Yes, that is the desired behavior I'm trying to obtain. Your solution will achieve the intended purpose! I'll create a VI to script the minimum Pane Size to current value.
However, I'll keep exploring other ways to accomplish this from the architecture code, because that is my ultimate objective. I was hoping there was a Boolean somewhere I could set to prevent the SubPanel from altering the UI dynamics of the loaded VI. That's the standard behavior I've seen in all OpenGL object constructs. I'll mail our NI rep to lobby inclusion of a variable to accomplish that.