LEESBURG, FL (352today.com) – The Leesburg City Commission voted unanimously 4-0 pm on Monday, Oct. 13, 2025 to deny GKO Devlopment’s request to annex their property into the city, along with a comprehensive plan amendment that would have changed zoning, allowing for 48 townhomes to be developed on a property, approximately 7.53 acres, located west of U.S. Hwy. 27 and south of the Florida Turnpike.
A capacity crowd was on hand, with a deep volume of residents from the Royals Highlands Community in attendance at the meeting.
Tom Daly from the Daly Design Group, landscape architects and urban planners from Orlando and Carolyn Haslam, Akerman, LLP, the attorney for the project, represented the applicant, the property owner GKO Development.
In September, the applicant made a PowerPoint presentation before the city commission and went through the presentation again on Monday so people would have an understanding of what was being proposed. The applicant was requesting that the property be annexed into the city, and that an ordinance regarding annexation amending the future land use map of the comprehensive plan be approved. The applicant was proposing to down zone some of the property from commercial to residential use.
The proposed development would’ve been using both city water and sewer, which currently serves Royal Highlands Community.
The original master plan was approved for 1,500 residential units, 300 recreational vehicles and 5,000 square feet of retail commercial, said Daly. After 2005, the master plan was amended by the master developer Pringle Homebuilding Group, LLC, and took the property and deeded a portion of the property, which is at the main intersection of the community. They deeded that to the homeowners’ association for a softball field. At that time, they took the commercial that was currently approved, moved it to the south, and the zoning was changed.
There were access easements that were recorded, and another portion of the former commercial property was deeded to the HOA in 2009, and that was to construct pickleball courts for the community, and then the property was ultimately purchased by the applicant in 2023. The area around the applicant is the entire Royal Highlands Devlopment, 1,500 single family homes.
There’s an existing pond that’s located there within the property. The pond currently serves a portion of the Royal Highlands Development.
The commercial development, the 49,500 square feet, based on the City of Leesburg and Lake County code was for 49.500 sq. ft. of general retail, the need would be for 198 parking spaces to serve that space, based on the code, said Daly.
The development would have 48 homes versus 49,500 square feet of retail and commercial. The builder for the development that was denied was local, that builds commercial, apartments and town houses, said Daly.
Traffic was an issue that had been brought up previously, and the applicant had their traffic engineer, who was a licensed engineer, and from his determination, the number of trips for a townhome site on a daily basis is about 552, for the retail it’s about 3,236 daily trips, a significant disparity.
There was also a question regarding access easements at the previous meeting. The mayor had asked the city attorney to review the easements that were in place to provide this site with access from Monarch Blvd.
Haslam reviewed the access easement, and although it was drafted at the time, that property was to be developed as commercial, and as it was mentioned in the recitals, there weren’t any restrictions or requirements that require the property to be commercial. It was an easement that was given specifically to the property. Haslam spoke with Grant Watson, the attorney for the City of Leesburg, and according to Florida Law, the applicant would’ve been able to use the easement.
Watson also reviewed the easement that indicated that the use of the property benefitted by the easement had to be commercial. Watson didn’t see anything that limited the scope of the ability to use the easement to that parcel being commercial.