Southwest Florida Church of Christ requested a special exception for a religious facility and day care in an agriculture zoning district at the corner of Sandy Lane and Broadway Avenue East in Estero. The subject property is 2.18 acres, where a 12,000-square-foot facility will provide a 249-seat sanctuary and day care for 171 children.
RVi Planning Vice President of Planning Alexis Crespo presented the request at a public information meeting during Estero’s Planning, Zoning and Design Board meeting Tuesday night. No votes are taken at public information meetings, as the applicant is expected to return to the board.
The proposed church would function as a children’s day care for infants to age 5 and operate outside of church hours from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. weekdays.
“Something of note with something like a day care use is pickup, drop-off,” Crespo said. “The rules of the facility are that parents park and bring their children in, so this would not have those queuing lanes and stacked up traffic that you see with larger schools, where parents just let their kids hop out and run into the school. This is a much more controlled pickup and drop-off situation.”
Planning board member Jim Wallace expressed concern of stacking onto the road despite Crespo’s statement, with project engineer Tim Keene saying the issue was looked at.
“It’s like 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. is the drop-off period and 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. might be the pickup period depending on the parents schedule,” Keene said. “It’s very stretched out. It’s not like a single intense moment where everybody’s there. That’s why we didn’t think there was really a stacking problem here.”
Sandy Lane resident Patricia Janowski was concerned about the project’s surrounding uses and potential traffic leading to safety hazards. “Sandy Lane is not a road that we can use this infrastructure on,” she said. “The cars do not go 30 [mph], they are going 40-50 miles an hour down that road.”
The proposed day care is expected to be open to the public and not limited to church members, Southwest Florida Church of Christ Pastor Matt Newburg said.
The building is proposed for a single story on the southern property line, designed at the same scale as surrounding single-family homes. “[We’ll] then use that to block the sound of parking and day care-type uses that would be in the middle or northern portion of the site,” Crespo said.
A 3,800-square-foot playground is also proposed on-site, which will have two access points from Broadway Avenue East and Sandy Lane.
A religious facility and a day care can be considered special exceptions, but village staff had concerns about the proposed number of children permitted when considering the surrounding neighborhood.
“When you look at the day care special exception in the code, I think they have been designed in agriculture zoning for smaller day cares, where you’re looking at maybe 12 or 20 kids in a house,” Estero Community Development Director Mary Gibbs said. “I think that’s the genesis of the special exceptions for day care. This is a little concerning that it’s kind of a commercial enterprise, and you’re looking at a Village Neighborhood 1, kind of a low-density residential area.”
Gibbs expects the intensity and compatibility of the proposal to be the main issues with the request.
The concern regarding the intensity of the use will be worked on by the applicant before returning to the board, Crespo said.
