A proposal for a four-story self-storage facility where Serenoa’s town center was supposed to rise has aggravated neighbors and received a thumbs-down from Lake County’s Planning & Zoning Board.
Located just off Sawgrass Bay Boulevard, the 120,000-square-foot storage building would be the anchor of a 16.64-acre commercial center, according to a report in GrowthSpotter.
WMG Development, which has offices in Chicago and Winter Garden, is the owner and proposed developer of the 120,000-square-foot facility. WMG is seeking to amend the PUD zoning to add self-storage as an allowable commercial use. The proposed site plan also has several outparcels fronting on Sawgrass Bay Boulevard, in front of the proposed facility.
“The height is a big issue, and its presence is so inconsistent with the lifestyle, the views and everything about the area,” Palms at Serenoa resident Mark O’Halloran said at the March 4 planning meeting. The proposed self-storage development is scheduled for a public hearing at the Lake County Board of County Commissioners meeting on April 7.
Kolter Land Partners, master developer of Serenoa, had previously sought approvals in 2021 for Serenoa Lakes, a grocery-anchored retail plaza with three outparcels on Sawgrass Bay Boulevard. It would have served as the final phase of the master-planned community.
Previous plans for the final phase of the master-planned Serenoa community showed a neighborhood grocery store and shopping center. The town center plans were replaced by plans for a proposed self-storage facility after WMG Development bought a portion of the property for $4 million in March 2025. (Site plan by Heidt Design)
After the town center plans fell through, Kolter sold the site to WMG for $4 million in March 2025.
According to a county staff analysis, the development would be inconsistent with the designated Conservation Subdivision future land use of the Serenoa PUD. Commercial uses are not permitted under the Conservation Subdivision category, according to staff, but a self-storage facility could be “an appropriate support use for the adjacent residential uses.”
Lowndes Law attorney McGregor Love, representing project applicants WMG, said that the project would meet current restrictions outlined for commercial development at the property.
“What the concept plan shows are that the restrictions that are in place for commercial development — the performance standards, the open space requirements, impervious surface area, floor area ratio requirements — this concept plan is consistent with all of those,” he said. “A development of this intensity could be permitted by right, right now, without a public hearing.”
Love argued the project would not be directly on the right-of-way or generate any consistent traffic.
“In terms of offsite impacts, self-storage has among the lowest offsite impact compared to any commercial use because of its low traffic generation,” he said.
WMG Development is looking to develop a 120,000-square-foot self-storage facility just off Sawgrass Bay Boulevard within the Serenoa PUD in Lake County. (Concept plan by KPM Franklin)
But board members were unconvinced, voting 6-1 for denial at Wednesday’s Lake County Planning & Zoning meeting.
Serenoa resident Rachel Williams said the self-storage facility does not align with the vision the community wants to see.
“We’re not anti-growth, as we’re all the product of growth, but we just want it to make sense, and we want it to work with our community and not against,” she said. “It also doesn’t make sense when there are roughly 28 storage facilities within a 15-mile radius of us between Clermont, Davenport and Horizon West, which will be connected to us next year.”
Residents also questioned the project’s proposed height of 75 feet, allowed under the existing PUD zoning, but taller than all residential homes in the surrounding area. With the project’s proposed location only a few hundred feet from the Lake-Orange county line and developments continuing to spring up in the nearby Four Corners area, several residents argued the self-storage facility would be better placed on available land in nearby Orange County.
“We’re getting ready to be connected to Orange County and financial incentives in Lake County — land, building and almost all costs — are lower,” O’Halloran said. “There’s a strong incentive to grab what you can and build what you can on the Lake County side. There are huge tracts of property that are better designed just for this on the Horizon West side and are just as close. They don’t need to do that here.”
WMG has been active in South Lake County since 2023, when it bought several retail pads within Plaza Collina in Clermont. Last year, it opened Chipotle, FifthThird Bank, Heartland Dental, Panda Express, and White Castle at Plaza Collina.
WMG also purchased a 95-acre site set to serve as the urban center of the master-planned Crossprairie community in St. Cloud. Construction will start this year on the multi-phased project that includes retail, hotels and housing.
Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at jwilkins@orlandosentinel.com or 407-754-4980. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook and LinkedIn.