Planning, Zoning, and Appeals Board

Planning, Zoning, and Appeals Board — February 18, 2026 - 5:40 PM

a copy of the code section about lobbyists is available at the city clerk's office or online at municode. Com any person making a presentation, formal request or petition to the board concerning real property must make the disclosures required by the city code and writing a copy of the city code section is available at the office of the city clerk or online@municode.Com. The city requires that anyone requesting action by the board to disclose before the hearing any consideration provided or committed to anyone for agreement to support or withhold objection to the requested action pursuant to city code section 2-8 any person MAY be heard by the board through the chair for not more than two minutes on any proposition before the board unless modified by the chair. Any person with a disability requiring assistance, auxiliary aids or services for this meeting MAY notify the hearing board's liaison. When addressing the board, the member of the public must first state their name, address and what item will be spoken about if the item is being continued or rescheduled, the opportunity to be heard MAY be at such later date before the board takes action on such item. A member of the public MAY also submit comments via the city's online comment form. The comments submitted through the comment form have been and will be distributed to the board members and city administration so the board can consider the comments prior to taking any action. Additionally, the online comment form will remain open during the meeting to accept comments and distribute to the board members up until the chair closes public comment. All comments received will be included in the public record and will be considered by the board prior to action. Items shall proceed according to section 7.1.1.4 of the miami 21 zoning ordinance, the members of the board shall disclose any ex parte communications to remove the presumption of prejudice pursuant to florida statute section 2622 86.0115 and section 7.1.4.5 of the miami 21 zoning ordinance. Staff will briefly present each item to be heard for applications requiring board approval, the applicant will present its application if the applicant agrees with the recommendation, the board MAY proceed to its deliberation and decision. The applicant MAY also waive the right to an evidentiary hearing on the record. The order of presentation shall be set forth in miami 21 and the city code. Anyone wishing to appeal any decision made by this board for any matter considered at this meeting MAY need a verbatim record of the item. A video of this meeting MAY be requested at the office of communications or viewed online at miami comm. The city published an agenda as well as included in the notice of the public, the items and topics that will be discussed at this meeting. The public has been given the opportunity to provide public comment during the meeting and within reasonable proximity and time before the meeting. The public comment options established and provided for this meeting comply with section 286.011 for the florida statutes as the city has provided different public comment options for members of the public to indicate their support, opposition or neutrality on the items and topics to be discussed at this meeting. Board members are you comfortable with all these notice provisions set forth in these uniform rules of procedure we've established? Yes. >> thank you. MAY we stand for the pledge of allegiance? [Laughter] To the flag. >> of the united states of america. One nation under GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. If you intend to testify in this proceeding, MAY you remain standing and raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm the testimony you will give will be the truth and nothing but the truth. Thank you. You MAY be seated. I'll go ahead and call attendance. Calling chair adam gerstein present. Thank you. Calling member andre s lopez present. Thank you. Calling member mario bailey present. Thank you. Calling member joseph corral thank you. Calling member maria paula de corolla's present. Thank you. Calling member javier lopez calling member paul man present. Thank you. Calling member ellen metoyer present. Thank you calling member joshua patinkin calling member arthur passoff calling member manuel vadillo thank you. I do have a request for absence waiver by member javier lopez. Move to approve second all in favor? Also we do have quorum. Thank you. Thank you. And as of 6:41 P.M. Uh, chair, there were no online public comments. MAY we close the online public comment? Thank you. >> yes. Okay. >> um. >> yeah. >> are there. >> are there any changes to oh yeah. Sorry. Yeah forgot about the minutes. Any minutes? I don't think so. Yeah. Um so oh yeah there were sorry sorry. Uh. >> through the chair. We do have minutes to approve. >> yes. Sorry. Yes yes. So is. >> there yeah. I'll move to approve them both both JULY 16th and OCTOBER 15th. Okay I'll second. Second. >> okay. All in favor? Great. Thanks. Okay. So, um, are there any deferrals? There are no deferrals at this time. Okay, great. >> thanks. Calling ab one file id uh oh. Excuse me 17940a resolution of the miami planning, zoning and appeals board recommending to the miami city commission approval of an ordinance amending ordinance number 13114 the zoning ordinance of the city of miami, florida, as amended miami 21 code by amending article six titled supplemental regulations specifically section 6.1 titled intent and exclusions table 13 to modify the permitting process for food service establishments and alcohol service establishments and by amending section 6.3 titled commercial uses to clarify and update outdoor dining regulations and to allow outdoor dining by right and specified locations and when scale and design criteria are met, making findings containing a severability clause and providing for an effective date. Thank you melanie appreciate that. Good evening. My name is mousie watson. I'm the chief of land development. I'm really really excited to be here today and to present our outdoor dining legislation reform. We've been working on it for a long time and we're finally bringing it before you. Before I go into the proposed legislation, I just want to give you a program update. We've brought in several pieces of legislation through the piece and so we just want to give a little update. Um, we've made solid progress across the reform program. There's several items like personal wireless micro dwelling units and educational forum that have already been approved by city commission um, which is showing a really meaningful need and momentum in this in this program that we're implementing. Other reforms are actively moving through the legislative process and there are several key items that are also scheduled for the upcoming uh, review today we're talking about outdoor dining. We want to do some reform to the midtown class two permits and most portion of the miami 21 code and overall the aim is just to advance um, the legislation and make things easier for businesses, for our residents and even for staff. So currently oh sorry. Jumping ahead. So the um we had a workshop number six back in OCTOBER and um graham did an update in JANUARY before the city commission updating them on where we are in terms of the reform right now we're in the process of cleaning up our um, land use table that I presented before you I think last month what we're going to do is make sure that those categories that we've put together are fully aligned and then we're going to the planning director is going to publish a determination with the uses today we're here before you about the outdoor dining and then we plan on coming like I said again with some reform ideas for our class two permits and also an overarching entitlement program. And what we mean by that is that, you know, sometimes when we're looking at our warrant criteria might not be very clear. So we're using this as an opportunity to kind of clarify those criteria as well as if there's modifications. Sometimes it can get a little bit fuzzy on what can be modified what cannot be modified. We're hoping to, you know, make modifications that make that easier for applicants as well as staff and remove ambiguity. So currently and this is like a lot of text on the on the slide but the most important part is is that in order to get an outdoor dining warrant by right right now you have to meet like six criteria all of them and one of them is being in the dda which is downtown. We know that a lot of businesses are not downtown, so that knocks out a majority of the businesses that are able to access outdoor dining by right. So our proposed amendments. The objective of this as I explained is to provide some clarity, consistency and fairness on how our outdoor dining legislation is applied throughout the city. We want to make sure that it's aligning with how restaurants actually operate, and we want to make sure that we also are protecting our neighbors. We're here to modernize the outdoor dining standards so that we can create vibrant, thriving small businesses and neighborhoods. You know that outdoor dining activates streets and it puts what was her name jake jane addams eyes on the street. So in the beginning of this process we started back in JULY of 2025 um the overall overall reform steering committee and our last meeting was in OCTOBER but specifically for outdoor dining. We've been having a lot of community outreach, a lot of meetings. So our initial kickoff meeting was in AUGUST 21st and then we had an internal working group, uh, which you're seeing the picture of we did a presentation before the miami river commission which they provided recommendations that we've included into the legislation. And then we had two other meetings in JANUARY with stakeholders one the last meeting that we actually had we were able to kind of test out our ideas and say, hey, you're thinking about submitting an application with this work for you or not? It didn't work for them but they were excited to hear about the changes. So here's some data we were asked in land development to take a look back from today and see how many outdoor dining warrants were actually approved. This is the list of the outdoor dining and there's 24 of them. But we'll just admit you know that a lot of the smaller scale outdoor dining establishments they're going to require a warrant currently warrant process is taking too long. There are often extended periods in the review and there's a need for more um, more outdoor dining to be by right. So here's the proposals we're excited about this okay so some of these general standards are still the same like you know with outdoors um with the food service establishments and outdoor dining is only allowed when you have a food service establishment or alcohol service establishment. So that means that you just can't have some random outdoor dining that's not connected to those types of services. Um, in this particular um our purview is on the private property and we're trying to understand where that dining is and how it um, you know, so essentially if it's on the ground floor then you know that that's less disruptive. But once it gets to the roofs and stuff like that that's going to automatically be by right I mean sorry that you would have to go through warrant if it's above the ground floor. Um. Another important key point is that any of the furnishing, any of the furnishings or any of the things that are associated with the outdoor dining need to be able to be removed within 24 hours. And this is specific to the parking because if you have like a let's say you have a cafe and you only have inside you might have like maybe four four well two tables and four chairs let's say if you have like eight tables and 24 seats outside you would have to it would trigger parking. So that's basically what this is saying. In addition we also are considering the placement of the outdoor dining. So there has to be a distance of six feet from the back of the curb to the outdoor dining so that we can have that flow of pedestrian movement that we're looking to encourage with the outdoor dining. And again we're also concerned with the noise. We want to make sure that we're you know, if we're approving something that we're hopefully um adding a business that's going to be a good neighbor. So we do look at things like maybe like where the speakers are placed or what kind of noise can come from the establishment. So this is the part we've all been waiting for. This is the major change. We are adding four by right conditions to the outdoor dining [Laughter] I wish I had like a drum roll I feel like I should have one but I will thank you. All right so first all four of these first criteria have to be met by any of the by right which means they have to be wholly within the first and second layer. So we're seeing these colors you're seeing the first layer in green the second layer in in like a yellow and the third layer in orange. So anything in the green and the yellow is within the first or second layer. And that's where you can have by right potentially outdoor dining it must be on the ground level I've heard you know I did have a community member that I met with that was very, very adamant about the fact that anything above the ground floor needed to be approved. Um, we see sometimes you know, I see on instagram you might hear like buildings that are part you know, like having parties and stuff like that and you're hearing the noise reverberating. We want to be sensitive to that and make sure that we're not creating by right approvals that would facilitate that. The outdoor dining cannot be across from at3 residential zone to be by right, and it cannot be located within mimo or bisque biscayne boulevard historic district. So these four criteria are applicable to all of the by right. But then we're going to start going into our breakdown. So as I stated we've broken down the scale and the location by four major groups. You have micro we have small we have medium and we have large and I'll go into it in more detail but you can kind of see with the pictures of the chairs like how the scale and the intensity or the amount of chairs is increasing as we're getting from micro to large. So the first category that we have is is micro. Now there's only two besides the four there's only two other criteria. It has to be less than 1010 seats and it cannot abut a t3 or t4 r. So if you look at the diagram you you oh I'm sorry and I forgot a key point that it can only be located on the principal front because that's what we want to activate right. So this is a diagram of that. Okay. When the outdoor seating is not abutting a t3 or t4 r then the restaurateur can have seating on the secondary frontage so they can have and on the first I mean on the front primary frontage and on the secondary frontage. This is a rendering of what it looks like. You can see it's a less lesser intensity you know lesser chairs you know just pretty calm kind of area not creating a lot of activity with micro. So the next opportunity for by right is the small size and this has a specific distance requirement of 150ft from either t3 or t4 r and you can see that kind of with the red buffering. So you can have the seating along the the principal frontage here because it's not abutting those two um transects at the top which is the t4 and t3. Here's a rendering of what that might look like. You're seeing a little bit more intensity a little bit more potential for activity. The third opportunity for by right is a medium size which is from 21 seats. Oh I'm sorry I think I skipped one part so for small it's between 11 and 20 seats. For medium it starts at this is the ranges from 21 to 40 seats. And this also has a distance requirement as well from t3 to t4 r but we're just not communicating that in this particular image. But as you can see the opportunity for outdoor dining around the block is created more in this scheme. In addition to in addition to the fact that we're opening it up in. We are. Hold on let me back. So in addition to the fact that we're opening up the ability to have 21 seats to 40 seats in these particular areas if you fall within a tod, a transit corridor, a dda um, our our central business district, our specialty districts that are located in chapter four or the d1 or the d2 zone, you potentially have the ability to go by right if you're meeting the other criteria. So that's for medium. So medium has the ability to you know have 21 to 40 seats. It has a distance requirement. And in addition if you fall within these specialty corridors um you're able to go by right. This is like the first opportunity in the well this is the only how do I say this all of the other schemes that I provided for you for outdoor dining they're not location specific, right? You can have them anywhere within the city. This one is. And this is another rendering of what that could look like. All right so large is anything above 40. Sorry what was the that chart that just was that. I'm going to get there I just was trying I was trying to get to large and I so I apologize but I'll get there. So if if it's above 40 seats then it's not going to be able to go by right and this is following this the typical procedure that we do every day now you know you have to get a building permit you have to get a q you'll have to um go through the warrant process and your application will be judged through article seven. And then this is important to um that we wanted to clarify is that just because you are having outdoor dining you might have alcohol serve service as well if if a business expands its outdoor dining that doesn't automatically mean that you're improving or increasing your alcohol service area. So we wanted to make that very clear. And then we have some minor updates as well. Um for the food service establishment section of article six we're clarifying this and making it compatible with state uh state requirements right now in our code it's saying that this size is um should be a minimum of 2500ft2 where it should be 2000 and then for the alcohol service establishments we're making sure that that's cross-referenced with chapter four of our muni code. So I know you're probably thinking like what's the impact of this or you know, are we just throwing things at the wall? Are we really going to make a difference? And we're feeling like it's a good start. We still need to you know, do some research and if it gets passed see how it's implemented we can monitor it. But like I said what we did is we looked as if today a year back from today if we had 24 applications how many of them would have been approved by right. And so we did the exercise and we found that five out of the 24 would have been done by right which is a 21%. Removal rate of warrants that we would have had.. >> are these numbers days? Yes. >> thank you. >> yes during days and again we understand that there is room for improvement. Um that's why we're here and we're hoping to get these numbers you know we intend every day we work every day to get these numbers down. But this is just a little snapshot of potentially the impact that we would make. So thank you. Thank you. Um. Can I just mention one thing? Um I just wanted to give kudos to woodsy and her team for the amount of work they put into this. Um very happy to receive your feedback today and you know, continue the work uh, as we move forward. But you know, all the renderings were prepared by the city of miami. All the data that was supported supporting the presentation was prepared by her team. We got a lot of support from the office of zoning. We got a lot of stakeholder involvement. Um, we went about this the right way and I just wanted to give just take a moment before we get into the discussion say you know well good job to to that team. Thank great job. Thank you. >> first of all I love the presentation I understand the importance of activating streets. My only concern is the noise I know that we put chapter 36 but did you ever think about decoupling and so you get everything but the ability to add speakers and things of that nature um by getting it uh like as of right. So you're referencing the location of the speakers specifically. Speakers noise and things of that nature and the reason why. So I live in a building where um, there's a restaurant um, and like of course they're able to play music and things like that until about 11 every night and so depending I know like you put it on the first floor a lot of people will not be impacted but some still will be impacted. And so like I love the idea that you allow to have the restaurants and things of that nature outside or outdoor dining. But have you thought about decoupling the ability to amplify music outside and that way you kind of protect the people who live near those. I mean I'm thinking that's a part of our analysis as we have in number four letter h. Um, I think graham and I had talked about this a lot because we're maybe you know, um, to be frank with you, like a lot of the plans they might not have the speakers. So this is something that we have to kind of like that's where we're adding it into the code with h so that planners when they're looking at they're starting to consider like what the potential impact of the noise can be. Can I ask a question about the question to clarify are you saying like also the idea that maybe there'd be more by rights if they did not if they said we will not put speakers outside so it's not correct. >> is that what you want speakers? That's what I thought I was hearing you try to yeah yeah I. >> didn't. Understand right like right so maybe you say okay well there's no speakers it's just dining. So so does that change. It for the first time a general regulation around this we say that place outdoor refuse containers orientates outdoor speakers and locate ingress egress in a way that mitigates potential noise smell and visual ambient impacts on neighbors so you can place them indoors or outdoors provided that you meet this requirement. This is to help code especially as now we're going by right for a lot of things whereas before we were by warrant and by warrant you know we can get into the details of things. So there's a strike off a balance there if we want things to go fast and streamline through a right by right process, we really need to rely a little bit more on enforcement. If you want everything checked all the details, the location of speakers you know all the details. Then we bring it into a by warrant process and that adds more time. It creates an appeal process and so forth. So I think we've tried to capture it a little bit in terms of the general regulation by but also by still having you know the plans show where the speakers are if necessary. I think you bring up a good point on that on that note whether but his suggestion though is more like what about expanding by right if you say I will never put a speaker and then and so but then along those lines you know because that could be there is a there's a by right and there's a box checked on the application you know because you still need to see you. Right. And the queue is still going to reference that there is outdoor seating allowed and it would say speakers no speakers right. But what you brought up brings up a huge question that's kind of affects this whole conversation which is you say well we can look at it and we can put it in the warrant and that's sort of how we're going to be able to control it. I say not a chance because really at the end of the day the enforcement of anything in the city has to do with the people on the outside wearing badges. That's it. Okay. First of all. Well that's it but that's a really cool idea by the way. That's cool if if that's what you're saying I think that's an interesting could expand it. Yeah. >> a