Winter Springs planning board looks at 7 Brew Coffee Thursday

The Winter Springs Planning and Zoning Board will vote today – Thursday, Nov. 6 – on a proposed new drive-thru coffee shop in the Winter Springs Town Center. 

The meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. at Winter Springs City Hall, located at 1126 E. State Road 434. Check here to download the agenda, and check here to watch the meeting live. 

Staff is recommending approval of the 7 Brew Drive-Thru Coffee, located at 1248 E. S.R. 434. It’s at the northeast corner of the intersection of S.R. 434 and Michael Blake Boulevard, in the same development as The Learning Center, a planned daycare, and a possible 82-townhome development known as The Sea Hawk Cove. 

“Staff finds that the proposed development is compatible and harmonious with adjacent land uses and will not adversely impact land use activities in the immediate vicinity,” city planning officials wrote ahead of the meeting. “The construction of a coffee shop with a drive-thru will have a beneficial impact on the local economy, providing additional coffee shop options to local residents and workers, while also providing employment at the facility. Staff find that these impacts will improve property values by continuing to make Town Center a desirable place to live and work.”

The proposed 7 Brew would be a drive-thru only coffee shop, operating from 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and staying open until 11 p.m. on the weekends. The building would be 520 square feet, and a traffic analysis found it would generate an expected 132 average daily trips, with the biggest impact to traffic coming in the mornings.

The Planning and Zoning Board will consider the developer’s request for exemptions from three parts of the city’s code. 7 Brew is asking for exemptions for:

1. A waiver to allow 7 Brew Drive-Thru Coffee to be located farther away from S.R. 434, at a setback of 68 feet instead of the 50-foot maximum front setback. 
2. A waiver to allow a drive through service window in the side of the building; city code requires drive-through windows to only be permitted in the rear of a building and in alley-accessed locations.
3. A waiver to allow variations in the landscaping for the project. 

Nearby, there are also plans for an Ace Hardware that’s under construction and a Chick-fil-A restaurant.

The coffee shop sits on the same parcel that became a political hot-button earlier in the year when the developer argued that it had previously paid arbor fees for the project. 

Ultimately, the Winter Springs City Commission voted to require them to pay for $227,000 in arbor fees – which pay to help shore up the city’s tree replacement fund, among other things – to move forward with the project.

More development could come to same land

Former Winter Springs Mayor Paul Partyka, the realtor, said that the same site has five total parcels. That includes townhomes, the daycare, and the 7 Brew coffee shop. The first lot, which includes a large oak tree on the corner, is under a confidential due diligence review, and there are two offers on another second lot – one for retail, and one for commercial. 

Partyka declined to say who the offers were from, just that they were “national clients.”

“You’ve got a lot of projects in that area,” Partyka said. 

The driver behind the retail parts of the project, he said, are the planned Sea Hawk Cove townhomes. He said the engineering is still being done but, right now, the townhomes are expected to be three stories tall and would likely sell for around $425,000 to $450,000.

The townhomes still need to be approved by the Planning and Zoning Board and the Winter Springs City Commission. 

“They should be moving to closing and construction by summer of 2026,” Partyka said.

Calls to the 7 Brew franchise owner weren’t returned before press deadline. If 7 Brew is approved Thursday by the Winter Springs Planning and Zoning Board, it would come before the City Commission for final approval at the Dec. 8 meeting. 

Brian Schultz, the CEO of Ocean Bleu Group LLC, owns another parcel across the street, at the northwest corner of S.R. 434 and Michael Blake Boulevard, where the Starbucks coffee shop currently sits. He said he’s put the other portions of that parcel on the market, and has had some interest: a car wash, a drive-thru, a charging station and a dental office. 

“We can take our time and get the right tenant, where we know we have the right tenant to make sure we don’t have any issues with the city,” Schultz said. 

Additionally, the Winter Springs City Commission is meeting Monday, with plans to discuss a possible change to the city’s charter to eliminate the mayor’s position.