I don't have no issues, you know, with the church having in -- we need a church, you know. We need church in every neighborhood. So a church I welcome, you know. That's where we go, and, you know, we sit down, pray, and talk when we need to talk to up there. And so the only thing is they have to make sure, you know, all the neighbor -- because they have a -- this is single-family-home neighborhood, so they have to make sure neighbor on the left and the right -- you know, pretty much that's the people they're going to hurt more because -- or they're going to be happy, so I don't know, but they have to make sure everybody be on the same page, you know, and they approve and they -- and, you know, we're able to get no -- no bad feelings in between church and neighbors so when they do whatever they do and they allowed to do so they don't have the County coming and do, oh, the church or that because this in here is so typical. Anybody can call, and they can come in to tell you whatever because you don't have the freedom in your home to do things, you know. And so this is -- I was scared because when it's 64, I thought that's the church is moving to Golden Gate Parkway. I guess it's not. So I'm going to have the church next to me because I own -- so I -- when I put my name, I thought I'm coming for the multifamily affordable housing because across the street is -- I'm going to have -- the house that I'm building is almost two, three thousand -- I mean, 2, $3 million home, so I need to know what type of housing are we talking about; what kind of affordable, you know, is. But I don't have no questions. I think I came in the wrong meeting, but I'm glad I came to hear what's going on, and I don't -- you know, church, they're welcome everywhere, you know, but -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Just not across the street from me again. Ms. Rojas, real quick, you said you're on 63rd? November 20, 2025 Page 15 of 48 MS. ROJAS: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Okay. So you've got -- the Center Point Community Church is right there on the corner. That's -- MS. ROJAS: Yes. I have right on the corner, yeah. Go around my house, yes. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Okay. Gotcha. Excellent. MS. ROJAS: And I have -- on the 64, that is not working church, is that, 64? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I'm not sure they know. MS. ROJAS: You mention in there, there was -- can you able to put all the churches you have, like -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: No. That's -- I appreciate it, but when we get to that affordable one, I look forward to seeing you there. MS. ROJAS: All right. No, no, no. The church, there is a church on 64. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Okay. MS. ROJAS: Right there on 64th Street. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: All right. MS. ROJAS: That is right next to me. I own another property right there, but there's nothing going on in there. It's not working. It's closed. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I gotcha. It's closed down? MS. ROJAS: Yes. But the church, I thought that was the church is moving because you mentioned there is only small churches only for 100 people, and now they're doing the other church for 200 people. I thought that was the same church that they're moving from 64th to Golden Gate Parkway, so, yeah. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. MS. ROJAS: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: And we'll see you at the next meeting. MS. ROJAS: Okay. MR. SABO: No further public speakers. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Excellent. Rich. MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, in response to the concern about water management, we will actually improve the water management right now because right now it's a free flow of water. When we go through and get our Site Development Plan approved, we'll actually have to have a water management system to keep our water on our site and discharge it at the county's location and at an appropriate discharge rate. So the water management will actually be better than it is today if the church goes through and the church gets improved. I think she wanted us to put the conditions up. These are all of the conditions that are applicable to the property. We didn't read them all, but, one, we've got to get state and federal permits, which I just mentioned one of them, which was getting Water Management District. It's limited to the master plan area. The lighting, as modified, will be Dark Skies, and they'll all be 15-foot elevation. The hours of operation we went through. The size of the church is 6,000 square feet and the 4,000-square-foot structure. We're going to have to bring that 1,000-foot structure up to whatever the habitable standards are if it's going to be a habitable facility. So it's not going to be just simply, you know, going in and using that facility. If we're going to turn it into something that requires modifications under the building code, we'll go in, and we'll have to make those modifications under the building code. Where are we getting sewer? MR. ARNOLD: We're not. MR. YOVANOVICH: So we're doing septic? So we are doing septic for our -- for sewer, but we are getting county water, or water from -- off of Golden Gate Parkway. If there's significant traffic generation, we have that same condition that every other church has, we have to have a police officer or traffic control there should there become a traffic-related November 20, 2025 Page 16 of 48 issue with parishioners coming to church. So we have that typical condition; that's there. We have -- as you can see, it's such a low traffic generator, it's 20 p.m. peak-hour trips during the peak. That's not a lot of -- that's not a lot of traffic. That's probably -- So we cannot have a private school or daycare other than daycare associated with services. So that's typically a concern about traffic generation. We're not going to have that on this facility. No outdoor amplified music. And then we have the -- Wayne did take you through the buffer on the westernmost -- the additional buffer that we're going to have there. So again, we've looked at this as to what may happen should the church expand. You have a Site Development Plan that's associated with this. The traffic impacts are already determined. They're limited. The light is limited. The impact on the hours of operation are all limited. It doesn't get any bigger than 200 parishioners at any one time, whether it's in 2,000, 4,000, or 6,000 square foot. So we think that, you know, all the -- all the testimony has been that it's compatible with the neighborhood. The only reason we're here for the Growth Management Plan Amendment is because of that policy; otherwise, as Mike pointed out, churches are conditional uses pretty much anywhere. You just don't want a church on every piece of property. So you go through a review. Predominantly it's a compatibility review when you go through a conditional-use review process. And all the testimony from the expert planners is this is compatible. It is not a negative impact to the neighborhood. I hope we have addressed the neighbor's concerns about water management and lighting and all that to where she'll have the quiet, peaceful enjoyment of the home that she experiences now. And should Pastor Paul no longer be the pastor and it's a different church, they're going to have to live with the same conditions. You can't go from a church to a commercial or retail use. You can't go from a church to a multifamily use without, one, amending the Growth Management Plan, and two, changing the zoning on the property, which will all require the public-hearing process just like we have today with the same notification requirements. So this church can't sneak other uses in. The use is -- the Estates use is single-family and a church. That's what can go on this site. Nothing else. So there is -- there are guarantees that this is not going to evolve into something else without going through a public-hearing process. And I'm sorry the lady came for the multifamily project. That's not here before you today. I didn't even know anything about that project, but anyway... CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: But I'm looking like a Christmas tree over here right now, so hold on a second. I'll go with Commissioner Shea, Commissioner Colucci, and then Commissioner McLeod. COMMISSIONER SHEA: It's actually a question for Mike. The conditions of approval up on the screen, you agree with those? MR. BOSI: Yes. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Those are your conditions as well, right? MR. BOSI: Those were arrived upon through -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: But that's part of your recommendation is -- MR. BOSI: Correct, correct. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Commissioner Colucci. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Is county sewage not accessible? MR. YOVANOVICH: It's not there. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: You said something about the septic system. MR. YOVANOVICH: That's -- all of Golden Gate Estates has septic. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. All right. Thank you. MR. YOVANOVICH: So it's very expensive to extend sewer. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: So it's not -- it's not available? November 20, 2025 Page 17 of 48 MR. YOVANOVICH: It's not readily available, no, sir. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: All right. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Commissioner McLeod. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: And that's a concern of mine, too, because as you all know, I keep bringing this up, you know, is there availability for sewer? And at the last meeting, it was like, "Oh, yeah, Michelle, no, there's all -- there's accessibility for this," and then here we go with another septic. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: How is water available and not sewer? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Good question. MR. BOSI: Within this corridor -- and unfortunately I don't have Anthony Stolts here. Within this corridor -- and we learned this during the Hope Home Planning Commission meeting -- there's no capacity within the wastewater. Wastewater is at maximum capacity, so there's no ability to tap into the wastewater. There's ability -- there's potable water where it's available. There's no wastewater available. So based upon that, that's why we would allow for the utilization of septic. MR. YOVANOVICH: Right. And it's no different than what Temple Shalom did. Remember a few years back we came through for the expansion of Temple Shalom and the Jewish Federation building? They're on septic. They're in Golden Gate Estates, but they're on -- they're on water. They connected to water, but they're on septic. It's very expensive to bring sewer to bigger-parcel lots. The assessment for those individuals would be a big number. COMMISSIONER SHEA: What is David Lawrence at? What do they have; septic? MR. YOVANOVICH: I don't think they have septic. I don't think so. COMMISSIONER SHEA: So it is nearby. MR. BOSI: I believe -- no, the David Lawrence Center is required for it. Because of the capacity, the size, the demands associated with it, they are on potable and septic -- or not septic, but wastewater. COMMISSIONER SHEA: So public wastewater is nearby. MR. YOVANOVICH: But it's not -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: Not big enough? MR. YOVANOVICH: Yeah. We can't -- it's not accessible to us. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: It's tapped out for the area. MR. YOVANOVICH: This really is a small use. You know, it could -- a septic system is not -- is really not an issue for this size church. We're -- the David Lawrence Center, totally different use. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: So I have a couple more questions. So, Mike, at the last meeting we talked about how Golden Gate City in the future has plans to go with sewer. So -- at the last meeting we talked about how Golden Gate City has a plan to go to sewer. MR. BOSI: Yes. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: When that happens, then is there capacity for a property like this? How far out of the city do you take that? MR. BOSI: And once again, that would be a question that our utility department could answer with more specificity. But I would say that if -- when that project starts for the septic -- or the conversion within Golden Gate City, the capacity within the Golden Gate Parkway area will have to be increased to be able to handle the additional loads because it's all interconnected. Our sewer systems -- the sewer system isn't individual block by block. It's an all-interconnected system. So because of that -- to be able to handle the additional capacity of all the additional homes within -- within Golden Gate City that eventually will get transitioned, they will have to have a much greater capacity within the overall system, so it will be addressed as part of that. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. Right. And I -- MR. YOVANOVICH: And I understand the concern. And I hate to offer conditions, but, you know, if they ever build a sewer line that fronts our property, we're happy -- that has capacity, November 20, 2025 Page 18 of 48 we're happy to tap in. To extend to sewer -- let's just imagine the David Lawrence Center actually had capacity. That's a $200,000 connection fee. That's a huge number. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Right. MR. YOVANOVICH: So if -- but if you have the sewer line with capacity in front of us, we'll tap in. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Can we make that a condition, then? MR. YOVANOVICH: I just offered it up. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Oh, thank you. So that's one thing. Also, the neighbor to the west had mentioned concerns about parking. There's only 10 spots currently on there. Can you tell me how many members are at the church now? MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, we're -- again -- whoops, I went the wrong way. I could have Mr. Arnold come up here. But there will be site plan improvements to add parking. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Right. But I mean, currently -- we don't know when that will happen. I'm sure there has to be fundraising to build the buildings and... MR. ARNOLD: So, again, Wayne Arnold. The County requires three parking spaces per seven seats for a church. So before they could open even with any capacity for a church, whether it's, you know, today at 80 people, let's say, they still have to provide parking that meets code for those, and that requires them to put in handicap accessible parking, internal circulation for them. The one advantage we do have, we are allowed for a church to have a larger percent of grass parking. We have paved drive aisles or stabilized aisles, but we can have grass parking. So that helps soften, you know, the parking as well. So we'll have drive aisles that are highlighted in here, for instance, in dark gray, but we also have provisions for all these other little open parking spaces. Those would be grass parking. I'm sure -- we've been to a lot of different churches around where they have grass parking. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Yeah. How many members at the church right now? MR. ARNOLD: I think it's under a hundred. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: And so how many parking spaces would that be, then? If you have 100 chairs or -- MR. ARNOLD: I'll do the math. MR. YOVANOVICH: It goes into 100 -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Fifteen times. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: So 15 parking spots. MR. ARNOLD: Three per seven. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Will already be put in -- MR. YOVANOVICH: So that would be 45 spaces. If we had 105 people, it would be 45 required parking spaces. So we have to upgrade the parking. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: So from the get-go, you're going to have to identify 45 parking spots. MR. ARNOLD: That's correct. MR. YOVANOVICH: Correct. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: And you have it in the plan and -- MR. ARNOLD: Well, the plan is going to have to be consistent generally with this plan that's on the computer screen. So that would be the arrangement of parking. We made some provisions for existing parking in front of the house, which would be in front of the church, and then the balance of it sort of goes along the side. We're trying to soften that, obviously, for the immediate neighbor, too. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Yeah. I was just concerned for that neighbor. I didn't want to see parking, like, everywhere, maybe even encroaching in her space. MR. YOVANOVICH: You can see it where it's on the arrow, so you can see it's basically next to the school. November 20, 2025 Page 19 of 48 COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. But again, my concern was, like, overparking and encroaching, so, if you can -- MR. ARNOLD: What I would say -- COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Yes. MR. ARNOLD: What I would say, having dealt with a lot of churches in my career, they typically, one, don't have the funding to put in a lot of extra parking spaces. It's expensive. Obviously, we do have some churches that have large, large congregations. But I mean, we're talking a congregation that's about 100 today, and they want to grow that. And, yeah, they will have to provide the parking that's required by code for that. And I don't think they'll be providing excess parking by much. I mean, you want to make provisions for some, but it's very expensive to put in parking lots and improvements. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: And I understand that. I just want to make sure that there's not that overflow situation. And I love grass parking because it's less impervious space -- or more impervious -- impervious space. And then there was -- the homeowner had also mentioned electricity concerns. I'm not quite sure what she was mentioning, but can you just address -- MR. ARNOLD: I took it as are we going to be extending a power line somehow between our building and hers. And, I don't know, there's electrical service to the house today, and my assumption is that will be upgraded to service the church. So I don't know -- I don't think there's any intent or any need to have some other electric corridor that would be between us. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I think the concern was it would be strung all over the property to each. You're going underground. You're taking a main meter and then going under for service. MR. ARNOLD: Generally that's what's dealt with these days, yes. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: And -- oh, just one other. She also mentioned a concern for space. These buildings are, whatever, 4,000, 6,000 square feet. I think this is a question for Mike. Would we be able to limit size of the buildings for a parcel? MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. You have every right to suggest reductions or modifications to what's being proposed. This is a conditional use. If you feel the use has a chance to encroach upon an adjoining property in a negative way and you feel that there is justification to reduce or put additional conditions, buffering, spacing, setbacks, those are the type of things that would be appropriate to suggest at the time -- at this hearing. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. Then I'll ask my colleagues to weigh in on that. But before we do that, just with the other concerns that she had, water protection. I thought that Rich's explanation was very good. If they do tear down and build new, they'd have to abide by the new standards for water management, so that's going to help you. We want that. And then the lighting concern at 15 feet the whole way, so hopefully that will satisfy the owner, and she's nodding her head, so I'm happy to see that. Okay. So just at some point, Chair, if we could have a discussion as to the size of these facilities and -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: If you want to let Commissioner Colucci go next, and then we'll circle back with -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, I was ready to -- if there are no more questions, which I guess there are, I was ready to recommend or make a motion, but I guess I'm not ready for that. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. Yeah. So let's go back to Commissioner McLeod on that discussion on the building size. So the 4,000, 6,000. So 6,000 for the congregation, the front space, and then 4,000 for activities. Like Rich said, you have some daycare November 20, 2025 Page 20 of 48 in there while services are going on, different things during the day, meeting rooms. Thoughts? Questions? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Chair, I'll start off. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Mr. Arnold, the west side buffer, on Page -- I don't know -- it's 74 in our packet, it said 15-foot-wide Type B. Was that updated? MR. ARNOLD: The condition, and what's on the site plan, it's for a 25-foot-wide buffer. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Okay. That's what I thought, that there was -- MR. ARNOLD: And it's upgraded to be a Type B with some additional plantings. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: All right. The initial plan was 15. You have taken upon yourselves, working with -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Staff. MR. ARNOLD: That's correct. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: -- the County to increase that to a 25-foot-wide buffer, Plan B. MR. ARNOLD: That's correct. That was a staff request, and we agreed with that. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: That certainly, in my eyes, diminishes any visual problems you may have from the neighbor on the west to see what's going on on this property with that widened landscape buffer. So I'm satisfied and would allow -- my recommendation is if the church believes this is proper square footage -- and they have reduced it from 7,000 to 6,000, the fellowship hall has remained at 4,000, that I believe they know best, and with a 25-foot-wide buffer, I believe that should make both neighbors be happy with each other, so I'm satisfied. MR. YOVANOVICH: And if I can, we have a height limitation of 30 feet. We can also add that it will be one story not to -- one story not to exceed 30 feet. I think that hopefully will also have the neighbor comfortable that you're not going to have people peering into her yard unless they're really, really, really tall. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Rich -- or I'm sorry. Mr. Yovanovich or Mr. Arnold, how tall is that cross? MR. ARNOLD: I don't know the height of that, but it's -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Does that count as the 35 foot or is that a -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Thirty feet. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Thirty foot, or is that a supplemental? MR. ARNOLD: There is a height exception for certain things in the Land Development Code, and I think steeples may be one of those. I don't know what, then, the maximum height is. Mike -- like, the Estates is 30 feet. It's 30 feet. I think that's just a depiction. I don't know that that's exactly what has been decided by -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: The architect there? MR. ARNOLD: Yeah, I think it's just a rendering. I mean, I think -- the church doesn't want to spend a fortune renovating the structure, but obviously, most churches depict some sort of steeple or cross, so... MR. YOVANOVICH: So whatever the code allows is the maximum height we'll go for that steeple. Again, one story, though. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Commissioner Shea. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Just a follow-up to Michelle's question. Mike, does -- you have planners on staff. Do you feel there's a size that there's too much building with the 10,000 square feet on that size lot? Are you comfortable with it, your staff? MR. BOSI: The size proposed and the number of parking spaces, based upon the conceptual plan, staff feels has -- has been designed to be compatible and be -- and be in a sense where it will not impose any negative impact upon the adjoining properties. The property to the west being a single-family residential house, that 25-foot buffer does -- 25-foot landscape buffer November 20, 2025 Page 21 of 48 does provide for some extra protections to provide for it. And I would think the one thing that maybe you could put as an additional condition, and the applicant might have to work out the specific wording, but there can never be a church service as well as, you know, individual activity within the outparcel building or the -- what -- MR. YOVANOVICH: The fellowship hall? MR. BOSI: The fellowship hall. You may want to have a restriction upon not having those two buildings be utilized at the same time. I mean, I can see during the service that child care could be provided there, because that's customarily associated with it. But another outside event, another individual activity happening in the fellowship hall while church services is going on, I think, has the ability to potentially put an intensity that staff isn't anticipating based upon the limited number of church services that they're having. MR. YOVANOVICH: Mike, are you referring to things unassociated with the church in the fellowship hall? MR. BOSI: Yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: I'm trying to understand, are you worried about that, you know, the Boy Scouts are going to hold an event in fellowship hall while we're having a worship service? MR. BOSI: That's what I'm talking about. MR. YOVANOVICH: I think we'd be okay with a condition that says a user unrelated to the church utilizing fellowship hall while the church -- the main church building is also being utilized. I think it would be impossible for us to say we're not going to have people in fellowship hall while there's a church event going on. I mean, that happens all the time. So I don't think that's what you were saying. But if it's an outside user, you can't have an outside user of the fellowship hall at the time that church services are going on in the worship center, then we're okay with that kind of a condition. MR. BOSI: That's what I was suggesting that would be the -- that could be problematic, because during the church services, the daycare's going to be going on. There's other activities that are associated with the church. But if it's an outside group utilizing their fellowship hall while church service is going on, I could see that there may be an over-intensification of the use at that period -- that period of time. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Can I ask the resident of -- MR. BOSI: Ask the Chairman. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Yes. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: May I -- may I ask the resident of the west side to come back up to the podium? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Yes, please. That's why we have them swear in, so they can testify, call them back in. MS. BLOCK: Elizabeth Block, neighbor. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Elizabeth, can you share again what your concern was with regards to the size of these buildings? MS. BLOCK: Mostly about the intensity of use on the property and how much it would affect my property and my use of my property. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: But if there's enough shielding then with the plantings -- MS. BLOCK: Yeah, I love that they're going to not go two stories. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Right, okay. MS. BLOCK: And they do have parking at the back. And I don't know if you guys are aware of it, but the guy before they owned it put in very stable hard pack all the way to the back where they're planning on having their parking -- so as long as they can handle all the parking and not create a problem for me using my own property. Their current -- I forget what you call it -- a pull-out lane to go into Able Academy? MR. YOVANOVICH: Turn lane? MS. BLOCK: Yeah, the -- yeah, thanks. The turn lane starts at the mailbox for this -- for November 20, 2025 Page 22 of 48 the church property, which is all the way on the west side of their property line. So the turn lane starts there. So they're only going to capture, I'm guessing, eight or so feet to extend that turn lane if they move their existing property. So that also makes me wonder how much of my property they're going to end up taking to create a turn lane. I'm -- I think on Sundays, no problem, there's not really a lot of traffic on the Parkway. So depending on the times that they use it, it may not be an issue. But I mean, I want to make sure I can get in and out of my property. It's already difficult when there's busy traffic. But I think when this church is planning to use their property, I don't think it would create a problem for me. I just don't know how much of my property they'd end up having to extend that turn lane into because I have -- I have a driveway entry that's concrete that was installed at the time of the widening of the Parkway, and it looks to me like they'd be obstructing that if they have to bring the turn lane over to my property. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Maybe Rich can address that, then. Thank you. MS. BLOCK: Shall I go? MR. YOVANOVICH: You can stay. We will not be taking any of her property for purposes of our turn lane. We're not going to be taking any of her property, okay. Anything we do has to be in the existing right-of-way. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. So I'll make a -- oh. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Oh, yeah -- no. I was going to say I feel that the church knows what they need for their membership as a -- for size for the growth that they're going to make. If we try to downsize that in any way, it could just inhibit more parking or more -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Yeah. I was just going to comment. I was just doing simple Google Earth, and the church that's a couple doors down to the west, just doing an overhead measurement, it looks like it's about 10,000 square feet. So I mean, this is kind of in line with that. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah, this is. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: The one -- the one issue I have, and I'll ask County Attorney, is, is it possible to tie this conditional use to the current owner until construction begins? And the reason I say that is because just like this other church on 951 where they never even broke ground, and now the property's back up for sale. So instead of being residential, it's now zoned as conditional use for a church. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: So you're essentially saying that the conditional use would expire if the applicant -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Doesn't do any construction and sells the property to somebody else. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: I think you probably could. It's -- you know, under the LDC, when they get a conditional use, I believe it's three or five years. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Five. So it's five years. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: So it would be kind of unique, and I'm not sure whether applicant would accept that condition. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: No, five years is good. Five years is fine, because I know getting congregation -- what I'm concerned with is the fact of turn around selling it to another church who then wants to come in for a larger church because it's already got a conditional use. MR. YOVANOVICH: But they'd be back here -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I know they would be back here, but there would be no -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Same process. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: But then that conditional use would then impede the owner next door. I'm just trying to be respectful. She already -- your neighbor is good. I like to keep -- they're good. Everything else is good. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: If you're trying to limit intensity, I did hear that the building's going to be one-story, and you could ask that it be one-story, both the fellowship and -- MR. YOVANOVICH: I assumed that, since I offered that up, that that was going to November 20, 2025 Page 23 of 48 become a condition, just like the other condition about connecting to sewer. I assumed whatever motion, whether they specifically mentioned that or not, those would be conditions. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: And, Commissioner Shea, did I not clear you out, or do you have a question? COMMISSIONER SHEA: I think we -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Covered that. COMMISSIONER SHEA: -- cleared that. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: All right. So if there is a motion to approve, then obviously, those conditions will be one -- tied to the one-story buildings. It's tied to the septic converting to sewer at the point of time whenever that is available. Is there any other further conditions that -- MR. YOVANOVICH: And those two conditions go in the conditional use. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Into the conditional use, correct. MR. YOVANOVICH: And we also modified -- MS. ASHTON-CICKO: It was also the -- all lighting 15 feet and 3,000 K. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: 3,000 K. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: 3,000 Kelvin. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: And then I don't know if you accepted the no separate outside events activity in fellowship hall during church service. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I had that note down as well. No outside activity other than the church at the time of service. So have we got a motion? Do you want to summarize that and make a motion to approve -- go ahead, Commissioner Colucci. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Here's the motion. I'll probably bungle it, but -- the motion is to recommend an amendment to the Growth Management Plan to allow the project to move forward on a conditional-use basis. What did I miss? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: That will include 15-foot lighting. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, that's -- that's other conditions. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: But it has to go in your motion. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, finish it, then. I don't know -- I understand -- COMMISSIONER McLEOD: I'll try it. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: -- but I don't know how to finish it. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Okay, Commissioner McLeod. Amend the motion to include -- COMMISSIONER McLEOD: To include five additional conditions, one being tapping into sewer when that's available to the area; limiting the structure to a one-story; limiting the height to no more than 15 feet; limiting the light fixtures to 3,000 Ks or Kelvins; and no -- the fifth additional condition is no outside activities during worship service. Was that it? MR. BOSI: No outside groups. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Oh, no outside groups. MR. YOVANOVICH: Using the fellowship hall. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Using the fellowship hall during -- MR. BOSI: During church services. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: -- during church services. MR. BOSI: Yes. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: One minor correction if I may add is that both buildings are limited to single-story. MR. YOVANOVICH: Correct. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Yep. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I will second. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: I'll second. November 20, 2025 Page 24 of 48 CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: All in favor? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: (No verbal response.) COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Aye. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Aye. So PL20230012851, along with its companion, PL20230010505, passed unanimously. MR. YOVANOVICH: So all those conditions were related to the conditional-use petition, correct? I just want to make sure that's on the record. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Yes, sir. MR. YOVANOVICH: So your motion was for both, correct? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Correct. MR. YOVANOVICH: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: The original, the amended, and the amended, yes. MR. YOVANOVICH: Got it. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. It's 10:25. How about we take a 15-minute break before we get into this next one; does that sound good? So we'll restart at 10:40. (A recess was had from 10:25 a.m. to 10:40 a.m.) MR. BOSI: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. All right. ***Next item is PL20240013798 and its companion item, PL20240012938, for the Growth Management Plan Amendment and conditional use for the northwest corner of Shady Hollow East Immokalee Road. All those wishing to testify or speak on the matter, please stand 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.) MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Did you do the disclosures on this item? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: That's what I was just going to go into. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Okay. I'm sorry. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Disclosures. MS. LOCKHART: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Staff materials and site visit. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Staff materials, a site visit, and a correspondence with Mr. Trebilcock. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Gosh. Okay. Staff materials, spoke with Mike Bosi, spoke with Norm Trebilcock. That's it. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Excellent. Good morning, sir. I open the floor to you. MR. DuBOIS: Good morning. Thank you for seeing us today, Planning Commission. My name's Richard DuBois. I'm here on behalf of the applicant, the Orangetree Bible Church, and I'm here with RDA Consulting Engineers. Thank you for your time today. We're here to discuss the Orangetree Bible Church project that we are here for a GMPA and a conditional use. Our project team consists of myself; Mike Delate; Jim Banks is our transportation consultant; and Marco Espinar is our environmental consultant. Quite similar to the November 20, 2025 Page 25 of 48 previous project that you guys just listened to. The Orangetree Bible Church was established approximately two years ago, and they currently have about 100 churchgoers. They are currently meeting at the church at Paul -- or I'm sorry -- at the Palmetto High School right around the corner to the east of the property that we are looking at today. And the reason that we're here and the reason that we're looking at this parcel is it's centered within their churchgoers' community. They have a lot of people that attend this church that live in this community. And there aren't many parcels available in this area specifically that would allow for a church use by right. They're all very similar to the previous project you saw where Estates-zoned properties will allow for the church with a conditional, and this property also would require the GMPA to modify the future land use and create the subdistrict allowing the church. So -- next one. With what we're looking at today and what we're looking at proposing for this church, the intention is to integrate into the community. The intention is to be a member of the community. And we've already, ourselves, and then also with discussion with staff, come in and put in some conditions of approval that would limit the uses of the church on this property. For example, services are being proposed only on Wednesdays and on Sundays. In addition, they are capping the church at less than 300 seats and with a gross floor area of 12,000 square feet or less. As part of this, throughout the process, we've -- through talking with staff, through talking with the neighbors and hearing some of the concerns, we're looking at proposing some enhanced buffer material along all four sides of the property, not just along the road frontages, but also to the neighbors to the north and to the west, and then to discuss the stormwater management. Any and all stormwater management systems for this property will adhere to the South Florida Water Management District rules and County rules at time of SDP. One other thing to bring up, too, is the 50-foot way -- right-of-way reservation along Immokalee Road that we would be dedicating to Collier County with this project's approval for any future right-of-way improvements. Based on discussions we have had with staff during the permitting process, we understand that eventually Immokalee Road would likely upsize in this area. So in order to be a good neighbor, we're already offering that as something to the County with this application. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Let me ask a question of the attorney real quick. Would that right-of-way -- is that already implied for an increase, or would they have -- would the County have to purchase that land from the owner? MS. ASHTON-CICKO: It is provided in the resolution that the County pays the fair market value of the date before the conditional use is approved. So the value of the property today is what would apply, not the value after conditional use is approved. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Not later on. So either way, the property, it's not like they're dedicating that to the County and not being compensated for it. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: They're just basically selling it to the County at current market price versus whenever the County decides to expand, correct? MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. I'm sorry. Go ahead. MR. DuBOIS: So just to summarize the location that was selected for this property that the church identified, the main -- the main selling factor for this property for the church was the location off Immokalee Road. It's an easily accessible road and a highly trafficked road, and this parcel is right off the Immokalee Road. Now, we proposed our site access off of Shady Hollow Boulevard after discussions with staff. The County has no desire to have another property be accessed off of Immokalee Road. So we are -- we are proposing a single access with a turn lane off of Shady Hollow Boulevard to help minimize any impacts to that street. November 20, 2025 Page 26 of 48 Just to give you guys a quick summary of the property, I'm sure you've all seen it, but here is the property on the corner of Immokalee Road and Shady Hollow Boulevard East. To the north and the parcel immediately to the west, they are both currently vacant properties, and the closest property is after the vacant property to the west. And that corner of that home would be approximately 394 feet, 395 feet from where we're proposing that church building, but it would be about 165 feet away from any proposed site improvements besides buffer material with that being parking. So just to give you a summary of how far away this proposed improvement is from the adjacent neighbors. To summarize the site plan, as you can see, there's the proposed 50-foot-wide right-of-way reservation, and then in addition we're proposing the 25-foot landscape buffers to the south, to the east. As this is in the Estates, we're providing 75 feet of native vegetation to the west and to the north and also supplementing that with some additional buffer planting materials as well to provide that full, I believe, it's a Type B buffer material to that, to those adjacent properties. We would be looking at putting in a preserve -- or dedicating a preserve along with this project. The intention of the church would be to put in grass parking for a substantial amount of their parking on the property, and then there would be a small playground use for children either during church services or directly after, but obviously, within the hours of operation with the -- that our -- that our client, the applicant, is proposing with this application. Just to give everyone an idea of what we're looking at proposing, this is a conceptual elevation of that building. Nothing has really been finalized or set in stone yet, but this is the type of construction that the church is looking to build. It will be a nice finished product that -- their desire is to fit within the community and be a part of the community, not stand out like a sore thumb. And to go with that conceptual elevation, here's a conceptual floor plan of what they're looking to do at this location for this church to continue to provide a home for their churchgoers and to provide a place in the community that's their own building instead of utilizing space from a school. Just to summarize the traffic quickly, it has been an item that's come up as a concern, which is why we added the turn lane to help address some of the concerns. With the current churchgoer count of approximately 100 people, if we assume there's two and a half people per vehicle per household, that would be around 40 vehicles with the current congregation. Most people leave within 30 minutes after a service is over, and that would be about 1.3 to 2 cars per minute exiting onto Shady Hollow, just to give you guys an idea what that may look like. Even with looking at the capped future churchgoer seat number of 299 seats, that would still only increase to about four or five cars per minute exiting out onto Shady Hollow with this project. One of the other conditions that we've placed on this project if there is still concerns about traffic -- traffic after that point is that, if necessary, the church would coordinate with the Collier County Sheriff's Department to ensure that someone's out there directing traffic should that need arise and should that become a concern, similar to many other churches here in the area. Coming into today, as you guys have in your staff report, there's the conditions that we've already agreed to and the conditions that we've already worked through with staff. Coming into this meeting today, here are three other conditions that we would like to discuss and offer with this project. The first one regarding landscape buffers. This is essentially stating that we would be planting larger plant material at the time of planting and some additional tree material as well. As it relates to No. 2 with the parking and site lighting, this is similar to what you just heard with the previous church project that we would be committed to doing Dark Sky compliant light fixtures with pole heights not greater than 15 feet. So, you know, the goal here -- really, the goal is to build a community church and to fit in with the community. We don't want to be the sore thumb. We want to be a place in the community for people to come and to, you know, worship November 20, 2025 Page 27 of 48 God. And then the No. 3, the proposed right-turn lane into the site on Shady Hollow Boulevard, we would just request that we would not -- we would not need to provide compensating right-of-way along that right-of-way for that turn lane, as that right-of-way width is already sufficient to accommodate a turn lane. And then that's our presentation today. I'm sure there will be questions. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: There is. Let's start with Commissioner Shea first, and then we'll go to Mike. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Mine's an easy one. Is the petitioner here? MS. ASHTON-CICKO: Excuse me just a second. Has staff reviewed and approved the conditions that were put on the visualizer? MR. BOSI: The condition -- the additional conditions that were just proffered today, we have not reviewed them, so we would -- MS. ASHTON-CICKO: And I do see, like, a deviation from our Land Development Code that requires compensating right-of-way. So I am a little bit concerned about, you know, his deviation that he's putting up there, whether staff is in agreement that it's not required, so I just needed to put that on the record. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. That was on my question log for you on that, especially the conditions. Go ahead, Commissioner Shea. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Yeah. The only question I had is is the petitioner here? MR. DuBOIS: Yeah, the petitioner is here. Pastor Dennis and his wife. They are here as well, so... COMMISSIONER SHEA: Oh, okay. Usually you sit over there. No, you don't have to. I just -- I just wanted to make sure you were here. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Petscher, Commissioner Petscher. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yeah. You said there's no institutional availability in the area. Right across the street on Immokalee Road that's not on a public residential street, there is an available parcel for sale. And it looks like you purchased this last year, and I know that parcel was for sale last year. So why didn't you guys go with this rather than -- or go with this one rather than one that's already zoned for institutional? MR. DuBOIS: Is the zoning Estates on that as well? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: No. It's zoned institution already. MR. DuBOIS: Is it? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: I could look it up on Collier Appraiser and tell you that. But it's literally across the street. It's 200 feet away. MR. DuBOIS: Sure. So at the time of purchase, you know, we talked with the church, and this is the property that they identified as the property they'd like to move forward with. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Pricing issues? MR. DuBOIS: They've looked at pricing, wetlands, access, all those kinds of items. MR. HUSTEDT: I'm happy to -- sir, we did look at that property. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I'm sorry. What's your name, sir, for the record? MR. HUSTEDT: Sorry. I'm sorry. Denny Hu -- Dennis Hustedt, pastor of Orangetree Bible. We did look at this property. We looked at a number of properties all over the area. We were looking, searching, hunting. That one is quite swampy. In fact, we had a hard time even locating anyone who was selling it. We discovered it was John R. Wood, but they didn't have it on the records. It had been off the records for so long. But when we did investigate and look at it, very wet. The land we're looking at here that we're seeking approval for is -- has been designated by the County as upland. It's all upland, which -- and, in fact, our environmental expert who we paid November 20, 2025 Page 28 of 48 to have a look at the place said he's not seen that in years where the County actually gave upfront approval to upland. Massive, of course, cost difference, as I know you would be aware. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Okay. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Those were my only two questions. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Okay. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to staff. MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. As mentioned by the County Attorney on the newly proposed requested supplemental conditions of approval, reviewed 1 through 2, and I don't have any issues with those. Three, I don't understand what value that had -- there's no -- that, I believe, should be stricken. Staff would not support a condition that says the proposed right-turn lane into the site at the Shady Hollow Boulevard estates -- East will not require compensated right-of-way given that -- I'm not sure that they made that determination. That would be a determination that staff -- or staff would make during the site planning to see if that was required. So I wouldn't want to tie any hands as to making the declaration as to whether there was going to be a compensated right-of-way needed or not needed. It's not an appropriate condition for the conditional use. MR. DuBOIS: And we have no issue with withdrawing that if staff doesn't find it acceptable. MR. BOSI: And there is another issue that the applicant has not addressed, and I've got a display that -- again, Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. The recommendations that were contained within your staff reports for the conditional and the GMP was recommendations of support with additional conditions, and staff still recommends the conditions. An issue was brought to our attention late last week, and it's on us and it was on the staff -- or it's on the applicant for both missing this. Within the -- within the screen, you see you have a 75-foot setback indicated here between the front of where they would be proposing the facility and the end of the right-of-way. And then you have the 50-foot right-of-way reservation, but that occupies 50 feet of that 75 feet. So when the road is expanded, Immokalee Road is expanded to its final condition, the church and the playground would find themselves 25 feet away from the road. Staff has asked the applicant to move the facility back an additional 50 feet to be in compliance with the 75-foot front-yard setback required within -- customary within the Estates when the condition -- when the road is expanded. They have not agreed to that. Now, I understand that their basis for their application was what they put forward on their conceptual plan. It is a conceptual site plan. It's not a site plan that's been engineered. It's a site plan that is put forward for the conditional-use process. Staff feels if you're asking for a Growth Management Plan Amendment and you're an applicant -- and I get it. It's the late hour. Staff assumes responsibility. They assume responsibility for missing it. But now that we know that there's -- there's another 50-foot reservation that's going to cut into their 75-foot front-yard setback, at the end of the day when that road construction is finalized, you're going to have a playground and a church that's 25 feet from the roadway when there's a 75-foot requirement for -- within the Estates zoning district. So staff is not recommending denial of the GMP and the conditional use. We are asking for an additional condition that they set back their building an additional 50 feet to the west to be able to accommodate the 75-foot setback at the -- at the final condition of the Immokalee Road expansion. That is the issue that staff has with the proposal. Other than that, the modifications, the two additional conditions that have been proffered staff supports. We think it's a project that fits within the -- within the land-use arrangement, but it's only the -- it's the additional 50 feet, and we understand the applicant's position. We're asking the Planning Commission to recognize that this is a -- it's a conceptual site plan, and we found -- and the issue's been identified well before any site planning or the specifics of a building permit has been even requested. November 20, 2025 Page 29 of 48 And based upon that, we think it's appropriate for that additional 50-foot, and staff would support that recommendation. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Hold that thought. MR. BOSI: And any questions? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Yes, Commissioner Colucci. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: I guess where I'll start is 25 -- an eventually 25-feet space between the buildings and the road is, to me, pretty much a nonstarter. MR. DuBOIS: Yeah, it's -- COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: That's not enough. Hold on. MR. DuBOIS: Go ahead. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: If the petitioner is reluctant to move it back, why? MR. DuBOIS: Wonderful question. So we found out about this very late, late afternoon Tuesday. So we've had time to discuss it and work through it now with ourselves internally and with the applicant. We have no objection to shifting that setback measurement from the right-of-way reservation line instead of the current property line. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Well, that solves that problem. MR. BOSI: Staff would agree. That is in -- I was working off -- under incorrect information, or maybe their position has changed somewhat compared to our conversation we had on Tuesday. Regardless, with that, staff would -- is recommending approval of both the conditional use and the GMP. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Okay. MS. ASHTON-CICKO: And the Board will see a slightly different site plan with the 75-foot back from the right-of-way reservation than what you're seeing today. MR. DuBOIS: Correct. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Any other questions? No? Public comment? Thank you. MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, we have several speakers. The first is Peter Rasmussen. He was ceded time by Michele Dyer. Is Michele Dyer here? (Raises hand.) MR. SABO: All right. That's 10 minutes for Mr. Peter Rasmussen. We're setting up the visualizer for him. MR. RASMUSSEN: Hello. I apologize ahead of time for not knowing acronyms and sources and -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: No worries. MR. RASMUSSEN: -- everything, but some of my comments are based on something we received from somebody in the Planning Commission discussing goals and objectives and policies of land-use, public facility design. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Would you mind spelling your last name for me, please. MR. RASMUSSEN: R-a-s-m-u-s-s-e-n. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. MR. RASMUSSEN: Something that hasn't been talked much about -- how do I move around here? Can we -- I need to find the area. Oh, there it is. Okay. So you can see the church site right where the arrow is. Well, let me back up. So the goals, there are certain goals that are listed that are going to be problematic. Natural resource concerns, safety, quality of life of the local residents, preserving rural character. There's a legitimate traffic concern which will affect the quality of the local residents. The entry to the church -- and I'll come back to this later -- is not from an arterial or collector roadway but from a two-lane residential road that is adjacent to the interconnection of a major arterial roadway. November 20, 2025 Page 30 of 48 This narrow residential road provides -- also provides access to the CREW Bird Rookery which is further west on Shady Hollow Boulevard. It dead ends down in the CREW Bird Rookery, which makes this road a little bit different than other residential roads because of weekend traffic to the -- to the Bird Rookery. I've got some numbers. The Bird Rookery attendance on Sunday during high season is between 165 and 389 -- I've got these numbers I can hand to you after if you need that -- with an average of 266 on any given Sunday. Currently there are 41 homes that use Shady Hollow Boulevard to access. We have 96 -- or 92 additional lots that could be built out, and currently we're seeing about three or four houses per year being built that would be accessed on Shady Hollow Boulevard. Further up on Immokalee Road, north of Immokalee Road, there's also a 2,000-home subdivision that's going to be built which will obviously increase the traffic on Immokalee Road. And I'm bringing this all to a close because the traffic that they talked about I don't think identified the real problem. The church, as he showed on his slide, expects a maximum of 120 vehicles, and they spread that over -- spread that out over 30 minutes after the service, and they came up with four cars per minute. That was his number. Anybody going to church, I think the real number is before church starts. People arrive -- you know, after church they -- they spread out, but arriving I'd say the majority of them are going to arrive within a 15-minute time frame. And if you do that, that gives you 6.7 cars per minute, and obviously, that wouldn't be spread out evenly over the 15 minutes, so I think you could double that at points, which gives you basically one car every five seconds is going to be turning off of Immokalee onto this road. There is a turn lane. It is a single lane. As you can see -- MR. BOSI: Point to the -- yeah, touch the screen. MR. RASMUSSEN: I can just touch it? This one? MR. BOSI: Point to something. MR. RASMUSSEN: As you can see, Immokalee Road is a single road at this point, a single-lane road. There is a turn lane. Up -- just further up, it goes from a 45- to a 55-mile-an-hour. As you know -- you've driven these roads -- people start at acceleration well beyond. So, it -- Immokalee went from a two-lane shortly before this, very shortly before this, to a single lane, and now it's accelerating. So there is significant traffic there. If we're trying to get five cars per second [sic] into that turn lane onto Shady Hollow Boulevard, there's going to be times it's going to block that road. It's going to block a major artery -- a single-lane major artery road. I'll come back to that, but that's probably my biggest concern is the safety issue related to this traffic coming into this small two-lane road. Overflow parking on special occasions, Christmas, Easter, the only option is to park along the side of this two-lane road. There's no shoulder. It's just a -- literally you can't do a U-turn. You have to do a three-point turn. It's going to be in the grass. After the church is over, there's no way to turn around. They're going to have to go up the road, do three-point turns, or use people's driveways to turn around to get back out, not unlike the church parking where they can do a left turn to get back to Immokalee. Similar to the previous thing, I don't know that they have any daycare. You know, all their traffic is based on a Sunday meeting and a weekday meeting, but I think we need to limit daily -- a future daycare option. Many churches opt for that. I don't know if that's in their plan or not, but I think it's something we need to talk about. The next thing I wanted to talk about is a little more subjective, and it deals with the natural resource concerns and the rural character. We share our neighborhood with all kinds of wildlife. We've got bears. We've got panthers. We've got bobcats. Many of the lots -- most of the lots are half nature. I would venture to say many residents have never been to the back side of their lot. So it's a -- one of the things we love about living where we do is coexisting with nature. November 20, 2025 Page 31 of 48 There's no way that the wildlife would be able to do the same thing on that property. That would just eliminate that much more area where the wildlife could do that. Many of our lots provide shelter, food, and a home for the animals. I agree with the Dark Sky lighting, if they do that 15-foot Dark Sky 3,000 Kelvin. Just a personal thing, when I'm going home at night, it's a -- I don't know if the petitioner's ever even done this. When I go home at night, I turn off Immokalee, their streetlights. Instantly, it's peace. It's quiet. It's dark. It's one of the favorite things -- every time -- every time I do that, I love living there just because the feeling I get when I turn off that road, and all of a sudden it's -- my blood pressure goes down. I'm sorry. Back on this, what is it, the conditions. As I understand it, there are four sets -- or four criteria that must be met in order for you to even grant this. Provide essential services, I guess if it comes to that -- well, I guess only one of these has to be met. I'm not sure that a church is actually an essential service. And again, I don't -- I'm not opposed to the church. I go to a church where we met in a schoolhouse and then we built in the Estates, but we met at least one of these criteria. It must be near a neighborhood center. This is not. It must be adjacent to an existing nonresidential use. This is not. And it must be on or oriented toward an arterial or collector roadway, and this is not. If they figured out a way to access it off Immokalee Road, many of my concerns would be moot. But to try and access off this little two-lane residential area where, unlike most other roads, we are busiest on weekends. It's -- it is not like Golden Gate where they said, "Oh, it's a Sunday. It's not busy." That is our busiest time on this road, because of the Rookery, because people are out on their four-bys and their motorcycles, and it's a -- I can't come up with a number, but it's probably five times as busy on a weekend as it is during the week. You got a taste of this, but the petitioner, in a meeting on August 11th, stated the main reason -- the main reason they wanted to build on this lot was because of the cost. You know, we talked about this other lot. It's available across the street. You can build a church. It's going to cost him more. He's going to have to bring in the fill. So -- and my thing, it's not your job, it's not your duty, and it shouldn't even be your concern about saving him money. They can build what they want, meet all the criteria on this place across the street. And then in closing -- and I don't -- please don't take this as a -- I don't even want to say -- it's a concern. If somebody gets killed on that intersection, it's going to come to light that the concern was brought up in this meeting, and it's something for the petitioner as well. I don't know that they would want that on their head. I think it's something that they -- that intersection, trying to turn left on there, is just dangerous, and I don't think that's been properly addressed with any type of a traffic survey. So any questions? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Go ahead, Commissioner McLeod. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Mr. Rasmussen, where do you live on the street? MR. RASMUSSEN: We're further down. In fact, I should have mentioned that. I'm the president of a small HOA this lives further west, just straight west on Shady Hollow after you cross -- in fact -- yeah. Can I zoom out? Okay. You see the lake? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: So it's past Wilson Boulevard, then? MR. RASMUSSEN: Yeah, just past Wilson there's a lake. Our HOA consists of the lots along the southern shore of that lake. And then you can see where the Bird Rookery trail is out here. So our subdivision is right along here -- our HOA I should say. When I did the lots, I considered, you know, this road as well because that's how they would access it, rather than doing a U-turn and coming in. You know, they'd have to do a U-turn and come back in this way. So I considered all lots along either side of Shady Hollow Boulevard to get my numbers. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. Thank you. November 20, 2025 Page 32 of 48 CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Any other questions? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you, sir. MR. RASMUSSEN: And I'll just give those to you. They have the numbers that I used. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Perfect. MR. RASMUSSEN: Thank you. MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, your next speaker is Colleen Araujo. MS. ARAUJO: Hello. I'm Colleen Araujo. I'm the resident right next door to this. So I don't want to make this an emotional thing, but I want you to know that I waited 23 years to move away from people to the country so I could live with nature, I could have a garden, I could have my dogs in the yard and not have people all around just, you know, all the time. So happy when I moved to this house, so happy. Love my home. Love the nature, and there is a lot of nature. I have bears that come through my yard that go through the next yard to go to the next yard to go to the sanctuary. We have animals everywhere. My concern is I didn't want to move next to a commercial building, and even though it's a church, it's still commercial. There are people coming and going. There will be parking lots. There will be traffic coming right in and out next to my house. Every time a car door closes, my dogs are going to bark. This is a personal disruption for a resident that lives so close to a facility like this. I work really hard out in my yard. I'm very proud of my home. I take very big pride in my home. The last thing I want next to me is a commercial building. I don't want lights. I don't want a big building. I don't want people coming and going all the time. I don't like the fact that there will be kids running around making noise all the time. Kind of defeats the purpose of moving to the country. I feel like owning a home there, I wasn't expecting a commercial building to be put up next to me, which is what is trying to happen now. So in my defense, I just want to say if any of you waited that long to buy a home in your perfect area that you wanted to live in thinking it's going to be nothing but people living next to you, families and homes with dogs and people -- come to find out that there's going to be a commercial building right next to you, which will also stop all of the nature that travels through, which will stop everything that goes on now, the peace. They say it's on Sundays and Wednesdays. Well, I'm right next door. It doesn't matter what day it is. Cars coming and going. The driveway's right next to me. Now, they have to move the structure back further west away from Immokalee Road. That puts it closer to me. It's just not acceptable. It's not comfortable. I'm not -- I don't approve of it. It wouldn't matter if it was a church. It wouldn't matter what building -- what commercial it was. It really wouldn't matter. It doesn't matter to me one single bit. What matters to me is that it's a commercial building. It's going to have commercial traffic. It's going to add umpteen amounts of traffic to -- to our road. Our road is a small, little two-lane road. It's very quiet. People are quiet there. It's just -- it's a nature-loving road. I am going to be affected the most. It's very disheartening to me to have property that you think is going to be safe from something like that only to find out that somebody else is petitioning to build a big structure on it. I just have to say if any of you were in this position, how would you feel yourself? It's -- it's just disheartening. I don't want it there. I don't want anything there but another home maybe. That's fine. But I don't think it should be allowed to be a big facility, and I don't think it should be allowed to be a commercial facility. That's all I have to say. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Ms. Araujo, can I ask you a question? MS. ARAUJO: Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: How often do you hear gunshots out there? MS. ARAUJO: A lot. November 20, 2025 Page 33 of 48 CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Are they coming from, like, the street over and on your street as well? MS. ARAUJO: They come over from the street over. I don't rarely see -- hear anything on my street. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Your street. MS. ARAUJO: The street -- next street over, I do hear some guns, but I do understand from somebody there's some range -- gun range over there. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Yeah. Collier County, anything over -- anything over an acre and, like, a quarter you can put in your own shooting berm, and as long as your expelled ammunition does not leave your property, you're more than legally welcome to shoot. MS. ARAUJO: I mean, it's not like it's every minute of every day. I mean -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: So you do hear it? MS. ARAUJO: Well, you do hear it. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Okay. MS. ARAUJO: If you lived in the Estates and didn't hear gunshots, you've got to be deaf. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I do live in the Estates. MS. ARAUJO: You know. You know how it is. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I do. And I appreciate the comments. Thank you. MS. ARAUJO: Thank you. Anything else? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Anything else? No. Great. Next speaker. MR. SABO: Mr. Chairman, the next speaker is William Dyer. MR. DYER: Good morning. I'm William Dyer. I am a Shady Hollow resident, along with my wife Michele, and we have been there since 2016. We live further down by where Pete lives, but we access, obviously, Immokalee Road every day, numerous times every day. So we're here. Pete covered a lot of what I was going to say, but I do have some points I want to bring up. Number 1, it's not a Collier County, it's a State of Florida thing about shooting on more than an acre, which is -- nothing you can do about it. And you're right, the Collier County Government can't even control that so, yeah, there are a lot of gunshots out in Collier, but it's very rural. We moved out there from Marco because we wanted private, quiet, you know, peaceful environment. With that said, the lot across the street that they're talking about it's right next to the -- pretty much right next to the Collier County Sheriff's Office and next to the EMS building there. All right. Maybe a little down. Very usable land. Maybe a little wet at the time. But it's very usable, right? So, No. 2 I'm concerned about is that in lane, the left-turn lane there coming onto our road, and then they're going to have to make a right-turn lane going in, well, I'm a little concerned about that. First of all, the traffic north and south is tremendous, even Sunday. Fifty thousand people go to that bird CREW park a year is what I'm told. That's a lot of cars, okay. They know one way in and one way out. Sure, you've got Wilson Road and other things, but they don't know that, along with all the residents there. Now, it's not overly built, but it is very concerning to us. If -- I know the County has already denied access to Collier. I would deny access to Shady Hollow because of the traffic, the concern. It's all right there at that intersection coming out making a right on Collier is difficult -- I'm sorry -- Immokalee, it's harder to make a left. So if all their parishioners live in the area and they've got to turn left, you've got cars coming down -- and it's very difficult to make a left-hand turn going north on Immokalee Road. So we're concerned. I would rather see it exit, especially after they put the widening road in -- all six lanes is what I'm understanding. It's going to go six lanes further north, I believe. You know, three and three, plus the turn lane. Well, it would be a whole lot easier to get out on Immokalee Road, in my opinion. Obviously they didn't like that idea, but we don't like the idea, quite frankly, coming out on Shady Hollow. You know, it's a small, two-lane rural road, but it's very busy with the park November 20, 2025 Page 34 of 48 down there. So with that said, that's our -- one of our concerns. Okay. A lot of people bike and ride, families are walking up and down on the sidewalk there and down the roads. We have no sidewalks on Shady Hollow. There is -- it's a swale. And I'll tell you, right in that area, and you can ask the speaker that just spoke, it floods in the summertime in the heavy rain. It's just -- water just sits right there. So there really is no parking on the berms if that parking lot overfills. You know, if he gets up to 300, you know, parishioners, that's a lot of cars, a lot of people. I saw a little playground or preserve in the back, assuming where the kids are going to go play, right next to residents' houses and stuff like that. So our concern is -- we're not against a church, but there's options there where they don't have to be on a residential property on a small private little -- not private, but it's very a heavily used little rural road is what it is. And if that wasn't the option going over there, then I wouldn't approve it coming on Shady. Let them go out on Immokalee and deal with that there. I don't know if that's any better or worse. But it definitely will affect our lifestyle. It will definitely affect the wildlife, everything that goes on. And that road is extremely -- like I said, 50,000 people a year, all right. Holidays, weekends, it's crazy, it really is, up and down the road. Just come down. You live -- you live in the Estates. Have you ever been down to Bird Rookery? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: (Nods head.) MR. DYER: Yeah. Pretty packed. I mean, they're talking about having to expand their parking lot down there and make it bigger. I mean, it's crazy. And we hate -- we love the people coming down, you know. We enjoy the park ourselves. There's 50,000 acres of preserve back there; however, with that said, we don't need extra problems to deal with that we have to deal with. So that is my concern with the church going in there. You know, we don't have a -- we're not opposed to a church going in there. It's more opposed to, like, the other -- the last speaker said, putting any commercial buildings there, you know, especially when there was approval across the street. So that's all I really wanted to put out there are some of our concerns. And as a neighborhood, you know, we just feel like we have a right to let you know how we feel. So there it is. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. MR. DYER: Does anybody have any questions? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Any questions? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: No. MR. DYER: No. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. MR. DYER: All right. Thank you very much. MR. SABO: Our next speaker is Mike Pyles. MR. PYLES: Good morning. My name is Mike Pyles. I live on Shady Hollow Boulevard West. I'm last house on the end of the road before you enter the Rookery. And I'd like to reinforce mostly what Bill and Pete talked about regarding traffic in the intersection at Shady Hollow and Immokalee Road. One thing, though, you've heard some numbers today. These numbers aren't static. When I bought my lot in late 2014, there was an article shortly after that in the Naples news that the Bird Rookery was getting 35,000 visitors a year. Last news article I saw in the Naples news on the Bird Rookery was that that number had grown to 50,000. Likelihood, it's going to keep growing. As Bill mentioned, there are already plans to expand the parking lot, something that I understand the CREW preserve people resisted because they thought the traffic was already putting too much stress on the animal environment, but it's a growth area. You've seen the Google map of the intersection. You've seen the numbers about the cars. November 20, 2025 Page 35 of 48 The church is presented as maybe passing through. I'd like to just talk about what the reality is like of turning at that intersection onto Immokalee Road. It's an odd intersection. It's the point at which a two-lane road suddenly expands into a three-lane road and then shortly further along into a four-lane road. Traffic coming east off Immokalee Road tends to accelerate as they move into what they perceive is a larger highway. The County, in fact, calls it a highway now. It's been designated recently a memorial highway, and that's what it is. If you come in the other direction, they've already discussed the turn lane that's there now. The traffic is fast on that road. I know what the speed limits are, but when I turn onto that road, I have to get up to 60 miles an hour as quickly as I can to keep from impeding the flow of traffic. And when traffic is passing at that speed, you can't turn into small gaps between cars. You have to wait for very large gaps to open up. That doesn't often happen because there are no nearby traffic lights that stall traffic for a while and create open spaces and traffic you can turn into. It's a steady stream of cars at high speed proceeding with gaps that are very difficult to turn into. There's another dimension to it, too. The next road south of Shady Hollow Boulevard is 41st Avenue, and people -- and that road has more residents on it than our road does. You can't turn left onto that road from Immokalee Road because there's a median still there. The median only disappears up near our road. So people accessing that road come up to this intersection to make a U-turn onto Immokalee Road to get a block down to the road they live on. And I think you-all know what the experience is like with U-turns in Naples. Most people don't realize that U-turns have right-of-way. People using U-turns know they have the right-of-way, and I can't tell you how many times I've come close to watching an accident at that intersection as there's confusion between a U-turner and someone trying to turn right onto that road. It's quite often -- we often go left heading toward Immokalee. We've had to sit, with us being the only car at the intersection, a couple minutes, three minutes to be able to make a turn to the left because you have to wait for traffic to clear in both lanes. And I mentioned earlier the issue with having to wait for gaps the way traffic is flowing. I can't imagine what it would be like when church lets out and you have only 30 or 40, and later, larger number of cars lining up to try to make that turn. You're going to have traffic jams at that intersection, and you're not going to relieve a lot of it with an extra turn lane because they're going to be confronting the same issues. So maps look one thing; numbers tell you something else. Sitting at that intersection, it looks very different. And it is not the right location to have any high volume of traffic pass through over the space of a short few minutes. And I'm also sort of generally perplexed if what the purpose of the land-use restrictions are, if they're so easily waived for the convenience of someone who didn't have the budget to buy a lot that would work that is zoned properly for the use. So those are my considerations, thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you, sir. Thank you. Next speaker. MR. SABO: Last speaker, Lisa Rasmussen. MS. RASMUSSEN: Hi. I'm Lisa Rasmussen. My husband is Peter Rasmussen, and we live on Shady Hollow down across the canal. As we've all stated, our street is not your typical residential street. We have a public entity at the end of our street that we do face extra traffic on our road that other residential roads do not deal with. I have stated in a previous preliminary meeting that they had that I am strongly opposed to these changes. The residential property was purchased with the intent to make these changes before we, the residents on that street, were given any recourse. Statistics show that once -- the big white board that goes up on the property, once it goes November 20, 2025 Page 36 of 48 up, our chances of making any change to that is 10 percent -- 10 to 15 percent even though we raise our voices against it. It was stated that the reason for building the Orangetree Bible Church at this location is because of the cost of buying the property. It was so affordable, and it would be a convenience for the patrons. I think to purchase residential property knowing full well the intent was to make substantial changes to a residential property against the standards of a residential property is deceptive business practice. There are rumors circulating that there will be an intent to establish a daycare in the future as part of -- as part of that property. I know they would have to come back and get approved for that, but they'd probably get it, and that would increase the traffic even more. It gives me little faith in the limited conditional-use proposal that it will remain as stated or that we, the residents of Shady Hollow Boulevard, can restrain, reduce, or stop these proposals. We already have increased public traffic on this street due to the CREW Bird Rookery, and as remaining residential lots are purchased and built on, the traffic will only increase. What is to keep -- someone else with another affordable lot trying to build a business venture on a residential lot in residential areas. What will keep them from doing so if you set a precedent? There are appropriate building lots in the same general area that fit the standard for this proposal without having to change to the conditional use. Yes, it may cost them more money to build what they want to build, but it will cost far less for all of the residents on Shady Hollow Boulevard in ways that are more valuable than money and cannot be replaced, such as old-growth trees, wildlife nesting birds, dark sky, peace and quiet. And the next I thing I see is a traffic light because the traffic will be so bad at that intersection. So thank you for listening to my emotional proposal, but that's how I feel. I strongly oppose a conditional use, not a church. I don't have anything against a church, but this is not the place for it. So thank you for listening to me. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. MS. RASMUSSEN: Any questions? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: No, okay. MR. SABO: That was the last speaker. No further speakers. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Rebuttal? MR. DuBOIS: All right. For the record, Richard DuBois with RDA Consulting Engineers. Just to address some of the concerns that were brought up, specifically -- mainly traffic, right? That's the main concern that we've heard throughout this process. And we're working towards being a good neighbor. We originally proposed two entrances for this property off Shady Hollow. Originally our goal was to provide access off Immokalee Road. Based on coordination with county staff, that was not an option so, therefore, we changed access to Shady Hollow. Originally two entrances for fire ingress and egress to the property, and then we moved it down to one to provide even less of an impact to the street. In addition, the concern with traffic coming into church at a faster rate. To help address any potential concerns on Shady Hollow, we proposed a turn lane into the site. Based on the limited amount of traffic that's being generated for this church -- less-than-300-seat church. The turn lane is something that we're -- that we're proposing to do to help with traffic. That's not necessarily something that would be required for the project. So in addition, regarding the buffering for the project, we came in here today proposing and happily offering additional buffer material to help ensure that we are fitting into the community as best we can. You know, the church's goal here is to come in and be a member of the community, as they have been the last two years they've operated, and they're looking to build this location as a home for their community and help improve the community with also improving that corner which is right off of Immokalee Road. We are property right on Immokalee Road, which is November 20, 2025 Page 37 of 48 currently being expanded potentially to a six-lane highway. So one, you know, as we were discussing it, you know, Wilson being there came up. And we understand if we were here today talking about something maybe further down the street on the corner of Wilson and Shady Hollow, we understand that that would be a lot to ask. However, with this being right off Immokalee Road, with the expansions that are currently occurring to Immokalee Road, you know, one of our thoughts is that this does fit within the growing community and within the growing area, and it fits -- it fills a need for this area that does have a lack of churches. Other than that, we have -- the church has proposed limiting themselves to only Wednesday operation and to only Sunday operation for limited hours. They're trying their best to fit within the community here and be a member of the community, not a nuisance to the community. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Commissioner McLeod. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Yeah. I think I have -- I have question -- not "I think." I have questions with regard to transportation, traffic. I was hoping Mike could come up to the podium. MR. DELATE: Good morning, Commissioner. It may be best that Jim Banks, our traffic consultant -- oh, I'm sorry, the other Mike. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Oh, yes, yes. Sorry. No, no, no. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: No, no. No, no. The other Mike. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Mike Sawyer. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: We've got a lot of Mikes around here. No, no, sir. You can have a seat. Thank you. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Every Mike came up. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Every Mike's up here. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Later? May we ask a question later? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Well, we've closed the public comment, but I may call you back up. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Okay, thank you. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Hello. MR. SAWYER: Good morning. For the record, Mike Sawyer. COMMMISSIONER McLEOD: Thank you, Mike. I have three questions for you. When is Immokalee scheduled to be a six-lane highway? MR. SAWYER: Okay. In this particular case, right now it is listed as a critical need in our LRTP both in -- the existing 2045 as well as the upcoming 2050. It is currently looked at going from two- to a four-lane separated facility in this location. COMMMISSIONER McLEOD: At what time, I'm sorry; the scheduled time? MR. SAWYER: Right now it isn't -- we don't have a date as far as when the improvement is actually going to occur. What it is, it's on our LRTP, the Long-Range Transportation Plan, as a need currently and that it is going to be going from a two-lane to a four-Lane separated facility. MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi. And I can help out a little bit as well. When Mike says, "The project's on the Long-Range Transportation Plan," it means it's outside of your Capital Improvement Element, your five- and your 10-year program. So it is beyond 10 years. The early -- I mean, it's -- it's definitely beyond 10 years before this road is going to be contemplated or constructed. So there is at least 10 years before the road would be anticipated. And based upon funding, funding availability could dictate that it could be even longer before the project gets started. COMMMISSIONER McLEOD: And you're saying even from a two- to a four-lane, or to the maximum six? MR. BOSI: Expansion beyond what it is today, to a four-lane. November 20, 2025 Page 38 of 48 COMMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. And then, Mike, there was a concern about that island that happens before -- on -- COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: 41st. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Is it 41st? Wait. Here's my map. Okay. Yeah, 41st. So you have that island in front of there and you have to go all the way up to Shady Hollow and then turn around to do. Why is that? MR. SAWYER: Oftentimes when we've got a divided facility that -- you know, such as the one south where Immokalee is divided, you know, two lanes on both sides, what we try and do is we try and condense the number or reduce the number of median openings just so we can continue having traffic flow in both directions and keep capacity on those roadways as long as we possibly can. The idea is, yes, we do encourage the use of U-turns at those locations as far as getting people in and out of the residential streets. COMMMISSIONER McLEOD: But would that change once we develop that area? MR. SAWYER: It certainly could change. Right now we just got through revising our access management and adopting FDOT standards as far as median openings, and we are now fully compliant with those standards. We also do have the potential of having deviations from those because we just introduced that deviation process. But generally speaking, we try and keep -- we try and keep those medians and those separations as far as we possibly can just so that those -- we get the most out of those roadways. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. We're trying to keep the capacity as far as we possibly can out into the future. Whenever we have the -- have more median openings, more separation, more conflict points, those are the times when your capacity on your roadways comes down. So we look at -- when we look at the capacity on a roadway, we look at the number of lanes, certainly, the configuration, is it separated or not, the number of traffic signals, and the median openings, and at that all goes into a formula that says, okay, in this particular length, from this point to this point, all of those things add up to this particular capacity, and you'll see that in the AUIR. All of the roadways there have a capacity, and it is based on that formula. And what we try and do is we try and keep as much of that capacity as we possibly can, because we keep eating it up, quite honestly. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Right. Yeah. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Is that capacity based on peak hour? MR. SAWYER: Yes, and peak direction, and peak direction. You've got to remember we have directions on all of our roadways. It's generally north and east in the p.m. COMMMISSIONER McLEOD: And, Mike, my last question is, so staff is recommending that there not be access on Immokalee. Can you -- MR. SAWYER: Correct. The reason -- COMMMISSIONER McLEOD: -- explain the thinking behind that? MR. SAWYER: Yeah. The reason for that is that, again, it's the same type of thing: We don't have to have as -- we want to have as few conflict points on Immokalee, and having the access on the side street enables us to control that traffic better. Instead of having additional traffic coming directly onto Immokalee, we can control it better at the intersection. COMMMISSIONER McLEOD: It's just in my mind I'm thinking Immokalee's going to be this six-lane roadway, and it will eventually in my eyes have commercial up and down it. Is there an example here in the county where we did try to redirect traffic down a less trafficked roadway or less traveled roadway to avoid a commercial access from a major highway? MR. SAWYER: That's generally what we try and do in all cases. We try and get as much of the traffic onto secondary roadways instead of the primary whenever possible. COMMMISSIONER McLEOD: Do you have an example here in town where we -- where that's working well? MR. SAWYER: You can look at Livingston where you have eliminated access all up and November 20, 2025 Page 39 of 48 down Livingston. COMMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: 951 as well. MR. SAWYER: As opposed to Pine Ridge. If you look at the number of conflict points that we've got on Pine Ridge -- it's an older roadway. It's still six lanes. But if you compare that to Livingston, you'll experience a much different condition, much safer, and still retaining as much of that capacity on that potential roadway as possible. COMMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. That's very interesting. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Mike, what staff reviewed, was there any -- was there any consideration for the Audubon park at the end, the traffic that's generated from that? MR. SAWYER: At this point, no. What we look at when we look at these requests is the trips that are generated by this particular use, and we look at what the capacity is on the adjacent roadways, on the ones that we track -- not the public road -- or the secondary roadways. What we look at is the primaries that we all keep track of that are the ones that are real critical for everybody. When it comes to the SDP, then it's a much deeper dive into the actual trips that the use is actually generating and how those are going to operate on those roadways. So if there are needs for additional turn lanes, if there is a need to extend an existing turn lane, those will all come out with the SDP. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Commissioner Shea. COMMISSIONER SHEA: This is a tough one for me. I was out there, and I'm very concerned. First of all, your traffic studies are done on peak hour. This particular application presents a totally different issue to me, which was with the Rookery. So we have two nonpeak-hour peak uses happening potentially at the same time. I'm very worried about any traffic calming getting out onto Immokalee for just the residents, much less having, you know, the church services and the Rookery happening at the same time. I'm looking for some comfort. Because you keep saying you've studied it -- and we do study it. We study it for the good of the whole, but we're not studying it for the good of the residents, because we're not looking at what is the true busiest time and the most -- probably most unsafe condition where you have a lot of cars leaving at the same time. So I'm -- I'm kind of confused in my mind which way to go with that. I'm very worried about what they're worried about. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Can I jump in and throw a little math into this? COMMISSIONER SHEA: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: The Rookery has roughly 50,000 visitors a year. That's a thousand a week. It's about 140, 150 a day. This church is proposing about 140, 150, once they get built out, during that short, call it, two-hour time frame for maybe the early morning mass and another two-hour time frame at maybe an 11 o'clock mass, whatever their schedule is actually going to be. The Rookery at the end, if it's, easy numbers, 150 people for the day, I don't think all that 150 are going to take place within those first few hours. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. But we do have a concentration of traffic use on a Sunday morning. Wednesday evening I'm not too worried about because probably traffic for the Rookery will be diminished by the time the 6 o'clock mass takes place, so that's not bad. And the other comment, a couple of years ago, 10 years ago, whatever it was, Rookery was at 35,000 in a year which, obviously, is roughly 80 cars a day coming to visit it. And I don't want this to be a negative comment against the Rookery and the nature. But at what point would you tell them you can't allow any more visitors because we don't want any more traffic on the road? It's just something to think of for concentration of traffic and where you're allowing the traffic to be the origination from, the church or people coming and going to the Sanctuary, Rookery. It's a tough call, but this is concentrated within a couple of hours maybe twice a day on November 20, 2025 Page 40 of 48 Sunday, and a couple hours one -- on Wednesday evenings which will probably not affect it at all, or very minimal. It almost sounds to me that residents on Shady Hollow are more concerned with people going to the Sanctuary than the church because that continues to increase. And what can be done about that? MR. RASMUSSEN: No, it's the intersection. It's the intersection. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Right. And the only way to get there is off of Immokalee down Shady Holly. MR. RASMUSSEN: It's the intersection -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Okay. So just simple math, we're talking about 150 cars for the two-, three-, four-hour period on a Sunday morning. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Trying to get on Immokalee -- trying to get on Immokalee Road. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: I would say 50 percent of that weekly -- that weekly traffic is going to be on Saturday and Sunday, and then I'd say 75 percent of that is going to be between 7 and 12 in the morning because it's just -- it's too hot to -- I go there every weekend. So it's just too hot to walk after 12 o'clock. So I see the traffic. I know -- I live -- live on Rookery Lane, so I border the Rookery, so -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Okay. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: -- everything they're saying is pretty valid. I think -- I like churches. Churches are great. I think this is the wrong location for a good project. I think the -- there's other locations out there. There's one across the street. I just -- this is a residential street -- we're just putting a church on a residential street, and to increase the traffic on a residential street is not fair, in my opinion, to the existing neighbors. I felt -- you know, I felt sad when -- I mean, when Ms. Rasmussen -- I'm butchering your name -- said that the only 10 percent -- there's only a 10 percent chance of change once that white sign goes up. I -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I was once voted -- I voted no more than I voted yes, so don't worry, I don't think that's really all there. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: But no, I'm just -- I can't support this project because it's just not the right location for the right -- for the right -- I support the project, but just not for this location. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Are we in discussion now? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: We're in discussion. And to be honest with you, there's a ton of projects -- that stat might be correct with the Board, but what statistic that's not out there is how many projects don't come to Planning Commission because staff interacts and is able to talk about them and tell them it's not going to work here and go through why. So, Mike, go ahead. MR. BOSI: And just to provide -- I'm not sure how that number was derived upon, but I can tell you that the majority of petitions that go to the Planning Commission leave the Planning Commission with additional conditions of approval, whether it be in the PUD or whether it be in the conditional use. So that 10 percent really maybe is about get ultimately denied, but in terms of what modified, every -- the majority of petitions that come before you will leave with additional conditions imposed within the PUD or additional conditions imposed within the conditions of approval based upon the testimony that you hear at the hearing from the individuals who are being affected by it. So take comfort in that. I think it was about denial compared to improvements to the project based upon the concerns that have been expressed by individuals who live in closer proximity. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I'm going to go to Commissioner Shea next, but I just wanted to ask you real quick, Golden Gate Estates residential, you develop a lot and put up a home, you can only clear 40 percent and retain 60 as wooded, roughly, approximately? November 20, 2025 Page 41 of 48 MR. BOSI: As open space, yes. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Yes, okay. Forty for your home, and then 60 is natural. That's kind of -- okay. Go ahead, Commissioner Shea. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Since we're in discussion, I just want to support Mike's opinion. I think -- I just don't feel right about this. I think this has more of a negative effect on -- I always try to balance community benefit versus neighborhood effect. I think the neighborhood effect caused mainly because it's on the street where the Rookery is, I think -- and the -- and some of the highway improvements on Immokalee could be 10, 20 years out, because you have plenty of capacity on Immokalee. I'm worried about the safety of getting on and off Immokalee. So for that reason, I think there are better locations as well. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Commissioner Colucci. COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: While traffic is an issue, that's not my issue, that's not my big issue. My big issue is we're continually asked to balance between development and rural preservation. On this one, I'm sorry, I just come down in favor of preserving what we have when I think there are other places this church could be located. That's all I have to say. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Well, I think -- I think if we -- you know, there was a comment, is it essential service, I do think churches are essential. That's a given. Is it for a neighborhood center? You could -- you could argue that it's close to the new Publix and everything that's going in, which could be -- THE COURT REPORTER: Chair, can you get on your mic. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I'm sorry. I apologize. And then adjacent to -- you know, was it nonresidential use? I mean, there's a lot of points you could argue here. The issue that I have is if it was going to fit with the rural character, then 60 percent of this lot would stay woods. If it was connected to Immokalee Road versus a residential street, I also think that it would be a considerable use. But when you look at what the residents -- and I always go back to what the residents bought into. You bought into a single-family lot on a rural street, and that was the intention. It was never the intention -- if so, it would have been -- you would have had commercial out front. I did want to ask Mike, on that -- the future land use that went in, is it conditional use along Immokalee Road on that now, or is it still just Estates? MR. BOSI: No, it's still Estates, and part of -- we are going to engage within the -- an update to the Rural Golden Gate Estates Master Plan starting sometime in 2026 at the direction of the Board of County Commissioners, and part of that discussion is going to be identifying appropriate locations, expansions of existing neighborhood centers, maybe new neighborhood centers, but also the aspect of opening the Golden Gate Estates potentially and asking the residents what their perspective is related to allowing for conditional uses when you're on a collector or an arterial road, because if you look at the southern portion of Immokalee Road from this parcel, you see a transition of Randall -- or you see the 47 acres -- the curb. You see some of recent commercialization being added to these areas. And I think that's an improvement in bringing goods and services in closer proximity to some of the residents, but it most certainly is an area of transition. And at six lanes -- at six lanes, is it appropriate to have a single-family -- to have a single-family home that has access points to Immokalee Road, access on Immokalee Road? That doesn't -- you know, there are some folks that may feel they're comfortable living in those conditions. Other folks would feel that maybe a nonresidential use would be more appropriate, whether it be commercial or institutional, such as a church or other areas. We need to engage the community in those conversations because there is a transition happening within this area. If you also recall, the school bus barn that was for the school district, that's just a couple -- or that's no more than a quarter of a mile to the north of this facility that we're talking about. But I do recognize the issue of the Rookery facility at the end adding additional trips to this November 20, 2025 Page 42 of 48 local road that normally would not be part of the equation. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I mean, even the houses abutting Collier Boulevard are on a six-lane, and they turn out of their driveway onto Collier Boulevard, everything south from Vanderbilt all the way down to Golden Gate Parkway. So it's doable, and that's just how it's been. I mean, before that was expanded, it was a larger dirt road back to their homes. But anyway. Commissioner McLeod. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Yeah. I just wanted to make a point. It was noted that perhaps there's a better site for this church down the road on Immokalee, and that was not convincing to me. So you're moving it from one lot to another but along Immokalee. What has convinced me, though, is the conflicts with the timing of the church and the visits to the Sanctuary. So I had the same concerns as Mike and Paul, then, with this site location. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Well, I also have -- I also have safety concerns when people have shooting berms in their backyard. You know, we've got a charter school that's force-placing themselves in the middle of a residential shooting zone right now, and every house around that charter school have shooting berms. So that's why I was asking if you can hear gunfire, because I guarantee you that other people are shooting. Yes, they're responsible. Their ammunition is not expelled and going through the trees, but at the same time, that's not something I even want to question. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Quick question, if I can, for Mike. Why is this lot so much bigger, or am I not understanding it correctly? This is, what, 4.8 acres, something like that, and the other lots on the road are two and a quarter? MR. BOSI: For the most part, it is about two and a quarter. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Yeah. Was this lot intended to go more commercial, or it just happens to be a larger -- MR. BOSI: It just happens to be a lot that was never subdivided to the minimum two and a quarter acres that is required -- or that's the minimum lot size within the Estates. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Okay. MR. BOSI: There's no -- there was no directive or guidance within the Growth Management -- or Golden Gate Area Master Plan or the LDC that required these lots to be larger and not be subdivided. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Gotcha. And when the general maps are written for entrances on the lots, this particular large lot would never have had it going onto Immokalee. It would have always come onto Shady Hollow, correct? MR. BOSI: This lot, with the access -- with a local access road, would have -- even a residential property would gain access to a local road, but the lot above it, the lot above that, those two lots that are kind of sandwiched in, on the -- on the west side, they have to gain access to Immokalee Road. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: To Immokalee, because there is no other exit? MR. BOSI: There is the only -- that's the only access to the transportation system is the -- COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Right. They're landlocked. MR. BOSI: Yes. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Okay. All right. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. So we'll close discussion. So if anyone would like to make a motion on PL20240013798 and its companion, PL20240012938, please do so. COMMISSIONER SHEA: I'll make a motion that we reject both of them on the grounds of the discussion that you've heard previously. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: I'll second that. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: All in favor? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. November 20, 2025 Page 43 of 48 CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Aye. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Motion carries. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Against? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Against, PL -- carries against. COMMISSIONER SHEA: No, I'm confused. Did we vote unanimously? COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Yes. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Oh, okay. MR. BOSI: And that was the clarification, was it unanimous with unanimous recommendation of denial? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Yes. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Correct. MR. BOSI: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: All right. Moving on, so we have PL20 -- Terri, keep going? THE COURT REPORTER: (Nods head.) CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: This is going to be a quick one. Terri's saying you can keep going. She's running the show. I'm just here. ***PL20240008204, the Milestone Tower conditional-use southwest corner of Everglades Boulevard North and 58th Avenue Northeast. Sorry. Start with disclosures, if I may, first. MS. LOCKHART: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Staff materials only. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Staff materials only. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Staff materials. Oh, I'm sorry. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Punch bug. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Patience. Staff materials only. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: We'll ask Commissioner Colucci when he comes back. All those wishing to speak on the matter or public comment, please raise -- stand, raise your hand, 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 SCHUMACHER: Good afternoon. MS. SOLIK: Good afternoon. Mary Solik, 121 South Orange Avenue, Suite 1500, Orlando, Florida. I am legal counsel for Milestone Towers. This is a proposal for a monopole tower in the Estates district. And Milestone Towers is a Virginia-based cell tower developer. I like to say that companies like Milestone are the developers of vertical real estate. They build wireless towers and then lease the space on the towers to the licensed carriers in the marketplace. This is 160-foot monopole tower. Verizon is the anchor tenant, but we also have T-Mobile committed to install on this tower. It's a little bit unusual to get two carriers out of the gate on a tower, and that is a strong indication of the need in the community for expanded wireless service. This is the -- that was a really cool arrow thing I saw before. Does that work -- MR. BOSI: Touch anywhere. MS. SOLIK: Okay. This technology is new to me. Right here is our tower location. We're on the southwest corner of 58th Avenue Northeast November 20, 2025 Page 44 of 48 and Everglades Boulevard. It's on a 2.65-acre parcel. This is Everglades Boulevard here running north and south. These are the Verizon existing proposed and proposed without propagation maps that we were required to submit as part of our application. Unfortunately, we did not -- we weren't able to get a Verizon rep here today. We will have a Verizon rep at the BOCC hearing. But I've been doing cell tower zoning work for 30 years, and I play an RF engineer on TV quite often, so I'll walk you through this. The blue -- the blue dot is the proposed location. The green dot -- the green areas that surround yellow dots are locations where Verizon has existing sites on air. The yellow dots are proposed Verizon sites that are coming on air. There's a new tower up here, there's a new tower that's been approved down here, and then Verizon is proposing a small cell installation that's in permitting right now, I believe, along Oil Well Road. So this map here shows the existing coverage when you put all of those other proposed Verizon facilities on air. And we still have red areas. Green area -- green is good; that's reliable coverage. Red area is unreliable coverage. So our blue dot here is right in the center of this area that has unreliable coverage, and this third slide is the addition of the proposed tower, and the red goes to green. This is the T-Mobile Verizon -- T-Mobile propagation maps, and Olga Maffeo is here with me today. She is the T-Mobile RF engineer. So I'd her to come up and walk you through this. I should also have introduced Matt Forkas. He's sitting over there. He's with Milestone. He's the project engineer. He flew down from D.C. for this particular hearing. So, Olga, if you want to come up and walk them through what you've got going on out there. MS. MAFFEO: Good morning. I'm Olga Maffeo. I work for T-Mobile, live in Boca Raton, Florida. So the existing coverage in this area is very poor, as Mary explained, not only for Verizon but also for T-Mobile customers. So at this point we're trying to deploy or trying to work with other tower companies to provide service -- reliable service to this area, and this is one of the towers we are trying to support and make sure that we are collocated as a second carrier. So blue is no service. We do a little more explanation. We have different levels. We put more than Verizon does. But no service, and then we have poor, moderate, and reliable. The idea is to have really reliable coverage for all customers in the different areas that only provides in-building and outdoor coverage at the same time. Right now the in-building coverage is basically not in this -- in this areas of about a mile and a half, and that's what the tower is going to provide reliable coverage for. And the second -- the second map shows the coverage with this particular tower, and we also have other -- other plan, and the third map shows the other towers that we're trying to collocate with, too, so, you know, to make the whole area more reliable for every customer that we have. MS. SOLIK: And, Olga, is this -- is this down here -- this is the one that's south of Oil Well Road that's been approved, the same one that Verizon's going to be -- it's preparing to install on. MS. MAFFEO: That's correct. MS. SOLIK: So that's one that's already in the works. So this is the proposed tower location up here. Here is our site design. This is a 2.65-acre parcel. It has been subdivided from a five-acre parcel. Our landlord is also the owner of the property to the west, and that is the remainder of the five acres, and I believe he plans to build a struc -- a residential home on the western property that's not shown in this map. So our site's 2.65 acres, meets the minimum of 2.25 acres for Estates and the minimum in Estates to put a cell tower on. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: So are you leasing this, or are you purchasing this lot? MS. SOLIK: We lease the tower site. November 20, 2025 Page 45 of 48 CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: But you own the property? MS. SOLIK: No. Our landlord owns -- Evo Builders -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Oh, so the five acres is five acres. It's not subdivided? MS. SOLIK: Evo Builders has subdivided what -- you see here -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I'm just talking about from, like, a property tax position, like -- it's not two owners. Is it still one owner of the lot? MS. SOLIK: It's one owner of the lot. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: All right. That's fine. Thank you. MS. SOLIK: But your Property Appraiser will carve out -- once this is done, the Property Appraiser will carve out a little square on here because that will be taxed differently, and Milestone is responsible for that different taxation. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Got it. MS. SOLIK: So it's a 160-foot tower that code required that we be our tower height away from the property lines. We meet the setbacks all directions: 161 to the north -- or 161 to the east, 160 to the north, 161.7 to the south, and 181 to the west. This is our -- this area here is our native vegetation preservation area required under the code, 10 percent of the lot. The lot's heavily treed, and all of that other vegetation around here is all scheduled to remain. Like I said, the landowner owns the property, the 2.6 -- 2.25 acres to the west, and that's where he intends to build his home. The tower goes right in the center. The four carriers' ground equipment is located in here. It's proposed for an 8-foot fence that meets the code, and the 10-foot-wide Schedule D landscape buffer around the base of the tower. We meet all of the code requirements for the performance criteria for towers. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: If I may ask just another question. I saw in the packet there will be no light on this tower. MS. SOLIK: Correct. Anything under 200 feet does not -- doesn't need a light. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Does not need a light, okay. Thank you. COMMISSIONER SHEA: So this tower doesn't collapse on itself because you have a -- MS. SOLIK: It does. Well, it has -- it has -- it will be designed to have a 25-foot-fall-zone radius, which is all within the compound. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Oh, okay. MS. SOLIK: And the -- they buckle -- exactly. They buckle over on themselves. And the engineering support letter for that determination was in your package. This is the design. It is a monopole. It's 160 feet to the top of the steel. It has a 4-foot lightning rod on the top. And then these are the proposed Verizon antennas at -- mounted at 155. The T-Mobile antennas will be at a center line of 145, and the tower will be capable of supporting two additional users, here and here. And here's our stone wall at the bottom, and that is a code requirement that you allow for collocation on the towers. I think we're only required to have three users, but it will be designed for four. And it will meet the needs of all of the licensed carriers in your marketplace. Community benefits, enhanced public safety. We're seeing numbers up close to 90 percent across Florida in terms of how many 911s calls come into your sheriff's departments for 911 service. It's approaching 90 percent come in from wireless phones. Increased economic activity, you know, benefits all of the user -- you know, all the devices the users want to use in their homes. It will add choices for connectivity out of the gate. We'll have two users that will be using the towers, so there will be enhanced service and consumer choice. And then once we -- once we get that tower in the air, I think you'll see the other carriers on there as soon as their budgets allow. And you heard a lot about Golden Gate Estates rural GMP policies today. Your county did adopt an amendment in 2019 to allow for communication towers in Golden Gate Estates. That is why you're seeing so many of these applications come in. We weren't allowed to get into this November 20, 2025 Page 46 of 48 community to provide service prior to this Comp Plan amendment. And I took this language here right from the staff report for the LDC amendment that was done to implement the Comp Plan change. And this -- that amendment apparently originated from the majority of residents surveyed, really requesting and needing enhanced service. So that's the end of my presentation. I have to say to you I was in Charlotte County yesterday, and I packed the house. And ironically, it was a cell tower on a church property. And we were the last item on the agenda, like today, and we got an approval, and the county security staff made the board members and our application team stay in the room for a while, and then they escorted all of us to our cars. So you should very much appreciate that I have not brought you an angry mob today. We sent out over 1,100 letters for our community meeting. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Did it pass? MS. SOLIK: With that, we would ask for the approval. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Did you win? MS. SOLIK: Yes, 3-1, 3-1. Yes. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Wow. MS. SOLIK: So we would ask for your recommendation today to the Board. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: So -- COMMISSIONER SHEA: Staff? CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Staff report. MR. BOSI: Mike Bosi, Planning and Zoning director. As contained in the staff report, staff is recommending approval. We've got a couple conditions, minor. The applicant, I believe, has agreed to those conditions. I would agree with them this is the reason why we amended the Golden Gate Area Master Plan to lift the conditional-use prohibitions specifically for communication towers. It's all the reasons why the applicant has indicated, emergency service connectivity. You know, it's just -- there was an inability to provide reliable service to the Estates. Now that we've allowed cell towers to be located within -- if you're adjacent to a collector or arterial road, we're seeing more and more towers, and you're seeing more and more coverage being propagated. And I will say, having two towers -- or two carriers on deck before the tower is even submitted does indicate that this tower will be of value to the community and will provide the increased communication ability and reliability, and staff is fully in support of it, and can answer any questions that you may have. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I'm not seeing any questions. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Oh, you're right, I'm sorry. Commissioner McLeod. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: I've been waiting. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I apologize. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: It's Mary, right? MS. SOLIK: Yes. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Mary, can you -- just out of curiosity, how do these types of projects get put together? Like, I see that Evo Builders is the owner of the land. Like, did you seek him out or -- MS. SOLIK: That's a very good question. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: -- do you partner together to come up with something like this? MS. SOLIK: That's a very good question. And I will tell you that we've probably been in this process for a year and a half, Matt, before we yet to hear. It takes a lot of -- there's a lot of runway before we get to a board hearing. We -- companies like Milestone start with the request from their client, their customer, Verizon, and Verizon says, "I need a tower, and I need it in this little quarter-mile search ring. I need it in this tiny little area. Go find me -- go build me a tower in that location." So we take that location, and then we look at your code, first of all, to see where we can do it, and then we start November 20, 2025 Page 47 of 48 approaching property owners. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Okay. MS. SOLIK: Now, in this particular instance, we have to be on 2.25 acres, and we have to be on an arterial or collector road, and that limited us to properties that fronted on Everglades Boulevard. So we start looking around, and then we start approaching landlords. And I've -- I told you I've been doing this for 30 years. We have an acronym that I kind of developed. Buildable -- BLZ, buildable, leasable, zonable. So we find a site that's not all wetlands, that's got access, that doesn't have an eagle's nest on it or something else that would prohibit us from putting a tower on it, and then we have to find a willing landlord. And this landlord has given us the dead center of his property. That's unusual, you know, because, really, we've taken the utility out of his property, and then we have to find something that's zonable. So we have a lot of different layers that overlay the starting point, which is the technology. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: And then there's been three or four different tower requests that have come before us in this last year, and there's a different agent for each of these requests. MS. SOLIK: Different company? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Yeah. MS. SOLIK: Yeah. When I started this, all of the carriers built their own towers. I must have done 300 towers for T-Mobile all over the state of Florida. And then the tower companies -- or the wireless carriers decided that -- that infrastructure was not their core business, and a lot of them sold their portfolios, and then a new industry sprung up, and that is the -- like I said, the vertical real estate guys, the companies like Milestone. So they're out there trying to find -- you know, partnering with the carriers to do what's really kind of become a build-to-suit industry. So that's why you see different -- the carriers are all the same, but the companies are different. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Right. Okay. Great. Thank you. I guess I'll make a motion to approve. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Public comment? Any public comment? MS. SOLIK: Look at this. Whoa. MR. SABO: No -- CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: No public comment? MR. SABO: No public comment or angry mob. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: I think I got -- I think somebody's calling me from Charlotte County right now. Hold on. All right. So there's no -- we close. Now, for Board discussion, I'm just going to make a motion to approve as presented. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: I'll second. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Unless there's any -- there's a second. Is there any discussion? COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Michelle, any comments? COMMISSIONER McLEOD: No. Thank you for covering for me. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: All in favor? COMMISSIONER COLUCCI: Aye. COMMISSIONER SHEA: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER SPARRAZZA: Aye. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: Aye. COMMISSIONER McLEOD: Aye. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: It passes unanimously. MS. SOLIK: Thank you, all. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: Thank you. November 20, 2025 Page 48 of 48 All right. Great meeting, everybody. I'm going to go to church tonight and pray. Yeah, I don't think she needs security to get out. Mike will walk her out. All right. With that being said, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving, and we'll see you back here right before Christmas. COMMISSIONER PETSCHER: December 4th. CHAIRMAN SCHUMACHER: December 4th. Meeting adjourned. Have a great day. ******* There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 12:24 p.m. COLLIER COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION _________________________________________ JOE SCHMITT, CHAIRMAN These minutes approved by the Board on __1/15/2026___, as presented _____X_______ or as corrected _________. TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF VERITEXT BY TERRI L. LEWIS, RPR, FPR-C, COURT REPORTER AND NOTARY PUBLIC.