CC 2010 02 08
CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL
REGULAR MEETING
FEBRUARY 8, 2010
Mayor Furlong called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. The meeting was opened with the
Pledge to the Flag.
COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT:
Mayor Furlong, Councilman Litsey, Councilwoman
Ernst, Councilwoman Tjornhom, and Councilman McDonald
STAFF PRESENT:
Todd Gerhardt, Roger Knutson, Laurie Hokkanen, Kate Aanenson, Paul
Oehme, and Todd Hoffman
PUBLIC PRESENT:
Tim Litfin Minnetonka Community Education Services
Ann & Mark Page 10 Hill Street
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Mayor Furlong: Thank you and welcome to everyone here in the council chambers this evening
and those watching at home. Especially for those that came to join us, we appreciate your
trekking through the snow and the weather tonight to be with us. Look forward to working with
you this evening. The first item today would be to ask if there are any issues from members of
the council or any changes or amendments to the agenda from members of the council. Or
others. Ms. Hokkanen.
Laurie Hokkanen: Legislative priorities.
Mayor Furlong: Yes. At our work session under, at the last meeting we discussed the legislative
priorities. What I’d like to do is add that. We can either add that item number (i) under the
consent agenda. 1(i) or bring it under new business. Whatever the council would prefer. Is 1(i)
acceptable to everybody? That would be to adopt the Legislative Priorities. Okay, so we will
bring that in as it was presented at our work session under item 1(i). Any other changes or
modifications to the agenda? Hearing none we’ll proceed with the agenda as published. What
we’d like to do tonight is start with our consent agenda.
CONSENT AGENDA: Councilwoman Ernst moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded
to approve the following consent agenda items pursuant to the City Manager’s
recommendations:
a. Approval of Minutes:
-City Council Work Session Minutes dated January 25, 2010
-City Council Verbatim and Summary Minutes dated January 25, 2010
Receive Commission Minutes:
Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
-Planning Commission Verbatim and Summary Minutes dated January 19, 2010
b. Hill Street Drainage Project: Award Construction Contract.
c. Approval of Temporary On-Sale Liquor License, Gym Jam Event, April 10, St. Hubert
Catholic Community, 8201 Main Street
d. Approval of Amendment to Chapter 20 of City Code Amending the Chanhassen Retail
Center, Market Square, and West One Planned Unit Developments.
Resolution #2010-10:
f. Call for Public Hearing on a Proposed Modification to the
Redevelopment Plan for the Chanhassen Redevelopment Project Area and the Proposed
Establishment of Tax Increment District #10.
h. 2010 Pond Cleanout, SWMP18D: Award Contract.
i. 2010 Legislative Priorities.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: EXPRESS APPRECIATION FOR CITY’S HELP WITH
TOUR DE TONKA, TIM LITFIN, MINNETONKA COMMUNITY EDUCATION
SERVICES.
Mayor Furlong: At this time I would ask if any members of the public would like to come
forward and address the council this evening. Okay, very good. Tonight we do have a visitor
with us, Tim Litfin with the Minnetonka Community Education Services is here to talk about the
Tour de Tonka. Good evening Mr. Litfin. Good to see you again.
Tim Litfin: Thank you Mr. Mayor and council members. City Manager. I appreciate the, you
allowing me here tonight and this is a good news presentation. I’m here to present you with a
recognition and a plaque for allowing Tour de Tonka to stroll through your streets every year in
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August. This year it’s going to be August 7 but I’ve got just a couple of stats before I come
forth with your big award. Last year we had 2,137 riders and all of them came through
Chanhassen. 615 of them rode through southern Chanhassen if you will and the bulk of
everyone then rode through the northern streets of Chanhassen. So 4 years running and we’ve
had over 6,000 riders come through Chanhassen and very safely as well. Carver County
Sheriff’s Department, Todd, Todd and everyone else here in the city has been very helpful and I
appreciate that very much so therefore on behalf of the Community Education Department in
Minnetonka and Minnetonka Public Schools and the ICA Food Shelf which in part benefits from
this event as well, I’d like to present you, the City with a plaque. Thank you Tom. I appreciate
it very much. Todd, thank you for everything you’ve done for us. Todd, thank you. Very good.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you very much. We do enjoy Mr. Litfin the good relationship that our
city has with Minnetonka School District Continuing Education for Minnetonka as well as
Eastern Carver County and their continuing education program as well so we’re fortunate in this
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
city to be served by two very high quality school districts and we appreciate our relationship with
you.
PUBLIC HEARING: CONSIDER EASEMENT VACATION, LOTS 4 & 5, BLOCK 1,
RD
BRENDEN POND 3 ADDITION.
Public Present:
Name Address
Gina Sauer 2244 Lake Lucy Road
Paul Oehme: Thank you City Council members. The property owner here is requesting that the
drainage and utility easement on their property be vacated at this time, and I’ll show you. The
property is located off of Lake Lucy Road. Here are the two properties that are potentially going
to be combined and the easement runs down the lot line at this location. The easement again is a
10 foot wide easement. 5 foot on each of the property lines right here. The reason for this is that
the property owner wishes to construct auxiliary structure on Lot 5 in conjunction with Lot 4 and
then also the additional improvements on Lot 5 potentially in the future. Staff does not have an
issue with the vacation of this property, although I have requested that a drainage utility
easement be dedicated along the eastern side of Lot 5 to accommodate, and the north side of Lot
number 5 to accommodate potential utility improvements in the future so. And the property
owner, we met with them and the contractor that’s potentially working on this project a couple
times and they seem amenable to that. I did hand out the updated drainage and utility dedication
for the, for this project as well so, and again the easement vacation area, staff did call Gopher
State One. There is no private or public utilities out in this area and we are in agreement that this
easement can be vacated if the drainage utility on Lot 5 are dedicated so with that I’d request or
ask if there are any questions by the council and I’d request that a public hearing be open at this
time.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Any questions for staff at this point? And again as part of the
proposed motion the approval will be contingent upon adjoining the lots and granting the new
easements, correct?
Paul Oehme: That’s correct.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Any questions for staff at this point? Is the applicant here?
And if so do you wish to address the council on anything? Okay. At this point then I would
open up the public hearing and invite all interested parties to come forward and address the
council on this matter. No one this evening on this item? Okay, without objection we’ll close
the public hearing and bring it back to council for. Oh I’m sorry.
Gina Sauer: Oh I just had a question…to address.
Mayor Furlong: Certainly. With regard to this issue?
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Gina Sauer: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. If you could state your name and address at the beginning.
Gina Sauer: Sure. My name is Gina Sauer and I live at 2244 Lake Lucy Road, which is the
property immediate to the east and I just wanted to make sure that I understood the
documentation that was on the web site that one of the reasons for the adjusted easement and the
replacement easement I guess you’d call it on the east side of the property on the east side of the
property as opposed to the piece that kind of goes down where they adjoin. The two lots. Is for
purposes of possible future directional boring associated with the watermain, correct?
Paul Oehme: Yeah, that’s correct. There’s a potential for a future raw watermain. A new well
potentially up in this area in the future. We’ve identified it on our comp plan so it’s, we haven’t,
we don’t have a date for that yet or have any plans right now for those improvements but we just
wanted to plan for that potential improvement in the future and again it’s, we’re looking at a
directional bore process so we’re not open cutting it disturbing the surface out in this area. Like
to try to do it as minimal disruption as we can. There’s a tree easement to the north of you that
we want to protect so we don’t want to damage that area if at all possible.
Gina Sauer: Okay, and so it’s anticipated that the new easement as marked on the
documentation would be able to accommodate that watermain?
Paul Oehme: Absolutely.
Gina Sauer: Within that easement space.
Paul Oehme: Absolutely, yep.
Gina Sauer: Okay. That’s my only question. Alright, thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Anyone else that would like to address the council on this matter?
No? Seeing none then without objection we’ll close the public hearing and bring it back to
council for discussion. Any thoughts or comments on this from council? Or would someone
like to make a motion.
Councilwoman Ernst: I’ll make a motion.
Mayor Furlong: Please.
Councilwoman Ernst: I make a motion to vacate the drainage and utility easement on Lots 4 and
rd
5, Block 1, Brenden Ponds 3 Addition as shown on the survey prepared by Demars-Gabriel
Land Surveyors, Inc. dated 12/18/09. Approval is contingent upon combining the lots and
recording the “Grant of Permanent Drainage and Utility Easement” document.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Is there a second?
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Second.
Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Any discussion on the motion?
Resolution #2010-11: Councilwoman Ernst moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded
that the City Council vacate the drainage and utility easement on Lots 4 and 5, Block 1,
rd
Brenden Ponds 3 Addition as shown on the survey prepared by Demars-Gabriel Land
Surveyors, Inc. dated 12/18/09. Approval is contingent upon combining the lots and
recording the “Grant of Permanent Drainage and Utility Easement” document. All voted
in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
PUBLIC HEARING: AUDUBON ROAD RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT 10-02:
PUBLIC HEARING; AUTHORIZE PREPARATION OF PLANS & SPECIFICATIONS.
Public Present:
Name Address
Tana Erickson & Tim Boyce 8941 Audubon Road
Kristi Strang 1701 Valley Ridge Trail South
Steve & Mary Pat Monson 8850 Audubon Road
Dennis & Ruth Chadderdon 8900 Audubon Road
Meredith & Patrick Walsh 8731 Audubon Road
Gary Theis 1696 Valley Ridge Trail North
Bruce Feik 1773 Valley Ridge Trail South
Pamela Strand 8640 Audubon Road
J. Phans 1815 Valley Ridge Trail South
Elizabeth Kressler 1750 Valley Ridge Trail North
Wendy O’Connor 1702 Valley Ridge Trail North
Tim & Brenda Moore 1812 Valley Ridge Trail North
M. Choiniere Family 8481 Bittern Court
Paul Oehme: Thank you Mayor, City Council members. Before I begin real quickly, the staff
did receive two additional comments from residents in this project area. Didn’t have time to
include it into the packet so I did hand them out to you, if you have any questions about those.
And also I have here tonight Pat Corkle with SRF Consultants. He is, helped the City with the
preliminary design, the layout and the geometrics of the road. The traffic issues surrounding this
project as well so. This project has been planned for several years. Staff did hold two
neighborhood meetings. One at the beginning of December and then also one in January. The
one in December was more for the property owners most impacted by the project area that have
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driveway accesses and such, and the January 13 meeting was more for neighborhoods area so
we did send out about 100 notices I recall to the property owners in this area for those meetings.
Audubon Road is scheduled for improvements. As you know Audubon Road is just south of
Highway 5 and the section of Audubon that we’re considering for improvements is south of Lake
Drive West and then down to Lyman Boulevard about three-quarter of a mile stretch of roadway.
The existing conditions for Audubon, it’s a rural section roadway. No curb and gutter at this
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
time. Gravel shoulders. The street is overall, it’s in poor condition. Lots of rutting. Stress
cracks and such. The gravel shoulders on the hillside specifically are washing out and continue
to wash out, especially during heavy rain events. Staff does try to fix those washed out areas
best we can but they still continue and are still a hazard. There is no pedestrian access along the
corridor at this time. Our comp plan does show that there should be some sort of pedestrian
movement along this corridor to facilitate pedestrian movements in the south side of Chanhassen
here. There are substandard turn lanes at some of the intersections. We definitely want to
improve upon what’s out there today for safety reasons and staff did look at the utilities in this
area. There is no storm sewer right now, or very little storm sewer improvements. Sewer, our
sanitary sewer and watermains and we did not find very many problems with the system at this
time so overall we think they’re in fairly good condition so we’re not planning to replace any of
that infrastructure at this time. Just minor improvements. The street condition, you know our
records go back to ’82. This street was sealcoated in ’82. It was overlayed in ’92 and another
sealcoat put on in ’95. Since then the staff has been patching the street trying to keep it as good
shape as we can. We did not stick any major money into the roadway because it does need,
definitely an improvement. The sub-grade is sub-standard. The drawing that I show you here is
basically our pavement condition index and what these numbers relate to is what the condition of
the roadway is for each of these segments of the road so basically from Lake Drive to Heron
Drive, the paving condition there is about 40. As we go south from Sunridge Court to Lyman
Boulevard, that section is 18 which is, which tells us that that area of roadway is in worst
condition than the section to the north. And when you average out the PCI’s for this area it’s 31.
When you look at the average PCI, the degradation scale and where we see improvements
needed. Typically when you are at about 45 PSI condition index, you want to see a
reconstruction at that time. It doesn’t do us any good to do an overlay or sealcoat because the
sub-grade is not to standard and you’re more or less throwing your money away by doing some
of the minor maintenance improvements. So with that the proposed improvements for the
project still remaining a two lane roadway. We’re not proposing to improve it to a Powers
Boulevard type of collector roadway. Reconstruct the street and urbanize and do approximately
the same width and geometrics so we’re not raising the roadway up or lowering it very much.
It’s plus or minus a foot basically of the elevation that it’s at today. And then just adding the
curb and gutter. Along with that we want to add in the storm sewer system. We know that some
of this water drainage runs off into people’s back yards and want to try and capture that and treat
it in the existing ponds that we have along the corridor. We want to add some left turn lanes at
major intersections for safety. Right now the traffic is at a level and where we think it goes from
here, we’re probably going to need some of those left turn lanes just based upon some of the
delays and traffic trying to get around this area so we’re, it’s just definitely a safety improvement
that we want to consider putting in this project. Improving the right turn lanes. Right now
they’re sub-standard. Not long as the State thinks they should be so we want to lengthen those
out a little bit and make them a little bit more friendly. Construct a 10 foot wide pedestrian trail
on the west side of the roadway. Again our city comp plan for trail improvements indicates that
there should be a trail. Plan for a trail along this corridor somewhere. Again we want to add a
sand section and drain tile it to the project area. I know that there’s some high water tables and
some ground water issues and adding that sand and that drain tile, trying to get the water away
from the sub base will only lengthen the pavement life expectancy so. There are some hydrants
and some minor repairs of sanitary sewer and forcemain that we want to make, replace and bolts.
Move some hydrants back, out a little bit just to accommodate some of the turn lanes. Some of
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
the geometrics that we’re looking at through the project area. The speed limit we’re not
proposing to change at this time. I did put in your packet that you know that is a state,
Commissioner of Transportation. They do set those speed limits so the City really doesn’t have
any jurisdiction over how those are set or what the speed limit for any corridor would be. And
then also street lights from the neighborhood. There didn’t seem to be too much of an interest in
putting street lights up and down the whole entire roadway as it is on Audubon North of Lake
Drive West so what we’re proposing is just some safety improvements. Some street lights at
Osprey. There’s already one at, on the other side of the roadway at the same intersection. We
want to put two lights at this intersection. Valley Ridge South, do one additional street light
there and then also at Sunridge Court. So basically the main intersections. That’s where you see
the most conflicts. So at this time I’d just like to take a couple minutes and just talk about some
of the intersection improvements that are proposed at this time and how it relates to what is
currently out there. This drawing just shows you the intersection of Lake Drive West as it’s
shown today. North is up so, and then the drawing to the right here kind of shows what the
improvements, proposed improvements would be. So at this intersection existing roadway width
is 44 miles an hour, or 44 feet wide. This location also is 44 foot wide north of Lake Drive West
Audubon and the farther north you go it actually gets a little bit wider to 48 foot. But the
improvements that we’re looking at is nothing major, no major improvements north of Lake
Drive West. Just a stripe in a left turn lane at this time to accommodate the left turn lane that is
proposed at Lake Drive West to go westbound. So and then two through lanes. So the, again the
roadway width here is 44 foot wide. What we would propose to make the roadway width here is
40 feet wide to accommodate the left and the two through lanes. There is an existing stormwater
pond at the intersection of Audubon and Lake Drive West, the southeast corner. That treats
approximately about a quarter of the drainage in this corridor. We’re approximately putting back
the same amount of drainage area into this pond as before. What we want to do though is
eliminate the existing outlet structure to the pond right now. It’s a little bit higher than we like to
see it. Creates a little bit more erosion and then basically eliminate that structure and then put in
a new structure closer to Lake Drive West and around the trees here so. The intersection of
Heron Drive and Audubon. Currently the road is 40 foot wide. If you consider the paved
section, the 8 foot shoulders. We’re proposing to urbanize that roadway again to a 44, or 40 foot
wide road and then add a designated left turn lane in at Heron Drive at the southbound direction.
There is no right turn lane proposed at this intersection. Osprey Lane and Valley Ridge North,
or Trail North. This intersection is a little bit wider than the other intersection. There is
currently a right turn lane, sub-standard right turn lane. Southbound on Audubon there is again a
paved right turn lane northbound on Audubon into Osprey. The improvements that are proposed
are to add, make the right turn lanes more standard to State standards in terms of length and have
those through lanes go through this intersection again but designate left turn lanes into each of
the developments. We feel that again this is an important improvement just based upon the
traffic currently and into the future meeting a safe haven for traffic to turn with oncoming traffic
so the roadway intersection here is approximately staying the same. Maybe about 4 feet wider
than it currently is but we feel that we can accommodate this improvement within the current
right-of-way as it exists today. The trail will go in in the future. There is a planned trail crossing
at this intersection on the north side of Osprey and Valley Ridge Trail North. There was some
discussion about putting it at some of the other intersections. Pat Corkle can talk about the pros
and the cons of putting, or where that cross, or that pedestrian crossing should be but based upon
SRF’s analysis this seems to be the safest location for that crossing at this time based upon the
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
design. And also again the street light here is, we’re proposing one more street light at this
intersection. Valley Ridge Trail South intersection. Again there is a small little right turn lane
there heading southbound on Audubon. The Valley Ridge Trail South. This plan does not show
that right turn lane in but we are looking at trying to accommodate that right turn lane based
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upon residential comments that we received at our neighborhood meeting on January 13. So
and then there was also a designated left turn lane to this intersection, or to this Valley Ridge
Trail South from the north so. Sunridge Court, this intersection will more or less stay the same.
The existing roadway width here is 40 foot wide. 20 foot paved. 8 foot shoulders. We’re
proposing to keep it the same width right now but again just paving. Paving the shoulder edges.
Adding that curb and gutter for safety. And drainage. As we move south, the intersection of
Lyman Boulevard and County Road 18. This section of roadway here, what is proposed at this
location is a dual left, both for southbound and northbound. You see this at some other locations
throughout the metro area here. It allows residents in this area, since there are so many
driveways accessing Audubon Road to have a safe haven for turning into their driveway and
getting out of that through lane of traffic as much as they can so they have a safe haven to make
that turn if, when they want to. The storm sewer culvert at this location is proposed to be
extended out to accommodate the trail. We need a little bit more pipe out there to make that trail
improvement work, and again about 3/4 of the road here, Audubon is draining to the south. That
drainage will be proposed to be treating the existing storm water pond south of Lyman
Boulevard. That pond was constructed with the improvements. The first phase of Lyman
Boulevard improvements. It has been oversized to accommodate this section of Audubon and
the section of Lyman to the east, when that improvement is taken place so no storm sewer
ponding improvements are needed at this location in terms of over sizing or anything so. And
again if Audubon Road, this section we’re leaving the roadway widths approximately the same
as they are today, but basically paving those shoulders again and putting in the curb and gutter.
Typical section of the roadway that’s being proposed. For most of the corridor it’s a 14 foot
through lane. We did look at wider roadway sections when we first got into this but based upon
some concerns of the residents and the need and the desire to try to reduce some costs, we did
narrow the roadway section down about 4 feet from where it was previously proposed. This also
does add in a little bit of traffic calming when you have those narrower lanes. The traffic,
through traffic feels a little more confined. It will feel a little bit more not, won’t feel as the need
to speed as much, the more narrow the roadway through lanes down so. The intersection of
Valley Ridge Trail North, that again is proposed to be 52 foot wide. Again with 14 foot through
lanes. A center turn lanes and a trail off to the side which is again it’s a 10 foot wide trail. In
this area it’s between 5 and 8 foot boulevard. Pavement section that’s proposed. It is a 10 ton
design which is consistent with the section that’s north of Lake Drive West. North of this project
so we’re more or less matching the pavement strength, what’s out there today north of the
project. We did look at…engineering here. We did look at it with a soils report had
recommended and we did decrease the select granular. It was 24 inches they had recommended.
We think in select areas we can use more geo fabric. Save on some costs for that trucking for the
select granular and the…that would have to come out to accommodate the sand section so we did
look at cost savings in that respect. I want to spend a little time on the trail improvements. We
did hear from a lot of the property owners at the neighborhood meeting that this is one of the
biggest concerns or comments that we received for the project. This drawing shows what the
existing trail network is currently. The section here in green is what is currently built today and
there is a stub of trail segment just south of Osprey too that’s built that doesn’t go anywhere.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
The section of roadway or section of trail that’s proposed to be built is this section here on the
west side of Audubon and it’s basically a connection from Lyman all the way up to the section of
trail along Audubon to the north here. It kind of connects the south end of Chanhassen to the
north end right now and it is, has been identified in the park and rec comprehensive plan. We
did look at where this trail should be. You know I think on some of the earlier drawings the trail
had been shown on the east side of the road of Audubon. We did look at initially looking at
putting it on the east side but when we looked at what the cost would be and how to construct it,
we came to a different conclusion. Or several reasons had led us to propose it on the west side.
Just going through what the improvements on the west side would be is, the City owns this
section of road down here, or property down here at Lyman, just north of Lyman so there’s no
easements that would have to be acquired by that. It’s fairly clean. As we move north there is an
existing 20 foot trail easement that was platted with this development back in I think ’89 so we
do have a trail easement, an 20 foot existing trail easement that we would like to put the trail in.
We do need temporary easements to accommodate those improvements. That’s just basically
grading purposes. Instead of building a wall we’d like to grade back into this area and to
accommodate that improvement and as we go north of here, based upon the preliminary design
we don’t feel that we will need additional easements for this section of roadway here. We think
we can accommodate the trail within the existing right-of-way. When we look at the trail on the
east side, you know that is a little bit more of a challenge to put that road in. For one the right-
of-way that we have out here is, is really, it’s fairly tight considering what we’re, what has to go
back in. The geometrics and the alignment more or less has to stay at it’s current location and
then tie into Lyman at a fixed location where the County wants us to tie into so that, we can’t
really move the road all that much and in order to put the trail on the east side of Audubon, we
would have to buy permanent easement as opposed to temporary easement on the west side. The
permanent easement again we would probably need about 20 foot of permanent easement from
Lyman all the way up to where the stub of the trail currently exists so that incurs some cost.
There is significant trees along this corridor as well. More mature trees up in this area and
several trees down in this location that would have to be removed as well, as opposed to the west
side where there’s less foliage on that side. There are some trees that will still have to be
removed but not to the size or caliper of the trees on the east side. This area is fairly steep so
additional walls would have to be constructed to accommodate that. That trail improvement.
And fencing as well. As up in this location too there would be walls that would have to need to
be constructed. Down in the southern half again there are wetlands that would be impacted so
those wetlands would either have to be mitigated or we’d have to come up with some other plan
to stay out of those wetlands. So taking all that into consideration, putting a dollar value to what
it would take to put it on the east side as opposed to the west side, staff has come up with a
number of $335,000 just to prep the trail surface for paving. That doesn’t include paving the
trail but would just basically puts up the walls. Gives you the easements and grades the area out
and establishes a corridor for that trail to potentially be constructed so that’s the reasoning for us
to go on the west side at this time. Proposing on the west side. At this time I would like to invite
Todd Hoffman, our Park and Rec Superintendent up and he can give us a update on the
comprehensive plan and why this corridor is important for the city to improve at this time.
Todd Hoffman: Thanks Paul and Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council and members of our
audience. I’d just like to speak briefly. I think I have 3 slides on the comprehensive trail plan.
Why it’s a priority for the community and where we’ve been in the past and why we think this
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
portion of Audubon Trail is important as a trail corridor. The City’s committed to our
comprehensive trail system. To date we’ve invested over $15 million in trail systems in about 90
individual projects in the last 25 years in our community. Residents and visitors currently enjoy
an 80 mile multi-purpose trail system and when we’re all said and done we’re headed for just
over 100 miles in comprehensive trails throughout our community. Our trails provide a safe and
convenience form of recreation. They serve as pedestrian commuter routes to and from places of
work and then also to our bus lines within the community. Safe routes to school. We have our
new high school in this location so some kids and parents will utilize this pedestrian route for
school access. It allows training opportunities to our schools, for their track teams. Lacrosse,
football and other teams. Our fitness businesses in town utilize our public trail system as a part
of their business plan in their different areas and then individuals use them for training for
marathons and just a general fitness type training. These trails help to reduce vehicle trips in our
roadways on a daily basis in our community. They preserve and enhance property values and
that’s proven time and time again in study after study and they provide numerous health related
benefits and they’re a significant source of pride. Community pride for our community. People
talk about how they enjoy our trail system and how it’s maintained all year long and they can use
it throughout the year. This slide, the red trails shows the Audubon Road area trails. The
progression of how they’ve been constructed over the past 20 years. So you start in 1991, kind
of in the center of the map. There were some trails that were built to access Sunset Ridge Park,
and then it goes from there, 1995. The trail down along the weather ball. ’96 at Powers
Boulevard. ’99 the trail was put in in the Bluff Creek corridor itself. 2007 we built the trails in
Power Hill Park. In fact the north, the first section of Audubon was back in 1990 really the first
section of trail in this entire area and it stopped at it’s current terminus point. Then the most
recent 2009 big section of trail along Lyman Boulevard. The underpass of course under Lyman
Boulevard and then the access to the school coming from the creek trail on the north side. The 3
blue lines that are left remaining in this general vicinity are Audubon. The section of roadway
we’re talking about tonight. It’s an important connector to make these trails all come together.
One thing we hear time and time again from residents is they like a loop route so they can go out
one way from their residence and then loop back around on another section of trail. Then in the
future the missing link in Lyman Boulevard will be filled in and then one more section to the
south on Bluff Creek Boulevard. So that’s where we’ve been and that’s where we hope to go
and be happy to answer any questions as we move forward.
Paul Oehme: Maybe Pat Corkle can address the next couple slides that relate to the traffic and
the geometrics of the roadway.
Pat Corkle: Mayor, members of City Council. I’m just going to talk a little bit about the
roadway function and designation and a few of the issues as we went through some of the public
meetings, what we’ve heard from some of the residents at those meetings. Audubon is identified
as a collector roadway, and what’s a collector roadway? Basically it’s function in a hierarchy of
roadway system is connect the local street system to arterial system so in our case what we have
here is Audubon is that collector street connecting to the local streets and then serving as a
connector up to Trunk Highway 5 or down to Lyman Boulevard so it provides that connection
between residential streets and these major roadways. One thing that we have on this type of
roadway though is we also do have some private driveways along there and I think that’s a little
bit of some issues that we have. But that’s something that you experience and see there today
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
and I think we have a list of 3 streets there that also kind of provide that collector function but
also still have some of those private driveways. We did collect some data out there. The traffic
data and as you can see from the bottom table, there’s a little over 3,200 trips out there in
August. The volumes really haven’t what I consider significantly changed from 1999 til this
time. You can see there’s been some fluctuations where it’s went up a little bit and come back
down. One of the things that we did when we collected the data is, we did measure the large
trucks and we heard that from a lot of our meetings that there’s a lot of truck traffic there. There
is 3% of those trips so I mean that’s about 100 of over a day. 1% of them 5 axle. That’d be semi
trucks so the larger semi’s. 2% would be the 3 to 4 axle so that’d be more your delivery style
trucks. One of the questions we got from a lot of the residents was about can we band the truck
traffic from that location. We did some more research after that discussion. We went and
looked at the state statutes and what they said for municipal state aid routes that we can’t go
through and band trucks on those type of roadways so that was one of the things that we did find
after people asked us a lot of questions about doing that. And then, so there’s the functional
classification map that shows Audubon and the other roadways along there that’s a collector
roadway and some of those other roadways that are similar function. One of the other things that
we heard a lot of discussion about was speed limits. I think there’s a lot of discussion of are we
able to lower the speed limit to something less than the 45 miles an hour that’s out there. Again
going back and spending some more time looking at the state statutes, as kind of Paul mentioned
earlier, and again you’ll find in your council packet discussion. There’s about a 2 page thing that
talks about speed limits. Once you get beyond some of, what I consider statutory speed limits
that can be identified, you need to go through and have the Commissioner of Transportation
determine the speed of the roadway. That process usually ends up them going and doing a speed
study and some other things that they take into account. I’ve seen sometimes where people have
done that. Other communities have done that and actually the speed limit has increased, and I
would guess that in my opinion would be that it probably wouldn’t change too much so we’re
not really, our intent today would not be to have them come out there and do the speed study to
determine the new speed limit of the road and stick with 45 miles an hour. I think one of the
things that I think will be to our benefit here of trying to get uniform speeds out there, and maybe
bring the speed limit down. I think today you kind of look at that roadway and you have a two
lane gravel shoulders. It feels very rolling in nature. It feels wide open. I think it feels like you
should go faster on that type of roadway. I think coming in and putting in the curb and gutter to
have that obstruction out on the side to kind of give you that feeling that hey I’m more in an
urban environment will hopefully maybe bring that speeds down or at least try to get them a little
bit more uniform. I’m here to try to assist with any questions that you have at a later time.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, good.
Paul Oehme: So the staff did talk to MnDOT about those two issues too. We had several
conversations on, Pat and I did and I specifically called MnDOT. Some of the property owners
had requested that we meet with MnDOT on those two specific issues too but we just haven’t
been able to get a date set or people engaged to come out here and talk about that so still working
with them on that. But as we move forward, you know if this project were to go, to move
forward we would anticipate phasing in the improvements. Basically reconstructing or
constructing half the road at a time so not all the road is impacted at one time. Or the property
owner they’re impacted by the constructed at one time. So some of the trees like I said again
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
were, would have to be removed, especially in those temporary easement areas. We would
definitely want to relook at re-landscaping those areas to a higher standard than they currently
are today. The City’s construction inspection would work with the contractor, coordinate the
work. Notify the residents on upcoming construction activities in this area. Definitely want to
get out notices and let people know which way they can get in and out of the development as
best as they can. And then Audubon would be closed through the duration of the construction
process. This would allow the contractor to get in and get out a lot sooner than having to
reconstruct the road under traffic so there would be again local access to the properties in this
corridor, but we wouldn’t open it up to all the traffic that there is today. So mailboxes again
would be relocated and we’d work with the post office on those type of relocating that facility
and then the garbage collection we would work with the garbage collector and the residents on
making sure that that service is not disrupted. So as we move forward, the cost estimate that we
have for the project is a little over $2.7 million dollars and that includes some assessments
associated with the improvements and again those assessments are just based upon the roadway
improvements to the benefitting property owners those properties that access directly Audubon
Road consistent with our assessment policy, and again those assessments are based upon a 31
food wide roadway. A rural section, or a local road section so basically if you’re living on a cul-
de-sac versus this road you’d be paying the same amount of the assessments and again it’s at a
40% assessment rate. There are some properties out here that do not have water service at this
time. It would be advantageous for us if this project were to go forward to at least stub services
to those properties. That cost would be 100% associated with those benefitting property owners
which they would not pay for those improvements but it’s, we’re leaving it as an option for the
property owners at this time if they want that improvement made at that time. Just cost them a
lot less to do it now versus having to get at that watermain which is underneath the street in the
future. Again the assessments that are proposed at this time for those property owners that
directly benefit or access the road are $6,295. There are 8 property owners out here that fit that
criteria and again even for the improvements on Audubon Road, the City’s picking up that 60%
of the local cost for those improvements so again the assessments right now are calculated at
about $50,000. The total project cost is estimated at $2.7 million dollars so just a fraction of
what the…just a fraction of what the overall cost for the improvements are. Again they don’t
include the over sizing of the pavement section. We would relay back the assessment back to the
what a typical pavement section would be for local residential roadway. No turn lanes are
included. The trail’s not included. Those type of infrastructure would not be included in the
assessment calculation. The assessment’s consistent with past reconstruction projects would be
assessed at a 10 year period and right now it’s estimated at 6% interest rate. The project will
move forward. We would anticipate having the plans and specs ready early March sometime. If
the project moves forward again. Bid opening sometime in April. We’d like to have another
neighborhood meeting to talk about the project one more time and then assessment hearing or
award of contract sometime in May. The project would, we would anticipate starting in June
sometime. Probably right after school and hopefully have most of it reconstruction done before
the end of August. Final wear course, we always leave that til the following year so sometime
around the June timeframe. So with that if there’s any questions regarding the project or what
we had talked about tonight I or Todd Hoffman or Pat Corkle would be more than happy to try to
answer those questions for you.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you. Appreciate the comprehensive report. Staff, questions. Or
excuse me council members, questions for staff at this point. Councilwoman Ernst.
Councilwoman Ernst: You know Paul as you’re talking about the speed limit and I’m trying to
think of some ways that we could accommodate lowering the speed limit and I know that the
State is coming back and saying we can’t do that. But are there certain restrictions that we can,
we as a City can put on that road that might decrease that speed limit? And I know this might be
a bad example but I’m thinking you know can we say a certain, put a certain amount of tonnage
restriction on that road. I don’t know.
Paul Oehme: Yep and that’s, we looked at that issue too and based upon MnDOT’s response and
I think I put a tech memo in your background that clarifies the state statute regarding weight
limits on streets or municipal state aid routes. Basically they don’t allow us to restrict those type
of usages on a MSA route if you know the design criteria meets that standard.
Councilwoman Ernst: But are there other restrictions that we could put on that road that the City
could enforce or, other than the tonnage?
Paul Oehme: Yeah, um. Maybe that’s a better question for Pat Corkle. I just, we just looked at
what the state statue is. We talked to MnDOT about trying to eliminate or eliminate or
discourage some of the truck traffic coming down this road but to my knowledge I don’t know of
any other avenue there.
Pat Corkle: Yeah, Mayor, members of the City Council. Yeah, you know we went through and
looked, tried to look through the state statute trying to find some other way of maybe giving us
an opportunity to maybe to try to change something. One thing I’ll talk about speeds is that, you
know you can put a number on a sign but a lot of times from the research you read, the character
of the roadway is what really influences people’s driving. Now my mom will obey the speed
limit no matter what. The bad thing is if you get my mom driving 30 and somebody else driving
45, that’s probably when we get the most unsafe conditions so I think some ways the best way to
try to do that is try to make the character of the area look a little bit different and I’m hoping, you
know and I don’t know, the hope really by changing this from a rural to an urban section, I don’t
know if there’s any streetscaping improvements. Maybe the trail along there will make it feel a
little bit more that you’re in more of a residential area. But otherwise going through here I really
think there’s a lot of you know opportunities for us to go through and say hey, we’ll do some
kind of study and be able to change the speed limit. We’re a little bit tied with the statutes.
Councilwoman Ernst: Yeah, I was just wondering if there were, if you could, to that point I
mean if there was some, if there was some restriction that we could put on that road outside of
what the State mandates.
Pat Corkle: Yeah. The only thing that we’ve seen that I can see about the trucks or anything
was about weight restrictions and usually that’s just during spring and that’s the only thing that
we can find.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Councilwoman Ernst: Okay. In the report I saw that we were putting some street lights at those
intersections. Are we, so how many actual signal lights are we adding to the intersections?
Paul Oehme: There’s no signal lights. It’s just street lights so.
Councilwoman Ernst: Okay, I thought so but.
Paul Oehme: Yeah, just lighting the intersections at nighttime. Just at those intersections just to
help you know brighten up the area so you can see potential conflicts coming sooner than later.
Councilwoman Ernst: Right. I thought I saw something in here where there was a traffic light
but maybe not. So if we were to put, is there a way to put like a yellow, like a flashing yellow
light at some of those intersections or one intersection or two? Where it would actually slow the
traffic down.
Paul Oehme: Our traffic engineer probably could answer that better. We looked at it…
Pat Corkle: Yeah, we did look at a lot of options. We did hear, you know we did hear some
people suggest all way stops. Now when I, when we go about trying to do all way stops for,
we’re supposed to follow the Manual for Traffic Control Devices. That’s our rule book and they
have pretty strict rules on putting all way stops in and you know one of the criteria’s is the
volume that’s there and none of the roads, none of the streets or intersections that we have in this
segment would meet that criteria to put in all way stops. And again there’s sometimes putting in
all way stops is a very good intention of trying to do some things but if there’s not enough,
usually the reason they don’t want you to put in all way stops when it doesn’t have enough
vehicles, what happens is you and I drive by there. There’s nobody there and I get in a habit of
always going through and kind of running it. Now again maybe that’s against the law but the
research does show that people become very, just like any sign that we see out there that doesn’t
really apply we just kind of ignore it after a while and they actually found that it would actually
maybe decrease the safety of the intersection by doing something like that. I think there’s one,
you know we did talk about and we did talk a little bit about at Lake Drive and potential for a
round about. One of the things that I think about a round about is that while I’m sure it’s not in
the cost or anything. One thing about the round about, while I would say again that wouldn’t
meet an operational threshold or a safety threshold, we have talked about potentially sometimes
using that for what I’ll say is maybe a transition from, in our case maybe a commercial area and
a residential area and trying to use that device to try to again change that character of the
roadway by saying hey, slow down through here and let’s you know feel like we’re going
through a different area and try to get that speed down. Now that can sometimes be an expensive
device to do but is something to at least think about.
Councilwoman Ernst: And I did like that idea. I mean I personally get confused on round
abouts but I do think that that would really slow the traffic and I think also it might even deter
the truck traffic.
Pat Corkle: And that usually ends up being one of the things I think that people find useful for
that device and I think the one good thing is from my perspective is, it would be a single lane
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
round about and I think when I’ve seen a lot of confusion is when you get to the multi-lane ones
which there’s a couple in Woodbury and Richfield that are a little harder I think for people to
really grasp it with a single lane. It is a little, once you’ve done it it feels a little bit easier. I
think the other good thing is from my perspective, it isn’t like, the volume is so taxing on it that
it would be extremely confusing. It would be you know you kind of get used to it without having
lots of cars trying to get in and out of there.
Paul Oehme: Yep, and that’s, right and it’s an idea that we came up with. We haven’t gone and
taken it to the next level and actually costed it out. I know that we definitely will have some
right-of-way impacts there in terms of some impacts I think to the northwest parking lot might
have to be. You’d have to acquire some property there to make that accommodation but it’s
definitely something if the council thinks we should pursue a little farther, we can look at that.
Councilwoman Ernst: Okay, thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Other questions for staff at this point? Okay. If nothing at this time then let’s
go ahead and open up the public hearing. I want to make sure we got an opportunity to listen to
everybody here. What I’d like to do, when you come up to the podium please remember to state
your name and address for the record, and also make sure, what we want to make the opportunity
here so we can get any questions you have answered. You have answered, but also give us your
thoughts, give the council your thoughts on whether or not this project is necessary. Whether
there are improvements needed to this road. If the plans or the proposal that’s been laid out
meets those needs and addresses those needs and then specifically, especially for those along
Audubon, and others as well, who may be interested maybe you can tell us whether the proposed
funding sources with a combination of the City and property owners being assessed, whether
that’s a reasonable way to accomplish the project. So if you could try to address those issues and
if I don’t hear it in your comments, I may ask you on some of those directives because I think it’s
important that we understand what your thoughts are. It’s also important to make sure that you
have an opportunity to get your questions answered. So at this point what I would like to do is
start out and make sure, invite any property owners along Audubon to come up first. They may
have some different questions than other property owners so if any of the property owners along
Audubon, you’d like to talk or address the council, I would invite you to come forward at this
time.
Pamela Strand: Mr. Mayor and council members. I’m Pamela Strand. I’m at 8640 Audubon
Road. If we could go to that, can we zoom into that?
Kate Aanenson: You can point to it right here.
Pamela Strand: Alright, thanks. I’m right here. So first I’d like to address the trail issue. The
trail, the existing trail that they plan in that he stated was built in 1990 or there abouts, way back
goes on the east side of the road and now they’re proposing that it comes instead on the west side
of the road which now, just to point out, this property on the east side and down further these
properties here, this is a side yard with a fence. So this property is, this property faces out to
Osprey so this is along a fence route and then these are along the back of properties here and
that’s where the existing trail goes. Right now what they’re proposing then is coming across not
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
only my neighbor’s side yard here but across the front of our yard and across the side yard and
through some garden areas of this property here which is their front yard as well, even though
their address is on Valley Ridge Trail South. So that’s an objection that I have with moving it to
this side of the road. Another objection we have is putting in the left turn lanes. We feel that
that upgrades the road unnecessarily. We don’t object to this upgrade. This road is a mess. It’s
been through some really tough winters but upgrading it to this level, what they’re proposing is a
crossing area here which brings children, pedestrians across here 4 lanes of traffic. One of our
objections of course is that this is an industrial area and this is a residential area and we do have a
lot of truck traffic. The study that was done was done in August and it was before the high
school was opened. It’s also before or there abouts when the freeway traffic was not quite settled
down. There was a lot of road construction south of us and so since then I think there’s been a
big increase so we’ve requested that another study be done because I don’t think the study
reflects the traffic accurately so. These are some of the things that we’d just like to have
considered.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Other residents along Audubon at this point? And we’ll make sure
everybody has an opportunity so.
Steve Monson: I’m Steve Monson. I live at 8850 Audubon. And I think we’re so far away from
getting anything figured out here I don’t think anybody can make any kind of decision tonight at
all about this. There’s just so many if’s, and’s and but’s about it. We got, I think our house is
going to be the biggest impact right there. Can you go to my house?
Mayor Furlong: Can you point to it on the map right there?
Steve Monson: Yeah, we’re the one right here. And our house is so close to Audubon Road
there that we have all kinds of pine trees. You know big 20 foot trees that have been there for 15
years and a huge old oak tree that we’ve got to decide here. Are they going to cut all that stuff
down or? And then I’ve got, there’s a little garage that comes right off the, right off Audubon.
It’s about a 30 foot driveway that kind of goes right down to it. How are we going to get access
to that? And we’ve got, can anybody answer that, those questions or?
Mayor Furlong: Please.
Paul Oehme: We’ve met with the Monson’s last week.
Steve Monson: And we didn’t have any answers then. I don’t know if you’ve got…
Paul Oehme: Yeah, we talked about the access point and the drawing shown today is not exactly
what we’re proposing to build. This drawing shows lowering, let’s see, raising the road by 6
inches or looking at lowering it by about 6 inches to accommodate the grades going back up into
his driveway and the grade coming down to his shed. We’re looking at less impacts by that
design. We’re not removing the big, I think it’s an elm tree at the corner of his property there.
There might have to be a little retaining wall that goes around it but we don’t feel that that tree
would be impacted by the improvements. The, I think there’s two pillars on either side of your
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
driveway. Those would definitely have to be, those would be impacted. We would definitely
want to remove those and replace them in kind outside.
Steve Monson: What about the 4 or 5 big pine trees? What are you going to do with those?
Paul Oehme: Those are going to stay.
Steve Monson: I mean how, the thing is how close is this path going to get to all this, you know
that tree. You’re going to, I just don’t see the room there for the, you know where the curb is
going to be on the street.
Paul Oehme: Yep.
Steve Monson: Then 8 feet of green area.
Paul Oehme: Well in this, in that particular area it’s going to be, again it’s about 5 feet.
Steve Monson: Okay, then that’s another problem. Then you’re going to have the path.
Paul Oehme: Right.
Steve Monson: Okay. You know you take just winters in general, the plow trucks go up and
down that road. The snow is so high you know, 5-6 feet high. They’re blowing that show into
the, where this path would be so what are they going to have plows coming to plow the path out
to be able to use it? Where are they going to put that snow? Back out in the street? I mean
there’s just so many if’s and you know problems with this whole deal you can’t make any,
nobody can give me a right or wrong answers on what’s going on. Before all, you know all the
other questions we have you know.
Mayor Furlong: Mr. Oehme, with regard to the location. In this particular area, since we can see
where the current edge of the road is now.
Paul Oehme: Right.
Mayor Furlong: From that point do you know where the trail’s going to be or where the road’s
going to be? Is the road going to be, is the edge of the road going to be at the same point that the
edge of the road is…
Paul Oehme: It’s approximately, yep exactly. It’s going to be approximately the same location
where the edge of the gravel is so.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. And what’s the width of the trail and the.
Paul Oehme: At that location’s probably going to be about plus or minus 15 feet so.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. And is all that within the current right-of-way?
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Paul Oehme: That’s all within the current right-of-way.
Steve Monson: Yeah it’s in the right-of-way but it’s going to be closer to the street so I mean it’s
going to be impacted by the snow. I mean that just came up today because I was fighting with
the guy in the snowplow because they’re plowing us in every day you know all the time like that.
There’s no, you’re going to have to figure out a different way to get snow, get rid of the snow
along that side unless the, you know like my house you’re going to move the path closer to the
street but up the road it’s going to be farther away so.
Mayor Furlong: Well Mr. Monson let me ask a question of Mr. Hoffman then, with regard to
plowing of trails is something that we’re dealing with on a, literally on a daily basis. Today and
tomorrow and this week.
Steve Monson: You know trails aren’t usable in the winter anyway. You can’t run or ride your
bike or walk on, especially going down that hill. You’re going to be falling down all the time.
Mayor Furlong: Well and that’s what I want to ask Mr. Hoffman what their…
Steve Monson: I guess to get to my point is I don’t want the path at all.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. And that’s.
Steve Monson: I mean there’s plenty of trails in Chanhassen to walk on. People keep going
around in circles you know, where you’re, you’re never going to get home. You know and that’s
what these guys are telling us. Got to have a circle. We’ve got to follow that circle so they can
get back home. What’s wrong with just walking the way we walk all the time? We walk down
this road and walk back this way and, I don’t understand that.
Mayor Furlong: Okay and that’d certainly be still an option I think, Mr. Hoffman with regard to
plowing. What do we do with trails? What’s our policy?
Todd Hoffman: Be glad to answer that question. We plow the vast majority of all our trails
throughout the entire year, if we go back and look at the winter, or the Christmas storm that we
had. We had to get out on these trails and snow blow every foot of trail within the community.
Traditionally we plow these trails but with the snow pack that we had at that time, we had to get
out and get a snowblower so that the snow is coming off the road and be deposited in the
boulevard and then onto the trail and then that snow that is on the trail, gets deposited on the
trail, we move it off to outside of the trail and that’s either with the plow or with the snowblower
depending on the location.
Steve Monson: Now see the plow comes down that road so fast and you’re going to have to
slow them down because they’re blowing that snow, I mean you’ve got 6 foot piles of snow.
Where are you going to put the, you going to put it back in the street? You going to try to pile it
up on the east, on the outside.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Todd Hoffman: It’s going to go on the outside. It’s going to go on the west side.
Steve Monson: So you’re going to keep it on the west side. Well the hill goes up like this.
Todd Hoffman: Well some years you have to move it down and then it up.
Steve Monson: I just don’t think the, my beef is the path. It doesn’t work there. We don’t need
to spend the money on it. I guess on the other, I don’t see where they get 3, what did he say?
$350,000 to put on the other side of the road more? That’s exactly the same. They’ve got, on
our side, on the west side you’ve got to move power lines and telephone poles. You’re going to
have to move those. On the other side of the road you wouldn’t have to move any power lines or
telephone poles. And on the west side you’re still going to have retaining walls and on the east
side you’re going to have retaining walls too so, and what, it doesn’t impact except one neighbor
up the hill it’s going to impact them just probably as much as it might impact them a little bit up
because their house is closer to the road too but that’s up more in the flat area up there. There’s
nothing else in the way going all the way til you get to Lyman and then that’s the other point too
that you guys had you know your future plan with keep following the path around you know.
Doing down Lyman to the east. You know across Lyman and your future plan there.
Paul Oehme: Yeah.
Steve Monson: Well one thing I think you said was when you’re coming down on the east side,
if you put it on the east side you’ve got to get, you’ve got wetlands right there. Well what are
you going to do with the wetlands when you run it down Lyman Boulevard? There’s wetlands
there. I mean it’s the same, you’ve got the same deal so what the heck. Do it there now. I mean
there’s so many, you’ve got to cross Audubon Road up by you know higher up there. The, it’s
just a mess and I think you guys have got to really figure this out before anybody gives any okay
to go any farther at all.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Steve Monson: I guess you know the, letting the you know, building this like in a big circle so
the school can use it. The kids you know if they’re running around. They’re running around all
the time. They don’t need to run up and down that road. I mean you see them running on the
roads and, I mean it just doesn’t make any sense to spend all this money for building a path for
the school kids to run on this path when they can run right, you know they have their track right
up by the school. You run around that track and extra 50 times instead of running down that
path. The path connects with the school back, and now there are so many spots to run we don’t,
the City doesn’t need to spend the money even as a comprehensive plan. I don’t even understand
what that is. I didn’t look it up in the dictionary but you know it just doesn’t make any sense.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Steve Monson: And then yeah, and then does this guy, do you work for the City or are you an
independent or?
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Pat Corkle: I’m an independent consultant for the City.
Steve Monson: You know he doesn’t seem like he has any willpower or anything to try to help
our road. I mean everything he said it just kind of well I can’t do this. You can’t do this. You
can’t do that. You can’t do that. Ms. Ernst there, she’s got good ideas. You know I mean she’s
trying to find out a way to slow the traffic down or with round abouts or you know, you know
that’s what we like is someone that’s going to figure it out there. Not somebody that’s trying to
deter the whole.
Mayor Furlong: If you can take individual people out of it.
Steve Monson: Well I.
Mayor Furlong: I want to make sure.
Steve Monson: You know you guys go through everything so fast and my pencil broke so I
didn’t write any notes down.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Steve Monson: But you know you can’t, I can’t get all the points because I forgot half of them
anyway. And I’m not, with the tonnage on the road. You guys change that tonnage all the time.
You’ve got the, there’s no sign on there anymore. They take the sign down when everybody’s
building you know houses and the big projects you know all around there they take, so there’s no
tonnage. Why can’t we just post it as a 4 ton road? Yeah, like it was. That’s what it was. You
know they took the sign down so the construction people could you know work.
Mayor Furlong: Before you go on Mr. Monson, let’s ask that specific question for you. Is it
legal to post it as a 4 ton road?
Paul Oehme: Ah no. It’s a 7 ton road by State, Minnesota Department of Transportation.
Steve Monson: Why was there a 4 ton road posting sign?
Paul Oehme: It was a 5 ton.
Steve Monson: Okay, 5 ton then.
Paul Oehme: I think it was a 5 ton road posting sign and we post those every year in the spring
because of the frost, the paving condition out there. It’s a statewide decrease in the amount of
tonnage for the roadway.
Mayor Furlong: During the springtime.
Paul Oehme: Those come off.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Mayor Furlong: Oh, one moment please. Let’s let Mr. Oehme speak and then you’ll have.
Paul Oehme: Sure. And then those signs should have been taken down annually, April or May
timeframe when the State says that those signs should come off. Evidently I’ve heard from
several property owners that those signs had been left up over the years so I don’t know how
those signs got left up or who took them down or how that all transpired but all I know is that it’s
a 7 ton design roadway based upon.
Mayor Furlong: Currently.
Paul Oehme: Currently by MnDOT standards. We reduce it down to 5 ton in the spring just
based upon the poor soil conditions. It goes back to 7 ton after those road restrictions are lifted
by MnDOT.
Steve Monson: So that’s a law that it’s a 7 ton road?
Paul Oehme: That’s what it’s designated today.
Steve Monson: And who, okay who designated it? The State?
Paul Oehme: The State, yep.
Steve Monson: And we can’t go to the State to undesignate it to 5 ton?
Paul Oehme: Well again it’s built to a 7 ton standard. You just can’t go back.
Steve Monson: Well who cares what it’s built at. Can we make it a 5 ton road if we, if someone
goes and talks to somebody? Or are you the guy that wants it to be 7 or what?
Paul Oehme: Well no.
Mayor Furlong: The issue is, and maybe this is one of philosophy. Should we just be arbitrarily
setting restrictions on a road that’s built and paid for with gas tax dollars.
Steve Monson: No.
Mayor Furlong: Which everyone, all us as individuals as well as all the truckers and everybody
else.
Steve Monson: It just gets to where you know those, he said there weren’t that many trucks
driving up and down there. I don’t know what the percentage you had up there but, I mean when
you live there there’s trucks just howling down that road just all the time you know. They get,
they come over that crest you know right down by where we live and that’s when they start you
know backing off or shifting down their gears or braking. That’s why that road breaks up so bad
right there. They’re going, I don’t know, maybe that running curbs and that kind of thing in
there is going to slow it down because it looks nicer so, but they get to that point going 60 miles
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
an hour or 50 miles an hour and they just got to slam on the brakes you know because they see
you know us pulling out of our driveways or people just around or they see the stop sign so,
that’s what we really got to figure out is how to slow people down. Put speed bumps in them or,
well that round about’s probably about the best idea you could probably do but then you’re going
to have to you know make a huge round about so the semi’s can get around it too though. But
the semi’s should go to 5 and then down to 41. They shouldn’t be coming down our road
anyway. I mean it’s easier or takes them about a couple seconds longer just to go up to 5 and
then down to 41 or you know that way too. If you could stop that traffic because the road,
double the life of the road.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Steve Monson: Okay, my biggest thing is the path I don’t think we need.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Steve Monson: And I don’t think anybody can give anybody any kind of, we can’t go any
farther til they figure out what to do with my house. What are you going to do? I mean that
stinking path is going to be all the way up in my yard. It just can’t you know, all my trees are
going to be gone. That big 100 year old tree is going to be gone. You know these big pillars
I’ve got there, why even have them if they’re going to be up by the front door?
Mayor Furlong: Well and again what I was hearing is that the trail’s going to be in the right-of-
way. The tree issue.
Paul Oehme: The tree issue and that south oak, or elm tree I think that’s out there, we’re looking
at putting potentially a retaining wall around it. The grades out there are going to change a little
bit. The pine trees to the north there, they’re outside the right-of-way. They’re in our temporary
easement though, but it doesn’t appear like we would have to remove those trees. I mean there’s
potential for putting a retaining wall.
Mayor Furlong: And that’s something that, excuse me for interrupting. That’s something that
we could clarify some of these questions.
Paul Oehme: Right, and again we’re at the preliminary design level. We don’t take it to that
level of detail where our touchdown point for our construction limits is within plus or minus 5
feet of where we think we need that easement. But on the plan we show right now it looks like
you know those trees could be saved because they’re in back. They’re about 5 feet is back of
where the trail’s going to sit.
Mayor Furlong: And that would be confirmed as you go to final design.
Paul Oehme: Exactly.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Steve Monson: You’ve got to be 15 feet at least from you know the branches you know. How
they go out so I mean it’s just will not work so you’re going to have to take those down and
move them.
Paul Oehme: Well again the.
Steve Monson: On that 100 year old tree, what you, you can’t. You’re going to have to order a
crane that goes at least from that tree, at least 15 feet. I mean that thing, you probably have to be
30 feet around there or else it’s going to die no matter what. It’s going to be dead. You can
guarantee it. And then the other thing is how to get to my lower driveway. That’s all I care
about.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Steve Monson: So I think we should table this thing and do a little more study.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Steve Monson: And you know get go with it that way. I think we’re just jumping the gun here
trying to jam this thing in this fast. I think that’s all I got.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you.
Steve Monson: Thanks a lot.
Mayor Furlong: Others from Audubon that would like to address the council at this point.
Pat Walsh: Hi. Pat Walsh. I live at 8731 Audubon and that’s right here. We don’t want the
path on our side either. I think the path’s a horrible idea. I don’t think it’s conducive to just the
layout of the road. There are problems with it on either side so why have it on either side. Like
he said there’s plenty of other paths around. I think the turn lanes are, I mean not to offend
anybody who designed them but I think they’re ridiculous. You’re turning into you know
farmland. What’s the point? I think you’re designing this road for expansion where there’s
really no expansion to be had here. If you want it wider for the people who live in Chaska, let
the people in Chaska pay for it. That’s what he’s talking about is people going from 5 to the new
developments across you know. Let them pay the taxes on it then. I don’t think we need it. The
road needs to be I think repaved. I think we can all agree on that but beyond that the expansion’s
unnecessary and disruptive to the residents. That’s all I have to say. Thank you.
Paul Oehme: Mr. Oehme why don’t you address Mr. Walsh’s question with regard to adding in
turn lanes and to his point building for expansion.
Paul Oehme: Absolutely. We’re right now the ADT is right around, Average Daily Trips are
right around 3,200 per day. You know when the County did their traffic analysis, their comp
plan and when we looked at their numbers, you know this corridor potentially in 20 years could
be upwards of 7,000 trips per day. Now when we look back at you know what determines when
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
we want a left turn or right turn lane in there, I mean right, we’re on the threshold of needing
those turn lanes now and into the future. We’ve got several corridors right now within our
community that you know residents are requesting us to put left turn lanes in there. Well on
Lake Lucy Road and Powers Boulevard, at that intersection the County is looking at putting that
in next year which is a significant dollar amount. 101 is another corridor that is in the same
category of ADT’s as this one potentially in the future. That you know Pleasant View Road for
example or Kurvers Point where we always get complaints there. Why can’t there be a left turn
lane at my intersection because we have seen accidents at those intersections. And we’re, we’ve
got to look, staff has got to look at the future. We look at what the current ADT is and then what
we project out in the future and based upon our analysis and what SRF recommendations are, we
feel justified that some sort of left turn lane should be put in there now and into the future. It’s
only going to cost the City more money down the road to make those accommodations later
when they’re really, really needed.
Mayor Furlong: And how far into the future are we looking from this road design in terms of
road?
Paul Oehme: Yeah and again it, you know it all depends upon development and how the
economy happens. I mean we’ve still got 30% of our land in the city of Chanhassen to develop
just south of Lyman Boulevard so you know a lot of those trips are going to want to come north
to downtown or west to Victoria or some other place and this corridor, the county and city feels
that it’s going to take additional trips so.
Pat Walsh: I actually have one more question then because you brought up some points. He said
the traffic, a slide earlier saying the traffic’s actually going down. I think traffic is going to go
down because of the expansion of the 212 so you’re saying that traffic is going up. I don’t really
believe that it is going up. I believe that’s going down because there are alternative routes now.
And I think the numbers that he provided prove that. Speculation I mean.
Paul Oehme: And again you know to his point, you know it could be based on the economy. It
could be based on several factors. 212 for example. I mean it’s within a couple percentage
points of what it has been over the last you know 10 years but you know we still have the senior
class to arrive at the high school. That’s coming. We still have about 30% of land south, in the
city of Chanhassen to develop south of here so we do feel that, and the economy will eventually
turn around sometime so there, we feel that you know this corridor will definitely see additional
trips in the future.
Pat Walsh: But I don’t think we want the corridor to see additional trips. That’s what we’re all
here complaining about. We want them to go on the wider Powers or you know other roads that
are more suited for that level of traffic. I don’t think Audubon needs to be suited for that level of
traffic. I don’t think it warrants it. I think the numbers prove that you know traffic’s going down
there because there are better routes to go on. By widening it, making it more attractive to
people, yeah. They will go down there but I don’t think it’s necessary. I think there are better
routes to go directly to 212. Powers for example.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Pat Walsh: Thanks.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you.
Tana Erickson: Hi. I’m Tana Erickson from 8941, which is right here. Right at the end. I have
to say that I don’t want the trail either on my side. I’m part of that wetland.
Mayor Furlong: Seems to be a common theme.
Tana Erickson: Yeah.
Mayor Furlong: I’m sorry, could you point on the map again.
Tana Erickson: The old farm down on the corner.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. On the east side.
Tana Erickson: On the east side.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you.
Tana Erickson: I just want to reiterate my husband and I are concerned about the traffic going
faster and making it easier for everyone to go faster. I appreciated Councilwoman Ernst’s
comments to try to think of a way like the road restriction on weight or the round about. That’s
how we’re all trying to think as well. I really appreciate you answering all our questions Pat.
He’s been really good about that but I don’t know if we can just trust that making it look more
residential will slow people down. I would think it just the opposite. If it’s easier and smoother
and straighter that they would go faster. Like I think it’s good that it looks like an old country
road. I don’t know.
Audience: It feels like one.
Tana Erickson: It feels like an old country road and so you know I don’t think we have any
proof that that would slow people down. What else? So it’s two fold. We’re worried about the
speed because it doesn’t feel like a neighborhood at all. It doesn’t feel safe and it’s getting
worst. The other thing is, what’s the other thing I was going to ask about? The trail seems
excessive to spend in a tight economy. I don’t understand where the money comes from for that.
Where does it come from?
Paul Oehme: Well for that improvement we’re looking at bonding dollars for that. It’s been
programmed in our debt levy for I don’t know 5 years or so for this project to take place in 2010.
Tana Erickson: And so I guess if I ran the City I wouldn’t spend my money that way and I also
don’t quite understand the assessment process because if it’s not really going to be a residential
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
road anymore. Were the people assessed on Powers for example when their improvements were
done?
Mayor Furlong: Mr. Gerhardt?
Todd Gerhardt: Some people were assessed on Powers. Instant Web Companies, United
Mailing, Victory Envelope.
Tana Erickson: Businesses?
Todd Gerhardt: Yeah. Those people that directly access out onto the road so Powers probably
isn’t a good example. Lake Lucy is a good example of one that we.
Tana Erickson: And is that a truck route?
Todd Gerhardt: It’s a collector road. Similar standard. Similar traffic counts that Audubon has
but there’s not industrial in that area. You’ll have delivery trucks, mail trucks, garbage trucks,
things like that but the individuals that directly access onto Lake Lucy were assessed for a
residential equivalent so we are treating those individuals that directly access out onto a collector
road the same way.
Tana Erickson: Well when you looked at the traffic, you know the high numbers, the 9, 8 or 9 of
us, that’s pretty small in that number using the road.
Todd Gerhardt: Yeah, we’re.
Tana Erickson: And so that doesn’t feel quite right. And then also just building it for such
heavy weight. I would rather keep it at least at the 7 ton that you were talking about. You don’t
have to make it a 10 ton road. Am I correct?
Paul Oehme: Well typically MnDOT wants you to upgrade them to a standard collector roadway
which is typically 10 tons and 7 tons was the old kind of limit that they like to see. Now with the
more truck traffic or you know bigger and heavier garbage trucks and delivery trucks and
everything else going down these roads, they typically want you to upgrade to 10 ton now. And
that’s a question we can talk to MnDOT.
Tana Erickson: Yeah, and can you explain to me why we are so concerned about what MnDOT
wants? Is it because they’re help funding the road or we owe them in some way?
Paul Oehme: Well, and that’s the, it goes back to the. It goes back to you know State Statute
and MnDOT is kind of the jurisdictional entity in the State of Minnesota for designs and criteria
for roadways. I mean we always have to look to them for these types of improvements because
basically we get dollars back from the state gas tax for improvements and maintenance of our
roadway system, specifically collector roadway systems and you know typically you have to
follow their design criteria’s and standards before you know if you want to get the, you know
have the gas tax be dedicated to your community so.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Tana Erickson: But it seems like you can’t really have it both ways. Either it’s that commuter
route you know by MnDOT or it’s a residential road.
Paul Oehme: Right I mean and again residential roads, you know we’re designing our local
roadway system, our cul-de-sacs and everything else to a 7-8 ton design right now so they are at
a, local roads are at a higher standard than they were say you know 10, 15, 20 years ago. So all
of the standards are kind of, are bigger and more beefy than they have been in the past.
Mayor Furlong: Excuse me, let me clarify something. You said you can’t have it both ways.
It’s either a collector or a residential.
Tana Erickson: Well it just seems like if you’re getting all the money from MnDOT and we’re
going with the gas tax and the weight, that I’m still confused why we would be assessed for that.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. And again we, Mr. Oehme.
Paul Oehme: Yeah again that’s, we’re looking at the practice for assessing on collector
roadways is to look at this roadway as being that local roadway component so if you’re access, if
you access your house driveway onto a local roadway, that’s what the assessment would be for
that 7-8 ton design basically, what we’re looking at. You know the City again pays for the turn
lanes. We pay for the upgrade to the 10 ton road. We pay for the over sizing. The wider width
roadway than you would see for a 31 foot wide residential street so those, you know we break it
down to that level where you’re only paying for, or propose to be paying for the benefit for a
local roadway in front of your house.
Mayor Furlong: Mr. Oehme, do we have the graphic that was in our packet that showed that
calculation and the hierarchy of the calculation? Because some other people have asked about
this issue of residential when it’s a collector road.
Tana Erickson: Well and you know I know you don’t like that Powers as an example but there
are some residences on Powers. Did they pay or was it just businesses? There are some
driveways that go right onto Powers. Right around the corner from Lyman. There’s a couple of
them.
Mayor Furlong: When was Powers upgraded?
Todd Gerhardt: Powers was upgraded probably 1998.
Tana Erickson: I thought you just used some federal stimulus money for that.
Paul Oehme: That’s a county road. I think you’re referring to the stimulus project that took
place this summer.
Todd Gerhardt: I wasn’t.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Paul Oehme: Oh I’m sorry.
Mayor Furlong: It is a county road right.
Tana Erickson: So it’s different than our road.
Mayor Furlong: This is not a county road. Audubon’s not a county road so yeah.
Tana Erickson: So I guess in a nutshell, you know obviously we’re really anxious about this and
it does seem like it’s moving too fast. That things aren’t ironed out. There aren’t enough
different options like on how we’re going to slow down this traffic. And I’m with my neighbors
that I think we need a little bit more time to resolve some open issues instead of pushing this
through for spring. I know we had a couple neighborhood meetings and I’m unclear about, from
the original plan based on all the feedback we gave you at the meeting, what changes were
made? The 4 feet?
Paul Oehme: Yep, the 4 feet.
Tana Erickson: Anything else?
Paul Oehme: We looked at tweaking the trail design. We looked at that.
Tana Erickson: Did you tweak it or did you just look at tweaking it?
Paul Oehme: We looked at, we moved it to accommodate some of your neighbor’s issues in
terms of impacts to their property in front of their house. We looked at you know cost savings in
terms of the pavement section that we’re using. We decreased that based upon some engineered
analysis to save on some money. So those type of things. I mean the overlying design that has
been put forth by staff you know, we looked at all the changes that have been requested. Moving
the access point of the, or the crossing of the trail to a different intersection. You know we
looked at, we looked at different, brought some information back to the property owners in terms
of why we can and cannot do different things in terms of you know what MnDOT will allow us
to do and what the design standards are. I mean there’s so many things that we can do to
accommodate this corridor and to fit both our the collector roadway needs and the desire of the
property owners in this corridor. It is a collector roadway and it’s been on the comp plan for, I
don’t know, for a long, long time so I mean we’re basing our analysis and our design on what the
overall corridor had been envisioned for when the, when this whole area developed so.
Tana Erickson: So what’s hard as a resident is you know you try to get involved in the process
and we go to these meetings and you know you show up at a City Council meeting because for
the first time something directly impacts you and it’s just hard because you pour out your heart
and then when the plan comes back, it looks almost the same and then we wonder if you all have
even heard our concerns. You know like if you’re kept up to date before this meeting if you
know that it’s a big deal to us or if you know we should have just not even bothered because the
plan was going to be the same as it was presented originally. If our voice mattered. Or if it
really mattered to be involved in the process.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Mayor Furlong: I’ll take a quick stab because I want to keep the public hearing going but it
absolutely matters and we’ve been absolutely kept up to date on what some of the issues are that
have been brought up at the neighborhood meetings. What I’m hearing a little bit is that while
there’s a, there’s some questions that have been answered, the answers are coming back but
sometimes the answer is we can’t make the change that’s requested because of other limitations
so. But in terms of, are your questions important? Absolutely. I mean I go back to some of the
things I said at the opening of the public hearing. Is this a project that needs to be done? My
general sense is most the people that have come up believe that this road needs to be improved.
So now we’re dealing with the questions in large part, and if people come up and disagree with
that please be clear on that. But we’re also dealing with the question, is the proposed
improvements meet the needs and I’m hearing some conflict there between the comprehensive
plan and what some of the residents that access this street with their driveways want and so there
are some conflicts there. Public hearing’s still open we’ll hear some more and then we’ll be able
to discuss it but yes, it absolutely does matter and we have been listening.
Tana Erickson: Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Anyone else on Audubon?
Ruth Chadderdon: Good evening. I’m Ruth Chadderdon. 8900 Audubon Road and this is
Dennis. We are right here. Basically just agreeing with what everyone else is saying here. I was
going to read a couple of questions that I have. Excuse me, I’m losing my voice. We all agree
that the road needs to be updated but we’re questioning again why 8 homes are being assessed.
Out of a $3 million dollar project, there is $52,000 that are coming to 8 homes. In making the
road wider and adding a larger base you’re creating a road that is desirable for the trucks. I think
all of us are agreeing to that. You’re going to have to read because my voice is going. It sounds
like we can’t do the 30 mile zone. From what MnDOT is saying however again MnDOT is not
the one that lives out on that road. All of us live out there. We see the trucks. They’re going 45
would be great but they’re usually going about 50-55. We have children that are accessing
buses. Trying to pull out of the driveway. All of us are trying to you know get out onto that
road. The trucks. The semi’s. They’re barreling down the road. 3% for the trucks, I find that
hard to believe. I don’t know if you can do a proper assessment going out one day and make that
assessment. Again with the high school going in there’s going to be a ton more traffic coming
down that road. The seniors aren’t there yet. Again you’ve got 16-17 year olds that will be
accessing that road. If they’re going 45 miles an hour, they’re probably going to be doing 55. I
think putting the round about in sounds like a great idea to slow some of that down and to
discourage some of the trucks as well. I have to agree with Mrs. Erickson. She indicated that
we’ve been here on 4 separate occasions and have voiced our opinions. I don’t see very many of
the suggestions being implemented. It appears that the plans have been drawn up and that they
are, that they’ll stand as is. We’ve had many engineers and park planners that have completed
their assessment but not one of them live in our neighborhood. We invite you to come and sit at
the end of our driveways for a couple of hours and see what we see. The bike path, obviously
none of us want that on either side of the road. Again you know when you look at the park
system that’s behind all of those homes, it’s very vast. There’s ton of paths down there. I
understand that, you know for the new high school, maybe that would be a nice running track for
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
them. I think we spent a ton of money putting in a running track at the new high school. I guess
the only other thing for that bike path again is we’ve heard that it’s a quality of life and for those
of us that live there, it’s our quality of life too.
Dennis Chadderdon: I mean if we’re talking about that bike path being, I mean I heard a lot of
you know from the exercise standpoint. You don’t need that stretch of road to be an exercise
standpoint. There’s plenty of other places to go and as far as a loop, it goes down into the back.
You can see here where it actually. Is it right here that it comes down? By Valley Ridge. Yeah,
it comes down in the back. Loops this way. It just, it does not have to come up and loop that
other way. And from one of the comments that was made about well maybe if kids are seen
there or if there’s curb and gutter there things will slow down. You’re smoothing that road out.
It’s not going to slow down by any means. At all. Smoothing that road up is just going to make
things in my mind a little bit more dangerous. Little bit faster and by putting people on the side
of that road, I don’t think it’s going to slow it down.
Ruth Chadderdon: And again with that, with the path going in as Mr. Monson had pointed out,
we’ve met several times. Have asked what the assessment is. What the appraisals are coming
back at. If you can look at our property you can see again that, while it takes out most of Mr.
Monson’s property, it has quite a bit of impact on our driveway as well. We have some trees in
there as well. We have sumac. We have you know grass that we’ve been trying to grow for
about 3 years. So in meeting with them we’ve asked what the appraisal is and we have not been
able to get any number on that. When we’ve asked about you know looking at other options, it
seems like there’s just a lot of questions up in the air about that. Tonight honestly this is the first
time I’ve ever heard any dollar amount of moving it from one side of the road to the other of
$335,000. I find that very, just mind boggling to me and that’s the first time we’ve heard that
dollar amounts. I guess the other question that we have too is, we’ve all talked about this feeder
road. Audubon feeder road and again we’ve all seen the county road. 15 I believe it was for
many, many years. In fact when they were building the new Chanhassen high school there was a
road that was put out and it said detour County Road 15. Right down our road. We’re not sure
when that all changed. Audubon going towards Chaska is a county road. Powers is a county
road. Galpin is a county road, is that correct?
Mayor Furlong: Yes.
Ruth Chadderdon: Lyman is a county road. Highway 5 is a state road. 101 is a state road and
Highway 41 is a state road. Seems to me that the only road that we can now get assessments on
is Audubon. 8 homes.
Dennis Chadderdon: And one final thing about the assessments. We’re talking about 8
driveways that have direct access to this road. Valley Ridge South whole development. You
couldn’t get in or out of there without Audubon. I realize the developer probably was assessed
on residential roads in there, but without Audubon Road there is no other access to that
neighborhood so I don’t think it’s fair that the 8, and I’m not saying that those people should pay
either. I’m not trying to make anybody mad at me but the, doing it to the 8 people when you’ve
got 150 homes in that development seems a little bit wrong to me.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Ruth Chadderdon: And not to mention again you know General Mills, the trucks. 3% of their
trucks, it’s more than honestly again we invite anyone to some out and sit out there for a day and
look at the trucks that are coming down. It’s General Mills and it’s a huge industrial park. If
you look at Lake Lucy that you’re referring to before, there’s no industrial there so it’s really not
comparable so again we’re just, we’re against the bike path completely I think, that’s been loud
and clear for everyone on both sides of the road and it would be great if we could do something
to discourage the trucks that are barreling down that road.
Mayor Furlong: Councilwoman Tjornhom, you had a question? If you don’t mind.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: I do have a question and of the 5 people that have come up tonight,
you’re right. Everyone has been pretty inflammatory about the bike path. That no one wants the
bike path in their yard and I honestly I just want to know what your fear is. If you take out, if no
trees are going to be destroyed and no property damaged was going to happen, what is your fear
about having the bike path?
Ruth Chadderdon: Well I can tell you from our standpoint, you know again we purchased that
property. We purchased 3 acres so that we lived in you know kind of a nice setting that was
more rural. Obviously things change. We now have the high school right in our back yard. That
is a huge eye sore and then now where we had a buffer you know that kind of goes up to the
road, there’s trees in there and so now what we’re having proposed is that it’s going to come
closer to our property. To our home. It’s going to be flattened out and there’ll be trees replaced
but again we’ve asked the question what type of tree will be replaced and we haven’t been told
what type. We’ve asked you know with our driveway being torn up, will you put that back you
know so that it obviously looks nice and all the way up to the house. We’ve heard that they’ll
patch it in. So those are just things that we’re concerned about. Again you know there’s an
easement that will be coming in. You can see it. It impacts our two homes greatly. There’s
huge disruption and the cost again in times like this, honestly it’d be great if none of us had to be
assessed $6,000 in this economic times and what’s going in for a path that’s going to have access
to 3 homes when you have a huge trail system behind all the other homes. Maybe take that
money and put it towards the assessment and I think that would make a lot of people very happy
in these times.
Mayor Furlong: Mr. Oehme can you respond to some of their questions?
Paul Oehme: Sure. And you know Ruth, Mrs. Chadderdon and her husband did come in last
week and I know Alyson Fauske, my assistant did meet with them several times and I know that
they were at the neighborhood meetings so we’ve been talking several times about the, about this
project. You know the trail, I know it’s, I don’t know, you know I can’t address I guess the trail
issue. Maybe Mr. Hoffman can do that but in terms of the assessment methodology, I think that
was their first question. You know we’ve tried to explain as best as we can that you know, this
has been a city practice and the council has talked about the assessment practice actually tonight
at the work session about this specific type of issue so it’s something that has been worked on.
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The assessment. We’ve assessed on Lake Lucy Road. We’ve assessed on 78 Street. Similar
methodology in terms of going back and looking at local road improvement design and assessing
that back into the benefitting properties adjacent to the road. You know again we’re not
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
requesting or asking that the property owners pay for that oversizing of the road. It’s just the,
just trying to be consistent with how we assess with the rest of the community and local
roadways. In terms of the tree impacts. There are some trees and some sumac that would
potentially have to be removed and you know we’re looking at coming up with a landscape plan
to address those needs. You know we’re not, typically we don’t talk about landscaping or land
acquisition until we move on to the final design portion of the project so that’s the reason why
we haven’t really talked about what the appraised value would be for that temporary easement.
We typically like to move the process along. Get to the final, or get to the design before we
make that next step so that’s the reason for that. Not moving forward with the appraisal amount
in terms of…
Mayor Furlong: And just for clarification.
Paul Oehme: Yep.
Mayor Furlong: The appraisal there is to establish a basis for value for the easements that need
to be acquired.
Paul Oehme: Exactly and again it’s just for temporary easements. All we need is to
accommodate the trail is for additional land to grade onto the private property. Re-establish the
vegetation in that area and we always work with the property owners on what they would like to
see out there in terms of revegetation. And then see either a hydro seed, I think they mentioned
requested it to be hydro seeded. So those type of things are more conducive in terms of when we
get to the plans and specs and the final design because it’s something that has always been
worked out farther along in the process.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. And what about matching the grades of the driveways because there is
some elevation differences?
Paul Oehme: Right and that was one of the things that the Chadderdon’s we talked about with
them last week. We’re looking at trying to reduce the impacts to their driveway as much as we
can. The drawing that’s shown here shows the driveway impacts going farther up back into their
property. And based upon what we’re looking at we can, we think we can reduce those impacts
about 15 feet from where they are today. We can’t eliminate all of them because we want to try
to tie back the driveway grades into as close as they are today. We don’t want to steepen it out
any more than it already is. That’s the reason why we need to take it farther back into their
property.
Mayor Furlong: Alright. Just with a question as far as the assessment again. I mean we
understand that you’re trying to be consistent with again like the Lake Lucy Road but I still come
back to that Lake Lucy does not have the industrial use. By adding the auto park on that road, on
a Saturday, again come out and sit with any of us. The auto park is now a raceway for these cars.
There’s Porsche’s. There’s Lamborghini’s. They’re beautiful cars. They’re absolutely gorgeous
but on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, you’re not going to put your kid out there because they use
that road and if you’re improving it and you’re making it wider and putting in you know a
beautiful street, it’s going to become a raceway.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Mayor Furlong: And just to clarify Mrs. Chadderdon, when you say put your kids out there. In
terms of driving on the street or riding their bikes or?
Ruth Chadderdon: I mean honestly to.
Audience: They would never ride a bike.
Ruth Chadderdon: I mean you wouldn’t, yeah. You wouldn’t ride a bike. You wouldn’t walk
down that road so I understand you know that’s great for the pathway but at that point I mean
there’s a lot of people that they’re not going to even use that path but aside from that, to pull out
onto that road it’s very dangerous. I have a 16 year old right now. It makes me very nervous to
watch her try to pull out onto that road. If the assessments are made and it’s upgraded, with the
trucks and the auto park, it’s dangerous. I have a son that gets on the school bus. He has to cross
the road. We have called, we’ve had to call the school bus company every single year because
the way that the trucks come down the road, they’re not seeing the school bus stopped. What
they’re seeing ahead is a stop light. Or stop sign and they know that they need to get to that and
they need to get to it fast so they can access the 212 or wherever they need to go. The school bus
driver, I can’t tell you how many times has taken down license plate numbers. Flashing their
lights. They’ve done so many things trying to discourage and trying to slow down the trucks and
some of the speeds that have become just so excessive on that road so that’s just our take on it. I
can only image anyone else that have children that are trying to you know come, and again just
myself trying to pull out in the morning to you know and our’s, I mean we have such a short
distance to go that being assessed for the entire road is also killing us too for that but whatever.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Anything else?
Ruth Chadderdon: That’s it. Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any others on Audubon or even open it up to other interested
parties that would like to address the council.
Tana Erickson: I’ve just got one quick thing on the trail. I’m not opposed to trails in general.
We’re going to have one on the other side of our property right here. So we’ll be getting it both
places. This is what year, 2000? But this is part of our property here that will become a trail
eventually. I just didn’t want one here as well because it takes out all the trees which is a buffer
to all the semi’s coming down and the noise.
Steve Monson: I guess Bethany, I can’t read your last name. How’s it go?
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Tjornhom.
Steve Monson: Tjornhom?
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Tjornhom.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Steve Monson: Tjornhom. You know about the path you know why, you said why we don’t
want the path there. Well we all live in big lots. You know we don’t want people around. You
know we don’t like kids coming for Halloween. If you’re going to put that path in we’ll just get
you know how many more people vandalism. You know just kids ride their bike down there
crashing and I mean it’s just you know, brings in a whole other can of worms for that kind of
thing there.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And that’s good to know.
Mayor Furlong: Good evening.
Krista Strang: Good evening. My name’s Krista Strang. I live at 1701 Valley Ridge Trail
South.
Todd Hoffman: Want to zoom Paul.
Krista Strang: So I’m right at the corner. As you come into Valley Ridge Trail South. Our
property backs up to Audubon. One of my questions I have concerning the trail is, if you can see
on the picture, right on the edge of the trail there’s a white line. That’s my fence and my concern
is the distance from my fence to the trail. A couple years ago we put in a bunch of arborvitaes to
kind of try and buffer some of the noise and some of the sights of the traffic back there and what
it looks like from the edge of where those trees are to where the edge or where that trail starts is
going to be like 1-2 feet.
Mayor Furlong: Do we know?
Paul Oehme: Yeah, it’s about 2 feet from the fence there. That fence is in the right-of-way so,
but we think we can accommodate the trail around the fence.
Mayor Furlong: How far into the right-of-way?
Paul Oehme: It looks about 3 feet.
Mayor Furlong: So you’re saying it’s going to, right now the trail would be about how far away
from the fence?
Paul Oehme: About 2 feet.
Krista Strang: So the distance is just one of my concerns having you know the trail, granted we
have a fence there which is great but I have 2 small children and the idea of having the bike path
right there, right where my play set is and my 2 little kids are and just the extra people going by,
that just makes me a little nervous having it that, 2 feet away so that makes me a little nervous.
And kind of the same thing that other people have said. The trucks and the speed. Somebody
said, I think you Mayor mentioned taking your kids out riding bike or what would they be doing.
Our side yard comes over here and playing football over there or doing anything along that part
of our yard is, I just try and discourage it from the kids because those cars, they’re not going 45.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
The trucks are not going 45. They’re going much faster and there are a lot of trucks that come
by there and they are not, they’re not looking for a 4 year old little boy chasing a football so
those are some of my concerns. Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Thank you.
Steve Monson: Steve Monson again. Say you know and that brings up another, back to the issue
of the snow again. I mean you’re going to put the snow over in her yard, over her fence. That’s,
where you going to put it back on the street or are you going to put it on her fence you know?
Todd Hoffman: Push it down the trail until it can go off the trail.
Steve Monson: Yeah so I mean there’s still a lot of issues with the snow removal. I remove
snow, that’s my job. So I just wonder about how you’re going to get rid of all this snow.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Others.
Wendy O’Connor: Hi there. My name’s Wendy O’Connor and I live at 1702 Valley Ridge Trail
North. Right here. Okay, well I have a couple of things that I’ve noticed and I’ve spoken to
Paul extensively and he’s been very helpful and I talked to Pat at the city meeting, or the
neighborhood meeting and he was helpful as well. Couple things. We talked about the speed
measurement study and we also talked about the volume. One of the things about the speed
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measurement study, it was done on Monday, August 10 through Wednesday, August 12.
Couple of things about those dates before the school started so the traffic we expected would go
up once school started, when Paul and I talked about that he said that generally you could expect
it to go up 10-15 percent. So 3,200 trips would increase by 10-15 percent. Beyond that they
only monitored from Valley Ridge Trail, well they only monitored north of Valley Ridge Trail
North and I can show you on this map. Right here, right here I’m sorry. This is where the
pneumatic tube was put. Right at this spot. Now the pneumatic tube, and I’ve read a lot. The
internet is my friend but one of the things I noticed about it is, there’s no visual and also, it also
measures by axle so when they say it’s less than 3% of truck traffic is what we’re seeing, it’s 3
axle traffic. We have UPS trucks. We have postal trucks. We have every delivery truck that
goes into that business park that we see all the time and I think that’s what we all see, besides the
truck traffic so I think that that 3% is a bit of a misnomer. I think it’s very convenient but I don’t
think it’s accurate. The other thing is, is we talked about an all way stop at Valley Ridge Trail
North. Now it’s 45 miles per hour and the road is also proposed to be 52 feet wide. We have no
park at our neighborhood so our children are forced to cross the street, Audubon. 45 miles per
hour. 52 feet wide. To go to the two parks over in the bird neighborhood. We have, I wouldn’t
send my children across that road so one thing I’d ask for was an all way stop. Well based upon
some of the rules by, I think it’s MMUMTD or whatever it is, some of, they needed another
traffic study and based upon that, based upon the traffic study we have, it’s just not there.
There’s just so much gray area. If there was a possibility of getting an all way stop I think that
would slow down the traffic. I also think that when you look at the 45 miles per hour you can
also look at Powers Boulevard, which we’ve talked about. Four lanes. Divided highway. Also
45 miles per hour. We are in a two lane road, local that is 45 miles per hour. It’s crazy and if we
can’t regulate that, then how about we spend $10,000 to put in a stop sign. Four way stop.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Relatively simple. I realize that it does violate some of the code because maybe we may not
have as much traffic right now but there’s also a couple benefits. I spoke to a gentleman from
the school district and his name is John Rogers and he manages the transportation. Well this
year with the high school they had to actually put buses into the bird neighborhood because
there’s no safe crosswalk. If we had a safe crosswalk there he said it would save $42,000 a year
for the school district to put in an all way stop. And you know what, and that’s in none of this
information and when I talked to Paul about it they hadn’t even included the school district in
any of the conversations so again, a lot of gray area. Very confusing. I can sit there and do all
this research, which does anybody have the time? Absolutely not yet at the same time it’s like
we just need that little extra step and I think you know, I commend Paul for trying to help us
with a lot of things and I think Pat has great insight but one of the things Pat said was, he didn’t
view it as a residential area. It is absolutely residential area. We have no other way to get out of
our neighborhood and this is where our children cross to go to the park. This is where we cross
to walk. I think that it’s nice to have an improved road but I think at 45 miles per hour and no
stop sign, no way to slow down the traffic, I don’t think it really benefits anybody except for
delivery vehicles.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Mr. Oehme, other thoughts or comments?
Paul Oehme: Yeah, just a couple that I jotted down here. The trip generation, we did do it
beginning of August. We felt that that time period seemed to fit with the average trip traffic in
the neighborhood there and again the numbers we brought back to the council in terms of
historical numbers along Audubon do somewhat relate back to the numbers that we have
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historically gathered in the August 10 trips so I mean I think you know that was one of our
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questions too. Are the numbers that we took on August 10 similar or are they out of bounds
from what we have seen historically and based upon the numbers that we dug up over the last say
10 years, I think they fit right in line with what we see today so that was one point. The stop sign
issue, maybe Pat can address the issue of putting a stop sign in an intersection that potentially is
not warranted for a stop sign. I mean there’s some issues surrounding that that we need to really
think about before we start putting up stop signs.
Mayor Furlong: Certainly, please. If you’d like to address that.
Pat Corkle: Mayor, members of the City Council. I know that, I understand, we get this a lot
where people say hey put in an all way stop. It’s not that expensive. That’s true. From just
installing it. The cost of installing it. The bad thing is I think, while this is very good intentions,
a lot of research shows that, that doesn’t always get what we want. In fact one of the quotes out
of the research that I’ve looked up, so it’s not me saying it. It’s looking up some of the things,
other studies. I’m just going to read it here kind of directly. Safety at pedestrians can actually
decrease because pedestrians expect people to stop while vehicles become accustomed to
running the unnecessary, unwanted stop sign because they never stop for cross street traffic.
And so they’ve actually seen where people again, it just became something that they, if it’s not
warranted a lot of times people just end up assuming that it’s not needed. They just go through it
and then when there is actually a pedestrian there, they don’t see it. One of the things I think to
keep in mind just in general about pedestrian crossings, and I could spend time explaining why
we maybe mark this location. One thing that we should probably understand is that it’s legal for
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
pedestrians to cross at intersection with marked or unmarked crosswalks and again research
would probably show, to be honest with you, they’ve actually had more safety problems at
marked crosswalks than unmarked crosswalks because as a pedestrian you think you’re safe but
you know that much of paint ain’t going to save you. I mean you just become accustomed
saying well I’m at a crosswalk, you should stop for me and that, you know that doesn’t always
happen so again anywhere along here people could cross legally. In fact a vehicle should stop
for them. I think we were trying to find a location, while I’ll agree. I’m not as pleased maybe by
the number of lanes to cross. It seemed like from a connection to the other trail system, this was
the right location to maybe stripe it and sign it. Down at Valley Ridge Trail South, that’s about
the spot where the grade starts to change. That’s where the hill is. We’re a little concerned
about the sight distance. That’s why we didn’t keep that trail on the east side. West side? Down
to there and then saying hey, this is a safe place to cross, even though I would say one of the
things I did like about that location is, and maybe you’ll see it in the council or the letter is that
what we called that shadowed area you can see, and I’m going to just kind of point to this real
quick. This location right here. This is an area I call shadowed so the benefit of that would be
the fact that you could walk across into the median and you only got to look at one side of the
roadway each direction so you’re just looking one way. You’re looking at one direction. Going
out to the median and then going across the other section. In fact there was some discussion
about well maybe we could do something else at that location, or you could cross there. I think
the location at Heron might be a better spot, if there were pedestrians that were there and it’s
hard to get an idea of, to be honest with the pedestrian traffic at this time of year obviously
because it’s winter so that was some of the issues. I think the other thing, as long as I’m up here
if you don’t mind, there was some discussion about you know we’re adding a bigger roadway. I
think the one thing just to make sure we’re all clear is that, if we were to design this roadway as
it is today, it’s a 12 foot, two 12 foot lanes so 24 feet of pavement. 8 foot shoulders on each side
so that’s 40 feet. If we went back out there today we’d still put that 40 feet but we’d just pave
the shoulders. We’re still saying we’re going to use the 40 feet. Instead of having two lanes and
shoulders, my perspective is that it’s safer to put that left turn lane in there for a safe haven for
the vehicles that are turning left so. If we’re going to use that space, and I know it looks like
there’s more lanes and I think that makes people uneasy but from my perspective, my
recommendation back to everybody would be is we’re going to use 40 feet. Let’s use it the
safest that we can so that’s something else I just wanted to put up.
Mayor Furlong: Is that intersection there with Osprey and Valley Ridge Trail North, the way it’s
designed, could stop signs be added to it in the future when it’s warranted?
Pat Corkle: If it did meet warrants you could go back and put a stop sign.
Mayor Furlong: With this design.
Pat Corkle: Yeah.
Mayor Furlong: So when the warrants come about, because you’re concern is you put it in
without it warranted, it might create an even more unsafe situation.
Pat Corkle: Yeah.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Mayor Furlong: At some point if the traffic volumes get to the point that I’ve heard tonight, it
may be warranted and then, so my question is are we designing it so that can be added in when
it’s warranted.
Paul Oehme: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: We’ve also heard after construction, if you know traffic behavior might change,
we can take other tests after, after it’s completed I assume and double check and see if those
warrants are met. Would that be?
Pat Corkle: That would be fair. I don’t think we’re doing anything that would prevent installing
a stop signs at a later date.
Mayor Furlong: Making additional safety improvements.
Pat Corkle: Sure.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright, thank you. Please.
Elizabeth Kressler: Hi, good evening. My name is Elizabeth Kressler and I live at 1750 Valley
Ridge Trail North. Here. Okay. I’m a good friend of Wendy’s and neighbor and so we’ve kind
of been collecting our thoughts but I just wanted to express some concerns and there was a few
questions. I was really surprised that the City didn’t contact the school with regards to the
Audubon Road reconstruction project. It has a direct result to safe passage for the bird
neighborhood. Osprey and all, Heron. And the amount of money to be saved is just about a
teacher’s salary so I was really surprised, as was Mr. Jennings when I met him in Caribou
Coffee, strictly by accident. But he was talking about working on the budget that day and I said
well how would you like to save $42,000 if you can have safe passage for those kids to walk to
high school? What a great idea. Not sure why they’re not contacted in the beginning. I thought
we were all a community working together. So that, I was a little concerned and you can address
that later but I was wondering if you can over with me the four lanes and the measurements that
you’re using. You had up like the old measurement versus the new measurement and what
you’re including in those measurements. Is it, you had, in some instances you had 40 feet old, or
44 feet old, 40 feet new. But yet the road is getting wider so I don’t really know.
Paul Oehme: Yep. Let me just pull up an example here.
Elizabeth Kressler: Okay there. No, that’s. Let’s see I had it.
Paul Oehme: You want that one? This is just an example of.
Elizabeth Kressler: That’s one of them.
Paul Oehme: Heron, yeah. Which intersection would you like to take a look at?
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Elizabeth Kressler: I don’t think I wrote down, oh. It was Lake Drive West. Now 44 feet wide
going to 40 feet wide.
Paul Oehme: Right. Okay, so Lake Drive West here. Right now from, it’s curb and gutter out
here.
Elizabeth Kressler: Okay.
Paul Oehme: 40 to 40 here. We’re, we need to reconstruct that intersection. There’s some
drainage issues here we want to address. And then based upon the analysis we have, we’d like to
shrink that down by 4 feet so removing the curb. Shrinking down the roadway to 40 feet to
accommodate the new design.
Elizabeth Kressler: So each time you’re going from curb to curb?
Paul Oehme: Curb to curb.
Elizabeth Kressler: On every measurement.
Paul Oehme: Yeah, it’s not curb to curb. I mean for example Heron it’s from edge of gravel
shoulder to edge of gravel should basically so.
Elizabeth Kressler: Okay.
Paul Oehme: So that’s the measurement that we’re using.
Elizabeth Kressler: That’s inclusive.
Paul Oehme: Exactly. Yep.
Elizabeth Kressler: Okay. I got a little confused. I thought there was some apples and oranges
being added.
Paul Oehme: Okay.
Elizabeth Kressler: I was wondering if any of the businesses north of us are also contributing to
this reconstruction project. I know you mentioned that you were breaking it down that the City’s
paying for the trail and the extra widening and all this other stuff but those businesses, yes. Their
only way to get to Audubon is on their driveway so are any of those businesses, i.e. General
Mills or a couple of the new ones that, IBI and Jehovah’s Witness, I mean all. There’s nowhere
else for them to go.
Paul Oehme: Right, and again the, if and when Audubon north of this project area were ever to
be considered for reconstruction and if we use the same methodology, they at that time would be
proposed for assessments. Just like in your neighborhood we’re not proposing your
neighborhood to be assessed for any of the improvements we’re talking about tonight. Likewise
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
we’re not asking the property owners north of here to contribute directly to the improvements at
this time.
Elizabeth Kressler: Okay. So everything is funded through the city and bonds and all that.
Okay. I was wondering, I’m trying to understand what the roadway system, how it’s like and it’s
a county road and that. I thought our road used to be a county road and then they crossed us off
the list sometime. When did that happen?
Paul Oehme: Yeah.
Elizabeth Kressler: They said no more. You’re not a county road.
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Paul Oehme: Right, I did pull that up in, it looks like December 7 of ’81.
Elizabeth Kressler: So the signs were up for quite some time.
Paul Oehme: Right and again I don’t.
Elizabeth Kressler: To ’97, ’99. We’re talking 10-11 years they were in there.
Paul Oehme: I don’t understand where those signs came from. Obviously and how long they
stood up there or why they were still up so that’s the date that we found in our files that the road
was turned back to the city, and Powers was designated a county road.
Elizabeth Kressler: Okay. You know there’s a couple of roads that come to mind, which is you
know you’ll see my lack of understanding. When you’re going, and this is way out of our
neighborhood but when you’re going north on, north of 5 on Galpin, just past Kwik Trip.
There’s a little neighborhood right off to the right hand side that has a stop sign. There it is.
Right in the middle of the road. Stop sign. How did they get one and why can’t we have one? I
mean their neighborhood’s the only way they can get out to and frolic in the rest of the city.
Well, I want one just like they have. I’m like what dictates them getting one and not us?
Todd Gerhardt: That one didn’t meet warrants either and.
Elizabeth Kressler: But yet they have one.
Todd Gerhardt: They have.
Elizabeth Kressler: So the precedent’s been set. Just wondering.
Paul Oehme: Yeah, and just to address your point too though. If you talk to our law
enforcement officials, I mean they can sit at that intersection all day long and write tickets for
vehicles running that red light, or that stop sign so I mean it is a safety concern from our
perspective because there is that park on the other side that pedestrians are crossing.
Mayor Furlong: And just to clarify. Galpin is a county road correct?
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Paul Oehme: Correct.
Mayor Furlong: Did the City put the stop signs in?
Paul Oehme: No.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Elizabeth Kressler: The County did. Okay. So in the very, very beginning of your presentation
Paul you actually said, and you probably misspoke but I’m going to catch you on it because I
write quotes all over. I have 6 pages of notes over here. Your proposed improvements you
quote were not making it a collector roadway. You must have misspoke because, and if
somebody recorded that you’ll hear it. It is in fact a collector roadway.
Mayor Furlong: Yes.
Paul Oehme: Right.
Elizabeth Kressler: How do we get it to not be a collector roadway when there’s all these other
collector roadways all over the place, why does that one, little old Audubon that has a majority
residential with a high school. Well we want safety. How do we get it not to be a collector
roadway? How does it get to not be, we’re not a county road anymore. We crossed that off the
list. Can we cross off that we’re a collector, not a collector road?
Paul Oehme: Sure.
Elizabeth Kressler: I mean is that easy? Can’t we just, you know.
Paul Oehme: It comes back to the traffic and access and where these trips are going virtually.
You know as Pat had indicated earlier that you know from a local roadway you need a collector
roadway to bring vehicles to principal arterials or arterial trunk highway system so it’s a network
of roadways and different classifications that the city and all communities basically in Minnesota
follow that you know, every street is not, cannot be just a local roadway. Some roadways have
to carry more trips than others and that’s how that classification has come about. I mean the
functional classification has been on the city books for this roadway since 1981 when this
roadway was turned back to the city. It’s always been planned for this roadway to have larger
trip generation because of the access points that are out here. Where the destination potentially
are heading and going and there has to be a roadway system that can handle those trips. We’ve
got Galpin, just referring to the… Galpin is a collector roadway, or arterial roadway by the
county out here. There’s another Powers Boulevard is another arterial roadway out here. And
then there has to be collectors to handle that traffic coming in and out of those county roadway
systems so that’s basically how the functional classification designation is determined. There’s,
you know we have several collector roadways in the city that handle about the same amount of
traffic that Audubon Road does so.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Councilman Litsey: A lot of that, if I could ask, is a way of moving traffic through the city. I
mean otherwise you’re going to have gridlock because if everybody wanted, got their way on
every street you wouldn’t be able to get anywhere. Everyone wants speed bumps. Everyone
wants stop signs and you couldn’t get from point A to B very quickly so you try to make it as
reasonable as possible where you have the real residential but you also need the feeder streets
and the main streets to kind of a full traffic grid and that’s the struggle is where do you put that
traffic. I understand if you live on that street.
Elizabeth Kressler: Yeah, and I can appreciate which is why this is all a big learning you know.
The internet is Wendy’s friend when she’s speaking about pneumatic tubes. I didn’t even know
she knew how to spell pneumatic.
Todd Gerhardt: She can say it.
Elizabeth Kressler: So which brings me to, I travel a lot in and around you know the county or
whatever and I go into Minnetonka every day to work. Almost every day and what type of road
is Williston? Do you know? I mean I know it’s not in your county and it’s not in your city but
it’s 30 miles per hour from Excelsior to Highway 7. Excelsior Boulevard to Highway 7. The
whole darn thing is painfully 30 miles per hour. But for good reason because it goes through a
residential stretch and so I’m just wondering, that seems like it’s a collector road or a feeder road
of some sort. I’m just, and then there’s speed limits going into Chaska on Highway 41. Slows
right down to 30. What up with that? I mean that’s a big, giant road. I’m just, I guess
everybody else might have the same question. Wait a minute, how come it’s slower there and
we can’t get it lower and I understand we can’t but.
Mayor Furlong: No, and that’s a fair question.
Pat Corkle: Yeah I think, well okay. Answer your question. Williston, we worked on that in
Minnetonka. It is a collector roadway. I don’t know why it’s 30 miles an hour. I’m going to
guess they must have done a speed study or it was that speed limit, I’m not sure why that is to be
honest with you. All I can really, from my perspective and we spent a lot of effort because we
hear you. We do hear you guys talk about trying to do something and I’d love to give the
council some good advice on maybe how to do some things differently but from my perspective
in reading the statute, I just don’t see how I could recommend anything besides what we have
there than to try to do some other things to improve the situation. And why is it in Chaska go
down to 30? I’m going to guess there might be some statutory type limits that they can put on
that because of, because it’s a business district. I’m not sure. I mean I’d have to go look. I’m
not sure. I’m just guessing. I’m speculating so.
Elizabeth Kressler: Okay. If you can bring up this roadway again I just wanted to talk about the
gray area. That you’d like me to stand in when I want to cross the road. Does anybody want to
stand with me on that road when you’re trying to get across or kind of over here? Maybe the dog
gets away and I’ve got to cross. I don’t know, 45 miles per hour standing in the gray area, I
don’t want to do that. And are crosswalks not as safe as stop signs or they equally unsafe? I
guess you have some studies and I’m just wondering if maybe you could share some areas that I
can go and read up on those. I know crosswalks aren’t safe because unfortunately some police
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
officers don’t stop at them when you’re in them on Powers but stop signs I always thought were
safer than crosswalks, which is why I think we were all asking for a stop sign. Maybe to make it
a safe path and to slow the traffic down so those are just, these are more food for thought maybe
to keep your brain pumping with the questions. And the last thing I have to mention, and Wendy
might have but I didn’t hear her. When the traffic study was done the PGA was in town so there
was a lot of traffic that was directed around us so they wouldn’t get on Lyman and go into
Chaska. So a lot of traffic didn’t ever come down our road so I don’t think, I think to get a fair
assessment of what the traffic is like, you need to do it when school is in. You know, I don’t
know, April. You know everybody’s happy and out and driving around and high school’s in or
maybe sometime when the PGA’s not in town and I don’t know, something so, that’s all I got.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Any follow-up Mr. Oehme. Just the school district comment.
We do check with the school district during the design process. I mean we don’t typically talk to
them upfront and I’m not clear exactly how they’re saving $42,000 by putting in a stop sign there
but you know we always, we talk to them about the design. The standards that we’re using are
standards that will accommodate you know bus traffic or pedestrian movements better than they
do right now.
Wendy O’Connor: Can I…
Bruce Feik: No, it’s my turn. You had your turn.
Wendy O’Connor: Sorry. No, I just wanted to answer the $42,000 question.
Paul Oehme: Yes please.
Wendy O’Connor: When John and I spoke he said that right now they have two bus routes that
go through our neighborhood and $42,000 would be saved every year because they would be
able to eliminate at least one of those routes and that was his assessment. It was $42,000. Not
my number. His number so, and I did put him in contact with you.
Todd Gerhardt: What was his last name?
Wendy O’Connor: Rogers.
Todd Gerhardt: John Rogers.
Audience: Thomas.
Wendy O’Connor: Thomas. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Paul Oehme: John Thomas.
Todd Gerhardt: John Thomas. And what’s his title?
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Wendy O’Connor: And I’d be happy to forward his email. Transportation Guy. I don’t know.
But Nancy Krake put me in touch with him and he was extremely helpful.
Paul Oehme: We’ll contact him. Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Sir.
Bruce Feik: Good evening. I’m Bruce Feik. I’m at 1773 Valley Ridge Trail South. I’m about 8
houses in on Valley Ridge Trail. I’ve got a couple things for you tonight on a little bit different
tone than some of your previous speakers. First I’d like to thank city staff for all their work on
this. Quite frankly I think it’s a pretty good plan. I really would like to see, I think the round
about’s are a creative idea if we could do something like that. That would help. Second of all on
the turn lanes, I think they’re absolutely necessary. I come up the hill and make a left onto
Valley Ridge Trail South. I have to own that lane for the cars coming up behind me and there’s
no drive around so if I don’t take the middle of that lane, drivers behind me either want to hit the
ditch or want to hit me and I also drive a small motorcycle and in that case I actually have to stop
on the right side of the road to make sure they don’t try to scoot around me, so we really do need
the turn lanes. I’d like to see that. I’m not so big on a stop sign at Valley Ridge Trail North. I
think a marked crosswalk with maybe some flashing lights might do the same thing. We do need
to get access for the kids over to the park and over to the sliding hill and what not so I would like
to see a safe, safe way to get across there. It’s 45. Heck, Lake is only 30 but people drive 45.
You know it’s a fast road. It’s going to be 45. I don’t think you’re going to be able to do a
whole lot to really get it slower in the grand scheme of things. It would be nice but I really think
that’s kind of unrealistic. I would like to ask a question regarding where Audubon meets Lyman.
I spoke with one of the city engineers a couple weeks ago and my concern here is where the stop
sign is marked. If you stop your car where the stop sign is marked during the summer, there’s
some trees on this, I guess would be the north east corner. Northeast corner and those trees, it’s
kind of some scrub trees. Mostly some box elders or whatever. But anyways if you stop at a
stop sign you cannot see any of the traffic coming down Lyman. We have to creep way forward
into the intersection. Past the stop sign to see past this group of trees here. When you creep
forward because of the way that’s oriented with Lyman, you creep forward and you go a little bit
left, staying in your own lane. Traffic coming from west, from the west so it’s eastbound Lyman
coming this way basically wants to take your front fender off. And so my concern is this
intersection and I’d like to see a median. If that’s not possible I’d like to see, I know you’ve got
the alignment here has to line up with the street across so I know the alignment can’t really
move. I did talk with the city engineer. They did mention something about we’re already
bumped up against some of the easements. I guess my point would be is if we can’t adjust the
stop signs or do something, I would like to see the trees come down. As much as I like to see
trees, it’s really not safe. Particularly if you’re in a smaller vehicle. The traffic is coming
eastbound on Lyman that wants to go north onto Audubon really don’t want to slow down for
cars that are stopped there and you pull up and you kind of look out your window. Make sure
you’re still in your lane but it’s tight. And I think that’s it. Otherwise I think it’s a good plan.
Oh! Sidewalks. The sidewalks are necessary. We’ve been trying to hook up sidewalks in this
community for many, many years. All the way over to Bandimere. The goal is to put the
sidewalk on Lyman in a few more years and to hook up the whole park system. We have been
landlocked over on this side for years. Can’t bicycle to the east side very well. This is an
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
incremental step on the sidewalks. I think to come back and try to put sidewalks in 2, 3, or 4
years from now after this road is in, after we decide that Lyman goes in and we get sidewalks
then and now we want to put this sidewalk in, it’s going to be much, much more expensive. So
I’d like to see the sidewalk go in now. I’d like to see this project get done right and I’d like to
see it get done this year. It’s a bumpy, bumpy road that needs to be repaired. Thanks.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Others.
Mike Choiniere: I’ll try to be quick. My name is Mike Choiniere. I live at 8481 Bittern Court
which is right there. Just off of here. The only point that I really want to make at the moment is
that I know that Audubon is used to head south. You go through the jog and head south that
way. The area in front of the high school over there was closed for a long time and I believe at
the time, it opened up like the day or two before school did which means at the time that they did
the study for how much traffic goes through there, that section of Audubon when you get down
to Lyman and turn right to catch the next part of Audubon was closed. The only way to get to
that section, you had to go down Powers or you had to go to 41. So from that perspective anyone
who is going that direction didn’t take Audubon. So I think.
Mayor Furlong: So are you thinking that the traffic counts are too low?
Mike Choiniere: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So especially with looking at the seniors of the
high school. The traffic that normally goes that direction that would have to go across Powers to
get across the freeway or to go to 41 to get to the other side. So I think you’re missing a large
chunk of traffic that normally takes that route.
Councilman Litsey: So, could I speak to that?
Mayor Furlong: Mr. Litsey, please.
Councilman Litsey: So if they are low, then how does that play into the design? You’re saying
it’s under designed then and should get a higher design standard?
Mike Choiniere: What we’re saying is, when we’re talking about the safety of the kids crossing,
because we are on the east side.
Mrs. Choiniere: We’re in that bird neighborhood.
Mike Choiniere: We’re in the bird neighborhood. Bittern is a bird. On the internet I found out
th
bittern is a bird. So, and we have a 10 grader this year who is being bused because you know, I
don’t want him going across the marked 45 that’s going 50-55 mile an hour zone and so we are
north of where they want to put the crossbar. There are walk paths that go down toward where
the high school is but then you have to go either up the lake one connects in that direction.
Otherwise it’s all the way down to the other that connects to the high school. The ones in the
middle eventually move their way around. There’s one that goes right down here down Valley
Creek and the other one comes down in…over here. They’re the ones and they have to connect
over on, I’m sorry. I’m off your chart. They have to connect over here somewhere in order to
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
get back to the high school. Actually that path has to go all the way up to the viaduct under the
railroad tracks in order to get back over to where the high school is. So the two ways you can get
to the high school in the walk paths is one that goes right next to the train viaduct and the other
one that goes along Lyman.
Paul Oehme: This is the drawing you’re referring to?
Mike Choiniere: Yes.
Paul Oehme: This is the trail that comes in the back.
Mike Choiniere: Yes.
Paul Oehme: And then accesses.
Mike Choiniere: So the one that’s up on top on Lake Drive, there’s. Not Lake Drive. Where the
mail station is.
Kate Aanenson: That’s it.
Paul Oehme: This one right here?
Kate Aanenson: That’s it.
Paul Oehme: At the end of the cul-de-sac.
Kate Aanenson: And there’s one right behind it too. 1995.
Mike Choiniere: Yeah. So the 1995 is the one that’s right next to the Heron, and that goes down
right along Valley Creek. No, sorry. Valley Ridge. Sorry guys. But even if you go down the
one to Valley Ridge you have to go over to the other side and up around by the viaduct in order
to get over to the high school. So if you’re looking for it as a method of crossing going to the
high school, the further you put it south the more you still have to go back up into the other
neighborhood in order to go over. So technically I wouldn’t mind having crosswalks at the
major intersections that go through there. For sure the road needs to be fixed. It’d be nice to
have some other things with it. If we’re looking at it connecting to the high school, Heron is the
one that we’re on. It goes all the way through to Powers. There’s a lot of roads that feed into
that one coming in. I would see that a lot of walking type traffic would come through at Heron.
Mayor Furlong: And now I’m going to ask you, if we can look on that map or Paul if you can
bring something up. Show us where Heron is relative to.
Mike Choiniere: Heron is right here.
Mrs. Choiniere: There it is. It’s right down at the bottom.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Mayor Furlong: Can you zoom out please?
Mike Choiniere: Heron is right here.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Mike Choiniere: We’re right across from the weather station is right over here.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Mike Choiniere: And Heron goes through and meets up with Lake Susan Drive that both north
and south meet up with Powers and you’ve got 1, 2, 3, 4. Four cul-de-sacs and you also have
what’s the long one that goes back.
Mrs. Choiniere: The Osprey.
Mike Choiniere: No, no. On the other side.
Mrs. Choiniere: Flamingo.
Mike Choiniere: Flamingo. All of Flamingo Drive all feeds into Heron. All of those residences
have kids in our school district who if we’re going to open up that as a walk zone going to the
high school, they’re all going to be coming out on Heron.
Mayor Furlong: And let me just clarify Mr. Oehme. Right now as we’re looking at those, Heron
is a little part of the picture and Osprey.
Mike Choiniere: Yeah, there is a walk path that comes on the back of Osprey that some of the
Flamingo Drive kids could come down that direction.
Mayor Furlong: And just to clarify. Under the current preliminary plans there’s a crosswalk
proposed at the Osprey and Valley Ridge intersection?
Paul Oehme: That’s correct.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, and that would be a marked crosswalk?
Paul Oehme: A marked crosswalk.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. And what are the red lines there along the.
Paul Oehme: Along the drawing that you see there?
Mayor Furlong: Yeah.
Paul Oehme: That’s the trail. There’s a trail on the east side that’s existing.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Mayor Furlong: Okay. So that’s existing trail.
Paul Oehme: That’s an existing trail.
Mayor Furlong: Now is there anything on the north side then too? A trail on the north side that
runs along there? It’s just not marked red right now. I’m sorry, on the west.
Paul Oehme: On the west side, yes. Yes.
Mayor Furlong: You’re looking for the north side of Audubon and you can’t tell what I’m
talking about. On the west side.
Mike Choiniere: There’s a walk path on both sides.
Mayor Furlong: I mean where did, while it may not be marked at Heron to the extent that there’s
a trail there to move people down to the marked intersection, is that reasonable or?
Mrs. Choiniere: I would say that it is. My concern is that it moves us closer to that hill and I’m
concerned about the visibility. Right now there’s not very much lighting along there and when
you have vehicles that are coming north on Audubon going 50 miles an hour, trucks, I do not, I
th
don’t even want my 10 grader standing out there and that middle of the road thing that
Elizabeth talked about, no way.
Mayor Furlong: And those of us who have driven it know but can you point on the map where
the hill is for those watching at home.
Mike Choiniere: The road goes up right at Heron. Sorry. The road goes up right at Heron and
for those who live south, where does it go back down? On the south side here. Right here? So
the road is elevated between here.
Mrs. Choiniere: And then it goes even steeper down as you get closer to Lyman.
Mike Choiniere: Yeah.
Mrs. Choiniere: And that’s the stretch I’m concerned about. Those trucks cresting that hill, even
with a marked crosswalk, even with a 4 way stop you guys, I really am concerned that
somebody’s going to get hit and I realize $42,000 a year is a lot of money for our school district
but that’s not going to, one kid’s gone and that’s going to make up for that. I truly would rather
see we did something really safe. I mean we’ve done tunnels for Bluff Creek on the north side
by 5. You guys did tunnels under Lyman into Chaska. You know I know that the people further
south aren’t happy about the trail. I’m kind in the middle on that. I don’t use that part of the trail
system myself so whether it’s there or not for me is a non issue at this point but if you’re talking
about connecting kids to the high school, where are we going to put the best trails? And I am
also concerned about your neighborhood. If you have, I mean I think we have 80 kids in our
neighborhood who are bussing right now. Do you guys want 80 kids going through your
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
neighborhood because that’s what’s going to happen and so I think we have to be realistic. You
don’t have sidewalks. So where are these kids going to cut through? I don’t know too many
teenager kids that are going to go way north to go way around to come way back down or are
going to go way down here on a trail and to go here and to go there and to navigate through.
They’re not going to do that. They’re going to cross and they’re going to filter through the
neighborhood through people’s yards. So I think we need to talk about what’s the best way to do
this and what’s the safest. I like the idea of a stop sign or a round about or some way of slowing
traffic down, but it’s to slow traffic down. It’s not to make it safer for my kids to go to school.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. One of the questions raised was a crossing underneath or great
separation for pedestrian crossing. Was that something that we looked at? Is that something that
is possible here?
Paul Oehme: Yeah we looked at it preliminarily and it’s very difficult due to the topography of
the area. There’s a, typically you need a wide right-of-way to make that, those connections work
because you’ve got to dive the trail down underneath the road and then come back up again on
the other side. For example 101 over by Presbyterian Homes I think that roadway right-of-way
is about 150 feet wide. Likewise over on Lyman close to this project. It’s very wide so in this
area it’d be very difficult due to the density, the residential density in this area to make an
underpass work. I’m not saying it’s impossible but it’s, it’s very difficult. I know there’s sewer
that’s out here that would have to be relocated. And then there’s a watermain. There’s a
forcemain too so all those utilities have to be in our consideration so.
Mayor Furlong: It’s not, there may be things in the way underneath the road?
Paul Oehme: Yeah, there’s a lot of utilities and fiber optics and stuff that have to be moved too.
It’s a very expensive project.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Thank you. Other comments. Sir.
Gary Theis: My name’s Gary Theis. 1696 Valley Ridge Trail North. Right there. Few
questions. How long has Audubon upgrade been in the works?
Paul Oehme: At least 3 or 4 years. Maybe 5. I know we had looked at upgrading Audubon
before the Lyman improvements were made. In front of the school or before the school came in
so we were looking at actually doing that several years ago. Based upon the funding and timing
of the, those improvements we felt it wise for us to delay this project until those improvements
are made.
Gary Theis: So is that why since ’95 nothing’s been done to Audubon Road but throw a little tar
down and pack it down and let’s move on?
Paul Oehme: Well again we don’t, there’s only a couple things that you really can do to alleviate
the problems that you have here. It’s a structural problem. There’s really nothing you can do to
this road except for putting overlay over the top of it and having a smoother road surface. I mean
sealcoats are not going to work. For the last several years we’ve been patching the roadway but
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
based upon the poor pavement condition that’s out here, it’s not you know cost effective for us to
put an overlay, put a band-aid over a problem that’s going to persist.
Gary Theis: And what year was the last time you oiled and rocked it? Was that in ’95? To me
that’s when you quit.
Paul Oehme: Yeah.
Gary Theis: You gave up on the road.
Paul Oehme: Well in ’92 there was an overlay and then they came back in ’95 and sealcoated it.
Gary Theis: Right.
Paul Oehme: So in, what that tells me is that overlay didn’t work very well because in 3 years
time they came back and sealcoated it and probably crack sealed and it was already starting to
fall apart in 3 years so they put a sealcoat over the top of it.
Gary Theis: Hopefully we don’t use the same contractor this time then.
Paul Oehme: Well again it’s a thin overlay is nothing structural so when you get that many
trucks, that many trips over that road it’s not going to hold up over the long term.
Gary Theis: There’s some collector roads in Chanhassen that are divided. Without a residential
driveway. 40 miles an hour. There’s another one that’s divided. No residential driveways. 45.
Mayor Furlong: Which roads are those sir?
Paul Oehme: Which ones are we talking about?
Gary Theis: Highway 101.
Mayor Furlong: Would you just identify the roads?
Gary Theis: Highway 101 is 40 miles an hour between 212 and 5.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Gary Theis: Correct?
Mayor Furlong: I don’t.
Gary Theis: If you haven’t driven it in a while.
Mayor Furlong: I’ve driven it but I don’t memorize the speed limits.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Gary Theis: What’s that?
Paul Oehme: It’s 45.
Gary Theis: It’s 45?
Paul Oehme: It’s 45.
Gary Theis: I don’t think so.
Paul Oehme: Well, I drive it constantly. It’s 45 north of the bend over by Kurvers Point. South
into Chanhassen it’s 30 miles an hour and then it turns into 40 and then it’s up from there it’s 45.
Todd Gerhardt: He’s talking south of 5.
Paul Oehme: Oh south of 5, I’m sorry.
Gary Theis: Between 212 and 5.
Paul Oehme: Okay. 212 and 5.
Gary Theis: It’s 40.
Paul Oehme: Okay.
Gary Theis: And Powers.
Paul Oehme: I’m sorry, I was thinking north of 5. I apologize.
Gary Theis: Okay. Now who determined in stone those speed limits?
Paul Oehme: MnDOT.
Gary Theis: And they mark it in stone and that’s it. Nothing can be done.
Pat Corkle: …usually when we do the design plan and we do the sign plan, we actually…
Gary Theis: I’d be willing to bet the City can change the speed limit lower than what MnDOT
recommends.
Roger Knutson: Mayor?
Mayor Furlong: Mr. Knutson. City Attorney.
Roger Knutson: We can’t.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Gary Theis: You can’t?
Roger Knutson: No.
Gary Theis: Because you don’t want to try or?
Roger Knutson: No, because it would be unlawful. Minnesota Department of Transportation,
MnDOT sets the speed limit. They do a speed study. They set it. We have no authority to do
that.
Gary Theis: So going back to the other lady that talked about Williston Road in Minnetonka
being 30, MnDOT regulated that down?
Roger Knutson: Yes, except if it’s considered, if it meets certain criteria such as you have so
many homes in a certain segment of roadway, then it’s set at 30. It’s an urban design.
Mayor Furlong: Different densities and has driveways on.
Roger Knutson: Yes. The City has no discretion. None. We can request MnDOT to do a speed
study.
Gary Theis: Okay.
Roger Knutson: You’re rolling the dice if you do because.
Gary Theis: That’s true. They could raise it.
Roger Knutson: They could raise it and believe me I’ve sat in enough meetings where council’s
have rolled the dice and said let’s do the speed study and the speed went up.
Gary Theis: Okay. Now considering Audubon from Lake Drive West south is basically a
residential neighborhood. Why couldn’t we get that section of roadway speed limit dropped
down than the commercial end where you don’t have driveways or houses then it could be your
45?
Roger Knutson: Again same answer. You’d have to ask MnDOT to do a speed study and they
would set it and we don’t have that authority. That’s just what the law is.
Gary Theis: Okay. As far as a stop sign or crosswalk, is the City proactive or reactive?
Mayor Furlong: Help clarify your question.
Gary Theis: Well in your materials here you listed just a couple incidents where there’s been an
accident or something like that so will we get a crosswalk when somebody gets killed or are we
going to have a stop sign or something as proactive rather than reactive?
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Mayor Furlong: Mr. Oehme.
Paul Oehme: And again we’re, if the project goes forward we would put in a crosswalk for
pedestrians at a designated intersection and then you know we look at, we have. We do speed
studies all the time. Residents frequently ask the City to do a speed study and traffic study for
intersections and see if the intersection would be. You know I probably could name off 6
intersections I think we’ve done in the last year that property owners or residents or commuters
have requested that the City look at those intersections for improvements so we are proactive in
terms of you know making the travel, the network, the roadway system as safe as we can get it I
feel.
Gary Theis: Why does this road change widths all the way down and about?
Paul Oehme: I would say it’s standard 40 foot wide road. I mean we’re not, again we’re not
changing the road width all that dramatically from gravel edge to gravel edge. The only area that
we’re really changing the width is at Valley Ridge North where we’re widening it out potentially
to 4 more feet. That’s really the only intersection that’s increasing in width. The intersection at
Lake Drive West we’re actually decreasing that intersection. Proposing to decrease that
intersection by 4 feet…from curb to curb.
Gary Theis: Why does the width between the curb and the bike path change?
Paul Oehme: To accommodate right-of-way. Grades. There’s a lot of things that take into
consideration where that trail’s going to be. Obviously we’d like to push the trail back as far as
we can to accommodate a bigger buffer zone. It helps the grass grow better. You can better
maintain those areas. Better storage areas. Those type of things so the narrower you get it’s
safety. Reactionary too. It helps you, more area to react to changing condition as well so there’s
several reasons why we like to push these trails out and back of the curb as much as we can.
Gary Theis: Okay. Well thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Anyone else? No one? Everybody’s had an opportunity that wants
it? Okay. Well good. We appreciate that very sincerely. It’s worth the time and effort to sit
through. If no one else would like to come forward at this time, I’ll make the last call and ask if
there’s a motion to close the public hearing.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: So moved.
Councilwoman Ernst: Second.
Mayor Furlong: Motion’s been made and seconded to close the public hearing. Any discussion
on that?
Councilwoman Tjornhom moved, Councilwoman Ernst seconded to close the public
hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. The
public hearing was closed.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Mayor Furlong: As we get started here I’m interested in comments and thoughts from members
of the council. The hour is late but I do want to keep this going if the council is with me and
willing to keep moving forward. But I do want to thank everybody for all their time and effort,
not only coming to the neighborhood meetings but there clearly have been a lot of one on one
meetings and a lot of effort that’s gone into some of the questions we’ve heard tonight. I
appreciate staff for all their efforts as well in terms of trying to work through the questions.
Answer them as best they could and seek alternatives as well. With that any follow up questions
at this point from the council for staff? Or any points of clarification before we get into
comments or thoughts. If not, they may come up in discussion but at this point I’d open it up for
comments by members of the council. Councilman Litsey.
Councilman Litsey: Sure, I’ll go first. No I don’t mind going first.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Councilman Litsey: And I do appreciate everyone. We’ve gone through a number of these so
far this year already and on road reconstruction projects and it is helpful to hear from residents
that live along there and are affected by it so that we can make decisions based upon what staff
gives us and the feedback we receive at these public hearings. And I really do appreciate the
time staff has spent looking at this project. I know it’s a difficult one. I think you are looking
towards the future. I think that’s important. I think to get a good return on your investment we
should look to the future. You know we talked about incorporating left turn lanes in here. I
know there was one person that was supportive of that. I can tell you from making a turn off of
Powers Boulevard onto Kerber Boulevard, that you’re looking in your rear view mirror the
whole time and that wasn’t with the future in mind when they designed that road obviously.
Obviously traffic has increased and so forth so I think a lot of the design things that have been
implemented in here are very important and towards safety because I heard a lot of concern
about safety and I think the things that we’re trying to do here within the limitations of a right-of-
way I think we’re maximizing safety in terms of the design. I just think it’s, I think everyone’s
pretty much in agreement something needs to be done. It makes no sense just to put new
pavement over it. That actually probably would increase the speeds of vehicles along there but it
wouldn’t solve the core issues. I think we need to move ahead to the next phase. There’ll be
multiple phases as we move ahead on this project where we have check in’s so we can make sure
that things are being answered best to our abilities. I think some of the things staff’s been asked
to do quite frankly we just can’t accommodate with the road the way it is. With the right-of-way
that we’re working with. So I’m comfortable at this point moving to the next phase and working
with staff, working with residents trying to make it the best project we can. In my other line of
work I deal with a lot of these safety issues on a first hand basis and they’re always difficult to
address. Everybody would like, I shouldn’t say everybody. A lot of people like stop signs. I’d
like a stop sign on Kerber Boulevard where I cross at Big Horn Drive so I can get over to
Meadow Green Park with my child too but it just isn’t, it just wouldn’t make sense there and so I
am careful. I have to be with him when he crosses and I prefer not to have to do that but it’s the
reality sometimes of what you have to be faced with so. So I guess I’ll listen to what other
people on the council have to say.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Other comments or thoughts? Mr. McDonald.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Councilman McDonald: I’ll go. Yeah I appreciate everybody showing up. Do appreciate
hearing the comments. Yeah there are some tough problems. I appreciate what staff has put
together. I know that they do listen but I think as the Mayor said we can’t always say yes. I
mean sometimes it just physically isn’t possible. Especially about the trail and the snow and the
driveways. We try to do the best we can to accommodate. We do need to look to the future. I
mean one of the things I hear from everybody is that that’s probably not what this road is. It is
not a futuristic road. It was built probably back in the 50’s the way it was put together. At that
time Chanhassen was different. That was a farm road. That was farm country and it’s been left
that. I think the other thing we’ve got to look at in looking at what we do for the City, that is
developmental area. It’s going to be developed. Maybe not now. Maybe not in 2 years. Maybe
in 3 years. Depends on upon the economy but that was already a hot area before on the last go
around. It will be a hot area again and at that point everybody with large lots, when they’re
offered money, they do it time and time again. They will sell their property and at that point a
development comes in. So I think we do need to design the road for the future. We need to put
something down there that is safe. Right now the current road is not safe. I do drive it. I guess I
don’t see as much traffic as everybody else is talking about but then I’m going middle of the
morning. Maybe early in the afternoon and stuff before school either starts or gets out but yeah
the road’s in bad shape and especially as you come up that hill. I don’t see how some of you can
even get out on the road because of the way those driveways are. So it’s got to be upgraded. We
need to do you know something safe. I do think that at this point we probably need some more
detail and that’s what staff is asking for to proceed to the next level. I think that, you know the
road’s got to be fixed and we do need to proceed so I would be in favor of it but again I’ll listen
to everyone else also.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Other thoughts or comments. Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yeah. I think, I’m not going to repeat what other council members
have said. I agree with them. I think when you listen to the comments and questions by the
residents of this neighborhood it’s been why was the road made this way or why was, weren’t
there any turn lanes. You know let’s do it right this time. We have another chance to go back
now and redo it and make it safer for future neighbors that will be living in this neighborhood in
20 years hopefully. One idea I have is I hear, I think two fears. The trail and that you know
there are going to be a lot of people in your yards and intruding on your private lives. That’s
what I heard some people at least say and I’m hoping that, if the trail does come in you’ll learn
that that probably isn’t the case. That you’ll probably end up using that trail more than you
would think. And also I heard a lot of comments about truck traffic and of course that’s
something everyone’s concerned about and while I don’t think, obviously we’ve heard tonight
we cannot limit trucks and we cannot tell trucks where they can and can’t go. I would like
someone from your neighborhood or the City or something to at least contact General Mills or
some of the other businesses and explain to them what’s happening. What you’re seeing that is
occurring more and more and working out a solution with them to see if maybe they can direct
their clients or their delivery trucks or whoever it is to maybe go a different way or maybe slow
down a little bit more. You know take that approach instead of trying to come up with a way to
just stop people from using the road all in general. You know we’re all going to be here a long
time. We all need to somehow learn to live together and so I think tonight we have agreed that
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
there are problems with this road and that it does need to be fixed and so I also would be in
agreement of going ahead and ordering the plans and specifications.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Councilwoman Ernst.
Councilwoman Ernst: Well there have been, actually I, the big issues of course from what I’ve
heard of it is speed and actually the road itself and so as I listened to all the questions, first of all
I want to thank you all for coming tonight. I know you took a lot of time that it took so a lot of
time and energy that you went on the internet and did all this checking and I applaud you for
that. And you did a lot of research and that’s wonderful that you’ve taken such an active role in
this process so thank you. But I think that everyone is in favor of this. The road does need the
construction and you know when I hear that we went in 1982 we did a sealcoat. 1992 we did an
overlay. 1995 we did more sealcoating and I think even when we did our second sealcoating we
were beyond the life of where we supposed to be so obviously the road does need the
construction. The trail, sounds like a couple are in favor of it. Some not but I’m going to go
back to what Councilor McDonald said. We need to think for the future. We need to build on
the future and Chanhassen is notable for the trails that we have in this city, and we have a lot of
people using those trails and so it goes beyond your neighborhood and so I would hope that you
would be a little bit more open and objective to a trail that would be going through there. The
safety issue we talked about. It sounded like Pat or Paul are going to take a look at what we can
do there. Probably not stop signs. Probably not lights but maybe there are some other options
like the turn arounds and things like that that we talked about. And then I don’t, I’m not clear,
did you say that you’re going to go back and do another study for the traffic study? I wasn’t real
clear on that.
Paul Oehme: Yeah, I mean this time of year you can’t do the pneumatic tube counts. Those can
only be done in the summertime.
Councilwoman Ernst: Okay. So we will…
Paul Oehme: Yeah, we definitely take traffic counts on these types of road every 2 years and
you know if need be we can take them again more frequently so.
Councilwoman Ernst: Okay.
Paul Oehme: I’m just confident, the numbers that we’ve received, they seem to fit this historical
traffic counts along this corridor so I’m fairly comfortable with the numbers that we received.
Councilwoman Ernst: And that may be absolutely true but I think that they brought up some
things here tonight that may have interfered with those traffic counts so if we could just take a
look at that.
Paul Oehme: Sure.
Councilwoman Ernst: And then in the notes I read that staff is probably going to be talking with
the businesses as well about that truck traffic going through there.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Paul Oehme: Yeah.
Councilwoman Ernst: Or said that staff could.
Paul Oehme: Yeah, that’s one idea. We can talk to them and see if there’s anything we can
work out there. I mean is it time of day or is it the volume or is there routes that we can
reconsider too. I mean that’s not a problem. I put that in the notes and you know that’s one
thing that if the council thinks it’s important we can definitely follow up on it.
Councilwoman Ernst: So I think I’ve addressed some of the concerns that we talked about
tonight and based on that criteria I would be in favor of moving.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. As I thought about this project coming in tonight, I knew
there were a lot of concerns. This is probably in terms of a public hearing and listening to
residents, more than more educational for me in terms of some light bulbs that went off as I was
listening to people and the, the issue isn’t may or may not be end up, I may or may not agree
with what you were encouraging me to do but as I listened the issue of safety came up over and
over again and that word wasn’t used all the time but there was discussion about speed along the
road and the traffic issues. Not only from a, from the volumes of traffic, the number of traffic.
We heard some people suggest that maybe the count taken was too high because of some detours
and others that suggested it might be too low because of some other factors. But every one’s
concerned about the volumes. Type of traffic. It’s not just cars. Some of it is cars on the
weekends coming from the Autoplex and others are cars from the neighborhoods and others are
trucks and I think you know again there’s a safety issue. They’re the intersections. Crosswalks.
How do you make it safe for cars to enter and exit the road and to, and for the through traffic so
that it’s safe along the road. The trail. You know I think somebody said you know you wouldn’t
walk or ride your bike along the road and again that gets to a safety issue. I absolutely recognize
and understand and hear people’s concerns about adding a trail where one does not exist because
that, the change that that brings about and just the physical space and the widening of this area,
even if it’s legally within the right-of-way that’s always been there. That’s a change but clearly I
think that’s one issue that speaks to safety and we look at trails, when I think of trails along
Powers Boulevard between Highway 5 going up north to Shorewood, and then you get to the
Shorewood line and there’s no trail. Yet the road keeps going and the same number of cars that
came up Powers continue on up Mill Street. And Councilman Litsey, that goes into your
jurisdiction but now there’s no trail and I notice that and I see that. Galpin Boulevard is the same
way. The trail goes north and it stops at the city line but the same number of cars, the same
number of trucks. Whatever the mix is continues on up the road. I think allowing pedestrians or
children, adults, whether they’re for fitness or their animal’s fitness. Walking the dog. To be
able to walk safely and get to and from neighborhoods is a key component that makes
Chanhassen a great place to live. I think there may be some differences here. I think it’s clear to
me that this, this section of our road system needs to be improved and it needs to be upgraded not
only to meet the current needs of traffic, but what the future needs are going to be. There will be
development in the southern part of the city, down along Lyman. The farm areas that are there
eventually will develop and I think taking a step here to make sure that this road can safely and
adequately handle vehicle traffic and pedestrian traffic and bicycle traffic to the extent it will, I
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
think it’s important that we take a step and do that. I’m a little concerned when we start talking
about engineering designs that are going to limit people using a public road. Philosophically I
struggle with that. I certainly understand the desire to try to minimize people traveling on our
roads but when we talk about engineering the road to discourage people from using a road, I
have a problem with that. It’s a public road and I think what we need to do is design it safely
and then monitor it and make sure that it’s used safely in terms of doing that so while there’s
been some ideas thrown out, I get concerned when we start saying how can we, and I think we,
some cities use speed bumps. Some cities use you know elevated. Not the speed bumps but the
more elevated and elongated and such and the whole idea is to keep people from using a public
road. Philosophically I have a problem with that. Taxpayer dollars are paying for these.
Whether that’s coming out of our property tax or out of the gas tax that people are paying for,
whether it’s individuals or businesses filling up their cars, public roads are public roads. So how
do we make them safe? How do we build a transportation system that allows people and goods
to move safely? I think where there is a difference here, and again what I heard tonight and
comparing it to our prior experiences as a city, and earlier tonight at our work session the council
and staff talked about our current assessment practice, which is being used here, and we talked
about Lake Lucy Road which is a collector road and we’ve heard some other roads as well. One
th
of the projects that we’ve worked on recently was Laredo Drive and north from West 78 up to
Frontier Trail. One of the issues that came back there that was very clear when we started
listening to the residents was, you know it’s not just a residential street. There are, there’s a
school there. There’s a post office. There’s a bank. It’s mixed use. There’s mixed traffic on
there and they were looking at fairness. Rightfully so in terms of how we allocate the cost of the
road. Indirectly, and what I would suggest staff think about here, and the council too, we have it
from a mixed use a little bit here in that the northern part of this collector road does have an
industrial mix to it. Very similar to Powers Boulevard but that is a different designed road. That
includes concrete medians and four lanes urban section of what’s being designed here. When we
talked about Lake Lucy Road as our example this evening, that’s mostly residential. There isn’t
the industrial use at one end or the other that might be increasing traffic. We’re always going to
have delivery trucks. We’re always going to have postal trucks. We’re always going to have
other types of trucks but this road I think, it sounds like carries some different mix than some we
see on some other collector roads so maybe we need to take a look from, at the assessment. Not
from a designing the road to restrict that road but from a fair allocation in terms of the
assessment practice when we have that mix. And I go back to how we looked at Laredo and we
kind of modified it, after the first public hearing then we kind of modified how we looked at it.
And so I think there may be some… Clearly I think from a safety standpoint this road needs to
be upgraded. Clearly the condition justifies it. I understand there’s going to be some significant
change when we’re going from a two lane rural to an expanded two lane urban section with a
trail on the side and such but I think for the current needs, what I’m hearing from existing
residents in the area and businesses as well as for future residents, I think it is something that we
do need to move forward with. I think there are some detailed questions and Mr. Monson raised
that tonight. Excuse me for letting me reference you in my comments but you raise that there are
some questions that aren’t answered and you’re absolutely right. I think what, by going forward
tonight it provides staff the authority to answer some of those questions. Dig into some more of
the detail so that we can zero in on some of this and hopefully alleviate concerns. Make
accommodations where possible and, but ultimately seek to do something that is going to do the
most good for the most people. So I think we do need to move forward tonight. I think there’s a
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
lot of work ahead of us but I think from a safety standpoint for the 8 people in the area, as well as
for those that use the road, I think it makes sense to move forward at this time. Any other
thoughts or comments at this point? If not, is there a motion from the council. Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: I’ll do the motion. I’ll make a motion that the City Council authorize
the preparation of plans and specifications for the Audubon Road reconstruction Project #10-02.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Sufficient? Is there a second?
Councilman Litsey: Second.
Mayor Furlong: Made and seconded. Any discussion on the motion?
Resolution #2010-12: Councilman McDonald moved, Councilman Litsey seconded that the
Chanhassen City Council authorize the preparation of plans and specifications for the
Audubon Road Reconstruction Project No. 10-02. All voted in favor and the motion
carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
Mayor Furlong: That motion does prevail. Again thank you everyone. We appreciate it and we
certainly encourage you to stay involved because this process will continue forward. Let’s just,
now seeing the hour, we have one item left on our agenda. Let’s take a very short recess…so 3
minutes? 2 minutes? 3 minutes if that’s okay. Subject to the call of the Chair. Thank you.
The City Council took a short recess at this point in the meeting, subject to the call of the
Chair.
CONSIDER APPROVAL OF AMENDMENT TO CHAPTER 20 OF CITY CODE:
REZONING CERTAIN DOWNTOWN PROPERTIES.
Kate Aanenson: Thank you Mayor, members of the City Council. Earlier tonight you acted on
a, kind of a secondary part of the rezonings and that was the three PUD amendments, and I’m
going to put some context to how those relate to the rest of the rezonings that we’ll be visiting
tonight. As you recall as part of the comprehensive plan, one of the steps that we took was doing
the market analysis prepared by the McCombs Group. We took that information and we looked
at additional commercial retail opportunities in the city so as we updated the comprehensive plan
and we got feedback from those, for the community meetings, we recognized that we wanted to
dual guide the area south of Lyman along the Powers Boulevard, 212 interchange. In addition to
that we most recently changed and provided for another new zoning district, the Community
Commercial district so since the comprehensive plan we’ve, as required by the process, we have
created two new zoning districts. The Community Commercial zoning district and the regional
commercial zoning district. As a part of that we also wanted to increase the commercial
component downtown to make sure that that still becomes a vibrant area if we do the regional
commercial zoning district. So with that these are the commercial zoning districts we have
downtown. As I stated earlier the IOP, which is the Industrial Office Park, or the Community
Commercial is shown in that light green. And these are the, this is kind of the current fabric that
we have right now in the downtown. The Central Business District, red is the highest zoning
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
district that we have in the city and provides the most flexibility. The PUD we’ve applied where
we wanted to limit some of the uses. The PUD’s that we adopted earlier tonight would be kind
of in the mark, I’ll show you in a little more detail but kind of the Target and Market Square
pieces have, would just change that to be a Central Business District. But the hierarchy that we
have right now would be the BN district which is the lowest type of commercial. The Business
Highway which provides for auto related. The Central Business District and then the BG and
there’s really only one active BG and that’s the IRET property which is actually Byerly’s, Office
Max all under one ownership and that’s the only parcel that we had in BG. The other piece that
we have in BG is actually a storm water pond. So the application for usability there is really
non-existent so what the goal there was is to take all of this core area, so some of the PUD’s that
you looked at tonight, what we did is made them the underlying zoning district consistent within
those PUD’s. Now we left the PUD on there because in some circumstances we’ve limited the
types of uses that go in there but the flexibility that we provide is to allow for greater intensity.
For example if you were to look at the Target parking lot, there is some space in that parking lot,
maybe on, just in the drive that comes in opposite of where the Taco Bell and that, there is an
opportunity, as there is on the front of the Byerly’s property, opportunities for some other free
standing, and both of those parcels would be interested in doing it when the market becomes
available so providing that intensity creates that more opportunities in downtown. Again that’s
whether we want to, where we’ve already made the investment for infrastructure to capitalize on
that. So the ones that you changed earlier today, besides the Target area and Market Square
would be also the West One property, which you just recently changed the zoning so those all
have the underlying zoning district. Now again the West One, that PUD does allow what’s going
on there is some light manufacturing but the PUD limits how that can be used so it’s, it fits very
well in the rest of the neighborhood.
Mayor Furlong: Ms. Aanenson if I could interrupt. On this picture that we’re looking at right
here. The Central Business District is generally zoning that way. There are no PUD’s there?
That’s just an ordinance level of zoning?
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah, so the current Central Business District that’s not the light, that’s the dark
red. That would be currently where the Dinner Theater and all that is so, yeah.
th
Mayor Furlong: Right. And the PUD areas at least south of West 78, or they’re PUD’s and
have some specific rights associated with them for a PUD. The underlying zoning there now has
been changed also to the Central Business District.
Kate Aanenson: That is stated very correctly. Yep, good way to put it. And the thing that we
did also change in there, we have made some ordinance amendments so by doing this now we’re
going back and working with the City Attorney’s office. Kind of saying what do we do to make
sure that they’re consistent. We have a number of these we’re meeting throughout the
community. We share with the Planning Commission. The ones that we have, we have about 13
of them so for example we allow LED lights so these were locked in that they wouldn’t allow the
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
PUD lights so by changing that we’re saying anything that we change underneath that zoning
district, it’s consistent with the Central Business District and that was where it made on parking
standards. For example we now let electronic messages, message centers which these PUD’s
wouldn’t allow. We want them also to be able to enjoy those opportunities. So you can see the
one pond there, that is also guided General Business. That pond, I can’t point to it but it’s right
below the, right coming off of Highway 5 and Market Boulevard. That pond. So by taking that
out of General Business we’re recommending an Agricultural District because that also takes it
out of the opportunity and that kind of shows up when you have that BG. It will take out of
when we look at how much land area do we have in that zoning district. It’s not usable so we
don’t want to calculate it as potential developable. Also I think sometimes when people are
looking at available property they see that and interestingly enough we have had requests
sometimes to try to fill those ponds because… Unfortunately we can’t always relocate our storm
water ponds to handle that, manage that capacity but the City Manager can attest that we have
had requests to that fact. So really what we’re looking at the specific changes to the PUD then to
be consistent, I mean the General Business. We’re eliminating that as a zoning district so we’ll
just have the Business Highway, again which is important. That’s more the auto related. Central
Business District and then we created the new Community Commercial so that will be going
away so again just clarifying how those work out. At the Planning Commission meeting, when
they met, the significant property owners were at that meeting and did speak in favor of the
rezoning. That they had met with us. We did have a year ago, last fall. Last summer, excuse
me. Last summer we did meet with all the property owners. Business community. We had an
open house at the library and then we contacted them again before this meeting and they came
and testified that they were in support of this. So again the intent of the General Business was
for downtown. It was kind of, it really wasn’t applied very well so I think taking that away and
allowing for more intensity in the downtown development, and more flexibility in types of uses
is a great opportunity to capitalize on our downtown. And than again as I said the Central
Business District is the most robust. It does allow for residential too. We don’t see that
opportunity based on the values that are downtown. If somebody wanted to do that on the
second floor, we do allow that. That may be something in the kind of, if you look over maybe on
the Dinner Theater site as a potential for something like that. That that does allow a residential
in there but I think some of the other ones, the Planning Commission had some of those
questions would that happen. I don’t see that on a large scale. I think there’s enough value in
there so with that, this is just a quick comparison of the two just to see. And included in your
packet we did a more detail so what it really allows for is there’s no green requirement. You can
maximize the hard cover and that really gives you the most opportunity to maximize that
property. In looking at some of the shared parking, we talked to the Planning Commission about
this too at the Target, even at the Byerly’s center they did put the Bachman’s out this summer so
they’re kind of testing that market too and trying to again capitalize on the trade that’s already
going there and just kind of take it into the next and finding a use that would fit in there and do
those shared parking and making that work, because that was their concern. Do we have enough
parking? Well obviously both those uses have peak times which typically are around the
holidays but we certainly believe depending on the mix of uses that we would look at that, that
there’s an opportunity to share parking. So again and we’re going to take those ponds and make
them agricultural as I stated there’s no sense in including them as available land when people are
looking so we’ll go back and make those agricultural because they’re really unbuildable so.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
With that we’re recommending. It’s a lengthy motion but there’s actually three different. Three
different motions.
Mayor Furlong: Oh absolutely. We’ll probably consider the recommended motion as our
motion.
Kate Aanenson: I just want to say our residents really had positive feedback. The business
community had really positive feedback from it too so we hope when we, with the uptick in the
economy that we’ll see some activity in the downtown.
Mayor Furlong: Very good. Questions for staff. Councilwoman Ernst.
Councilwoman Ernst: Just a quick question Kate. When we talk about the businesses that exist
today and we’re talking about rezoning, are they, can they, did I hear you say that they could go
back and make some modifications?
Kate Aanenson: You brought up a point that I should have emphasized. One of the concerns at
the Planning Commission, were we making anybody non-conforming? No. Nobody’s going to
be non-conforming. That was one concern and that goes back to even to West One where
they’re doing some light manufacturing in that PUD. There’s specific language on how that was
to be worked and so that still is consistent but it does allow them because they don’t have to
maintain a green space if that, they can develop more intensely. The area behind Target where
there’s trees, the City owns those trees around that but I think other than that there’s
opportunities then to further intensify on development. If that.
Councilwoman Ernst: Yes. Thank you.
Kate Aanenson: Okay.
Mayor Furlong: Other questions right now? Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: As you’ve gone through this plan and handed it out and you know kind
of reviewed it, you mentioned that the landowners have commented on it. Has anything been
done as far as, I mean the Central Business District has been a big deal with the Chamber as to
where it’s going to be located and we’ve gone back and forth. Have you gotten a lot of input
from them as to what the impact of this could be as far as economic development within
Chanhassen?
Kate Aanenson: You know the feedback that we got from the neighbors, when we had the
downtown meeting is, and certainly the City Engineer is aware of this. It’s just some of the
turning movements coming out of some of the businesses. For example I think you’re aware
when you come out of Market Street Station, some of those turn movements are difficult which
is really important that we’re bringing with the park and ride to bring that through. And there’s
an opportunity to strengthen that. That whole area there and continue that core. I think we’ve
worked really hard to connect on the south side. You can go between even the Market Square.
Getting off of, going over to Target so we’re working really hard to connect all those and we did
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th
the same thing on the north side with Byerly’s. That you don’t have to get back on West 78 to
connect all those and that’s something we want to continue and that’s I think what they see too is
an opportunity to make it easy to move between the different uses. I think when we look at the
Community Commercial, as you’re aware, when we talked about that, if going across now kitty
corner to Powers, that we have to look at what those uses are and how the traffic can be managed
at that intersection too because that was another concern coming out onto Powers there.
Depending what that use is. When we talked about maybe a mini, what it was a lumber kind of
place or even a large sporting goods, can the traffic meet that so we’d have to, that was one of
the questions that you said if something comes in they need to demonstrate that that fits. But the
goal again is to get more trips downtown and kind of create more energy there. Does that answer
your question?
Councilman McDonald: Well yeah and I guess, I don’t know kind of what I’m looking for, I
mean I’ve been to a couple meetings and this has all been discussed as to what we’re going to do
in the Central Business District and there’s been a lot of talk about well we’re kind of limited and
right now the way it’s set up, you can’t put a lot of new businesses in and one of the things that
we’ve been talking about is to be able to do, you know the intensifying and as I understand that’s
what these ordinances do and I’m just wondering are you getting any kind of positive feedback
or support that yeah, this is the kind of stuff we need to do?
Kate Aanenson: Yes we are. Yes we are. IRET is very excited about the opportunity to do
some additional development there. Certainly we’ve talked about with the Dinner Theater site
there’s additional redevelopment opportunities there, and as we talked about earlier in the work
session kind of looking at these ordinances certainly we’ll be visiting the Central Business
District and making sure that you know, that anything in there, the uses that we may want to
encourage or just kind of revisit that so we’ll be looking at those too. But there is opportunities
even in that Community Commercial piece that some of those buildings are vacant and we’re
talking to people right now and those buildings are looking for some opportunities there but
again it’s to get those trips downtown. That’s the goal that we can all benefit from those and
spin off each other. Certainly even at the Market Street station site where we’ve got the Jimmy
John's, the Kraus Anderson building, certainly they’d like to see some more traffic down there
too and I think that will come too with the redevelopment of the Dinner Theater. Or the park and
ride, excuse me.
Mayor Furlong: Ms. Hokkanen if you wanted.
Laurie Hokkanen: We talked about these changes at our last local business council meeting and
Vernelle Clayton is the current chair of the Business Council and she talked to both Todd and
Kate and between the two of us kind of gave an update and the Council is very positive that
we’re taking this step.
Councilman McDonald: Okay.
Mayor Furlong: Other questions? We talk about intensification from impervious surface area.
Is the existing stormwater management system, maybe this is a question for the engineer. If the
current.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Councilwoman Tjornhom: He’s exhausted.
Mayor Furlong: You were off camera so nobody saw you…Maybe now they know. The current
stormwater management system in the downtown area is going to be sufficient to handle this
intensification. If it does occur from a hard surface coverage, and perhaps there may not be any
intensification if you’re converting a parking lot to a building.
Paul Oehme: Right, exactly. For example the new parking ramp that’s going in there, that’s
very little new impervious is going in there because it’s all already paved so.
Mayor Furlong: Right.
Paul Oehme: There is, in some areas that we’re going to be looking at for stormwater
management and maybe a little intensification or some other improvements but overall I think
it’s an okay system that we have down there. We need to look at you know other opportunities
to at least slow down the water in this area but I think when developments come in, we can look
at it on a case by case basis.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, very good.
Kate Aanenson: I think as, to kind of go off, I think a lot of, some of those are already hard
cover. Existing parking lots that are not being over used and I think we’re looking at that shared
parking sort of situation which we’ve done over on the PUD that’s actually Villages on the Pond
which seems to work pretty well for some of that peak on St. Hubert’s. Sharing that parking off
peak so.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright, any other questions? Thoughts and comments. Councilwoman
Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: You know this has been kind of in the works for quite a while. I
think we talked about it and thoroughly done our due diligence in making sure that we’re doing
the right thing and I feel confident that we are.
Mayor Furlong: Very good. Anything else? I’m sorry…
Councilman McDonald: Well I was just going to say. I guess the thing I’m glad to hear is that
you know there has been involvement. One of the things that I would be very hesitant about
supporting this if this were being driven solely by the city staff and that’s why I was asking the
questions because I want to make sure that you know business has an opportunity to say
something about this because it’s going to directly impact them and I think you know some of
the things it takes to run a business, you know the City doesn’t always understand all these things
so that’s why I’m glad to hear that you’re getting good feedback because I feel much more
confident that the things we’re doing are going to work because you know we’re all kind of
behind this.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Mayor Furlong: Yeah, thank you. I want to thank staff too for the time and effort that they’ve
done, not only working with the chamber but with the other businesses and business owners as
well. I mean this is, to Councilwoman Tjornhom’s point. This has been an evolving process and
as another outgrowth of the work, a lot of the good work that they did earlier with the
comprehensive plan and looking at supporting the downtown and improving the local economy
and so I think that this is just, it is an evolution. It’s another step in the right direction but I think
it’s a positive one in terms of strengthening our local economy so thank you to everyone
involved and for your good work and working with the local businesses.
Kate Aanenson: Before you make a motion I just want to point out again so there’s probably 13.
You’re seeing, we did the commercial ones first because that’s kind of where we’ve emphasized
with the comp plan and tied into the fact that we created those two new zoning districts but we
will be working with the rest of the properties that have PUD’s. We do have a meeting set up
with Eckankar and their attorneys and, so they’re kind of excited to hear what we’re doing and
work through that. And then we’ll be taking some of the other businesses or the other PUD’s.
Some of them are industrial parks and again being, so it’s an opportunity for us to meet with
them and see what issues they may have and then also we’ll be bringing those back to you.
Mayor Furlong: Great. Very good. We’ll look forward to it. Somebody like to read the motion
or just recommend the proposed motion? Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yes, I’d like to make a motion the council approves the current
recommendation.
Councilwoman Ernst: Second.
Mayor Furlong: Very well put. And that second came in pretty quick too so. Made and
seconded. Any discussion on the motion?
Councilwoman Tjornhom moved, Councilwoman Ernst seconded that the City Council
approves the rezoning of properties from General Business District (BG) to Central Business
nd
District (CBD) on property located on Lot 4, Block 1, West Village Heights 2 Addition and
rd
Lots 1, 2 and 3, Block 1, West Village Heights 3 Addition; rezoning from General Business
District (BG) to Agricultural Estate District (A2) on property located on Outlot A, Crossroads
Plaza Addition; and rezoning from Highway and Business Services District (BH) to
Agricultural Estate District (A2) on property located on Outlot B, Crossroads Plaza Addition
and Lot 3, Block 2, Frontier Development Park; and adopts the Planning Commission’s
Findings of Fact. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to
0.
COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS:
Councilwoman Ernst: I’d just like to make.
Mayor Furlong: Councilwoman Ernst.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Councilwoman Ernst: Make a comment. More to staff. Probably should have waited.
Mayor Furlong: No, that’s fine.
Councilwoman Ernst: I guess I’m in a hurry. The fishing contest this weekend. It was
awesome. It was warm. Lots of people out there. I actually talked to one lady who’s been, she
was actually born in Chanhassen. Raised in Chanhassen and she said every year they all, their
whole family gets together and this is the one family event that they do every year as a family so
it’s a pretty awesome event so thanks to Todd and his staff.
Todd Gerhardt: Pass the work on. Yeah, we had about 400 people this year. I mean the weather
was just perfect and fun time. I just keep hearing comments that it’s very well organized and
laid out and compared to maybe some other fishing contests and so that’s always nice to hear.
And we got you know the tickets handed out, because everybody’s got to get their free coupon as
they come in for the raffle and that was smooth. You know the lines were very short so.
Councilwoman Ernst: So I do have a question. How many holes got drilled, do you know?
Todd Gerhardt: Well that was something new this year too. The Rotary volunteered to drill the
holes.
Councilwoman Ernst: I know my husband was very sore and tired.
Todd Gerhardt: Used muscles he’s never had before. We sold 500 fishing tickets and I would
say there was at least 500 holes out on the lake. And each fishing ticket allowed you a hole to
fish out of so there was I’d say probably another 100 holes that weren’t used.
Mayor Furlong: That’s where the big ones were.
Todd Gerhardt: I had the small hole.
Councilman Litsey: Couldn’t get the fish through it? It was too big.
Todd Gerhardt: No problem getting the fish out, no.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any other council presentations?
ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS:
Todd Gerhardt: Pretty quiet week. We’re plowing snow and we will be all week it sounds like
so that’s all I have.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, very good. Any questions for Mr. Gerhardt or his staff? Okay.
CORRESPONDENCE DISCUSSION.
None.
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Chanhassen City Council – February 8, 2010
Councilwoman Ernst moved, Councilwoman Tjornhom seconded to adjourn the meeting.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. The City
Council meeting was adjourned at 10:45 p.m.
Submitted by Todd Gerhardt
City Manager
Prepared by Nann Opheim
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