Site plans in metro Orlando

What shapes a site plan in metro Orlando

Metro Orlando is a tourism-scale county market where one zoning chapter does most of the work. In unincorporated Orange County, Chapter 38 of the county code holds the use table, the conditions that attach to each use and the standards for planned developments, and Chapter 34 adds a flood rule that sets floor heights. Five conditions follow, and each one changes how a preliminary site plan is drawn here.

1. Use conditions sit in one place. Sec. 38-77 is the use table, and Sec. 38-79 collects the conditions that attach to listed uses ^[1]. Reading both before a layout is drawn tells you whether a use is allowed on the parcel and which conditions the plan has to show.
2. Planned development standards govern large tracts. PD districts carry their own standards in Chapter 38, Article VIII (with Ord. 2023-46) ^[2]. A tract headed for PD zoning is drawn to the Article VIII standards rather than to a straight district's.
3. Freeboard is codified. Orange County Code Sec. 34-250 sets the lowest floor at least 1 ft above the base flood elevation in special flood hazard area subdivisions, and the county engineer must approve the base flood elevation, with supporting calculations ^[3]. Pad and finished floor heights on the plan follow from that number.
4. The county is suing over the state freeze. Orange County joined more than two dozen Florida jurisdictions in the lawsuit over SB 180, which the county says "has effectively invalidated Vision 2050 in its entirety" ^[6]; the suit by 25 local governments was filed in Leon County Circuit Court on September 29, 2025 ^[5].
5. The growth is large. The Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford metro added 37,690 residents from 2024 to 2025, 10th in the nation ^[4].

For Orange County and the cities inside it, SB 180 means moratoria are barred unless the law is struck down or amended ^[7]. A second challenge, filed in October 2025 by 1000 Friends of Florida and Orange County resident Rachel Hildebrand, cites harm to the protections of the Orange County Comprehensive Plan ^[8], and attorney Richard Grosso represents them ^[9]. SB 1080 adds a decision clock: 120 days after an application is complete, or 180 days where a hearing is required, with fees refundable when the deadline is missed ^{[10, 11]}. Orange County applies those timeframes through F.S. 125.022 and the City of Orlando through F.S. 166.033 ^[12]. Under the city statute, an applicant change of 15% or more in density, intensity or square footage restarts the clock, and a city may not require a state or federal permit as a condition of processing a development permit unless the agency has issued a final denial ^[13], so the city track and the state permits can run in parallel. RV parks and campgrounds also need a Department of Health permit under Chapter 513, F.S. ^[14], and the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone wind provisions of Florida Building Code Sec. 1620 apply only to Miami-Dade and Broward ^[15].

The Tampa page shows the same state layers over a county with a published review clock, and site plans in Florida covers the statewide regime.

Jurisdiction map: who governs where

The metro is named for three cities in three counties, and each city and county applies its own code. A site plan here starts by naming the jurisdiction and the zoning district it assumes.

Because the use table, the use conditions and the PD standards all sit in Chapter 38, the first deliverable on an Orange County site is a short code read: district, use permission, the matching Sec. 38-79 conditions, and whether a PD is the realistic route.

Site plan process: Orange County

Orange County's site plan fees and review times are not set out in the documents cited on this page, so confirm both at the pre-application stage before a schedule goes to a lender or a capital partner. What the code does settle is the order of reading: district, use, conditions, then the PD standards where the tract calls for one. A preliminary plan that shows each applicable Sec. 38-79 condition on the sheet, with the screening and buffer depths drawn, gives staff a direct answer to the conditions they will check. The general steps are set out in this post on the commercial site plan process.

Asset rules in metro Orlando

The screening rule is a layout rule: in an industrial PD, outdoor storage has to sit behind screening toward the right-of-way and every adjacent property, so the yard area on the plan is the area left after the screen. The RV park rows are statewide; the park plan in the Department of Health application is the layout, and the water and sewage information comes from the engineer of record. The full state regime is on RV park site plans in Florida, the layout standards on the RV park site plan hub, and density per acre in the RV sites per acre guide. For storage yards, the RV and boat storage hub covers layout, and car wash rules across the state are on car wash site plans in Florida.

Growth and proof points

The Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford metro went from a base of 2,673,372 on April 1, 2020 to 2,957,672 on July 1, 2025, and its gain of 37,690 residents from 2024 to 2025 ranked 10th nationally ^[4].

The clearest metro RV park record is in Lake County. Haines Creek RV Village (FLU-22-14-4, with RZ-22-30-4) proposed 159 manufactured home, park model and RV lots, 90 existing plus 69 new, and 15,000 sq ft of commercial space on 27.71 gross acres; staff found it consistent, and it went to the Planning and Zoning Board on April 5, 2023 and the Board of County Commissioners on May 2, 2023 ^[17]. The plan ran at 5.73 units per gross acre and 7.1 per net acre against a Lake County cap of 8.71 spaces per gross acre ^[17]. Its concept plan committed to 25 percent open space, a 50 ft wetland buffer, 25 ft Type B buffers on the south and west, an RV impervious surface ratio of 0.75 and a 35 ft height limit ^[17]. Attachment C showed a 2,400 sq ft minimum space, 12 ft one-way and 20 ft two-way drives, "Typical RV Lot" details and a "Typical 25' Buffer" section ^[17]: the exhibit set a preliminary site plan produces.

Between the Orlando and Tampa markets, the Polk County RV park model project shows how a Central Florida county layers its own review on the state floor. Polk rewrote its RV park conditional use criteria in LDC Section 303 through Ord. 2024-032 (LDCT-2024-3) ^[22]. Its conditional use fee is $4,023 plus $450 advertising at Level 3 before the Planning Commission, or $4,086 plus $850 at Level 4, which goes on to the Board of County Commissioners ^[23].

On the Gulf coast in Southwest Florida, outside the metro, the Lee County marina model project applies the same state layers to a waterfront program; marina site plans in Florida and the marina site plan hub cover that asset statewide.

Site factors

• Wind. Orange County is outside the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, which FBC Sec. 1620 limits to Miami-Dade and Broward ^[15].
• Flood. In special flood hazard area subdivisions the lowest floor sits at least 1 ft above the base flood elevation that the county engineer approves ^[3]; the plan's pad and floor elevations start there, and the grading that delivers them is the engineer of record's.
• Screening. In industrial PDs, the Sec. 38-1295 screen toward the right-of-way and the neighbors is part of the footprint from the first layout ^[2].
• Water and sewage for RV parks. The Department of Health application asks for the water system and the sewage disposal system alongside the park plan ^[21]; that design is the engineer of record's.
• Stormwater. Detention and retention design is the engineer of record's work; how it shapes yield is covered in this post on stormwater as a site plan variable.

What the preliminary plan carries in Orlando

In Orange County the plan has to answer the code read: the district, the use, every Sec. 38-79 condition that applies, and, on a larger tract, the PD standards ^{[1, 2]}. That is the preliminary site plan: site layout, buildings, internal roads and drive aisles, parking, pads and yield, organized with a site data table (acreage, zoning, density against the cap, setbacks, parking required against provided). Developers use it to choose the site, to have a general contractor price it, to show a lender and to raise capital. The engineer of record then adds the grading, stormwater, utility and access design and builds the sealed set on the approved layout. The site plan consultant and site plan services pages explain how the studio works alongside the engineer and architect of record, the case studies show the method on model projects, and service areas lists every metro covered.

By Viola Sauer, Principal, Innowave Studio