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CC Minutes 2000 02 14CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING FEBRUARY 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino called the meeting to order at 6:40 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to the Flag. COUNCILMEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Mancino, Councilwoman Jansen, Councilman Labatt, Councilman Engel, and Councilman Senn STAFF PRESENT: Scott Botcher, Roger Knutson, Dave Hempel, Kate Aanenson, Cindy Kirchoff, Sharmin A1-Jaff, and Todd Hoffman APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the agenda with the following amendments: Deleting item 2.5, Approve Layout and Plans & Specifications for TH 41 at TH 7 Intersection Improvements, PW67D-4 and setting a public hearing on this item for February 28, 2000; and moving item 8, Request for the City to Fund the Fourth of July Parade and to Incorporate it into the City's Sponsorship Program to item 3(b). All voted in favor of the amended agenda and the motion carried unanimously. PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: None. CONSENT AGENDA: Councilman Labatt moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve the following Consent Agenda items pursuant to the City Manager's recommendations: City Code Amendment to Permit Automobile Rental in the BH, Highway Business District, Final Reading, and Approval of Summary Ordinance for Publication Purposes. City Code Amendment Adopting Roberts Rules of Order to Govern City Council Procedure, First and Final Reading. c. City Code Amendment Eliminating the Position of Public Safety Director, Final Reading. Resolution #2000-10: Approve Resolution Repealing City Council Resolution 99-01 Concerning City Council Rules of Procedure. e. Approval of the Lake Ann Beach Contract with Minnetonka Community Services. f. Approval of the 4th of July Fireworks Contract. Resolution #2000-11: Set Public Hearing Date for Grandview Road Area Utility Improvement Project 97-11. Resolution #2000-12: Approve Right-of-Way Acquisition Offers from MnDot for Parcels 220A and 219 for the TH 5/West 78th Street Improvements Project 97-6. k. Approval of Bills. City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 1. Approval of Minutes: - City Council Work Session Minutes dated January 24, 2000 - City Council Minutes dated January 24, 2000 Receive Commission Minutes: - Planning Commission Minutes dated January 19, 2000 - Park and Recreation Commission Minutes dated January 25, 2000 m. Removal of Two Parcels from TIF District 3-1 (Hennepin County). n. Approval of Amendment to Organizational Chart. o. Request for Site Plan Review for a 43,000 sq. fl. Office/Warehouse Building; Lot 1, Block 1, Chanhassen Lakes Business Park 8th Addition, Eden Trace Corporation. p. Request for Site Plan Review for a 43,730 sq. fl. Office/warehouse Building; Lot 2, Block 1, Chanhassen Lakes Business Park 8th Addition, Eden Trace Corporation. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. G. RECEIVE FEASIBILITY STUDY; SET PUBLIC HEARING DATE FOR KINGS ROAD STREET AND UTILITY IMPROVEMENT PROJECT 99-20. Councilman Senn: l(g) I pulled because I'd like to ask Council to consider two conditions to attach to it in relationship to going ahead and setting the date for the public hearing. Condition one being that this be a project undertaken privately by the developer and not as a City project, but as per city plans and specifications. And secondly that before the hearing actually proceeds, we would be informed by the developer that he has reached agreement with the property owners in terms of acquisition as it relates to construction of the improvements. Scott Botcher: My only question is if you do that then you don't need a public hearing because it's not a 429 process. Councilman Senn: Exactly. Scott Botcher: Okay. Starting early. I'm paying attention. Mayor Mancino: So you would like to see the parties come to agreement and so that there isn't a public hearing? Councilman Senn: Well I mean unless the Council feels differently. I just, it doesn't seem to me that we belong in the middle of this discussion. I mean the developer, Heritage and the property owners either need to get together and agree or not. If not, I don't see why we should take the position of effectively going in and taking the land from the adjacent property owners to move this development ahead at this particular point in time. It seems to me we're kind of in the middle of a project that we shouldn't be in the middle of and it should be basically a negotiation between the parties.., market terms and act accordingly. Otherwise we're kind of creating a, let's say a favorite nation side from the negotiations standpoint and I don't think we should be doing that. City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: Any other comments from Council? Councilwoman Jansen: I guess I don't know what standard procedure is. Is it customary that the City would be holding the public hearings and being involved or would it be more common that we would step out? Scott Botcher: Well I mean if you take the approach that Mark's advocating, it would do one of two things. It would kill the development. I mean the proposed development that's contemplated. Or it would force the parties together and this is not a complicated deal. I mean as far as deals go, it's not complicated. So I think candidly yeah, it'd be nice to have the City not be involved. This is really sort of a nickel and dime road we're talking about. Not to denigrate the road. It's not a big deal and candidly, I mean I've met with the parties. They can probably do it cheaper without us being in the middle of it. I mean economically it's to their advantage not to have us do the 429 process so, I don't know if there is a standard practice. I think you apply the 429 to whatever case fits it. I can't, I don't have a big deal either way on Mark's proposal. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay, appreciate your comments. I'm okay with Mark's proposal then. Councilman Engel: It's easier that way to get us out of it. Councilman Senn: I would move that then with those two conditions added. Mayor Mancino: Okay, is there a second? Councilman Engel: I'll second. Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to Receive the Feasibility Study for Kings Road Street and Utility Improvement Project 99-20 conditioned on the following conditions: This project is to be undertaken privately by the developer, not as a City project, but as per city plans and specifications. Before the public hearing actually proceeds, the City would be informed by the developer that he has reached agreement with the property owners in terms of acquisition as it relates to construction of the improvements. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: UPDATE ON CENSUS 2000. Mayor Mancino: We have Bob here from the Census and he is going to give us about a 5 minute talk on the Census 2000 and how it involves our community. Ivan Schultz: Thank you very much for your time. I'd like to pass out some packets first of all to all of you. Mayor Mancino: You're not Bob. Are you Ivan? City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Ivan Schultz: I'm Ivan. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Nice to meet you Ivan. Thank you for coming. Ivan Schultz: Thank you for having me. Mayor Mancino: Bob was going to do it if Ivan didn't show up. Ivan Schultz: Again I want to thank you for your time. There's a lot of information in those packets on the importance of the census, which is the main reason we're here. We're trying to impress on people the importance of sending in that form. For every six forms that are sent out, one is going to be the long form and the other ones are only seven questions. They should take about 10 minutes to fill out. The purpose for the long form is to find out the needs represented in the community. Find out what type of migrates might be in the community. Senior needs. That type of thing. And all our federal funding is determined by census figures. And on the average it runs $2,500 over 10 years per person so we don't want to miss anyone in the community. And if you have an emergency in the community like St. Peter had a few years ago with that tornado, all the money they received for that tornado was determined by census figures. So anyone can realize how important this is. The reason we're here is to try to recruit workers from the area. We pay $11.50 an hour and 31 cents a mile for those people going door to door. And this work will take place between the middle of March and April. It will last 4 to 6 weeks and we need people to canvas. To try to find people that didn't send in their census forms and help them fill out that form. Mayor Mancino: And is there a minimum age to work for this? Ivan Schultz: 18 is the actual age. If they're under 18 they can work but they're not able to drive. They need a high school diploma or GED also which is very hard to find under 18. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ivan Schultz: Are there any questions? Mayor Mancino: Any questions from anyone in the audience that you might have for Mr. Schultz? Any volunteers? Ivan Schultz: We need you badly so please don't be bashful. Scott Botcher: We do have flyers for the audience. Those blue ones. About employment opportunities upstairs in the lobby where we have all the other stuff. The bus schedules and all that so, if you want to pick up something, there is stuff up there. Ivan Schultz: I was just thinking too, when they apply they probably should know they need to take a 28 question multiple choice test based on clerical skills. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Ivan Schultz: The number to call is 1-888-325-7733. I'll repeat that one more time. 888-325-7733. And I really appreciate your time. City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Audience: This will be in your local media but you might want to make a note that there are informational and application and testing sessions scheduled within the area. These include this Saturday at Chaska Community Center at 10:00 a.m. Friday at St. Bonifacius at 4:30 Old City Hall. 4:30. Also Friday at 1:30 at Watertown. Sessions will also be scheduled in Chanhassen in the near future and of course we'll be published in the local media. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Next on the agenda, anyone else from visitor presentation? Can you state your name and address please. Gloria Lindberg: Yes, my name is Gloria Lindberg, 8422 Rosewood Drive. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I'm here with Frank and Margaret Hetman also of Chanhassen who are members of the new local Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Chanhassen. As I quickly explain our presence here, Margaret will provide each of you with a packet of information about the Baha'is faith. And an invitation for all of you to attend a formal recognition ceremony on Friday, February 25th from 7:00 to 7:30 in the evening at the Chanhassen Rec Center. The Baha'is faith is the most rapidly growing world religion with members in over 175 countries and territories. Baha'is reside in 48 cities in our metro area. When at least 9 adult Baha'is reside in a city, a Baha'is Local Spiritual Assembly is formed. Currently there are local spiritual assemblies in 16 cities in the Twin Cities metro area, including Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Golden Valley, Plymouth, Bloomington, and Edina. The Baha'is faith is actively involved in many service projects. Our sister community in Golden Valley has for the past 8 years cleaned a stretch of Highway 101 from Pleasant View down to 78th Street and now that we've formed an assembly here, we took over this last fall and will continue doing that no matter what construction happens on 101. We are also very actively involved. Councilman Senn: Don't worry. Gloria Lindberg: Don't worry? We're going to have a lot of work and a lot of exercise. We're actively involved in human rights issues also and look forward to working with you if and when you have a human rights commission. And also are active in race unity issues, equality of women and men issues. I said that the right way didn't I? And so we look forward to offering our services to the City of Chanhassen on any of those areas. We do not have a center but cordially invite you to attend our ceremony on the 25th at the Rec Center and invite you to call us with any questions you have about us. We have devotional meetings and informational meetings quite frequently and invite you to attend any of those. Thank you very much for the time. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Thank you for coming. Anyone else during visitor presentation that would like to address the council? Okay, seeing none we will move forward with the agenda and again just for everyone to know that under unfinished business, 2.5, the specifications and plans for Highway 41 and Highway 7 intersection will be at the 28th City Council meeting for a public hearing. So we will go now to new business. DAVE HUFFMAN MEMORIAL 5K RACE~ HOWARD ANDERSON~ MIKE HOWE & KEN GARVIN. City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Michael Howe: Good evening. Michael Howe, 2169 Stone Creek Drive. I'm here tonight representing the Dave Huffman Race Committee and the Park and Rec Commission. Mayor, Council members, thank you. We were here about four months ago and kind of gave you an update on how we were going and I'm happy to say that things are ahead of schedule in my view. I'm here tonight to give you just a brief update along with Ken. In your packet I think you'll see a race application. I'm also requesting we get a motion of some sort just so we can continue. Now we're ready really to go to the media and start putting these race forms and other races packets so we can get some attendance. With that I think Ken would like to say a few things about how we're doing. Ken Garvin: Hi. I'm Ken Garvin at 6390 Teton Lane. There's been a lot of interest in the community. Other companies wishing to help us sponsor this event. This has been unsolicited and these people have basically come out of the woodwork. And how they're hearing about it, it's by word of mouth and also the media is beckoning to you know get the word out as well and help us with this event so it's really all I have to say at this point. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Michael Howe: One last thing. I was here last time and I think the City Manager issued a challenge and you have about eight months to train. Scott Botcher: I'm doing it. Mayor Mancino: Well see that's why we don't want to get it out to the media yet because we're all going to train ourselves and get ready and then we'll tell everybody two months ahead of time. Michael Howe: I understand. Any questions we can help you with? Mayor Mancino: Any questions for council members? Scott Botcher: Senn's going to practice doing the census door to door and he's going to run. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Anyone would like to entertain a motion to continue with the 5K race. Councilman Labatt: I would move that we approve and endorse the Dave Huffman 5K Race Mayor Mancino: Okay, is there a second? Councilwoman Jansen: Second. Councilman Labatt moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded that the City Council approve and endorse the Dave Huffman 5K Race and support the use of in-kind services, public safety staff time, and financial assistance that has been budgeted in the 2000 Recreation Budget. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. REQUEST FOR THE CITY TO FUND THE FOURTH OF JULY PARADE AND TO INCORPORATE IT INTO THE CITY'S SPONSORSHIP PROGRAM. City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Todd Hoffman: Mayor and members of the City Council. The second item has to do with the 4th of July parade. Deb Kind is here this evening and if you recall Deb brought this issue up back in the Truth in Taxation hearing in December. At that time the Council asked that the Park and Recreation Commission review this request and then bring a recommendation back down to the City Council. At our July 25th meeting the Park and Recreation Commission discussed this item and discussion generally centered around the fact that the commission would like to see the city sponsor this event. Provide the funding and then just how to do that in this year of transition. Their fear being that if the city did go ahead and incorporate this into our sponsorship program and then send out a second letter this year, that would present an appearance of just not being organized in our sponsorship program and so the long and the short of that discussion is that they would like to see the city fund the parade for the year 2000 and if funded into the future, but then in the future years we would incorporate the language into our sponsorship program that this does include sponsorship of the 4th of July parade. So that's the recommendation that has been brought forward to the City Council. I'd be happy to answer any questions. The Minutes of those meetings are included in your item and then I believe Deb would be, Deb was there that evening and she'd be willing to answer any questions of the council as well. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Any questions for staff at this point? Councilwoman Jansen: No. Councilman Senn: No. Mayor Mancino: Okay, Deb. Would you like to come up and address the Council. Deb Kind: Sure. Mayor Mancino: It was a long discussion at the Park and Recreation Commission as we read in our minutes. Deb Kind: Good reading huh. Mayor Mancino: Yes. Deb Kind: I have a little handout... Mayor Mancino: So you're going to walk us through your handout? Deb Kind: Yeah, I'm going to walk you through that. It will reveal how much I read. My name is Deb Kind. I live at 2351 Lukewood Drive in Chanhassen and I am the Chair of the Parade Committee. And I'm just going to walk through this quickly. It will take about 5 minutes. I timed myself. Each winter the city contacts businesses for special event contributions, including the July 4th, and in the spring the same businesses are contacted for July 4th parade contributions. This is confusing to businesses who feel they have already contributed to July 4th events. I'll give you a quick background here. The first July 4th parade was a city funded event that was part of the Centennial Celebration in 1996. The response was so great that the committee decided to have another parade in 1997. At that time the committee did not formally request city funding. In 1998 I was asked to be on the Parade Committee. Once on the committee I was surprised to find out it was not a city task force or city funded event. But rather a small group of residents putting on a show. Our committee takes great pride in knowing that we are responsible for the success of City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 the parade. However, while this grass roots, resident grass roots concept is somewhat appealing, most businesses and residents assume the parade is a city funded event like all the other July 4th events. Basically we do the majority of the work and the City gets the credit. And this bothers me. So on behalf of the Parade Committee I am now formally asking the city to recognize that the parade is an important part of Chanhassen's July 4th celebration and fund the parade like our other July 4th events. The Council should approve this request for the following reasons. Number 1. The parade is a fun community event attended by thousands of people. This is probably the most important reason. Number 2. The City should be consistent with how community events are funded. Number 3. The parade committee and the City should work together on the same team. Having competing July 4th fund raising efforts is not good teamwork. Number 4. The parade supports the City's strategic plan. It brings an intergenerational community together in the downtown area. It encourages community volunteerism. It recognizes outstanding community contributors as our Grand Marshal. It gives taxpayers a good value. Parade costs will continue to be offset by special event contributions and our unpaid volunteer committee would continue to organize the parade. As a contributor to the special events fund, a taxpayer and one of those unpaid volunteers, I can verify the parade is a very good value to the city. The Park and Recreation Commission also recommended approval. That's the fifth reason. However, the Park and Recreation Commission did have a few concerns that I would like to address. Number 1. The timing of my request seems bad because staff has already done their special event mailing to area businesses and the city budget has been set. You may recall that I sent a written request for 2000 parade funding to the City Council, the Manager, City Manager, the Park and Rec staff on July 26, 1999 which was almost seven months ago. It is not clear to me why the parade was not included in the 2000 budget, but spring is when we usually start our fundraising so now is a good time to consider parade funding amendment to the budget. Bottom line. I would like this to be the last year businesses are contacted twice for July 4th contributions. Number 2. Do we really want to give control of the parade to the City? First of all I think the City does an outstanding job with Chanhassen special events, especially the July 4th celebration. And if the City wanted to take on a larger role of the parade, which I know if not staff's desire, I would willingly give up my power. Basically I trust the council and staff to make good decisions about the parade. Number 3. Will current parade contributors send checks to the City? It's true that some businesses had liked the idea of knowing their contributions were going directly to the parade, so I think the City should capitalize on this desire by allowing businesses to earmark their contributions to specific events. Yes, there may be a fall off in parade contributions. However, I feel it would be quickly offset by the annual increase in special event contributions as new businesses come to town. Number 4. Will the City end up getting stuck with the parade? The truth is City funding or not City funding, if the volunteer parade committee disbands the City is already stuck with deciding if the parade should continue or not. To me there is one key question. Is the parade more or less important than any other city funded special event? My recommendation is for the Council to amend the 2000 budget to include funding of the July 4th parade and include the parade in future city budgets with the following conditions. Number 1. The parade committee continues to organize the parade. Number 2. In 2000 the parade committee sent a transition letter to past parade contributors that explains the funding change and encourages contributions to the City's special events program. Contributions may be earmarked specifically for the parade if desired. And number 3. Future special event program mailings must include the parade on the list of events and include a checklist for contributors to earmark their donations for specific special events. In conclusion, if the Council approves city funding of the parade I would take it as a clear signal of support and I would be willing to continue as Chair of the parade committee. Thank you. Mayor Mancino: Any questions for Deb at this time? I think you've kind of circled the wagons. Any questions? I mean you've looked at it from all perspectives, I'll tell you. City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Deb Kind: I think I covered it all. Councilwoman Jansen: You just needed that flag to wave while you were up there. Mayor Mancino: No, seriously. Any questions for Deb on her recommendations? Okay. Councilman Senn: Not, but I have a question for Todd. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Thank you Deb. If we have some questions as we go we'll bring you up if you don't mind coming up again. Okay, Councilman Senn. Councilman Senn: Todd, if we fund this this year, then it will go into the special events program to the private fund.., correct? Todd Hoffman: Correct. Councilman Senn: Okay. So essentially what we need to do is close the gap here effectively on the one year and allocate the money for the one year in hopes that.., special events program will be able to pick up the cost of it in future years. Todd Hoffman: That's the hope. There is, if you look a couple of pages back at the special events funding report, it talks about a total budget in 1999 of 33 ½ thousand for special events and a take on the sponsorships of $27,000 so there always has been a gap between the actual expenditures and the sponsorship money granted and I don't know if that will continue in the future. It's hard to say year to year but that's been a trend for the last half dozen years or so. Councilman Senn: Have we made an effort to go out to the contributors though and tell them that this fund is running at a deficit and that we need to raise the bar? Todd Hoffman: No we have not. Councilman Senn: Okay. So could we undertake that effort? Todd Hoffman: Sure. Councilman Senn: Okay. Mayor Mancino: Just so you know, I'd like to follow up on that. I think that some of the chamber members didn't know we were at a deficit and I think. Chamber members did not, so I think it would be helpful for them to know that their sponsorship dollars are very well appreciated and we love putting on the events, and also where we are financially. And how we could use their support. For them to know that. Any other discussion from Council members or any questions for Todd and what would... Councilman Engel? Councilman Engel: I'd like to see this included in that special events sponsorship program. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Pretty much following Deb's recommendations? City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Engel: Yes. I think she's got that lined out. You can still, can we do that? Acquire money dedicated to a special component of an event? I think that's what you're asking for isn't it Deb? Councilman Labatt: Earmark it for the parade? Councilman Engel: Can I pay my federal taxes that way? I'd like to do that. Mayor Mancino: Now wait. This is going to turn into a long discussion. This is going to turn into too long of a discussion. Councilman Labatt: Make sure you fill out that card first. Councilman Engel: Yeah, where's that census guy? Councilman Senn: How many times would you like me to fill it out? Councilman Engel: I'll fill your's for you. Mayor Mancino: So obviously, I mean we can say that with all the festivals that we have, a company can earmark, number one if they'd like to, I mean the first box could be, you guys here's the money. Use it how best you see fit. Or they could also check a box for which event that they want to donate to. Councilman Senn: Maybe out of fairness, I mean you know, in fact we, I think at budget time we had a little bit of a discussion about this too and said that we really kind of needed to get our hands around kind of what events were going to be included and not included and how they were going to fund and if we were going to do more event directed contributions and that sort of thing. So why don't we maybe give staff an opportunity to put some thoughts together on that. Bring it into a work session and just effectively deal with the issue tonight of providing the one year stop gap for the transition to get this included in that funding. Mayor Mancino: Does everyone feel comfortable with that? Councilwoman Jansen: Yep. Scott Botcher: Yeah, I just think there's a lot of issues involved when you start directing it. It becomes more difficult. Councilman Senn: With that I'd move approval of the one year stop gap funding. Councilwoman Jansen: Second. Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded that the City Council approve a budget amendment to the 2000 budget to include funding for the 4th Of July parade for this year. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. Mayor Mancino: So that means Deb at, it will go back to staff for looking at it holistically and then coming back to us. But I think everybody's. 10 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Senn: We just allocated the money basically. Mayor Mancino: For one year. Councilman Senn: Right. Mayor Mancino: For this year. So you'll want to follow it as they come back for other years. Okay? Scott Botcher: And we'll do that at budget time. Mayor Mancino: So that you don't have to come to the Truth in Taxation hearing all the time. Deb Kind: But it's so fun. Mayor Mancino: Thank you very much for putting that all together for us. We appreciate that. APPEAL DECISION OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION FOR A VARIANCE FROM THE 40 FOOT WETLAND SETBACK FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A DECK, LOT 10, BLOCK MEADOWS AT LONGACRES 4TM ADDITION, 7415 BENT BOW TRAIL, TERRY RADIL. Cindy Kirchoff: Thank you. On January 19th the Planning Commission reviewed and denied this variance request and the applicant is appealing that decision. The subject site is part of a larger development, Meadows at Longacres 4th Addition. And as part of the plat approval, or request, the developer requested that 20 foot front yard setbacks be maintained on a few of the lots, including the subject site to pull the house pad further away from the wetland area. So this site is constrained, or the buildable area is limited to between the 20 foot front yard setback, the 40 foot wetland setback and the 10 foot side yard setbacks. During the building permit process, staff did permit an encroachment of a 15 inch bay window into this 40 foot setback. With the condition that no further encroachments take place. The applicant is requesting a 12 foot variance to allow a portion of the deck, the gazebo and all of the patio to encroach into this setback. Staff believes there are other options. A deck can be built on the site without a variance. Therefore we are recommending denial of the variance request since the applicant has not demonstrated a hardship. Thank you. Mayor Mancino: Okay, any questions for staff'? I do, and it's more, not a question just an explanation I guess from staff. It is always when we have subdivisions and especially the Longacres subdivision was, what do I want to say, an environmentally sensitive subdivision when they came in, Lundgren Brothers was very much into trying to preserve wetlands, stands of trees, etc and just have a wonderful development, which it is. We want to be as a city and as a council very open and proactive about letting residents know who buy into these subdivisions what the wetlands setback is, etc. What have we done as a city so that when buyers come in to Longacres or any subdivision and there are buffer setbacks, in what legal documents do homeowners know about this? And are there ways to be more proactive so that somebody doesn't buy and all of a sudden after they move in they find out that you know they're not allowed to be in the setback. Kate Aanenson: It's in the covenants. It's also, it's shown on a lot survey. Now there's different ways to transact the property but when the builder comes in it is shown on the lot survey that there is a wetland conservation easement. What the restrictions are on that and that exhibit is in there. In this situation the 11 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 homeowner wanted a change on a bay window so again there was an interpretation made and they were apprised of the wetland situation. Mayor Mancino: The builder was apprised. Kate Aanenson: Right. I'm assuming that, and again this is the staff's making some assumptions there that the applicant wanted the bay window because we told the builder no so there had to be some dialogue to go back and forth about the situation because there was a problem that was brought to his attention that we couldn't let the bay window go through based on the wetland setback. My understanding is that the owner wanted the window so that process had to be explained to them so our assumption is that there was some knowledge of the situation, even though the builder signs on the survey. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. I just think it's a good idea to take a look at and making sure that that's as openly communicated to a potential buyer as we can possibly make it so. Councilman Labatt: I just wanted, in reference to the bay window, so this bay window is on the second level. The full basement, walkout. Second level with an 18 inch bay window. Now, how does that qualify as an encroachment when it's above the elevation, above the ground by 10-15 feet? Kate Aanenson: It would be the same thing as a deck. It's still included in the setback from the wetland. It doesn't have to be at grade to meet the setback requirement. Councilman Senn: It's a vertical line. Kate Aanenson: Right. Councilman Labatt: Even though there's nothing going down into the, or the footing, it's still. Kate Aanenson: Right. We look at it on one dimension. The setback and that's what's shown here. The one dimension. The setback, and again that's the point where if there was lack in knowledge, it's certainly at that point. It was apprised that there is a situation here. The wetland and then the deck would have a problem in the future. Mayor Mancino: So you can't even cantilever out into the wetland setback. Kate Aanenson: Right. Whether it be a deck or a bay window, correct. Any projection. Mayor Mancino: Any projection, okay. Any other questions? Is the applicant here and would you like to address the council please? Terry Radil: My name is Terry Radil. I live at 7415 Bent Bow Trail. To address some of the discussion here. There was zero discussion with my wife and I and the builder concerning that bay window. This is a very standard model. I mean, and I don't know how other builders do it but Lundgren Brothers has a half a dozen, ten models that you can choose from. You can do some standard deviations from them, but this is a standard model. We did no deviations from the footprint of the house. The bay window is part of the standard model and they did not discuss this with us. You know that it was encroaching at all. We actually asked the question when we did sign off on the lot survey, if we were going to have any problems with putting a deck on the house and they told us no, so I'm not sure if that's a education on their part or 12 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 what the issue there is but, they always told us that there wasn't going to be any problem. Had we known there was going to be these problems we could have very easily built on a different lot. There's a number of lots out there that we were considering. We really liked the Longacres development because they do use an efficient use of land. They've got the wetlands. They've got some common parks and that's one of the reasons we decided to build out there. Had we know, had someone, had they told us that we were deviating from the original plat, here again we could have very easily chose to build on a different lot. I have talked with a number of my neighbors. Some of the neighbors have written letters. I actually faxed in a letter from my neighbor to the south, and that didn't make it into your staff report so if you'd like to look at that, I've got that for you. But none of the neighbors that are adjoining the property have any issues or concerns of putting a deck and patio and gazebo on a house. I guess do you have any questions of me? Mayor Mancino: Any questions for Terry at this point? Councilman Labatt: So this agreement in here between the City and Longacres, you didn't know about? Terry Radil: No. Councilman Labatt: For the bay window encroachment. Terry Radii: No actually, and that's something when I talked with you Steve I said in error. We signed the purchase agreement back in April. April 7th. The statement of encroachment, I think the date on it was June 2nd. Here again that was well before any digging. The lot was staked so if we would have had this discussion, all it would have cost me was another survey, you know which I'm sure was a few hundred dollars but in the big scheme of things that was nothing. So there was absolutely no discussion with us and the builder on this at all, which I'm very sad about right now. Councilman Labatt: Have you talked to Lundgren at all? Terry Radil: Actually I have. Our sales rep has left the organization that we dealt with the whole building process. I talked with the VP of Sales I guess he was and he pretty much directed all of our discussion to their lawyers, which I have not done yet. Mayor Mancino: Any other questions for Terry? Councilwoman Jansen: No. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you Terry. Pulling this back to Council for discussion on the appeal. Councilman Senn any words of wisdom? This is a hard one I know. Councilman Senn: I guess we've seen enough of these over the years. I mean it's really an issue between the builder and the resident. It's kind of hard for us to solve it after the fact. We make sure that that stuff is in the title and is in the survey work. I guess we can't insure that everybody does the reviews that they should do to make themselves aware of all that. I think the residents have got some definite issues with the builder if the builder in fact represented that they could add this stuff onto the house. It gets, I mean this is one of those pretty hard and fast zones that we tried not to, that we've tried very hard not to tinker with. I guess once we start doing it, I guess where do you draw the line on it one way or the other. The other part is, and this area just seems from past conversation that this is probably even more sensitive than some other areas because this entire area has been very sensitive about development occurring 300 yards or more away 13 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 from it across the wetland and now you get requests saying let's move our development closer to it. When they already think that they're too close to the development 300 yards away. So it's kind of even more catch-22. And so I would be at least from my standpoint going to side with the Planning Commission recommendation. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilwoman Jansen. Councilwoman Jansen: I pretty much echo what Councilman Senn just said and it really is a tough spot that the City certainly ends up in. Having to be the fall guy if you would, or the bad guy in a situation like this, and especially with the builder who has worked with our ordinances as frequently as this particular builder. But in looking at it too, this particular lot in essence has already received two variances. The additional 10 foot distance that was taken off of the front yard setback and then bumping out for the bay window so we have pretty well maximized the lot as it is. So I really hesitate then to be stepping out into this setback area when there are other options and I realize that it's not the first choice but unfortunately it really is an issue with the builder. I think he at least owes you a moved door but I mean that definitely is with the builder as far as the access point that was put in for the deck access. But I too would have to stand with the Planning Commission's denial. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Councilman Senn, or Engel. We don't want to hear from Councilman Senn again. Councilman Senn: I don't. Councilman Engel: He can speak for me. I've, well somebody who's built a new house in Chanhassen as well in the last 10 years. It's been a long time. I think you've got very little chance of getting any satisfaction going back to the builder at this point. Been my experience. Hope I'm wrong about that. So I think it's more or less on us to decide whether or not he's going to build offa deck here. And I've always, you've been on this council with me long enough to know which side I come down on every time on these issues and I always go for the landowner. So it's going to be no different for me. There's a 40 foot setback there. I agree. We should have them. They're good for the environment. They're good for all the reasons we all know. He's asking for 12 feet of it. Still these 28 feet, it's more than twice as much as he's taking. I'd let it go. Mayor Mancino: Okay, you feel comfortable with it. Councilman Engel: I'm okay with it. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilman Labatt. Councilman Labatt: When I look at the ordinance for conditions for granting and number (f). Is the difficulty or hardship self created hardship. The homeowner here in this case did not create the hardship. It was created by Lundgren Brothers and I don't think we should be sitting up here penalizing this one individual homeowner for somebody else's error that obviously he's not going to get any satisfaction from them so I'm in favor of granting the approval of the variance. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Is this a simple majority or is this 4/5? This is a tough one and I know that the Planning Commission had a tough decision with it too. I do tend to go with the Planning Commission recommendation of denial and that is because of setting a precedent. I am very, very concerned about that. 14 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 I know that we have other development that will be happening just south of this development along a wetland area and if we start now allowing the variances, it can also happen in the future and I know that the Lundgren people that live in that development are very concerned about that other side of the wetland and what happens there. So I too am, would go with the Planning Commission's decision. With that, may I have a motion please. And it's still very hard so. Councilman Senn: I move to deny the appeal of the Planning Commission's decision. Mayor Mancino: Second please. Councilwoman Jansen: Second. Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded that the City Council denies the appeal for Variance #2000-1 for a 12 foot variance from the 40 foot wetland setback for the construction of a gazebo, deck and patio based upon the following: 1. The applicant has a reasonable use of the property. 2. The applicant can construct a deck on the site without a variance. All voted in favor, except Councilman Engel and Councilman Labatt who opposed and the motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2. Roger Knutson: Mayor, just so the record's clear. The reason for the denial is based upon the findings set forth in the planner's report. Is that correct? Councilman Senn: Yes. Mayor Mancino: Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you Terry for coming. REQUEST FOR SITE PLAN APPROVAL TO CONSTRUCT 5 THREE LEVEL APARTMENT BUILDINGS AND A COMMUNITY BUILDING (344 APARTMENTS TOTAL); AND A PLANNED UNIT DEVELOPMENT AMENDMENT TO ALLOW 34.9% HARD SURFACE COVERAGE, AND PRELIMINARY PLAT APPROVAL TO SUBDIVIDE 21.34 ACRES INTO 4 LOTS; LOCATED AT THE SOUTHWEST CORNER OF POWERS BLVD. AND LAKE DRIVE WEST, POWERS RIDGE APARTMENT HOMES; LAKE SUSAN HILLS PARTNERSHIP AND MILLER HANSON WESTERBECK BERGER, INC. Public Present: Name Address Mike Stoebe Jeff Shopek, Loucks & Associates Bill Scarbono, Loucks & Associates Larry Guthrie Link Wilson Doug Wilder 3122 Club View Court 7200 Hemlock Lane 7200 Hemlock Lane 3740 Drexel Court, Eagan 1201 Hawthorne, Minneapolis 1320 Lake Susan Hills Drive 15 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Chris Mallet Jan Ryland Ed & Mary Kraft Thomas & Marcia Reis Erick Ries Geoff & Holly Kuchera Andrew K. Olson Steve Neururer Michele Hellickson Jim & Mary Lamson Bill Weber Mark Menzuber Rhonda Weber Sam Wilder Diane McCarron Louis & Maureen Pistulla Jim & Lois Dyvig Scott Berquist Doug Taylor 1271 Lake Susan Hills Drive 1351 Lake Susan Hills Drive 8711 Flamingo Drive 6600 Sally Lane 4233 Valley View Road 3441 Egret Court 8290 West Lake Court 1301 Lake Susan Hills Drive 44O9 5132 1290 1310 Lake 1290 Lake 1320 Lake 1331 Lake 1291 Lake 1260 Lake 1321 Lake 1360 Lake Claremare Drive Meadow Ridge, Edina Lake Susan Hills Drive Susan Hills Drive Susan Hills Drive Susan Hills Drive Susan Hills Drive Susan Hills Drive Susan Hills Drive Susan Hills Drive Susan Hills Drive Mayor Mancino: Because we have so many of you here in attendance, if for some reason, and I know I tend to go in and out, if you can't hear me or someone else, would you kind of please just raise your hand so we can see that and let us know when we're going in and out like this. And I don't know if most of you were at the Planning Commission but how we will, how we'll go ahead with this is that number one, there will be a staff report on this proposal. Secondly, I will mm it over to our attorney to talk a little bit about legally the constraints for the council and answer some of those questions that I know that the residents have had. Number three, we will then have the applicant make their presentation to us. And then number four, I will allow some public input. I would like to have the public input, when you come up to say your name and address. If you could give us any new information. I mean we've all read lots of things this weekend. So if there are some new relevant facts or issues that you have, you are welcome to come forward and if you could, unless you've just designated one or two people, if you could kind of limit it to 5 minutes would be helpful. And also any questions that you have, you may have a question when you come up for the applicant, etc. All questions please direct to me and then I will forward those to the appropriate person. So that again when you're up there you're not asking the applicant directly. Okay? And if you have any other questions, any other questions about the proceedings from here on out tonight? It's wonderful to see so many of you see here. Okay. Staff report please and again if you can't hear staff or need it louder, please let us know and Sharmin, if someone can't hear you I'll just flag you down if you don't mind. Thank you. Sharmin A1-Jaff: Okay. Thank you. Madam Mayor, members of the City Council. Just a brief background on. Mayor Mancino: Can everybody hear? You can't hear it very well. Can you go forward or can we. Sharmin A1-Jaff: Just a brief background on this application. In 1987 the City approved a mixed density planned unit development for Lake Susan Hills. This PUD permitted up to 411 single family units, and it created three outlots for medium density units. One outlot for high density units. The single family lots have been platted in nine additions. The outlots which were designated for medium density units have also 16 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 been platted. Some of them have been built up. Some of them are still under construction. The only remaining parcel is the high density outlot, which is the subject proposal. The entire planned unit development consisted of 332 acres. Outlot A is designated as high density residential. The PUD contract states that the development shall provide a minimum of 21.5 acres of high density multi-family residential units. The total number of dwelling units shall not exceed 375 units or a density greater than 17.4 units per acre. The development of the high density multi-family residential shall be in accordance with the uses standards requirements of the R-12 zoning district. Basically what that means is if the planned unit development contract is silent, then we refer to the R-12 district requirements. The applicant is requesting preliminary plat approval, site plan approval and a planned unit development amendment to construct five apartment buildings. With a total of 344 units on Outlot A. The buildings are proposed to be built in four phases. Phase I is an L shaped building located along the northeast comer of the site. It will contain 100 units. Phase II consists of two buildings. They're what we refer to as Buildings B1 and B2. They are connected through an underground garage and they are proposed to contain 80 units. 40 units in each building. The community space which consists of community rooms, swimming pool, wading pool, picnic area and a fountain will also be constructed as part of Phase II. Phase III is Building C which contains 88 units. And the fourth and final phase is a 76 unit senior independent living apartment. The apartments are proposed to be market rate rental and be located on four lots. Phase II which contains two buildings and the community space will be located on one lot. However under the PUD you can have more than one lot, more than one building located on a lot. The gross density of the site is 16.1 per acre which is less than that permitted by the PUD. Access will be provided through two entrances off of Lake Drive West. The site is currently zoned planned unit development. It is guided for high density residential and utilities are available to the site. We've been working with the applicant for months and we have looked at several options as to how this site could be developed. One of the main issues that we need to deal with specifically deals with the hard surface coverage on this site. Under the planned unit development agreement there was a cap of 32% hard surface coverage. The applicant is proposing 33.7% hard surface coverage. We look at the R-12 zoning district. Within that district we permit up to 35% hard surface coverage. If we look at current PUD ordinance requirements, they are permitted up 50% hard surface coverage. The total density of this site is less than that permitted in the PUD. However the hard surface coverage exceeds the PUD requirements by 1.7%. We need to point out that this request will not have any negative impacts because this PUD was adopted in 1987. Since then the City has adopted a Storm Water Management Plan. It's what we refer to as the SWMP to direct storm water management throughout the community. This plan allocated a higher impervious surface coverage for high density residential development than what was originally approved as part of this planned unit development. The proposed storm water improvements proposed as part of the plat will adequately treat runoff for quality purposes. Again staff believes it is a reasonable request and we are recommending approval of this amendment. As far as parking, the PUD governing this proposal requires parking to meet the R-12 district requirements. The applicant must provide two parking spaces per unit. Of those two spaces, 1 ½ must be enclosed. Senior housing parking requirements may be reduced due to low demand generated by seniors. Total enclosed parking required is 478 and that's what the applicant is providing. At this point I will mm it over to Dave Hempel to address some issues relating to grading. We will not address the architecture since the applicant will present that to the Council in more detail so just to save on time. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Before we go to Dave, do you mind? Any questions for Sharmin at this point? Councilwoman Jansen: I will but not right now. Mayor Mancino: Dave, please. Oh I'm sorry, did you have? 17 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Labatt: No. Dave Hempel: Thank you Madam Mayor, Council members. We received a facsimile today from the developer's engineer. I forwarded a copy of it to you all and last minute revisions on some grading on the back yards of Building B. Mayor Mancino: We have that? Dave Hempel: Oh I'm sorry. It's a relatively minor revision to it. I just wanted to point it out for on the record this evening I guess. The plans full scale plans that you have show a bench slope on Building B going down to the neighbors to the south and what is being proposed now is flatter, gradual slope and then having the steeper part of the hill further to the south. Mayor Mancino: To accommodate more trees? Dave Hempel: That. Put the trees up on the level area and also to the perception of the building would be further away from the residents so as well. Mayor Mancino: Okay. And if the applicant could go over that in detail to us so we can see that. Okay. Dave Hempel: That's all I had, thank you. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Sharmin A1-Jaff: Staff is recommending approval. Earlier we did hand out revised motion. We just want to point out the only thing this motion does is separates the planned unit development amendment from the site plan and subdivision. The planned unit development amendment requires four votes. The subdivision and site plan requires three votes. Other than that everything remains the same as outlined in the staff report and again staff is recommending approval. Thank you. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Councilwoman Jansen, you had some questions for staff at this point? Councilwoman Jansen: I can wait. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Roger, I would like you to speak to, there has been and councilmembers received a very well put together document from the residents. The Lake Susan Hills residents on the Power Ridge project and a lot of it has to do with legalese of the contract and what it is we as a city, because we've been handed this contract that was created in 1987 by that council and so we want to know what, I mean what do we go with? Do we follow the PUD agreement obviously that was done in 1987, but when that agreement is not specific on certain things like setbacks, etc, where do we go to next to tell us what governs what we can and can't do? Roger Knutson: Thank you Mayor. This property has been zoned planned unit development. Unlike conventional zoning where you can open up the text to the zoning ordinance and find out what all the rules are, the rules here are embodied in the planned unit development agreement. That is the zoning of the property. So that's where you start. The planned unit development agreement. Mayor Mancino: So the 1987 PUD agreement. 18 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Roger Knutson: Agreement is the zoning for the property. Mayor Mancino: Okay, is the zoning. Roger Knutson: Now, having said that. This document which was adopted in 1987 provides, further provides that to the extent it is not inconsistent with the printed terms of this '87 agreement, the use of standards and requirements of the R-12 zoning district would apply. So the first document you look for to look at is the '87 agreement itself. Secondly, to the extent it is not inconsistent, you look at the R-12 zoning district standards. And then to the extent the R-12 zoning district standards and the agreement are not inconsistent with the general zoning standards for the city such as parking, to pick on something. You would use the general standards of the city. Like if you look in our zoning ordinance we have zoning district standards that are specific to that district and then we have general provisions that apply city wide. The general provisions that apply city wide would apply here unless they are inconsistent with something that's in the '87 agreement. Mayor Mancino: So where are the general standards of the city? Roger Knutson: That's everything, you can pull out the zoning ordinance. Things like satellite dishes and all sorts of stuff you have in your zoning ordinance. You can just go by it by category. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Roger Knutson: Section 20-901 to all the way to the end. To the extent those issues are not covered in the PUD, then those general provisions would apply. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Then let me ask very specifically. I'm assuming from the staff recommendation that this application which staff has researched and also talked with Roger, meets number one the 1987 contract. The PUD agreement. What's being proposed meets the conditions of the 1987 PUD agreement. The R-12 underlying zoning also. Roger Knutson: Correct. Mayor Mancino: And they also have to meet the general standards of the City. Roger Knutson: Unless they're inconsistent with the '87 agreement. Mayor Mancino: Unless they're inconsistent. And it also, that whole and Kate I ask you this. That whole, all those agreements come under the comprehensive plan, correct? Are also in agreement with our comprehensive plan. Roger Knutson: Correct. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Roger Knutson: We're not allowed to zone inconsistent with our comprehensive plan. 19 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: Okay. So it's also consistent with our comprehensive plan, because I think that there's been some confusion as, if this proposal is consistent with the comprehensive plan. Okay. Any other questions for Roger from council members at this point as we go forward? Councilwoman Jansen: I have one. Roger, right in point 2 in the PUD agreement. It states planned unit development concept approval, and it goes on to say the city hereby grants general concept plan approval of the plan attached as Exhibit B. And the documentation that we have been given doesn't have any detail on there for the Outlot A that we're reviewing. And I gathered from going back through some of the minutes that it wasn't something that they reviewed to any sort of a detail level whatsoever and realizing it was going to be a later part of the development within the PUD. So if they didn't get specific in looking at a plan for this property, and realizing that you helped draft this PUD, I'm. Roger Knutson: I did but I don't recall it. Councilwoman Jansen: A long time ago. A long time ago. I just, I wondered where, if that then didn't relate to the point (f) I guess which was on what is it, 14(0. That due to the preliminary nature of many of the exhibits and plans, and the timing of the overall development, addendums to this agreement may be required to address concerns not specifically set forth within. I'm just wondering in that they weren't reviewing a plan, and not getting into the detail, is this just approved as a concept in essence what we did on Puke as far as saying this looks good conceptually. Bring it back with more detail and we now go through it again with the detail. Roger Knutson: No, in Puke that was what I would call a, a quick look see. You didn't rezone the property in Puke to PUD at that point. Councilwoman Jansen: Right. Roger Knutson: Here you did. You went further. Filling in the details in this point means looking at a site plan and seeing whether the site plan meets your requirements. The concept, the zoning was established here but if you will, the details will have to flushed out with the site plan and that's what they have before you tonight. Mayor Mancino: But they did put some specific details. Councilwoman Jansen: They had some, sure. Mayor Mancino: Yeah, I mean those that we're dealing with tonight is what they had, and I think didn't we do the same in Village on the Ponds. Didn't we have again a developer PUD agreement and we went through again generally you know land use for each one and impervious surface and things like that too. And then yet the site plan had to come back in. Councilwoman Jansen: But within the Village on the Ponds for each one of the parcels there was at least design that you could look at as far as the building structure and sure. Kate Aanenson: No, I don't think that's true because the apartment project we didn't see exactly. We said it could be an office apartment. We just said here's how many total units and that's what the EA scoped, similar to this process. The EA scoped how many units but we didn't see the exact design of that apartment building until it was sold and somebody came in with a project. 20 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilwoman Jansen: The final design isn't anything like what was in the PUD proposal, but there was definitely a footprint that was indicated so that there was something to go from and it completely changed by the time it came in. Kate Aanenson: I believe the footprint is to represent when you're doing the environmental assessment document, to come up with the threshold levels of the sewer and water capacity, impervious surface, and those sort of things. Similar to this. Councilwoman Jansen: And it was talking about stories and number of units and I mean it got very detailed. Whereas here all we have are the number of units. Kate Aanenson: And the PUD. And the underlying R-12 zoning, which details all that. Right, that's what the R-12 zoning district does. Councilman Senn: Yeah, and there's a big difference. This was done in 1987 and Village on the Ponds was done in 199-. Mayor Mancino: 3? 4? Councilman Senn: 3 I think it was, or 4 or something. Roger Knutson: The only thing I can say for sure is every time you do it, you're going to do it different. Councilman Senn: Well you can do it better too. Roger Knutson: Hopefully. Councilman Senn: I mean you know, some of us were around when Village on the Ponds was done and we paid a lot of attention to that detail. I mean I don't think any of us were around in 1987, but out of all fairness to them I don't think anybody was paying a lot of attention to that detail in 1987. Roger Knutson: But again, for example. Not to pick on anything but as the site plan approval addresses things like architectural appearance and stuff like that. If they came in with a, I don't know, an all tin building. It wouldn't cut muster under your site plan requirements. And those kind of details, which are not addressed here. On the other hand, if it did say in here, it can be an all tin building. Councilwoman Jansen: Then we would be stuck. Roger Knutson: You'd be stuck with an all tin building if they wanted to build it. Councilwoman Jansen: Sure. Sure, understood. So then even with the preliminary plat approval, which is what we're doing now, we're not at site plan on the whole parcel. We're at preliminary plat so still there isn't that flexibility to be able to affect this. Mayor Mancino: Well we're approving preliminary plat and site plan review. Councilwoman Jansen: So that's my question. 21 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Roger Knutson: The site plan I believe is just for Phase I. Mayor Mancino: Yes, Building A. Councilwoman Jansen: But the preliminary plat review. Roger Knutson: Is for the whole thing. I believe. Councilwoman Jansen: Correct. And so we still can't get more detailed. Roger Knutson: I'm not sure what you mean by detailed but the site plan you're usually getting pretty good detail if you want to. Councilman Senn: But I'm losing something here because the PUD agreement itself, and in conjunction with the ordinance, is already very detailed. Roger Knutson: Yes. Councilman Senn: I mean it prescribes effectively all the parameters of what can be done on this property short of what it's going to look like. Roger Knutson: That's correct. Councilman Senn: Okay. And so essentially our value judgments that go into play relate more effectively at this point to what it looks like than to the effective parameters of the project which were already established. Roger Knutson: Right. The basic decision or I'll call it the overall policy decision on this project were made in 1987. That's when the zoning was set for this piece of ground. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. I have one other specific and it's using the R-12 zoning in that the PUD is silent on the, how do we refer to it? The area per unit that you can build. Within the R-12 zoning it's 3,600 square feet per dwelling unit. And when they went through in '93 and did the single family homes, again this is silent on lot size. They went to the single family zoning to then designate the lot sizes. And at this point we haven't talked about the lot area per unit. Since the PUD is silent on that, would we then refer to the R-127 Scott Botcher: But if it says 17.4 units per acre, isn't that your map? Councilwoman Jansen: If it's buildable, correct? I mean because then you have to get down to whether it's buildable under the guidelines of the zoning which they didn't do back then and it played itself out on all of the medium density lots that we ended up with almost half of what it was actually designated for. Roger Knutson: Remember when, go back to the first thing I said. R-12 applies to the extent it is not inconsistent with this PUD agreement. If for example R-12 says, and I'll just make something up. You've got to have six story buildings, and this agreement says you've got to have three story buildings. Then it's three story buildings regardless of what R-12 says. So if this document says you can do something, and R- 22 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 12 would make it impossible to accomplish that, then the R-12 gives way to the base document which is the PUD agreement. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay, thank you. Councilman Senn: But in reality, rather than the example with the 17 units per acre here, that's really just, I mean that's a maximum. Roger Knutson: Yeah. Councilman Senn: And that is defined then by two things. Surface coverage and height. Roger Knutson: Yes. Councilman Senn: Which are parts of the existing ordinance. Roger Knutson: Yes. Mayor Mancino: Can't leave one without the other. Councilman Senn: Yep. Mayor Mancino: So everybody is understanding kind of where we're at and what's, we'll go forward tonight. Applicant, would you like to come up please and state your name and address and present to us. Larry Guthrie: Thank you. Good evening. Happy Valentine's Day. My name is Larry Guthrie. I represent Lake Susan Hills, the applicant. For the project. I'm going to speak a few minutes. I've been representing Lake Susan Hills since the late 80's and I think that's why I'm here tonight, because I have a little background information. Link Wilson, the architect for the project is going to give architectural overview and building design and the amenities. Jeff Shopek is going to be giving civil engineering, specifically drainage and grading. And Ben Hartberg will touch very briefly on the landscaping. We'll try to be brief because the staff report as you know recommends approval of the project and we think with very good reason. It does qualify with respect to your ordinances and the PUD contract, except for the one minor issue that we'll be talking about here. But even beyond that we think it's a very high quality project. I think we've worked very hard to meet the, not only ordinances of the city but also the city's needs. This PUD contract goes back to 1987. The city wanted high density. They wanted it in this location and now we're here to build it and we want the city to be very proud of what we're proposing and we think the city can be very proud of that. Now, in response to the staff's report to the Planning Commission, some of the neighbors that bordered on the property raised some concerns and I want to briefly discuss some of those. They raised three minor and three major concerns. First, the neighbors didn't like the 100 foot setback. I think that was something that the PUD contract allows but they wanted to be governed by the current PUD ordinances which require basically 134 to, 135 to 140 is what they were requesting and their response to the staff's report. We worked with that. We've accommodated that setback. We now are 137 to over 180 feet with respect to setbacks. The neighbors wanted more buffer. Again, we accommodated that. We've worked with the city. We worked with city staff. We're putting in the maximum amount of trees that the area will allow. With respect to buffer, I think it's important that you look at what are the precedence in the city? Well there's one other development, Centennial Hill that is high density that borders on single family residential, and what did the city require with respect to that? Well if you look at Centennial Hill 23 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 there's basically no landscaping as far as trees, so we've gone way beyond the precedence there. The setbacks on Centennial Hill varies from about 110 feet to 150 feet. Again we've gone from 137 to over 180. And Centennial Hill was a much more dense development. It was 29.4 units per acre versus R-16.1. And we're exceeding the buffers that were given in Centennial Hill. A third major issue with respect to the neighbors was a stockpiling of dirt that had been on the site. Again, we've accommodated that request. The grading plan that we're utilizing will remove whatever stockpiling had occurred previously so that the land is returned to it's, what was normal heights. The neighbors wanted to have strict adherence with wetland requirements. Again, we've accommodated that and we have strict adherence with respect to the wetland requirements. There was addressed that they wanted strict adherence with parking requirements and we worked very hard to get strict adherence with parking requirements. Finally with respect to the one change that we've accommodated but has not quite accommodated enough and that's why the request is there to have the impervious surface requirement of the PUD contract go from 32%. Originally we wanted it to go to 34.6%. We've been able to reduce that down to 33.7% and the staff is recommending to go to 35%. On this point I want to specify that this was a minor point with respect to the neighbors as at least presented to the Planning Commission. They submitted written objections, and I'd like to quote. They said this is not a major change and we are willing to cooperate in seeing this amendment eventually granted. Now I just hope with respect to all the accommodations that we've made, that the neighbors who had that position before the Planning Commission can continue that position and support us with respect to this change with respect to going from 32% to 33.7% of hard surface. I think we should look at the history a little bit with respect to the PUD with respect to this point. Because as what's already been discussed here, the PUD and what was in front of the Council then was not largely specific. It was based on concept plans and the concept plans they had at the time was what triggered these impervious surface ratios. And if you go back and look at the council meetings I think minutes, I think it's very specific that that was what was intended and every one realized at the time that when it came time to approve a specific project, those specific numbers might have to be readdressed. And that intent has been carried forward with other councils here with respect to this PUD. If you look at the PUD, Outlots B, C and D are medium density and they also had impervious surface requirements of the PUD. When specific plans became available and were addressed to the council, the council looked at those and agreed that the impervious surface requirements could be expanded with respect to those developments. In that case, in each of those cases I think it was 5%, 9% and 8% amendments to the PUD contract to allow more impervious surface. We're requesting only 1.7% so I think we're in line with what prior city councils have done and the precedence that has been established with respect to this PUD and the impervious surface requirements. I think there's very good reason for that too that it's already been touched on by the staffs report so I won't go into it in detail, but the SWMP requirements are now in place. There's no really good reason with respect to not increasing the PUD requirements for impervious surface. As was pointed out, the current zoning for PUD is 50%. We're requesting only additional 1.7%. One other point that should not be forgotten is the open space that this particular developer has given to the city in connection with this PUD. When this PUD was originally negotiated by the City, there's a lot of things that people maybe don't like about it currently, but don't forget there's a lot of good things that came out of that PUD. One of the things the City got was more than their normal open space. They got over 62 acres of parkland which is about 1/5 of the entire development, which is about twice what is generally required by the city with respect to open space. So overall the density of the PUD, even with this minor increase in impervious surface requirement, is well less dense than a lot of developments. I guess I would like to address one change to the staffs recommendation. And that would be I think recommendation number 29. Which indicates that the applicant seriously review the angularity of the building B2. That has been done. We've gone over that with staff. We don't see any way that the angularity can be addressed any further and we think that's a moot point at this point and that 29 should be dropped from the recommendation. Other than that, we fully agree with, and can comply with the recommendations of the proposed conditions to the approval of the project that's before you tonight. 24 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 And I'm going to introduce Link Wilson, the architect next, but I'd welcome any questions now if you want, or if you want me to wait until the end I can do that as well. Mayor Mancino: Any questions from councilmembers at this point? No thank you Larry. Larry Guthrie: Okay, thank you. Link Wilson: Madam Mayor, members of the Council. I would like to focus my comments generally on the 1.7% impervious surface, but I did just want to touch upon because it was brought up in your discussion, the exterior appearance of the building. I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Link Wilson. I am Vice President and second generation owner of MHWB Architects. We were founded in 1962. We are probably most noted for our renovation of the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. The renovation of Butler Square in downtown Minneapolis and the design of Riverplace in downtown Minneapolis. I personally, in the 80's and 90's have worked on five different projects within a three mile radius of where we stand this evening. Probably the most notable being 150 yards to the northwest, Centennial Hill. If I leave you with one thing this evening, that is that I want to stress to you that this is a high quality project. In both it's appearance and it's design. In regards to the 1.7% impervious surface, those are really attributed to two amenities and ifI could focus into the site plan and then I'll return to both of these two topics. One is a ring road that goes through the project and also the community building at the center of the project. Both of these are amenities to the project. They're not required by the zoning ordinance. We can build the...that these are important aspects of this design. One thing in the city Planning Commission and in our submissions to the city, one thing that we have perhaps apparently not touched upon enough is the exterior and I'll just slide these two. This is a rendering focusing in on that community space, and I wanted to just touch upon for a few moments the exterior building materials themselves. At the base of every single building there is a rock face masonry planned. It's a colored rock face. Around the entire perimeter of each building there is face brick up to the third floor. Above that is a maintenance free siding. All trim on the project is maintenance free. In fact the only material on this project that is not a maintenance free material is the roof shingle itself and it's guaranteed for 25 years. One thing that we have not touched upon in any of the meetings has been the amenities within the building interiors because this is so much site driven and exterior driven but I think that I need to spend a moment on it just to talk about what amenities are within this that make this a high quality project. Each building within it, and this does not include the community building in the center of the site and I'll just review that one more time. That it's here. Within each building there is a community space that's over 1,000 square feet. Very similar to Centennial Hill. Within each building, outside of each individual unit there is a storage locker that an individual can store their seasonal goods. Each building has a trash chute that incorporates all trash within the building. There are no exterior trash receptacles. All trash can be dealt with inside the heated parking stalls below the building. Each individual unit has dishwasher, disposal, laundry facilities within each individual unit. The large units in this project, because we've built so many of them in the cities, cost more to build than many single family homes in this city. This is a high quality project. In regards to the site there are amenities that are not required by the zoning ordinance and I know that there has been some confusion regarding the sidewalks. But we have more sidewalks than would ever be required and really what this does is it serves to the high quality nature of a person, for instance a senior in this building being able to walk all through the site, out to the exterior, back to their home, which is quite a lap, without really ever leaving the site. This lends to the marketability of the project, but it also lends to the safety of the site where you have seniors every day getting their exercise, not in a park off site but on this site itself. The community building, the planning department did a great job of describing it. There is a pool. There is a baby pool. There is a large recreational area. There is a large fountain. The ring road that is shown lapping around this all lend to that 1.7% exterior. I wanted to just go back for a second to the PUD that everyone has been 25 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 talking about in 1987. This particular site plan was created by James R. Hill in 1987. I'll focus in on just the blow-up to show you the date that this was submitted to the city and part of the PUD. This is what John Miller, the founder of our firm started with this summer when he redesigned the site. We felt that we could improve upon this design, even though perhaps this could be built today, we felt we could do better. This entire booklet that I have here contains all of the redesigns and redivisions that we have made on the site and I can certainly go through it if anyone has any questions but I'd like to focus on this design tonight. What this design features is a central focus. It has green space on both sides of each apartment side. So you have apartments that are on one side. Apartments on another. Both sides are looking out onto green space. My understanding of the reason for cities having impervious surface rules is (a), to maintain runoff that does not erode the environment. Number two is to have adequate landscape for a site for everyone in and around the site to enjoy. I know that Ben can make some comments as to the budget for landscape and the landscape itself being essentially over what any zoning ordinance in the city of Chanhassen would require. But what we thought was important on this project was that each building have a space around it. That it have a central focus and that it have an organizing element such as this ring road, which on nights such as the last two where you have excessive snow, having a ring road such as this is very important to just get snow out of the way so that people can get into the site. Orient themselves where they need to go and then move to their destination, either as a visitor or as a guest. This all lends to the high quality nature of the project. This site plan is very similar to the previous. This particular site plan was presented to the Planning Commission as an option for them to lend their wisdom to the planning process. They opted that we go with this particular design. The only difference between A and B is that when you drive into the site, you drive through the parking, which on an evening such as two nights ago it would have been, just not as pleasant of an experience. This would not be as high quality a project. But this particular project is way less than the 32% impervious surface for the entire site so this could certainly be built. We just don't feel that it lends itself to the high quality nature of this community. And those are the only comments that I had. If you have any questions I'd be glad to answer them. Mayor Mancino: Can you show your rendering that you did with the, on the interior courtyard. That's what I call it. The green space or the town square as it were for the apartment buildings. Just so everyone knows in the audience. You're not going to plant trees that look like that. Those trees are what, 20 years out probably. We don't have trees that look like that in Chanhassen in new developments so I just want everyone to know that we're aware that your drawing is wonderful of the trees but they won't look like that. Link Wilson: Well it's a relevant question but the same could be stated for the cars. I kind of gave Olga Perkofsky, one of our designers some flack about these particular cars. That they were slightly askew and slightly out of scale. This is in a sense an artistic view of the site, but at the same time it is based on a computer generated design. And I don't know ifI can slip to it. One of the things with computer aided drawings is that they do render trees a little bit like balloons and we have some good balloons and some bad balloons here but let me just give you an example. For instance here these are trees that come from the computer and they are slightly bulbous in nature so we lay over the top of those to generate... Mayor Mancino: I just wanted everyone to know that we don't think that the newly planted trees are going to look like that. Link Wilson: And one thing I may mention that Ben who can answer any questions about the landscape. Ben is from Damon Farber and Associates. Ben and I have met with the City Forester and received her input on all the plant species and plant spacing on the project. 26 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Any questions for Link at this point? Councilwoman Jansen: I have one question. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilwoman Jansen: And it is a wonderful project. You've done a beautiful job with the design. I just had one question from the numbers that you just shared with us. On the parkland dedication, and not to do this when you don't have your papers in front of you. But the 61 acres that you're quoting, I'm not sure where that number would have come from because in the PUD it's showing that the parkland dedication was 38.5. So I'm wondering where the. Link Wilson: Right. Basically where this comes from is that if you add up these green areas right here, and I don't know if anyone has a calculator. But we can start with Outlot 6, which is 9.56 acres. Then the outlot which I can't, it's (f), is 21.22 acres. Outlot E is 39.44 acres and then we have Outlot H which is 3.3 acres and those, at least in my calculations add up to 61.7 acres. And all of this was within the property that was purchased by the Lake Susan Partnership. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. I think the difference then, from what you just called off and what they're showing in the PUD, just so we're all aware, is that they only credited 6.7 acres against that big Outlot E. And it had to do with it being a wetland complex so yes, it was left as open space but the parkland dedication that was credited to the development was the 38.5. Mayor Mancino: It was all wetland. Councilwoman Jansen: And then the rest of it was, well the 38.5 was parkland and then the balance was wetland that couldn't have been built in anyway but I was just curious as to where the number came from was where I was going. And one of the significant things I learned from going through this PUD was where that nice green space came around Lake Susan and that was part of this project and this dedication. So that was a wonderful amenity that the City did get from this project. So thank you. Link Wilson: You bet. Mayor Mancino: Any other? Councilman Labatt: Yeah. Mayor Mancino: Mr. Labatt. Councilman Labatt: 17.1 impervious surface. Or 1.7. Link Wilson: Percent, yes. Of the entire site. Councilman Labatt: And you stated that is because of the ring road and the pool. If I heard you right. Link Wilson: Well, that is correct. Because I believe, and now I'm going just off the top but I believe that that 1.7 is 15,000 square feet and if you just do pretty simply here, if we flip to this, if you just take even 27 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 half of this ring road. You multiply it by 26 feet in it's length. You don't have to go very far to come up to the 15,000 square feet. Councilman Labatt: Okay. So what if, I'll propose this to you, what if you reduce the size of one of the buildings a little bit? Link Wilson: I think it's a fair question as it's been raised before. And I think that it gets back to what we've seen around the Twin Cities right now, if not even the greater metropolitan area. And that is the statement that one of the large units here, because it's a commercial structure. Because it's fully sprinklered. Because it has to meet all the uniform building codes and adaptability codes. It's extremely expensive. And it does cost more than as I had said before, many single family homes. I could quote for instance what we're going to build in about two months in West St. Paul or what we bid out in the City of Bloomington, but I feel it's not fair to those particular owners or this particular client to talk about how expensive per unit they are. But they are extremely expensive projects to build. And so we do need to have the number of units that we have in order to make this project financially viable to do. Councilman Labatt: So how many units is 15,000 feet account for if each one of these units is how many square feet? Mayor Mancino: They're all different numbers. Link Wilson: Yeah, they're two you know completely different things. In fact, I'm glad that you did bring that up because this particular project is less expensive to build than this project. But the owner feels that looking at it in the greater scheme of things, over let's say 50 years. I'd hope I'd still be around by then but probably not likely. But even looking at it in a 50 year outcome, this is a better investment for my client than this. Even though in the short term there's a need out there. They can reduce their amount of cost that they have by producing this product, but in the long term it's not high quality and that's what this client wants. Mayor Mancino: But the average square foot per, I mean 1, 2, and 3 bedrooms, don't you have 800 and 1,200 square feet so 15,000 is 15 units. Approximately. Councilman Labatt: Well but you've got hallway space and. Mayor Mancino: Common area. Link Wilson: I mean we're comparing apples to oranges really in the cost of the bituminous savings versus units that they're two different. Mayor Mancino: Units are revenue generating. Councilman Labatt: I realize that and that's what I mean, you know. Link Wilson: And at the same time, in regards to revenue generating, there are a lot of amenities that we have in this project that in the short term, in the next three years, you know we fill this project up, you don't need those amenities because the need is so great out there. But this client wants a higher quality project. 28 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Labatt: My next question is, what are the demographics of your residents as far as the number of school aged children. I want to know what the impact on the school is going to be. Our schools are already maxed out. Link Wilson: That's a question that I can't answer but Mike Stoebe from our property management group, the group that will manage this is here in the third row so I could have Mike come up and talk about the demographics because he has more experience. Once these buildings are occupied, what the tax generation is. What the monthly rents are. Who will live here and I'd leave that question to Mike. Councilman Labatt: Just, that's fine. Just keep your rotation... Mayor Mancino: Any other questions? Councilman Engel: Yeah, I've got one. Can you spin that plan back up again? Link Wilson: This one? Councilman Engel: Yeah. The buildings B 1 and B2, Sharmin had indicated that they were 40 units in each of those buildings. Correct? Link Wilson: That's correct. Councilman Engel: The amount of space between them, where you broke it up but it runs underground for parking. If you built up in there on that space, how many units could you get in there? Link Wilson: We have done this before and I'll just flip to this particular building. We've done that. And that was one of the concessions that we made with the neighborhood that this particular view in fact is what, even just a piece of just solid mass of building and then there's another, you know about the same distance over. And I just made mention also here that preliminarily we had decks. Now, and this is split into two different buildings with landscape. This is all very preliminary, but now we have bays on that side. I could probably get, to just answer your question, six very large units inbetween there. Twelve small units inbetween there. And I think that we would still be under the maximum allowed by your zoning ordinance by adding those units. But we are trying to strike a balance here between being a good neighbor and having a viable project. And I think that is why this project has taken so long for us to get to you to this point tonight because we have tried to have a lot of back and forth and give and take in what these buildings should be like. Councilman Engel: So you're saying basically two large ones per floor. Link Wilson: Right, across the corridor from one another. Councilman Engel: Or three small ones. Or excuse me, four small ones. Link Wilson: Two small ones next to each one and then two across the hall. Councilman Engel: You're saying four small ones per floor or two large ones per floor? Link Wilson: Correct. And I'm going kind of by the cuff here. 29 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: By the seat of his pants. Councilman Engel: Okay, well because I'm just considering if you had for example four small ones per floor and you got another 8 units total in there, and I'm sure you'll see where I'm going with this when I ask this question. If you took the third floor off, what's the wash? Link Wilson: Well, taking the third floor off is not just as easy as adding in units. One of the things that makes this project expensive, and we could do it other ways by putting more cars outside. But this project has a conditioned garage space underneath each building, just very similar to Centennial Hill. That drives the cost, what we're seeing varying from region to region, about 12 to $15,000 per unit. Is what you're having to pay for that parking below. So for us to, we've got 80 units there now and so we divide that by a third. Councilman Engel: Basically be losing 25 units. Link Wilson: Right. And so we'd only be making up 12 small units which are the lowest in being able to generate. Councilman Engel: About half. Link Wilson: And Mike Stoebe can talk more to the demographics where at this time as you may know from the numbers, we've got a lot of three units because we see a market demand out there. And that's not just family housing. Each one of these units, and I failed to mention this when I talk about it. Every single unit in this project is handicap adaptable. And with the amount of public space that we have in each building, it's very conceivable that any one of these buildings other than Building D, which currently is slated for seniors, any one of these buildings could become senior buildings at any time because they're designed with that flexibility. That takes up more space too in all the kitchens and in the bathrooms. And that's just something to factor in as well to the cost. Mayor Mancino: Putting it down, do you feel comfortable with the answer that you got about filling it in and it would increase impervious surface but it might take it down? Councilman Engel: Yeah. I was looking, I wanted a measurement. I wanted a metric in my mind of what it would be. What would be sacrificed. Councilwoman Jansen: Can I ask a follow-up question to Mark's question? Following along on that same train of thought, if we're losing, if you would be willing to lose that third story and we would be willing to increase the impervious surface percent on the lot, is that negotiable so that you would make up the units lost? Link Wilson: From a dollars and cents standpoint, and I'm really, I'm just the architect here and I don't do the financials on these projects but it's still there again it's not apples and oranges because that bituminous cost is very small. When you look at the big picture of trying to build a high quality project and I'm trying to get back to my site plan here. It is that, really this is a more viable option really to have a lower quality site design as opposed to trying to... units or add units. I don't know if I answered your question or not. 30 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: I was just going to say, if you give, and I can't answer it completely but I also know it will probably affect the setback too. Councilwoman Jansen: Depending on where you add it. Mayor Mancino: And how much you can add. Councilwoman Jansen: Yeah. Mayor Mancino: Is Mike, on are you ready? Any other questions? Councilman Labatt: In your blue book you had some pictures of some sight lines from the back yard. Back yard of Lake Susan Hills. Link Wilson: These are very old. These are some of the preliminary, did you want to talk about what the site lines? Councilman Labatt: I'm just curious. I'm curious as to why we didn't see those as a council. Link Wilson: These particular drawings? Councilman Labatt: Yeah. I mean obviously it's somebody's back yard. Link Wilson: One of the reasons why we didn't was because this is extremely old. What you received in your packet is the most current of what this project looks like, and I'm trying to get to it. I guess it's in my landscape portion, the most current three dimensional drawing. This is the most current three dimensional drawing. Here again it's a CAD drawing. I know trees don't look like that. This is the most current sight line drawing based on auto CAD with the exact number of trees that Ben has on his landscape plan. And this is at full maturity. And this was what was in your packet and we didn't include this in your packet because it references a design that we didn't even present to the Planning Commission. Councilman Labatt: Now flip a couple pages back where you have the pine trees in there. Link Wilson: On this one? Councilman Labatt: No, on the color rendition. You had one of a view of the pine trees in there. Link Wilson: This is one thing that we submitted to the Planning Commission but here again this is before the building was pushed back. Okay. And so we feel it's not realistic because when you move the building back, which it currently is, you see less building. The trees are larger in the foreground. Councilman Labatt: Well you're at a different scale there too. Right? Link Wilson: Yeah, you're absolutely right. Councilman Labatt: Okay. Mayor Mancino: Any other questions? Okay. 31 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Link Wilson: Thank you. Jeff Shopek: Good evening. My name is Jeff Shopek. I'm with Loucks and Associates and I'm the civil engineer and I was just going to go briefly over some drainage issues and it's relationship to the impervious area which is one of the topics of discussion tonight. The plan I have on the board here, essentially shows that there is three major drainage areas to the site. There's one that drains to west, Lake Drive West. There's one that drains over to Powers Boulevard into an existing pond. And then there's a third drainage area that drains down to the park and existing wetland. And what we've done is we've essentially kept those drainage areas similar in the proposed development, except that we've created ponding in the southern area here next to the existing wetland. We've expanded the pond on the east side and we've reduced the area draining to Lake Drive West such that Lake Drive West has now 14% less runoff and discharge than it did under the existing conditions as natural site. When we added the pond and the storage down in the south end of this site, we reduced the discharge from that area by 48% so again the ponding is holding the water and also helping the water quality and then on the east side we've matched the existing runoff so there's no increase of discharge leaving that site. So even though we have these 32, 33.7%, when you look at the drainage and the runoff and the discharge that's actually leaving the site, we've decreased it by 14%, by 48% and matched the east side over there. Mayor Mancino: Where does it go after it goes to that pond, the 48% reduction? Jeff Shopek: There's a storm pipe that I believe runs between Lots 8 and 9, or 7 and 8. I'm not exactly sure, and that comes out to Lake Susan Drive and I believe runs into the Powers Lake, or Powers Boulevard storm sewer. Mayor Mancino: So that's all been constructed and will accommodate. Jeff Shopek: Yeah. I think Dave can verify that. Mayor Mancino: Okay. I mean we don't have to go in and do any work between the lots or, that's all sized. All been thought through. Dave Hempel: Pre-planned. Mayor Mancino: Pre-planned, thank you. Jeff Shopek: So what we've incorporated in that design is even above and beyond that to even reduce that further than what was planned. Mayor Mancino: So there's no way that you're going to be going in any adjacent property owner's property or doing anything to their property, correct? Jeff Shopek: Correct. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Jeff Shopek: The other issue was the extra dirt and the site balance and how this site was laid out with elevation, and when you look at it, when you start with the existing intersection of Powers Boulevard and 32 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Lake Drive West, which was of course built by the city, to our first entrance, there is a 22 foot rise from this intersection to our first entrance. So that's one of the control points and we actually again, this road is somewhat skewed but we had to get that entrance up high enough in order to be able to reach this site. The second one has about a 12 foot rise to it so these two entrances are 12 foot elevation rise inbetween. This one lines up directly with the driveway across the street. And this one, the easterly one comes up into the site about a 3 ½% grade. The westerly one drops into the site at a 5 ½% grade so we have one driveway coming up. One going down to get to the underground parking, and as we go from building to building, these driveways of the underground parking are connected and that's kind of what's setting the grade for the site. There's been some talk about trying to lower it. Well the driveways wouldn't work. The inner relationships between the garages and the underground park, there's typically 60 feet between buildings with the driveways coming down back up. There's only a little bit of grade you can work with there between buildings. So we've tried to maximize the two entrances and also tried to match the site grades around the perimeter as best as possible to get this thing to meet the grade there. Mayor Mancino: Excuse me... as far as roadways, whether it be into an apartment building or, I mean is that also going to comply with our general standards for grade? What's safe in the winter? Dave Hempel: That is correct. There is standards the city applies to residential streets. There's parking lots. There's industry standards grade wise. Typically you don't want to exceed 7% on a driveway grade to underground parking or cross slopes on a parking lot exceeding 4%. So what the applicant is proposing here with this development is, the grades are in the range of 5% to go down into the underground parking. By lowering the site or requiring the building to be lowered will definitely steepen those grades very quickly. With just a foot or two of lowering the buildings will increase that grade significantly. Mayor Mancino: Over and above the standards that we have? Dave Hempel: Correct. Mayor Mancino: Okay. And I'm assuming those standards are for safety, etc? Dave Hempel: Correct, yes. Mayor Mancino: The rationale behind it. Dave Hempel: Wintertime driving conditions. Sliding. Trying to gain access out of the garage and so forth. Jeff Shopek: That's all I have, if there's any questions? Mayor Mancino: Any questions? Because that was my concern and my question about just lowering the whole dam grade of the site. Thank you. Ben Hartberg: Good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is Benjamin Hartberg and I work for Damon Farber Associates who are the consulting landscape architects for Miller Hanson Westerbeck. Our office has been working with Miller Hanson and also with the City Forester since we were brought on board to address landscaping, to derive a plant pallet that was in keeping with the requirements of the city and also with plants that are indigenous and hardy in this area. Our budget right now for plant materials as what's shown on the plans that you have, if it were installed today from the construction drawings would 33 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 approach $290,000. That number is about 1 ½ times the required amount. That additional $118,000 goes into about 71 additional trees and 1,700 additional shrubs that all contribute towards the quality project that Link had mentioned earlier. In addition to trees and shrubs we also have numerous perennials and ground cover surrounding the site giving it a very natural and a very beautiful appearance. Our plan as we've given to you tonight for landscaping meets and exceeds the city requirements and happily I believe satisfies mine as a designer. That's really all I have to present. The landscape plan is pretty straight forward. It took me three sheets to fit it all on. Are there any questions at all? Mayor Mancino: No, I don't have. Oh, I'm sorry. Any questions? Councilman Labatt: Yeah I've got one. Do you have. Mayor Mancino: He's the landscaper. Councilman Labatt: Yeah. Do you have a plan that shows the existing trees and tree line along the northern half? Overlaid with the building footprint plan. Ben Hartberg: Are you referring to plants along the southern property line or northern property line? Councilman Labatt: The northern one. As I drove over there today I was just kind of looking at the. Mayor Mancino: You mean the ones that are parallel to Lake Drive West? Ben Hartberg: Along Lake Drive West? Councilman Labatt: Yes. Yeah, the ones that are more towards Lake Drive. You've got CI-1 that shows the existing conditions of the grading of the trees. Now I'm looking to see if you have this print, this plan here overlaid with the building footprint. Kate Aanenson: How many trees are going to be removed, is that your question? Councilman Labatt: Yeah, I wanted to see where they lined up in accordance. Ben Hartberg: It's my understanding from the grading plan that a majority of the trees in this upper portion will be removed. There will be a number of trees. Councilman Labatt: Will or, I couldn't hear that. Ben Hartberg: Will be removed. That's correct, as a process of the construction. There are a number of trees that border the highway to the west and those trees will be relocated. They'll be dug out and relocated to make room for the boulevard trees that are going to be going in along the road. So in an effort to save as many trees as possible was made by the civil engineer. Kate Aanenson: There are trees to be saved with the retaining wall that shows up, did you want to go through that? Councilman Labatt: What sheet is it on? On C-117 Or C-1. 34 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Kate Aanenson: It's on the comer of. Mayor Mancino: The big oaks. Ben Hartberg: The plan I have right here shows a retaining wall that was to be put in near Building A to preserve the two trees that are existing in conjunction with numerous trees that are in place already. Especially up in this northwest quadrant. Many of those trees in conjunction with trees along Powers Boulevard like I said will be relocated. They will just simply be moved and repositioned on the other side of the pond. This is to make, like I said, to make way for the boulevard trees that are required to ring the property. So as far as tree preservation, those trees will be protected during construction. That will be remaining and then the trees that will be relocated will be spaded and replanted before any grading work is done around them. Does that satisfy your question? Councilman Labatt: That's fine. Mayor Mancino: I will probably have a couple comments when we bring it back to council as far as some of the landscaping and the bigger sized trees that I'd like to see but we'll wait until then and if you have any questions you can ask me. Okay? Ben Hartberg: Okay. Mayor Mancino: Anyone else? A little bit about demographics. Link Wilson: You have questions specifically? Councilman Labatt: I don't think, did Mike ever come up? Mayor Mancino: There you go. We knew we were missing somebody. Mike Stoebe: Good evening Madam Mayor and members of the council. My name is Mike Stoebe. I represent a company called I&H Property Management. Relative to market draw, strong demand conditions exist throughout all market sectors. This past year the annualized metro vacancy was less than 2%. We anticipate a strong local demand since we feel this market is underserved, along with the draw from the greater southwestern metro area. Relative to unit household density that the gentleman asked, that will be based on a resident selection plan that we'll carve out. Generally one bedroom units will not exceed 2 occupants. Two bedroom units will not exceed 4 occupants. And three bedroom units will not exceed 5 occupants. Of course the senior households naturally will have a density of 1 to 2 persons. Relative to rent ranges, the one bedroom targeted scheduled rent will be in the $800 range. Two bedrooms will range from 12, excuse me, from $900 to $1,200. And three bedrooms will be in excess of $1,300 monthly. Thank you. Councilman Engel: Any special number on the seniors? Mike Stoebe: Pardon me? Councilman Engel: Any different number on the senior units? Mike Stoebe: Relative to rates? 35 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Engel: Yes. Mike Stoebe: I don't have those with me. They'll be at or around a dollar a square foot. Mayor Mancino: So you're saying the senior rates for the senior building are the same price as the rest of the buildings? Mike Stoebe: The definite target rents for the senior units have yet to be established. But they will very likely exceed a dollar a square foot. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilman Engel: Are they aimed at primarily singles or doubles or a combination? Mike Stoebe: I think Link may have the unit mix. Mayor Mancino: I know that there were 70 units, I think in D. Kate Aanenson: 76. Mayor Mancino: 76, thank you. Just yeah, how many are one bedroom. Link Wilson: There's in Building D which is the senior building there are 33 one bedrooms. There are 43 two bedrooms. Councilman Engel: Okay. Mayor Mancino: Any other questions? Okay, thank you Mike. Mike Stoebe: Thank you. Mayor Mancino: And the applicant is all done? Okay. Now we will, I will open this to public comments. Any other comments from council members at this point? I see you kind of looking. Councilman Senn: Yeah, get the architect back up here. Mayor Mancino: Link, could you come back up please. Councilman Senn: Link if you, how would I say this? If you throw out some of the rules or some of the things that have occurred through this process to date. Mayor Mancino: This is going to be a good one. Link Wilson: Did you say to date or today? Councilman Senn: To date. There's, I mean don't, you guys have designed a nice project and I think have done a nice job of coming up with a good quality project. Sorting through everything in this whole 36 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 discussion, what it seems to be coming down to is an issue over the heights of buildings, B1 and B2. Okay. So if you boil the discussion down to that, okay. And if you again throw out a lot of things that have occurred in the process, as a function of the site there's only two ways to do that. Either take up more hard surface area with buildings, or increase height. And keep your unit density where you need to keep it overall to make it work. Have you guys looked at any options (a), along the line that Councilman Engel started to deal with earlier in relationship to connecting buildings to take up effectively more hard surface area and take that then segment of building which would be in the area of what's now comprised by B 1 and B2, and reducing it's elevation by one story? Or have you looked at any option of reducing the height on B 1 and B2 to two stories and simply adding the story to make up the difference on one of the other buildings. Link Wilson: There's a lot of parts to that question but i'll perhaps try to start. Mayor Mancino: Wait, and second I'd just like to say he of all people up here at the council understands how hard that is. So, give us your best. Link Wilson: i'll start in reverse order. One of the them was, can we go to two story and then put another building four story. A, we'd be in here tonight asking for a variance on your height restriction. That building which we looked at would be Building C. Would be the tallest building in the city of Chanhassen so then you would be setting precedent there. Councilwoman Jansen: What would that height be? Sharmin A1-Jaff: 53 feet. Councilwoman Jansen: 53 ? Councilman Engel: Empire State Building size. Councilman Senn: On top of that it would also be at the high point of the site, right? Link Wilson: That is correct. In addition that Building C which is here, all of the electrical and that includes power cords, you know the internet now has become widely popular. Cable television. Anything in wire has to be inside conduit where in standard construction which these are currently, you just pull the wire through the wall. You've got two layers of sheet rock on either side and it meets the fire code. All plumbing fixtures that penetrate wall membranes or floor membranes now instead of being PVC are cast iron. So what already is a Class A commercial building, we've just really upped the ante. Mike did a great job of presenting what these rents are. That there is a certain tolerance level of what rents can be so now we've blown that out of the water. Councilman Engel had talked about Building B, lopping off 25 units. There again if we try to gain those units back, it gets back to the guiding principle that John Miller really set together when he put this schematic design, and that is a central organizing focus to this site. Having light and space and landscape around the buildings. All of a sudden, you know you've tighten that up. Now, we've looked at all kinds of other permeatations. You know this one is the very first. It's somewhat random and somewhat haphazard. We've looked preliminarily at just trying to do other layouts on the site. None of this one and it started to get back towards you know that principle. None of them really work as well as what we feel this is the best design for this site, both from a grading and drainage standpoint, from an exterior aesthetic and light and space around the building. And then also we've got to work with the financials too. But i think i only hit on a third of your six questions. 37 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Senn: You missed my statement though. I agree with you on the design. Okay, I'm not, this isn't a debate over that. But can you, again I'm not saying this is something you want to do necessarily or something anybody's going to mm cartwheels about doing but I'm just saying can you basically connect like you know through some combination of A, B, lB, 2 and D or whatever and pick up sufficient units to lop off a segment of the three story through there? You know again though, I'm not saying that should even appeal to your design. I'm just saying, is it plausible? Have you looked at that? Mayor Mancino: Well, did it come in that way where B was all connected? Link Wilson: That's correct. Councilman Senn: Well B was just connected. B 1 and B2 were one single unit. Mayor Mancino: Oh, so you're talking about going even. Councilman Senn: I'm saying take up more land area by connecting additional segments you know because I know he can't pick up enough units. Mayor Mancino: Just doing the two. Councilman Senn: ...between B1 and B2. I mean that's not an issue so, I'm just saying is there a way you go beyond that and should you do that? Link Wilson: I think that there is a way and one of them is to go back to the zoning ordinance which has 100 foot setback. Because right now this site, we're 137 at it's shortest point from the property line which is 37 feet more than what the code's really requiring us to do. So in order for us to get more space between here, you know you take a circle, and I'll just put it here, and you make the circle larger and you get more perimeter around that circle. So one way that we could do it was to get ourselves back out to that 100 foot setback boundary but in respect for the process that we've gone through and all the... Councilman Senn: We already threw that out the window through in my question though so. So you could effectively, your answer to the question is the way you could make up those units and reduce the third story through that segment would be if you expanded the circle? If you basically eliminated... Link Wilson: We got closer to the neighbors. Councilman Senn: Right. And the 137 to the 100 foot or whatever. Link Wilson: Then we'd need to make up those units someplace else and really when you look at the site, making up 25 more units, it's a lot of units. It takes up a lot of space. And design is a balance of trying to pull a lot of factors together. Councilman Engel: Tell me again why the fourth level like that on C is a no go. Link Wilson: Well there are two issues there. One is the city's zoning ordinance of height. The other one is the Uniform Building Code which requires any time you are in an R-1 building, that any time that you're over 3 stories in height, you go to that 4 story, it puts that building in a different classification where 38 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 basically all of your wall penetrations have to change from combustible to non-combustible. That being plumbing, cast iron, that being electrical. Councilman Engel: Says the City or says the State? Link Wilson: The State and. Councilman Engel: It's always the way when you want to do something creative. Mayor Mancino: Well plus the fact I kind of think about Byerly's and the townhouses overlooking Byerly's that just stand out so much. I get concerned about that a little bit. That we really think that through about setting a precedent. Link Wilson: It's the State for the next 18 months and after that it will be a National Code which still incorporates the same so it's in every state in the union. Mayor Mancino: Any other questions on that? Councilman Senn: No, that answers my questions. Mayor Mancino: Okay, you feel, you got that answer? Councilman Senn: Yep. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Any other questions for the applicant from council? Okay. Now we'll open this for some public comment and again if you could kind of keep it short, concise but please give us your comments. And please come up and state your name and address. Mark Menzuber: Hi. Mark Menzuber. I live at 1310 Lake Susan Hills Drive. I will try to be brief. I'll try to get through this as quick as possible. Unfortunately the person who was going to present this information rushed his wife off to the hospital earlier today and they had a beautiful little Valentine Day baby girl. So here goes. Mayor Mancino: Congratulations to Diane and David. Mark Menzuber: We too agree that this is a quality project. I mean everything we've heard tonight I feel has been pretty impressive. But there's one basic premise and principle of a well planned community that is not being met by these plans and that word is simply transition. This isn't a minor shortfall that is compensated for by increased landscaping and upgraded building materials. The Planning Commissioners clearly communicated that they too felt this was an issue that remains unresolved by the current plans. Though we acknowledge that this is a for profit project, we do not think that it is the city's responsibility to compromise it's standards to meet the developer's bottom line. There are other less significant aspects of a development that could have affected without, that could be affected without compromising the integrity and quality of the project. While preserving the integrity and value of the surrounding community. There are seven existing apartment buildings in Chanhassen where the city has demonstrated what they call a reasonable transition. There's a progression of density, size and intensity of development between single family homes and multi-family units. This was obviously guided this way by the City with the understanding of the quality of the issues by development decisions. In an effort to better understand the 39 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 intent of the 1987 City Council we have reviewed the background history on this project. From concept approval to the present phase, we strongly believe that the 1987 City Council did everything they could to provide future decision makers with the tools and the rights to guide this development to meet the high standards of a quality community and a quality neighborhood. The 1987 Council clearly recognized that there was a potential for conflict between multi-family and single family homes. They carefully and thoughtfully established specific guidelines to protect the features of the development that they thought were significant to this agreement, namely stricter impervious surface requirements for a multi-family outlots to provide green space for the families living in the developments. Secondly, buffer areas acceptable to the city between multi-family and single family areas to insure adequate transition between uses. And realizing that without any specific details to review on the multi family outlots, they established guidelines and included clauses to enable the city and the developer to react to unforeseeable issues based upon the principles used to build a quality community. There were four of these. The first one, the developer shall provide buffer areas acceptable to the City between multi family and single family areas to assure adequate transition between uses. The second one, disagreements shall be liberally construed to protect the public's interest. The third one. Due to the preliminary nature of many of the exhibits and plans and the timing of the overall development, addendums to this agreement may be required to address concerns not specifically set forth herein. And finally, densities are approximate and subject to change. We have never opposed the construction of apartments on this land. We are asking that you exercise the rights under the PUD and limit the size of buildings B 1, B2 and the south portion of Building D to insure that proper transition occurs. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Bill Weber: Hi. My name is Bill Weber. I live at 1290 Lake Susan Hills Drive. I'd like to thank you also for the opportunity to speak tonight. We realize that that is not typically the case but with a project this size we appreciate the opportunity to express our thoughts. I too would agree that this is a very, very high quality project. I'd like to thank the development team for the input that they have sought from us during the time that we've been talking about this. In fact I think it keeps getting better the more we talk about it. And I would agree that certain accommodations have been made. Very, very good accommodations. At the same time as my neighbor Mark mentioned, the issue has always been one of transition. And up until about 10 days ago we were under the very, very clear impression and understanding that that really there's really nothing we can do about the density. There's not really much we can do about the height of the buildings and so that's the reason why we have fought every step of the way for anything else we could get. The issue though has always been transition and after finally coming to a point where we needed to seek expert legal opinion on, are we interpreting this wrong? After having spent hours and hours and hours pouring over data that goes back 10 or 15 years. We finally decided we needed some legal help so we got a real estate lawyer. Tried to explain the situation to him as best as we could. Asked him to look at the documents and give us an impression of where does the City stand in this and his impression, his opinion is that the city has a lot more legal rights here than what we had been led to believe. And so for that reason, despite all the accommodations that have been made, if we could deal with the transition issue we wouldn't have even brought up a lot of this other stuff. And so that's where we come down to some of these issues and I think there's a couple questions that haven't been addressed yet that I'd like to address to the mayor that maybe we could get some clarity on. It's my understanding, as the City Attorney was explaining before that, we have this over arching ordinance and we talked about the PUD being the governing ordinance. And then beyond that we go to the R-12 with respect to Outlot A. But beyond Outlot A then we go to the general zoning and then the comprehensive plan. And I'm going to draw this over here because I think it's a little easier to understand at least... But it's my understanding that you've got the 40 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 1987 PUD. And then you've got the, with at least the regard of Outlot A you've got the R-12. And then beyond that you've got the general zoning. Mayor Mancino: General standards. Bill Weber: I'm sorry, general standards. Thank you. And then beyond that you've got the comprehensive plan and as long as there is not inconsistency, then this is kind of the umbrella. Is that correct? My understanding of that correct? Councilman Engel: Actually with regard to inconsistency, the core agreement supercedes... Mayor Mancino: ... versus what's in our code book. So if you could just add agreement after PUD. Councilman Engel: That means you've gone beyond what a standard PUD... Mayor Mancino: So that's the most important one. Councilman Engel: You have a contract there. Bill Weber: This is the most important and as long as there's no inconsistency, then these are over arching. Councilman Engel: Actually if there are inconsistencies. Central agreement governs. Bill Weber: Okay, but if there are not inconsistencies. Councilman Engel: Then you step up. Bill Weber: Then you step up. My question then for the Mayor would be, where does Article VIII of the City Code relative to PUD's fall within this? Mayor Mancino: Okay, good. I know where to go for this one and it's not me. But I told you to direct it to me... I don't want to get us all in trouble. You know lawyers want to be, to answer you they've got to do it right. Councilman Engel: I thought you had to memorize that to graduate that from law school. Roger Knutson: No, I hadn't written this at the time so I couldn't have memorized it. Mayor Mancino: And you know, in laymen's terms as much as you possibly can please. Roger Knutson: Ya sure, you betchya. How's that for laymen. Mayor Mancino: It's getting longer tonight. Roger Knutson: Article VIII establishes a process creating planned unit development districts. There's a process and it has some standards for creating the district. Once the district is created, there's really nothing in here that applies. This was written, if I remember right, the current Article VIII, long after the 41 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 '87 agreement was put in place. So the processing and how you get to PUD now, which is out in Article VIII, doesn't apply. Because this is how you get there. This PUD's already there. Bill Weber: My question then for the Mayor. Mayor Mancino: So Bill, does that make sense? I mean do you understand that? Bill Weber: My next question would be, within the PUD agreement it states that for five years for the date of this agreement, it's page 4 of the PUD. The effect of the planned unit development approval. For five years from the date of this agreement, no amendments to the city's comprehensive plan or official control shall apply to or affect the use of development density, lot size, lot layout or dedications of the development unless required by State or Federal law or agreed to in writing by the city and the developer. Thereafter, notwithstanding anything in this agreement to the contrary, to the full extent permitted by state law, the city may require compliance with any amendments to the city's comprehensive plan, official controls, plotting or dedicating requirements enacted after the date of this agreement. Our legal counsel interprets that to be that anything that was enacted by the city applies after five years and this PUD agreement, as long as it is not inconsistent with the PUD agreement of 1987, must apply. And that would include then the PUD Article VIII of the City Code. Is that not correct? Mayor Mancino: Roger? Roger Knutson: The short answer is no. The longer answer is, this particular provision is a paraphrase of a State Statute 462., in Chapter 462. And what this is saying is that after this five year window, we give them a five year window when you said our official controls, if they change. They don't apply. But this document is the zoning for the property and we may require compliance with changes but the only way you get there is by requiring going through a process and amending this document. Like you would amend any other zoning ordinance. So you would have to amend the planned unit development. The city would have had to initiated an amendment to the planned unit development. For example, you could have rezoned it from PUD to, pick something out, numbers. Letters. Mayor Mancino: R-8. Roger Knutson: R-8. R-1. What have you. You could in theory, having gone through that process, and if it were consistent with your comprehensive plan you could have done that. That's how you would get these amendments. But this does have some, so the five year window says you can't amend unilaterally this document for five years. Thereafter you can amend this document. But it still has some applications. In those general standards that apply city wide regardless of whether you're in a PUD, as long as there's nothing inconsistent in here, you would have to comply with those. Even if they've been changed after that five year period. So again by way of example. Kate Aanenson: Storm water management. Roger Knutson: Storm water management. Parking standards. Kate Aanenson: Correct. They had to change the parking standards, storm water management are all meeting today's standards and those were not in place at the time of the PUD agreement but they are meeting those higher standards. 42 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: Well, in effect also Bill, aren't we meeting the standards of Section VIII anyway? I mean when I looked at Section VIII I went through and did my little matrix because I was trying to figure out what we are or aren't meeting and I mean if we went by Section VIII, they would be able to do 50% impervious. There was, you know the additional setback about buffer yard requirements in Section VIII and they're meeting those. Building height, there is nothing in Section VIII on building height. So I went back and looked at the R-12 and that is three stories, 40 feet. There wasn't anything, unless you found something in Section VIII that I found that they weren't meeting anyway, because you know I checked that out and maybe not as thoroughly as you did but. Bill Weber: No, I would agree. The only reason we bring that up is because we had been led to believe that the 100 foot buffer that we had asked for and beyond that, really didn't apply and we were getting that as kind of gratis and so we wanted to make sure that we were on solid legal ground in interpreting the code the way we do. Mayor Mancino: Yeah, so okay. Bill Weber: The second question that I think we needed to deal with is whether the city really does have any power, authority or right to make changes and when I look to the original intent of the PUD wording, this is again a legal issue and I'm not sure we're understanding it correctly because none of us are lawyers unfortunately. Mayor Mancino: Or fortunately. Bill Weber: Or fortunately, depending how you look at it. Mayor Mancino: Had to give a lawyer joke in there. Bill Weber: In the letter to the city planner from, I'm sorry, to the city attorney from the city planner in 8/20 of '87, it is noted that Outlot A has a maximum of certain number of units and Outlot B had a maximum. Outlot C and D and then the city planner states these densities were approved just in concept and during preliminary plat they are subject to change. Now it's my understanding that there was a preliminary plat that was done on the entire PUD but we're also considering a preliminary plat tonight. Preliminary plat specifically for this particular outlot and that's exactly what the front of the staff report states. So it's our interpretation that if we're considering for approval of preliminary plat of this outlot that the densities are subject to change if the council so determined that this was not in the best interest of the city, is that the wrong way to interpret that or is that the right way to interpret that? Kate Aanenson: Can I give the preliminary plat question? There's four lots on this. We're platting of the lots of Outlot A. Outlot A could be platted as one lot. They're platting each lot with the building as Sharmin described in the staff report so we're at this time platting one lot within Outlot A. Roger Knutson: Just to follow-up on that. I'm not aware that there was ever a preliminary plat done for this approval before that I'm aware of. Sharmin A1-Jaff: None that I'm aware of. Bill Weber: Okay, then I stand corrected. Then if we're doing a preliminary plat for the first time on Outlot A, then are we not. 43 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: We're guided by the PUD agreement. Bill Weber: Right, and the PUD agreement states item 1, or item 3(b), page 1, and also item (f), page 7, embodies the spirit as well as the thought and the direct quote basically of the letter to the city attorney from the city planner of 8/20/87 which I believe you have in your packets which says these densities were approved just in concept and during preliminary plat. They are subject to change. The PUD agreement says then in following the instructions of the city planner to the city attorney, it says on page 7, item (f). I'm sorry, if somebody could read that for me. I messed up on that. I was working about 3:00 in the morning on this one. Mayor Mancino: Due to the, this is (f). Due to the preliminary nature of many of the exhibits and plans and the timing of the overall development, addendums to this agreement may be required to address concerns not specifically set forth herein. Bill Weber: Thank you. And then page 1, item 3(b) says densities are approximate and subject to change and then later on in that same portion it says the number of, total number of dwelling units of high density multiple family residential property shall not exceed 375. So it's our understanding that up until the time that the preliminary plat is approved, that these densities are subject to change and you have the legal right to do that. Roger Knutson: First, address your, address paragraph what is it? Mayor Mancino: I just have a. Roger Knutson: Well 12(f). That says items not specifically set forth in the agreement so that really doesn't, if we're talking about densities, that wouldn't have any application because that issue is set forth here. It is set forth in the agreement. The densities. Bill Weber: That might be true but if you interpret the PUD in light of the instructions of the city planner to the city attorney back in 1987. Kate Aanenson: He's reading from a letter that Barb Dacy wrote to you asking for an opinion. I don't know if you have that in front of you but... Roger Knutson: I've got a '93 letter. Mayor Mancino: Bill, can I just say something from just a common sense, not a legal perspective. Obviously we have a PUD agreement. Obviously there were some specific things put in the PUD agreement. And if those specific things weren't important to the council at that time they wouldn't have had a PUD agreement drawn up like this with the densities and the numbers, etc. They would have just left it for us to change at any time and there wouldn't be this PUD agreement. I mean once you have this legal agreement like that, I mean it's kind of a contract for the person's property. It is as to some of the limits about what she or he can do to it and that was kind of stated in '87. And those were very, very specific. I mean we can't just as a body, I mean this is kind of a democracy about being fairness to everyone. I mean we can't just say oh, by the way in 1987 we said this specifically but na, na. Nope. You've done all this work. You know we can just capriciously you know kind of change it and say oh, sorry. 44 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Bill Weber: No, I agree. I agree. Mayor Mancino: So I mean that's kind of. Bill Weber: I'm not asking for capricious changes. I'm asking that the law be interpreted fairly for the citizens as well as for the developer. And if you look for example at the impervious surface. If you follow that. Mayor Mancino: But also please know that the person who signed this is a citizen of our community. Is also a landowner so, I'm not trying, what I don't want to do is get one side against another. Bill Weber: Okay. You know we have felt a lot of accommodation as you mentioned before. We're trying to show that where there is give and take with the PUD agreement, we have felt through the research we have done that there has been a lot more give on the side of the city with regard to the PUD agreement than necessarily on the side of the developer. And if you look for example at the, I believe you have that also in your notes with regard to impervious surface for example. It was very, very clear and in fact the city council had the opportunity to make the wording of the PUD agreement more flexible so that impervious surface could be negotiated. Could, you'd have more give and take and that's also in your packets. In a letter from the, let's see here. It's the one that has some writing on it with regard to interpretation. On the letter to Mr. Don Ashworth, October 28, 1987. The City Council was given the opportunity to make the impervious surface much more flexible and they chose not to. And they said basically this is not to be gone over this maximum and the maximums at that time were 32% for Powers Ridge Apartments, 30% for B, 31% for C and 27% for D. And in every case in the first three outlots that were done, that original agreement, that original PUD agreement was exceeded. First by 35% rather than 30. 40% rather than 31 and 35% rather than 27. So there was a certain amount of give and take there. And I guess the concern that I have is, just to make things short. Transition. What is acceptable? We've got an original intent. If we look to the original intent of the.., council, what was wanted here. And we believe there were some very, very strict guidelines about how this outlot was supposed to be developed. We've got a 30 year history with regard to the Chanhassen apartment complex. The apartment complexes that are located in the city of Chanhassen. I apologize, if you look to the apartment matrix you will see that in every case there's only one apartment that borders single family homes and that was, there's only one apartment three stories high that borders single family homes that was built later than 1960. This was built in 1960. We actually went out and talked, the matrix that one of my neighbors did. There's the recent history when we consider the Pulte developments and the Walnut Grove developments with regard to intensity of development and step transition. Okay, well I'm sorry. Am I taking too much time? Mayor Mancino: Yeah, if you could kind of bring it to a close that would be helpful. Bill Weber: Okay. Well I apologize. We also have the precedent of the PUD. We have the precedent of the Planning Commission that states everyone of the people on the Planning Commission did not agree that transition is adequate. And we also have signatures from over 315 different citizens of Chanhassen that also agree that three story elevated apartments next to single family homes do not fit. So I appreciate your time. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Thank you very much on all the work you've done. Mark Menzuber: I'm just going to close this out. I sense that this has turned into a bunch of whining neighbors and we did our damnest to stay away from that because that's not what this is about. And I just 45 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 want to bring you back, I know you were there Nancy, at the Planning Commission meeting but for those of you who weren't, I want you to hear what some unbiased individuals have said about this. I mean these are people who we have sitting in your spots to make these kinds of decisions. On June 5th Conrad said I'm trying to make, I am trying to make some transition. I don't think our ordinance took care of this situation very well. It just didn't. It just never really considered what was going to be there in terms of the elevation and the height of the property. Joyce. I know that this day and age we would have a transition. Not only a buffer transition but a density transition. Then to the second Planning Commission on January 19th. Blackowiak. I too am rather concerned about the transition area. I don't think this is a good decision. I know we would not do this at this point in time. I know there's an agreement in place and that really puts us in a very difficult situation. I think because of what we do and what we know, what we would do today is probably very different than as has been done in the past. Burton rambles a little bit because he's a lawyer I understand so excuse me here. The site plan essentially projects adjacent and neighboring properties through reasonable provision for surface water drainage, sound and light buffers, preservation of views, light and air, all the things that we've gone through. And then he says, and as I said last time, I'm still not convinced that they have met that element, or that the applicant has met the element of our analysis of the site plan. There's not an adequate transition. And finally Peterson. The only thing I'm really uncomfortable with is transition. You know I think as a commission my personal thought is that we brought this as far as the statutes that guide our commission have allowed us to go. The commissioners and others that we have talked to seem to feel that this PUD is very restrictive. This we just don't quite understand. Our research and our legal expert opinion support the notion that this is an extremely well written PUD. Giving you ample opportunity to utilize discretion and exercise today's land development standards. You have the legal right and you have the support of the community. This is your project now. We ask that you maintain the high standards you've already established elsewhere in the city. Thanks. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Councilwoman Jansen: Thank you. Mayor Mancino: And I just would like to add on behalf of all of us, I don't think there's one of us sitting up here who is a resident and has been a resident of Chanhassen for a long time. Has seen the growth and the development. But there's not one cell in my body that thinks you're whining. We're glad for the input that you've given. You've challenged. You've made it a better project. So I don't think any of us council persons sees it's whining because we've also been in your shoes many times. So there is respect. There is admiration. This is what grass roots city government is all about. And the incredible amount of time that you have put into this. And now I am sure that you are all going to apply to be on the Planning Commission when we have three seats that are going to be open I think this year so with that. Audience: Can I make one quick observation? Mayor Mancino: One last one and then that's it. John Ehland: John Ehland, 1351 Lake Susan Hills Drive. I don't intend to draw a conclusion, maybe just a snapshot of irony or what. When I came in earlier tonight there was a debate on giving an easement on a deck and I think you made the correct motions and judgments in saying you have to follow laws to protect certain elements of design and that we're talking about a 10 foot element on a deck. Kind of a tough decision. A couple of you went in favor of it. I think in my mind I happen to be an engineer by trade. When I look at this, the intent of the PUD and everything is good and in place. What people didn't do when they looked at that was look at the grading. I mean we've not talking about a three story building. 46 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 We're talking about I believe effectively a five story building in an effective grade. And I just would put the observation of the deck to this and say that what this group here did was try to reinforce that you do have the right to make a decision on this. Mayor Mancino: Okay, and obviously we will go with our legal counsel but we're going to stop for just two minutes to take a bio break, if it were. Two minutes and come back and we'll bring it back to the City Council. (The City Council took a short break at this point in the meeting.) Mayor Mancino: Kate, what's our timing on this? Kate Aanenson: 120 days that is March 31st. Councilman Senn: Ends March 31st. Kate Aanenson: Ends. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Bringing it back to council. Councilman Labatt, do you want to start? Councilman Labatt: Do I have to start? Mayor Mancino: Well, I mean let's, there's. Councilman Labatt: I've got a question for staff. Mayor Mancino: I mean it doesn't mean we can't go back and forth a little. I mean if you think of something after another council person has spoken, please. Councilman Labatt: Number 19 in the staff report. Actually 18. It changed. The developer shall escrow with the city a financial guarantee for a share of the local cost participation for traffic generated from this site. How much is, do you define as share? What it costs. Dave Hempel: Madam Mayor, Council members. It's based on trip generations from this site versus the overall traffic flow of the city's leg of Lake Drive West. Traffic signal in the future would be located at Powers Boulevard and Lake Drive West. The City and County would be in a joint cooperative project for that. The city's share would be one-third of that traffic signal cost. Traffic signal range is I'd say $50,000 to $70,000 range so one-third of that would be the city's portion. And then we would break it down based on trip generations from this site in comparison to the overall industrial one to the north. Ballpark figure? Don't hold me to it. I'd say in the range of $7,500. The applicant's share. Councilman Labatt: So it's about a quarter of the city cost? Dave Hempel: Approximately. Councilman Labatt: Now when we didn't have the offices to the north there.., did we? Dave Hempel: Yes we did. 47 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Labatt: Okay. Okay. Well that kind of answers that. Maybe a question for Roger then. In Mr. Weber's conversation here he mentioned some legal advice he received regarding, from a real estate attorney regarding his opinion of the transition. And I looked up, and I brought my dictionary because I looked up what transition is and what adequate is defined as and I'm still looking for what a good definition of adequate transition is. I'm hoping you can help me. Mayor Mancino: Well, can I address that for a second? I mean because I just went back to the PUD agreement and you know kind of the guideline of, the center of everything. And also trying to look to see when they made this agreement what was in everybody's mind because it's kind of like, and page 3, on I guess it's 6(a) it says, additional conditions of approval. The developer shall provide buffer areas acceptable to the city between multiple family and single family areas to assure adequate transition between uses. And then they give three things to give adequate transition. Number one, including the use of berms. Number two, landscaping. And number three, setbacks from lot lines. I didn't see berms... Setback from R-16 is 50 feet. All sides. Our PUD I guess it's Chapter 8, there really are no internal requirements in the whole PUD but it does talk about buffer yard requirements when you go from low intensity to high intensity and that talks about it being 100 feet plus any other zoning requirements. So again, I mean part of mine was just going back to saying, what does again the PUD agreement that was set out, what did that say. Roger Knutson: And Mayor I would just add, you have to read that paragraph in conjunction with the whole document. For example if anyone got the bright idea, or excuse me, the idea that we'll have a 5,000 yard setback, then it would make the rest of this agreement impossible and you couldn't do anything like that. You have to read that in conjunction with what the permitted activities and build out is of the subdivision. So... Mayor Mancino: So you can't take it out of context? Roger Knutson: Right. You just can't rip one sentence out of an agreement and say this is what we're going to do. Mayor Mancino: You know so I just kind of wanted to see what they had thought about of as transition because my gosh, these were the people who put the high density next to the single family so what was in their minds and had they thought about it. Roger Knutson: If you're talking about adequate transition in the sense of next to a single family homes we ought to have townhomes or we ought to have quads and then we ought to step it up like that, you couldn't do that because that would be inconsistent with what this document has already provided. The high density is required for this parcel. Councilman Labatt: So then legally we can't force them to make Building B1 and B2 two stories? Or D. Roger Knutson: That's correct. Councilman Labatt: I'll hold off. I need some more time. Go ahead. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilman Engel. 48 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Engel: Well I think by now most of the neighbors know that I live around the comer on Flamingo Drive so I've tried to stay objective. It's tough when your spot like this. I haven't been put in one quite this bad where it gets that close to home but if I had my call on it, you know I was the dictator, those would be twin homes because I'd want transition. It's easy for me to say that. We can enforce it. But that's what I'd like to have. This agreement was drafted in '87. We just weren't thinking that clearly back then. Well we weren't here but the council back then just didn't see this type of thing at the time. We've dealt with it in other developments like Walnut Grove and I have been on the council when we did that and it worked out well. But we don't have flexibility on this one. And so I have to ask myself, you know when I ran for this spot, do I want to be liked or do I want to be respected when it comes to making decisions like this. I want to be liked. It's pretty easy, I just stick my finger in the air and see which way the wind is blowing and that's where I line up. That's what I'm for. You know what I'd like to have but we don't have any legal ground to stand on. I want to be respected. You've got to think about this. We've gone through a lot of these the three years I've been on the council. You have to think about what legal grounds you have to stand on and they get very clinical. They get very cold. All the emotion gets taken out of it because at that point I'm not just representing our neighborhood, and my own interests, but the rest of the constituents of Chanhassen which is the whole town. It's 19,000 plus people here. And ifI think we should go to court to win, I have to have a strong suspicion based on our legal representation indicating we'd win, that it's worth doing so. And I think you can clearly see we don't have that. So I tried to consider some other possibilities there. I'm making them up as I go along. Mark and I just cooked up another one. Maybe we could talk about it. I don't think we have enough time tonight to deal with it, but that's where I'm at. We're going to, we don't have any legal grounds to force them to not build three stories governed by the PUD. The PUD says R-12. R-12 says three stories. It is pretty clear. And no matter what else you want to bring up and try to argue our way around it, that's contract. I take some consolation in the fact that those are going to be some $1,300 apartments there and I think there's plenty of mortgages in our neighborhood that weren't even that high so a small consolation but I would like to see a transition zone. We just don't have the legal grounds to force it. That's what I have to say for now. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilwoman Jansen. Councilwoman Jansen: I'm going to keep testing Roger here for a bit. I'm coming back around again to the statement that was made earlier reading the PUD contract about after five years ya da da, ya da da. And the fact that the underlying zoning on this is R-12. We're saying that where the PUD contract does call out density, it also says that that's approximate and subject to change. We have an R-12 zoning on the property that if we use that gives us a lot area size that would limit the units to 260. Tell me again how it is we can't, this many years later, fall back to that position. Roger Knutson: The first of the provision in the development contract that says after five years you can change subject to some restrictions but you can change it. You have to go through a process to change it. The process would be a PUD amendment to say, rather than what's here, we're doing something else. Whether it's rezone it to a straight R-12. Straight R-8. Straight something else. Assuming you went through the right process and assuming it was consistent with the comprehensive plan and assuming there weren't a few other little wrinkles we don't need to get into, you could do that. This would allow you to do that but we haven't done that as we're sitting here tonight. This is the zoning and so this is what we're living with. Councilwoman Jansen: And I guess that's what I'm trying to understand because I'm hearing that it is zoned R-12. That we have a document. 49 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: I thought it was zoned PUD. Roger Knutson: It is zoned PUD. It's zoned PUD with a cross reference to R-12. It incorporates the R-12 standards into the PUD zone, unless they're inconsistent with this base document. You can call it an overlay if you want. That's not technically correct but it's good enough. I mean the zoning is not R-12. It's PUD. Councilwoman Jansen: Well I guess what I'm going back to is the PUD under the multi-family high density paragraph (b). The last statement. Except as modified herein, which I realize goes back to these units that were designated. The development of the high density multiple family residential shall be in accordance with the uses, standards and requirements of the R-12 zoning district. Roger Knutson: Correct. Councilwoman Jansen: It's stating here that the densities are approximate and subject to change. If they were changed to just the requirements of the R-12 zoning district, which is within the same paragraph and within the same document, is that not justifiable with the wording that's in here? Roger Knutson: First rule of construction, and I don't like doing this because I'm painting myself into a little bit of a comer and someone might be taking notes. Councilwoman Jansen: Sorry. Roger Knutson: Zoning ordinances and PUD agreements are construed strictly against the City. If there's any ambiguity we lose because this is a restriction on the use of private property and the courts say if you're going to do that, you'd better make it dam specific otherwise the property owner prevails. And depending on what side of an issue you're on, that's great or it's horrible but that's what it is. So the question is, this says 375. What are they at now? 344. They're less...approximately. I mean it's, if they came in at 380, 390, 400, I think you'd have something to say but not at the present density. Mayor Mancino: Well the units, the density is lower than the 17.42, isn't it? Kate Aanenson: Correct. Mayor Mancino: The density. Roger Knutson: It's lower than under R-12. Mayor Mancino: No. Roger Knutson: Lower than the PUD. Councilwoman Jansen: The 16. Mayor Mancino: Yeah, the 16.1 So you've got first, what's specifically in here at 17.4 and it's under that. Roger Knutson: It's less than what's authorized. 50 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: Yeah. Councilwoman Jansen: But as I understand it, it has to be buildable also which is what ended up happening on the other medium density lots was they discovered it wasn't buildable, at least not for the products they wanted to put on. Roger Knutson: I don't frankly recall the specifics of those other projects. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. I'm still having a great deal of difficulty thinking that there isn't room to be able to somehow shift and negotiate and I don't know if it's a matter of you know getting that priority across and somehow working with them on the other requirements of the lot. I mean you heard me say earlier I'd be willing to even budge on the impervious surface. Now the intent of the impervious surface number from the original agreement was to provide green space. It wasn't for water quality. So in my mind if it was for green space, and it could buy us a better transition, I would rather bank that and use it for a better transition. Mayor Mancino: So you would have less green space and less buffer yard area? Councilwoman Jansen: If we can come down a story, you know going back towards those homes as little as possible. Mayor Mancino: Councilman Senn. Councilman Senn: This is a hard one to talk to. You know one way or another, having been at this I'm going to say probably for about 30 years now. Mayor Mancino: You're not that old are you? Councilman Senn: Unfortunately. You know I've seen guidings come and go and changes. I've seen zonings and come and go and change. But more interestingly fundamental precip of changing dramatically back and forth at different points in time, you know the old transition zone from single family used to be you know higher density multi-family many years ago. There was actually a period where it went away from that and then people all of a sudden decided they'd rather see certain industrial and other types of uses like that be transition between single family and they'd like the apartments over on the other side of that. Mayor Mancino: We've gone through that. Councilman Senn: Well I mean a lot of people have. I mean the ideals unfortunately of starting with a cluster of single family homes and surrounding it with a cluster of duplexes and then a cluster of four plexes and then six plexes and setting this whole thing up is a wonderful concept. Unfortunately you know unless it all got started back that way, we can or can't go back to everybody and say oops. You know we want to change this. The way this is breaking down in my mind is that if this thing goes to a vote tonight effectively on the impervious surface coverage, that portion of it could very easily go down in flames by not getting four votes. But at the same time a very minor modification could me made to the plan and that element is eliminated, maybe making it a less desirable project and then we just have a site plan consideration in front of us and my sense is that will pass on a simple majority. If it doesn't, we'll probably be sued anyway. In eight years around council here now I have to give Roger I guess a little bit 51 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 of credit for one thing is and that is in the eight years I've never known us to lose a land use or a rezoning suit. And I think we lost a tax one though once Roger, if I remember right. But that was the County. Roger Knutson: I didn't handle that. Councilman Senn: I have to accept the advice of our legal guy sitting over there who has to interpret this stuff and we pay him to interpret it and provide expert opinion to us. And essentially if something goes array and we get sued, he's the one who has to defend us anyway so we may as well keep all the marbles in one bag. At the same time it's real hard when you get into projects of this complexity for us to kind of just get all this information. You know and I mean granted we've been getting bits and pieces but over a long period of time but kind of all the final pieces of information are dumped us on Thursday night and here we are on Monday night and we're supposed to define the fate of the world one way or another on a Monday night based on what's handed to us Thursday night for at least the fate of the world as it's defined by that particular project or action. This one in my mind requires some more thought for two reasons. One is, and I think you all know me well enough that I either get comfortable very quickly with these things or I don't and I'm not comfortable with this one yet. Not from the standpoint that I don't think it's a good design, because it is a good design. And not from a standpoint that I don't think we legally have no choice because I think legally we have no choice. But we also aren't bound by a time at this point and I'd like to take advantage of that time and just try to get a little more comfortable with whether there are any other possible alternatives or any other ways to deal with some of the issues and I'd really like to kind of see us put this offtil next council meeting for council discussion only and then a decision or a vote. That way I can come up with an excuse and miss the meeting. Just kidding. Mayor Mancino: Did you say only council discussion? Councilman Senn: Yeah I have to say that in front of the Mayor because the Mayor opens it up every time for the same issues. She's more than fair that way. But I'm just saying from my standpoint I guess that's what would make me most comfortable at this point and allow me at least some time to match some things back and forth in my brain now that I've heard everybody and now that I've seen everything and just seem to be best to take some time to do that. And I'm not sure it's going to change any of the conclusions I've already kind of fore drawn but at least it's I think worth the exercise to do it so. Mayor Mancino: If I may ask, and you certainly don't have to answer but is there something in particular that you want to see or. Councilman Senn: Yeah. Mayor Mancino: Because I don't want to do, I don't want to do a couple things. I don't want to leave it open big. I don't want to have any false or generate any false expectations on the residents who are here about you know where we're going. Councilman Senn: That's precisely what I don't want to do too. I mean I don't want to really throw some brainstorming you know out on the table right now and create false expectations. I'd really rather chew on it a little bit for a day or two and then I'd like to get some comments and questions back to staff and let staff go talk some more from there. I think it'd be unfair to really just kind of shoot from the hip on that one way or the other but again I just, to me I'm just saying if somebody wants to get me comfortable with it, that's what it's going to take to get me comfortable with it. If somebody wants to have a vote tonight, you know I'm comfortable with that too. I'm just not going to be comfortable with the outcome of it 52 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 because again I don't think we can change the underlying, how would I say, options that we really do or don't have. At least at this point. Councilman Engel: I want to add to that just brief comment that specifically there may be a design alternative or two that it just is going to take more time than this to discuss on B1 and B2. And it's just, there's no way you could go into it now. They'd need a lot of time to respond to it. Mayor Mancino: Okay. So you're suggesting what, tabling it til February 28th? Councilman Senn: Yep. Mayor Mancino: And be back here in two weeks. Councilman Senn: Be back for final council discussion and then a vote. Scott Botcher: Well and I'll save my comments until after Nancy's done but Roger's going to be gone on the 28th and I would not recommend you have the discussion without legal counsel, unless you're going to stay fully away from legal stuff.., and I don't know that I can honestly promise in good faith to any citizen that we're going to do that. Councilman Senn: Let's table it to the meeting after that then. I mean we've got til March 31st. Councilman Engel: First one in March is what, like the 14th? Councilman Senn: Yeah, I don't have an issue with that as long as we stay within our 120 days. For Roger, anything. So I guess I would say, what's that make it? March. Councilman Engel: March 14th. Kate Aanenson: 13th. Councilman Senn: So I would make, I don't know Nancy if you want to say something. I don't want to stop you from saying something but otherwise I'd be happy to make that motion. Mayor Mancino: No. I don't have anything in particular to say. I feel you know pretty comfortable with, I mean I sat through a couple Planning Commission meetings and I certainly know how Planning Commissioners felt. I think there's no question they felt tied because of the legality of it too and they were concerned about some of the transitions that we do today and so I know it was a hard decision for them to make but they did make it. No, I'm okay with doing that til the 14th. Councilman Senn: And don't get me wrong because I'm entirely comfortable with the legality issues here. That's not my, I mean what I'd like time to chew over has absolutely nothing to do with the legality of this one. Mayor Mancino: So I think we all accept. Councilman Senn: I think we're on very firm ground there and I mean again I have to rely on Roger's opinion there for I share what he said and I don't really see, I don't see holes in those arguments one way or 53 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 the other so I think it's more an issue here of whether can chew up something on just the overall design and site plan. Mayor Mancino: Okay, so you're saying overall design because I don't want to go back and forth with residents, lawyers and going over that whole thing again. Councilman Senn: No. Mayor Mancino: And I want the residents to know that too. That we feel very comfortable with the legal advice that we have from our attorneys so we're not going to open up the whole legal part of it. Contract. Councilman Engel: The impervious coverage, I don't know if you all spoke to that one specifically. I like their design. Their one asking for the variance on the impervious is better looking than the one I think with the loop road. It's a more attractive design than the one without it so I have no problem with that. Councilman Senn: It'd be kind of unique to have a looped sidewalk with a gap... Mayor Mancino: Well so if you want to go ahead and make that motion. Scott Botcher: Can I make just a couple... Mayor Mancino: I'm sorry Scott. Scott Botcher: It's the longest I've been quiet. Two hours...trying to figure out what I'm missing at home tonight. First of all. We have been as a matter of practice requiring all multi-family housing projects to participate in the Minnesota Crime Free Multi-Housing Program which I assume you guys are familiar with and it's not mentioned in the staff report. It's a no brainer. We have Beth, our Community Service Officer, or policing officer who works with the multi-family residential properties and that will probably be added by the council and it's just been a practice they've been doing. We just haven't codified it yet. Secondly I think, I agree with both Marks which is a scary thought but to me from the get go, and even today on the phone with Roger, and I did speak with Bill today. You guys have been very professional and I told Steve that when we get whiners we're going to invite you back in so you can see what they look like. Because we can pick them out, can't we Steve? I think we need to consider, having sat through the strategic planning session, what was that two weeks ago? Month ago? We talked about the need for senior housing in the community. That's a very real need. We've had members of our Senior Commission speak to us about trying to address the need. We've had some recommend to us things that I personally don't agree with, but that we even go into the senior housing business. I know Senn loves that one. So I think there's a need there and I think there certainly would be support and interest for senior housing in the community and so I think that's a real need. I think the stated need for what I would call Class A apartment units is also very real. We've worked with the Pulte people. We've begun discussions with the Lakeview Hills people. No matter who you talk to, there is an absence of Class A rental units in the city of Chanhassen and that does serve a need that we have. I think Mark's comments on the rule of the road so to speak in terms of the transition are very accurate so I won't belabor it but you know even if you look at issues like Villages on the Pond. Villages on the Pond breaks a lot of rules that even young pups like Kate and I when we went to school were in vogue then. And now we're doing Villages on the Ponds and so it's very difficult, and I told Bill this. I mean transition is such a subjective term. It is just such a subjective term. And the rules will change again. We'll sit here three years from now and the rules will be different. Finally, and Steve touched on it a little bit and nobody really got after it and I don't want to speak for 54 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 District 112, and I'm sure District 112 never wants me to speak for them. If you follow that relationship there we'll just leave that one alone. But as we talked about maximizing value in the community and the number of kids, I know you asked the question on that issue. We have all heard from representatives of the school board about what kind of development makes sense financially to the taxpayers in the city of Chanhassen who are District 112. Outside of CI this is it. Kate Aanenson: I was just going to say. Anybody that's interested, Barbara Luckerman did a study for District 112. The ratio of apartments is. 15 so we projected 40 students in this entire project. Scott Botcher: And then the estimated investment dollar amount is? Kate Aanenson: Well it's a 20 million dollar project. Scott Botcher: Is it $20 million? Councilman Senn: Yeah and where can a school district get 60% of the... Scott Botcher: Understood. But if you follow the tax bills and certainly a lot of times when tax bills come out they call us up and say, you know what happened and we remind them gently that 2/3 of it belongs to the school district. That is an issue that's out there. Certainly legally I don't, I agree with the two Marks and Linda I think touched on it a bit. This is written not to have wiggle room. Roger is absolutely correct in the construction that the court will apply. We automatically start in the hole. We have an 0-2 count against when we step in the batters box on land use law. Especially if you're Norwegian. So I hope that we all understand that and I think the applicants been very good to work with. You guys have done a very professional job and I commend you. I would hate to compromise, final thing. I'd hate to compromise the integrity of a good project for 15,000 square feet of impervious surface. Personal opinion. Mayor Mancino: Yeah, I think we're all in agreement there. Scott Botcher: Thank you for your time. Mayor Mancino: May I have a motion then please. Councilman Senn: Move to table til March 13th. Councilman Engel: Second. Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to table the request for Site Plan to Construct 5 Three Level Apartment Buildings and a Community Building, a Planned Unit Development Amendment to Allow 34.9% Hard Surface Coverage and Preliminary Plat to Subdivide 21.34 Acres into 4 lots for Powers Ridge Apartment Homes until the March 13, 2000 City Council meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. REQUEST FOR REZONING OF 13.41 ACRES FROM RSF, RESIDENTIAL SINGLE FAMILY TO PUD-R, PLANNED UNIT DEVELOPMENT-RESIDENTIAL; A LAND USE PLAN AMENDMENT TO CHANGE THE DESIGNATION OF LOW DENSITY RESIDENTIAL TO MEDIUM DENSITY RESIDENTIAL; AND PRELIMINARY PLAT TO SUBDIVIDE 13.41 55 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 ACRES INTO 30 LOTS; LOCATED EAST OF TH 101, NORTH OF MISSION HILLS, AND SOUTH OF THE VILLAGES ON THE PONDS; MARSH GLEN, MSS HOLDINGS. Public Present: Name Address Bill Coffman John Mazeike Bruce E. Hanson Larry Stein Steve Kroiss Beth Andrews Steve & Tracy Scheid Scott & Shannon Fiedler Tony Ferguson Vem & Barb Ludemann Dave Nickolay Lisa Gauvin JeffNordos John Gerogeorge 600 West 78th Street 8525 Mission Hills Lane 3300 Plaza VII, 45 So. Seventh St, Mpls 8541 Mission Hills Lane 8905 Cove Point Road, Eden Prairie 8905 Cove Point Road, Eden Prairie 451 Mission Hills Court 8511 Mission Hills Lane 8495 Mission Hills Lane 552 Mission Hills 8500 Tigua Lane 460 Mission Hills Court 461 Mission Hills Court 470 Mission Hills Court Cindy Kirchoff: Thank you. This site is currently guided low density residential, meaning 1.2 to 4 units per acre net density. Under this land use designation the site could be rezoned to R-4 or PUD as long as it complies with that land use designation. The proposed project seeks to rezone the site to PUD and to preliminary plat the property into 32 lots. It complies with the low density residential designation, however the land use plan amendment is required because the PUD ordinance does not permit lots less than 11,000 square feet on sites with this land use designation. It does not specify a minimum lot size for medium density residential. The project proposes to situate three sets oftownhomes on the northern part of extension of Mission Hills Lane and 24 detached single family homes for 30 total on the property along those two areas of open space. The lots are an average of 3,500 square feet. A tree preservation easement extends over the 150 lakeshore setback and 50 foot wetland setback. Staff has also prepared design standards to regulate the exterior elevations of the units. They address the variation in the unit type as well as variation of the windows and porches. This site is proposed to be accessed via Mission Hills Lane and in the future Highway 101. Staff does support the project because it meets the low density residential designation. It provides a different product, thus complying with the 2020 comprehensive plan. It offers a transition between 101 and the Mission Hills single family development. And it is environmentally sensitive. The project is environmentally sensitive. On January 19th the Planning Commission did hold a public hearing on this item. They were generally supportive of the proposal. However they did have a few concerns, namely the architecture. Exterior elevations of the units. They wanted staff to work with the developer to make sure that not one unit type is dominant in the development. The applicant has designated exterior elevations for each of the units and that is located in Attachment 8 of your packet. Concerns also expressed over access via 101 and as it was indicated in your staff report, MnDot will not permit permanent or temporary access at this time to 101 so this site until 101 is upgraded will be accessed, or proposed to be accessed via Mission Hills Lane. In addition to the condition that the exterior elevations be varied, the Planning Commission also recommended that additional landscaping be placed at the end of the cul-de-sac to screen headlights from incoming cars to the adjacent single family. And also to shift Lots 9 and 10 to the west to provide a greater setback from the perimeter lot lines. Staff recommends approval of 56 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 a land use plan amendment rezoning to PUD and preliminary plat with the conditions outlined in the report and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Any questions for staff? Councilman Senn. Councilman Senn: Cindy, could you, do you have something with you that would. Mayor Mancino: I know what you're going to ask, go ahead. Councilman Senn: Take this project and kind of put it into perspective to what's around it. Because we really didn't, or at least maybe it was just the copy I had. The one copy in our packet that came close, at least on my half of it wasn't really in depth. Cindy Kirchoff: To the south of this proposal is Mission Hills development. To the north is. Kate Aanenson: Excuse me Cindy. I just want to tell you the density. It's in the report. Mission Hills development is 7 units an acre. Councilman Senn: Okay. Cindy Kirchoff: Villages on the Pond is to the north. This area right here. Kate Aanenson: And there's the single family which stubs into this one. This street right here. I believe it's at 2.4, something like that? Cindy Kirchoff: This area right here? That's correct. Kate Aanenson: 2.4 and there's the existing homes along 101 which will be part of the taking and the city owns one of those homes. Mayor Mancino: I'm sorry, what's 2.4? Kate Aanenson: The single family of Mission Hills. Mayor Mancino: That's part of Mission Hills. Cindy Kirchoff: This area right here is a density of 2.4 and the remaining density is 7. Councilman Senn: So 7 units per acre, 2.4 per acre. Kate Aanenson: Correct. And then you've got Tigua Lane which is zoned RSF which could be as small as 15,000 but a lot of the backs of those lots are compromised by the large wetland. Councilman Senn: Right. Councilman Engel: Those two parcels north of the shaded area, is that swamp? 57 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Kate Aanenson: That's Rice Marsh. The creek that cuts through there and then going to the large wetland. Yes, there is a large wetland complex in there. Cindy Kirchoff: This area right here? That was to be saved as open space for Villages on the Pond. Mayor Mancino: Oh that's the knoll. The wood knoll. Right? Councilman Engel: That south, will that's.., south of the trail, right? Just south of the trail as you go along the creek coming out of the lake and into the marsh. Councilman Senn: And all three of those lots go then under the realignment? Kate Aanenson: Correct. Councilman Senn: Alrighty. And the realignment is already. Kate Aanenson: It shows up on here. Councilman Senn: It shows up right to the. Kate Aanenson: This mark on this, if you can go back to this map. These would be the ones right here. The alignment is actually following. Councilman Senn: Which line? Councilman Engel: That's a property line. Cindy Kirchoff: No, you can see kind of. Councilman Senn: Yeah, go back to the other one because I think the line was on there wasn't it? Councilman Engel: It is? Councilman Senn: Yeah I thought it was. Kate Aanenson: Right here. Councilman Senn: You've got to focus more for old guys like me. Cindy Kirchoff: It's this area right here. Councilman Senn: That line there, okay. Kate Aanenson: Which was on the other one, same proximity. Councilman Senn: And then the density in the new area is? Cindy Kirchoff: On the proposal? Is 3. 58 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Senn: Was it 3 even? Kate Aanenson: 3 even. Councilman Senn: Oh it was? Okay. Councilman Engel: And the State has said no access to tOt? Cindy Kirchoff: That's correct. At this time. Councilman Senn: Okay. And right now as far as other accesses go there, you've got accesses to all of the single family properties on the other side of Great Plains as well as driveways to the remaining single family on the outskirts of this area. Kate Aanenson: And then when 101 gets upgraded that existing Great Plains will be a cul-de-sac. It will act as a local street. Councilman Senn: Right, and that serves kind of like the frontage road or whatever. Kate Aanenson: Correct. Councilman Senn: Okay. And in MnDot's plans the, in their plans basically then the primary intersection and everything is what's always basically been planned. Kate Aanenson: West 86th, right. Councilman Senn: With West 86th, right. Kate Aanenson: And just to refresh you on that PUD, we did leave that piece out. It is guided neighborhood commercial so at sometime in the future. Councilman Senn: That's what I was going to ask. There is a commercial segment in there somewhere. Kate Aanenson: Correct, yes and let me just show you on this one and that would be this piece right here. Councilman Senn: Alright. Okay, thank you. That helps. Mayor Mancino: I just have one other question and maybe Dave answers this but when we talk about access on tat, isn't it MnDot's philosophy to have less access on these main roads than more? I mean part of the problem with tat is we have, well it needs to be upgraded. Excuse me, I'm losing my voice. But secondly, we have so many individual driveways and stuff that makes it kind of hard too. Dave Hempel: That's correct Madam Mayor. Highway 101 is classified as a minor arterial road. Believe it or not it is. It is just a two lane. It is ultimately proposed to be four lane with medians. The city did study this whole corridor back I believe in 1993. Actually I think it started in '87. But in 1993 the city selected an alignment for the future tat. At that time we also looked at access points along Highway tat. One such location is approximately where proposed Mission Hills Lane would eventually come out on the 59 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 future 101. So we have kind of studied that area for transportation needs from an access standpoint and felt comfortable with sight lines and traffic volumes and access points and that would be a viable. Mayor Mancino: That this would be a viable access point. Dave Hempel: Correct. Mayor Mancino: So when Mission Hills came in and you have Mission Hills Lane, it was always anticipated obviously to go forward into this property. Dave Hempel: That's correct. Mayor Mancino: And then it won't go anywhere else because then you hit the wetlands and everything else so it just goes into here. Okay. Dave Hempel: To serve this one additional parcel, yes. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Thank you. Help give me the lay of the land. Any other questions? We've had staff report. The applicant. If you'd like to address the council please. Beth Andrews: Good evening. My name is Beth Andrews and this is Steve Kroiss. We'll try and make it brief. It's getting late here this evening. I'd also like to introduce to you Andy and Theresa, the landowners and their counsel, Bruce Anderson. I do marketing for Steve and help him pick land in order to find developments that are going... I'll speak a little bit to why we chose to do what we did on this project and Steve can speak to the product. He is not only going to be the developer but the builder on this project. I'd like to also take a few minutes to just thank staff. This is our first project in the city of Chanhassen. We've done several in a neighboring community and we have been very pleased with the help that they've done. This site has been around for a while. Other developers have looked at it and they've gone to great lengths with us to help with what we think is going to be a good project. Anyway, in looking at this site, in trying to find out what's going to sell in the city of Chanhassen, and what your city we feel needs. Mayor Mancino: Do you want to pull the microphone so we make sure we get the minutes. Thank you. Beth Andrews: In order to find what we think is going to sell and is going to be a good product for your city, we find that there's not a lot of custom, upper bracket, empty nester type townhomes. You have lots of the national builders that are in here but one of the products that we see isn't available for the empty nesters that are trying to size down and stay in a community is a custom townhome. We anticipate our price range to be from about $250 to $400,000. Obviously the $400,000 are going to be the lots that are going to be backing up to the Rice Marsh Lake and the wetland area. So looking at this project, we looked at the high density that is a buffer here. We looked at the 101 expansion that's going to be needed near here. To the north, the easy access to your downtown, and we felt that what would fit here very well is very similar to a townhouse project that we're doing that Pemtom land, Dan Herbst is developing in Eden Prairie at Settlers Ridge. We are currently selling this very similar product there and are 50% sold out within one year. It has gone very well. We find a lot of people are coming into that area, not only from Victoria, Chaska, Chanhassen, but the Minnetonka areas also. We are also finding that they're empty nesters. Your dealing with people that are either semi-retired or retired or close to doing that. These are not high maintenance, three car, snowmobile, boat families. A lot of these people have one cars. A lot of them go south for the winter. Do you want to just speak to the price then? 60 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Steve Kroiss: Good evening. My name is Steve Kroiss with MSS Holdings and I appreciate you taking the time and looking at our project and I also want to thank staff. They did a wonderful job here to help us get through this process. Basically I'm just going to go and outline a little bit a couple of the things that we're doing that are different than what we have done in the past. We're kind of proposing most of the project to be like a villa or a single family type of a unit. We're only proposing at this time to do three units that are doubles. The product that we will be putting up will vary enough that we feel, in elevation, to give us a good transition so we're not going to be putting the same product right next to each other. We will have basically four different products and a number of different elevations. Anywhere from 4 to 5 elevations that we'll be able to work with and make a nice transition through the development. One of the key things that I really like about this particular site is the fact that we get to really put a nice path here that we'll be able to go to a corridor, be able to be used by the whole community in the park. Going to the park system. So we felt that this type of product would work well here. The site with 101 at a higher density and we felt it was a good transition neighborhood. We will be at 1,400 square feet on our main floor for our base unit. We'll be about 1,600 square feet with our a little higher square footage for our two bedroom unit. Both the A unit that we call, which our Aspen unit, that 1,400 if you were to do both floors, you'd probably finish out about 2,500 to 2,600 square feet and our B unit, which we call our Balsam unit would probably finish out somewhere in the neighborhood of about 2,800 square feet with both of those finished. Product in front of you is what we're more or less proposing. We'll vary it with different stone on different buildings so. We want to make a good color transition between our products. Mayor Mancino: Okay, any questions for Steve at this point? Cindy I have one quick question for you. We talk about design standards and the variations that the Planning Commission was talking about. You've got on page 2 under number 1, you say staff would recommend that this, that you, where did I read it? I'm sorry. That you work with the developer between now and final review to be more specific about the variations. And is that one of the conditions in here? Cindy Kirchoff: Yes, that is one of the conditions. That was discussed at the Planning Commission level and the applicant in response to that did prepare exterior elevations for each of the lots. But we would still like it to be included in the conditions. This is in attachment. Attachment 8. Kate Aanenson: So I guess what we're saying we want to make sure that carries through with the project so this would be approved so it stays with the development. Mayor Mancino: So does condition 31 on page 24 of the report still need to be there? Cindy Kirchoff: We could modify it based upon the council's feedback or concerns about the proposed elevations. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. And anyone else from the applicant? Okay. Is there anyone here tonight that would like to address the council? Take a few minutes to do that. State your name and address please. Dave Nickolay: Good evening. My name is Dave Nickolay. I live at 8500 Tigua Circle, or Tigua Lane. On page 51 of your staff report I think I clearly stated my position at the Planning Commission and I want to thank the council member who called me to ask me for clarification on that. That's a second in this time that I've been in this city for 18 years that a council member read the minutes and took the time to call so I thank you for that. So I don't want to repeat what I presented to the Planning Commission but basically I 61 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 feel I've really been overlooked. I own all of the property to the west, or I'm sorry, to the east of the proposed development. I have 3 ½ acres that borders this development and I've worked with the staff and they've been cooperative. I've talked to the developer and I thought we had an understanding and an agreement and the Planning Commission supported my position which was that if the, it's in the staff report. Lot number, Block 1, Lot number 9 and 10, I was willing to support the concept of if the developer could slide those units to the west to align them with the homes that are on Mission Hills Lane. Specifically the Ferguson home which is directly to the south of Block 1 and Lots 9 and 10. And based on the staffs work and after talking to staff today, I find out the developer only slide those homes one foot. Now that isn't what the Planning Commission I don't think felt I was talking about. And again I was very clear in my recommendations and so tonight I guess because I haven't been able to get the results, I'm going to take this one step further and ask you to go back to the January 12th staff report, on page 17 which was point number 2. The staff recommended that you eliminate one of the homes on this site and make this a single family unit or home and not try to squeeze two of these units onto what I'll call the postage stamp lot here. There's no transition here from my property and so again I don't want to belabor this because I think I've made and laid out pretty clearly at the Planning Commission so I'll stop there and welcome any questions any of you have for me. Mayor Mancino: Okay, any questions people have? Kate Aanenson: Madam Mayor, can I give some clarity on that issue. The original Planning Commission report that went out. The critch in the road needed to be realigned. The applicant addressed that. Therefore the lot did fit. The staff's position on that lot is that lot was to be split as a single family lot, a standard 15,000 square foot lot, it could sit in that exactly position and that was our interpretation. That it does meet all the setbacks which are a little bit higher. Again, that was our position on that. Mayor Mancino: What are the setbacks approximately? Cindy Kirchoff: The perimeter setback is 30 feet. And if it was a typical subdivision you'd have the 30 foot rear yard setback so it's consistent with what would be proposed otherwise. Mayor Mancino: So it meets our standard setback. Cindy Kirchoff: That's correct. Kate Aanenson: And that was our position, just so there's some clarity on where we come from. Councilman Engel: Did the road used to push it farther to the east? Kate Aanenson: Yes. It pushed it out this way. Councilman Engel: Okay. Kate Aanenson: We wanted the road moved back. Dave Nickolay: So the lot got smaller as a result of the changes that got made. And so the developer can't move the houses to the west. He's got to meet a setback from the road. Mayor Mancino: And the setback from the high water. 62 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Dave Nickolay: And the setback from the high water. So if you take the Ferguson's lot, and you just take and fold that over, this is the Ferguson's lot right here. Fold that over onto that site. You don't have a minimum lot size. Kate Aanenson: Right, exactly. But if you were to do a 15,000 square foot lot it would sit just like that. This house is sitting right here so I think what you're asking is that it follow that alignment? Dave Nickolay: That's correct. Kate Aanenson: But if this was to be developed as a traditional single family lot, you could sit there is what we're saying. Ignore the lot size. Dave Nickolay: It could sit there because of setback requirements? Mayor Mancino: Yeah, it could sit there because of setback requirements. Kate Aanenson: It meets the perimeter setback as required as part of the PUD ordinance. Mayor Mancino: But whether it's for single family or PUD. Councilwoman Jansen: I think what I'm hearing him say is if there is going to be a structure sitting there, have it be one versus two. Dave Nickolay: That's correct. I was willing to go along with two until I find out you can only move it a foot. Well, don't move it at all then. It doesn't make any difference. Mayor Mancino: Yeah but that's almost a, again a taking of a lot when you already meet the ordinance. Councilwoman Jansen: Well right now it's an RSF so wouldn't it be one house on 15,000 square feet right there? Councilman Senn: She's saying that's what it is. Kate Aanenson: Right. Cindy Kirchoff: It would still meet those requirements. Kate Aanenson: Right, any other lot, if you have 10 foot between the buildings. Councilwoman Jansen: But you have two homes there now. Kate Aanenson: You can put a lot line and move the other one over. Councilman Senn: ... inbetween and have 15 each. Kate Aanenson: You can move the other one over but that one could still be that close which is what I'm saying. Let's say you left this one, you could take that one out... 63 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Cindy Kirchoff: There still could be a structure at that 30 foot setback. Councilwoman Jansen: But it would be one structure if this was RSF, not two. Correct? Mayor Mancino: No. Go a little slower. Kate Aanenson: That's the first question. If this was developed as a single family, could it be this close? Yes. It could be this close. Could this house be tipped slightly and still make another 15,000 square foot lot, putting that house is pretty much in that close proximity. Mayor Mancino: You only have to be 10 feet away. Councilman Senn: So the bottom line is the land area you're talking about where those two structures are can accommodate two units either way. Kate Aanenson: That's our opinion. It's the PUD. You can. Mayor Mancino: So you can either put the two together like that or you can put them 20 feet apart and they'd still fit in there. In that land area. Dave Nickolay: Right, but it's inconsistent with what you did in Mission Hills. What you did in my development and I'm not asking, I support the development. I think this is a great plan and I've seen the builders houses. These are, this is going to be a great project for that area but you're trying to squeeze two houses into an area that really should only accommodate one and that's what I'm asking you to do. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you Dave. Dave Nickolay: Thank you. Mayor Mancino: Anyone else? Larry Stein: I'll try to be brief as best I can. I have copies of this if you would like it for everyone. Mayor Mancino: Okay, sure. Larry Stein: My name is Larry Stein. I live at 8541 Mission Hills. Some of the thought process and I've gone round and round with this in my mind and tried as hard as I can to do this from a business perspective as opposed to just a homeowner. There were some covenants mentally in my mind when I built where I built. One of the things we checked out is what could happen to the land all around us and one of those things was, there was a single family home to the land that we're now looking at. And I'm looking at, and some of the thought process was, when we moved in there was a lot of medium density around us and so when you ask what's going to happen to that. Is that going to become medium as well? No, it's a single family home. Zoned that way so from a mental covenant point of view, looking at it and say hey, now we're talking about going the higher density level and putting more townhomes in, albeit they are very nice and they are relatively upscale. There is a thought process there. You know and as I'm listening to the prior engagement on the part that just went through for the apartments is that, you know there's... 64 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 (There was a tape change at this point in the discussion.) Larry Stein: ...not sure about that. Because as I read through the staff, I'm not 100% sure of that. We'll address that in just a moment if that's okay. Some of the things beyond that as I started to look through some of the city code, there's some buffering requirements inside the PUD that I'm questioning and I'm doing this from a layman's point of view so you'll have to help me here but under the 20-505... 150 feet buffer as additional setback requirement from where the lot lines are currently. And I'm questioning whether we're meeting that requirement. Mayor Mancino: 150. Kate Aanenson: For low density? Mayor Mancino: No. Maybe when you go to different intensity. Larry Stein: Yeah it says buffer and I'm looking at 20-505, Option number M. Buffer yards. In these areas 50 foot buffer yards provided where the interface occurs along a public street. 150 foot buffer yards required where it interfaces and occurs in internal lot line. Page 1200.6. Kate Aanenson: Well we consider both these low densities so. Cindy Kirchoff: This is referring to a buffer yard between a higher density a low density use and this, even though the land use designation will be changed to medium density, it's still low density residential. Mayor Mancino: And it's only being changed to medium density to allow the lots to be smaller. But the overall density is still the same as low density. So there is not a difference. Larry Stein: Well, that raises a question. If we put single family homes on these lots and try to draw it up, and I'm not an architect but try to do it, I don't think you can come up with the same number. There's some proposals that did come in prior to this one and they were lower numbers to try and fit it in between the wetlands and everything that the requirements offer. If you left it zoned the way it is and said you've got to bring single family in there, you can't build 30 units in there. At least that was the impression that I had gotten. Mayor Mancino: Can you build 30 units in there? Cindy Kirchoff: It meets the low density that is allowed as a part of the land use plan. Kate Aanenson: We have received other proposals that, whether it be twin or whether it be single family detached that are close to 30. Mayor Mancino: That are close to 30. Cindy Kirchoff: Actually the one we had this summer was 37 units. Mayor Mancino: Just a minute, just a minute. 65 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Cindy Kirchoff: Yes, they're all single family residential. typical 15,000 square foot lots. Kate Aanenson: Mayor Mancino: They're just on smaller lots. They're not on the They're with a PUD, 11,000 average. So they had the 11,000 average? Larry Stein: Does it have to be on 15, my understanding was a 15,000 foot. Mayor Mancino: Just a minute. Cindy Kirchoff: Let me back up. A proposal that was submitted as part of this property right here asked, requested for 37 units. We said that was too many. It exceeded the density that was allowed on this, exceeded the units for the property. Mayor Mancino: It was not 1 to 4 units per acre. It was higher than that. Cindy Kirchoff: Well, it did meet the 150 foot lakeshore setback and the lots were not 15,000 square feet. It was a zero, again a zero lot line townhome, detached townhome development. No we have not received, well they are single family. Of 15,000 square feet. No we haven't. We haven't received an application in for 15,000 square foot single Kate Aanenson: Cindy Kirchoff: family homes. Kate Aanenson: We have received one for twin homes though. On the property. Mayor Mancino: And twin homes again are not, we could not put in there because, can twin homes go into. Kate Aanenson: They are permitted in the low density. It's zoned RSF. In order to do twin homes you'd have to rezone it to R-4. Mayor Mancino: Got it, okay. Kate Aanenson: Under twin homes can you get 30 units? Yes. You can get 30 units. Larry Stein: But I have to rezone it? Kate Aanenson: Correct. Cindy Kirchoff: Yes. Larry Stein: My point being is the way I'm zoned today, without having to rezone it, I can't put this many houses in there. Kate Aanenson: That's correct. 66 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Larry Stein: Okay, that's the point. And from a mental point of view, when you build a house, and obviously the mental view is you're going to build traditional single family homes which was the way it's zoned, at least as I understood it. We're therefore changing the covenant of the land use plan to make that happen. And of course you look at it when you build your home. Then you make an assumption so that's mentally where I'm at. And even if we do it, it would be a challenge but the same logic pattern that says then you still need the 150 feet is here because you are going up in density from what you were before. Therefore the PUD code would hold. I don't know if that logic holds but that's my thought. Again, you know staff's recommending it's a 1 for 1 swap. I'm challenging that so. The Planning Commission made some assumptions as I read through the report. If you look through it, they made some assumptions that the hard surface would meet the city requirements without knowing that. And I'm not 100% sure that it does. That's on page 42. And it says, there was also a comment in there by moving the pads back the commission felt it would give the city something back. I was trying to mentally work with what that would be. So just comments I guess based on listening to what the logic the commission used to make some of it's assumptions. The word temporary's been used all over the place here as far as 101. I greatly challenge temporary anything. When I talked to Paul Chex from MnDot, and my understanding he's had conversation with David Hempel as well. Their thought process is null. Period. As long as they own it, they say null. Now they make a comment that they're trying to do a Turnback. No one will comment whether it will happen or won't happen. It's a thought process right now. It's not in anyone's books officially other than thought. I think the assumption for the moment has to go on that this isn't temporary, it's permanent as far as the entrance to 101. So I don't know if Kate would agree with me or not but that's the impression I get by talking to MnDot. Even if the county does get possession, they haven't commented on their willingness to do this. So we haven't asked you know because they don't know what to ask I guess but. I'm challenging the thought process using the word temporary probably isn't valid so I think we have to assume that it's permanent. There's also a piece, I had an opportunity to talk to District 112, Chan Elementary and wound up being referred to the busing company for school buses. I realize this is geared towards the empty nesters largely. We noticed the townhomes on the either side of us are also geared for not a lot of kids but they do wind up with kids. We wind up with about 3 or 4 at the bus stop in the morning out of there. The school bus requirements, and I guess this is the recommendation, as quickly as he said recommendation he say by the way, my bus can't turn around. He said he needs 150 feet of a cul- de-sac to turn around. If you don't give it to him he says I've got to leave it where it's at so as you look through the recommendation here, if you live all the way out here, kids would have to walk all the way through here, all the way where the plat doesn't even show, to get to 86th Street and Mission Hills Lane to catch a bus. That's a long walk for an elementary kid. Mayor Mancino: Are you kidding, they'd cut through. They're not going to do that. Are you a dad? I was starting to believe you until you did all that you know. Starting to track with you. Okay. Larry Stein: It is still a walk. Mayor Mancino: Go ahead, keep going. Larry Stein: And from a long term perspective, and I don't know that I know the answers to these questions but I'm asking them. In talking to MnDot, they acknowledge there's a pedestrian safety issue right now at 86th Street and 101. There is on a plan somewhere, when and if 101 gets upgraded, to stick it underneath the street. For the pedestrian. So their thought process is that we're, you know there's a safety issue that they feel they need to drop the pedestrian underneath the, both directions actually. We continue to add traffic. We're adding motor traffic and there's a large pedestrian traffic and just questioning, we've 67 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 got a lot of premature, you know are we, is the cart in front of the horse as far as what can help. Don't know how long it's going to take to do the 101. Eventually it's going to come to head you know. Hopefully with not someone getting hurt. From a proprietary point of view, we're a young neighborhood. We have 28 children. We have 3 more on the way. We're going to add some traffic with a lot of kids. It's a thought process too and that's a concern. I realize it's attempting to stay away from the whining as best I can, but it's real. You know from at least our mind set. There's two notings. One from the staff that the grading meets the standards, design standards and there was a note right after it that says, the curb does not meet the 30 mph speed design but we'll stick some signs up. To say by the way, I'm not sure what the signs will say but you know it's a double edged sword. The other one, the grade at the bottom of Mission Hills Lane and 86th they say meets their design standards. I drive it in the winter. It's a slip and slide. You drive it, it's tough. Standards or not, there's a safety issue. There's a safety issue now with the traffic that's going through there. The other thought process in mind, and you know we're creating a very long cul-de-sac here. Probably a permanent one and is that the planning design or the land use as we more forward, assuming we want to walk away from the land design that's already there. So just questioning that. Councilman Senn: I want to get something clear here. You don't want the cul-de-sac? Larry Stein: When you create that very long cul-de-sac, you force traffic. Councilman Senn: I understand. You don't want the cul-de-sac? That's going to make you the first person in 8 years I've ever heard say that in this city. Larry Stein: From my perspective, no. I get to be a first. Councilman Senn: Okay, you're a first. Councilwoman Jansen: Because hasn't the neighborhood been, isn't that the focus in the minutes. Larry Stein: Yes, it's one of them. Councilwoman Jansen: Getting this to go through. Larry Stein: Yeah, to pull it through and all the traffic to move through, yeah. Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. Councilman Labatt: Move through where? Out to 101. Councilman Senn: Higher speeds and more traffic, you're for that? I mean I just want you to understand. You're for higher speeds and more traffic then. Kate Aanenson: Most of their traffic is going through around... Larry Stein: Yeah, the traffic actually would move through, most of this traffic, it's a long route around to go the other way so if you pull it through to 101, the majority if not all the traffic would just move out to 101. 68 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Senn: Which direction? Larry Stein: It would more than likely, if you look at having to come through here, all the way around, off of 86th Street, it's a much shorter cut to just come out here to 101. Mayor Mancino: Unless you're going to the little commercial area on 101. Okay, go ahead Larry. Councilman Senn: I'm not sure as far as 212. Larry Stein: With MnDot coming through and saying they won't even grant temporary entrance for the construction, we're asking the community to endure a couple years of tough mud and everything else. So just where we're at is, it was a key decision for us. Concern that we feel like there was a covenant being broken between us and the city as far as land use and that's probably the number one point. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Councilwoman Jansen: Thank you. Mayor Mancino: I understand that covenant. Anyone else? Yes. Vern Lindemann: Good evening. I'm Vern Lindemann. My wife Barbara and I live at 552 Mission Hills Drive. We live in that undesirable townhouse development right next to the new development coming in, or the sublet that doesn't have the single family home. But anyway, my wife and I moved here from Dayton, Ohio. We moved here because we. Mayor Mancino: Yeah Ohio. Excuse me. Vern Lindemann: We love Chanhassen. I think it's a beautiful area. I think you all have done a phenomenal job, and I mean this sincerely, designed this city. Laying out the walking paths and everything you've done here. We love it here. We think, and also the people who I've talked to in the Mission Hills area, we live in the single family garden homes right across from what we call Lake Trotter. That's the little pond in there that my wife plants flowers around. But anyway, the people that we've talked to there that have looked at the plans. They love it. We are for it. We want to see it happen. Yes, the wind blows from the northwest and when there's construction, we're going to get two years of dust blowing into our yards and in our houses and everything else, but we live in a community. We live in a society. We have to put up with some of the inconveniences occasionally for growth. And I would think, what's the alternative? Are you going to ask a landowner to sit on his property for 5 years until 101 decides to do something? I think that's unreasonable. Besides, the other thing my wife and I are looking at is undeveloped, vacant property attracts two legged and four legged rodents. Okay. And we are getting more and more cars pulling in there, people wandering around in there, and we are anxious to see that developed. Something happen in there. I'm with Councilman Senn here. I spent 13 years in law enforcement. Fire departments like to have two way exits from a property, okay. I also found the burglars do too. If I have my choice of living on a thru street or a cul-de-sac, I don't care how long it is, I will pay much more for my property on a cul-de-sac because I know who's coming in there. I know who's going out. I know what kind of traffic should be in there and thank you so much. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. 69 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Tracy Scheid: Hi. I'm Tracy Scheid. I live at 451 Mission Hills Court. I'll be brief because I don't have it in me to be anything else anymore. I'm sure the rest of us are the same way too. I have just a quick handout that I'd like to give everybody. It's really just a one page kind of thing. And I might be a little off base on some of that but I think that, when I was looking at the city code I was trying to interpret to the best of my ability what I thought the heart of it was for us. When we first opened up on this conversation you had placed a picture of somebody asked to see what was surrounding us in the area there. And that is a big issue for us because we are surrounded now on the south side with medium density housing. And somewhat on the west side with medium density housing too. And what you're proposing now is to change, although we're saying it's staying low density, really we're going to put in additional units and we have to rezone it to medium density in order to meet the requirements of this proposal. So you're saying that you want to put it in, or the applicant is saying they want to put in medium density housing on the north side of us as well. I think that for some reason when the plan, the comprehensive plan was laid out, obviously the zoning was indicated as single family residential for some reason. You know we're not asking for the change here. We're asking for the status quo. We would just like, the neighborhood as we envisioned it when we move in to be able to grow. We want it to grow. We don't want it to be undeveloped. We never assumed that the street would not go through. I think that we all knew that that which is a dead end now would be developed into future residential area, but when we look at what could possibly go on that from a single family residential standpoint, the likelihood of there being maybe 20 homes or less is very strong versus the 30 that is proposed and if we get into other possibilities of twin homes and other multi family units, I'm sure that we could squeeze in more units if we wanted to, but I believe that our point is that it was zoned single family residential. We'd like to see it stay that so that we don't, I mean the cul-de-sac, I know you kind of made a joke of that and laughed about it and most people would like to live on a cul-de- sac but when we think of the possibility of 300 additional cars a day coming past our door, that's not so appealing. When we think of traffic generated by the construction for two years of whatever it be, bulldozers, flatbeds, cement trucks, you know vehicles driven by the construction workers, whatever. All of that's coming past us and it's likely starting at the crack of dawn to do so. But you know, there is no temporary access that's going to be allowed for that construction traffic. Likely there's no access that's going to be allowed for many years out to 101. So really anything that goes in here is going to significantly impact those of us who are on Mission Hills Lane and in Mission Hills Court. And we would like for the City Council to consider keeping the zoning as it is and not changing it to a medium density, to a PUD, multi-family but rather keeping it where we feel that we would really be able to celebrate the new addition. And where it would fit nicely into I guess the neighborhood that's already been created there. Thank you. Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Councilwoman Jansen: Thank you. Mayor Mancino: Anyone else, because I'm just going to close this up. It's getting so late. Okay, let's bring it back. It's either now or forever hold your peace. Okay, brining that back. Okay Steve. Steve Kroiss: I'd just like to make a couple of comments of things that I've been hearing here. Number one, there's not going to be 300 cars a day coming through this area. Our experience is such that many of our people only have one car. The trips are going to be more in the neighborhood of 100 to 150 a day with the type of project that we're proposing here. I just, I want to work with Mr. Nickolay to the west here, or excuse me, to my east here a little bit. I'm more than happy to do a couple additional things there and we haven't even had a chance to really move that. I'm willing to move as much as I can. That particular unit to help out his situation and I will have a little more room to operate there. We just haven't had the time to actually initiate that. 70 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: Okay. So you haven't had any private conversations with him? Steve Kroiss: I did initially, but we haven't, the new proposal that is changing this pond here, and we are changing this alignment of the street, we have not done this yet but we certainly can work closer with staff on that to help alleviate any concerns that he may have. Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Okay let's bring this back to council. Councilman Senn, do you want to start? Councilman Senn: You know I think what everybody has to do is look at, and just accept the fact that the cul-de-sac's a given because I don't know what we can do about it. MnDot's MnDot and that's going to be MnDot there for a long time. Because I mean the county's already told us they need to go on a Turnback on that section until 212's being constructed. Until it can be worked into 212's budget and everything else. That's many, many years out. And the county's just as bad at saying no as MnDot is really for all intensive purposes. I mean they try to limit the accesses too. To me I have to kind of attack this I guess two ways. One is, I think between staff and the developers they've done a really good job of putting together what I consider to be a pretty nice project for the property. At the same time though it's kind of like a deal's a deal. And this has kind of come up time and time again in the past. I don't believe in kind of interjecting new zoning or new guiding on areas that weren't planning on getting it. And I think I've been hard line sometimes about saying you know hey, when you bought your home you knew that's what it was going to be so accept it. You know let's not try to change it. But at the same time I'm just as hard line the other way which is hey, listen if you bought and that's what it was, then that's what it should remain unless somebody can come up with something that affectively makes that acceptable to you. So from a perspective of actually changing the zoning, even though I think it's a good project, and a good design, I would side I think with the neighborhood on that. The only thing I would like to do though is tell the neighborhood at the same time to think a little bit beyond the envelope in terms of what you're thinking because what you're thinking is over some very outdated issues like what does this type of housing mean versus that type of housing. I just don't want you to be dismayed when you find out that 20 single family homes are going to probably bring 3 to 4 times the traffic of the housing here that's being suggested to your neighborhood. Just so you understand that because it will. Okay. And that's fundamental because you take a single family home, you're going to have probably 2 cars for husband and wife. You're going to have kids who are going to grow up and have cars. Okay. I live in a cul-de-sac neighborhood and I think we're getting to the point now where each household's averaging about four cars. And it's going to happen to you. So I think you should really just make sure that affectively what you're getting is what you really want, and that's something you have to decide because I firmly think that's your decision. Unless you guys come back in and say that's what we want, from my standpoint, we leave the zoning the same. But at the same time, we've been through this one before too, where a neighborhood comes in and opposes this particular project but, and they also come in and oppose the single family project because they figure that out. That that single family one is going to bring more traffic past their neighborhood. And at that point we have no choice but to say sorry, that's what's in the rules and that's what you're going to get. Because we can't say no to that person, but you've left the decision there and maybe you do or don't want to leave the decision there but I think you should think long and hard about that. Mayor Mancino: Do you have any concern about what kind of single family development would come in next to 1017 Councilman Senn: Well, you know. 71 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: That's my concern. Councilman Senn: We talk about that a lot. I mean the market's going to determine what goes there. Yeah, 101 's a factor. I mean but again, I don't think because the fact that 101 is there is any kind of a new condition. 101's always been there. Yes, maybe it's going to affect what somebody's willing to build in there but I hate to tell you this, I don't think it's going to. Because I really think somebody, you know I mean affectively if this doesn't go there and what you have to come up with here is a plan for 20 15,000 square foot lots and homes, you'll get it because we're running out of basically the property to do it. So the market will bring it and it will come in the not too distant future. And even in that proximity to 101 it will come. And guess what? Given the fact that it will be in that proximity to 101, and single family homes, it will be a lower style product from what is being suggested here on the basis that it is. But again, that's what I was trying to state to the neighborhood about, think about where you're going with this and where it takes you because it will bring in the single family product which will bring in a lower standard as far as single family product goes, and lower standard. I mean if you think through the whole equation, generally it brings in higher populations per household and it brings in higher populations per household. It's going to bring more traffic and a whole bunch of other things. You have to kind of take it all through the nitches and figure where you're going to end up. Mayor Mancino: Any other? You're done? Councilman Senn: Yep. Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilwoman Jansen. Councilwoman Jansen: There were a lot of things about this project that I definitely liked. I mean it is a nice project. I'm having the same reaction for the neighborhood though and again looking at changing zoning now that I've had some negative experiences from other people having done it previously and what the repercussions are, I've looked at some of the ways that you've handled it in the past to maybe make it a little easier or more acceptable and that being more of a gradual transition. And it seems maybe what I'm hearing is the concern being more what's happening right next to them, and I don't know if there are other options for stepping this out with the density and I'm of course thinking of how all of you.., and whether you can actually accomplish a transition here. But the other thing I keep getting hung up on is the 101 situation, and knowing where we end up with MnDot and the County, I see it never going through. Not to be so pessimistic but so then in approaching this, I kept trying to look at this as permanent. And is this the permanent road configuration that even the Fire Marshal would want to see in there. I know that his comments came at it from it's going to be temporary. Well what if it is permanent? Is this the way we would really want to see this constructed? Could we maybe make the roadway flow a little bit better? It just looks like some real steep turns as you're going around. Mayor Mancino: That's called traffic calming. Councilwoman Jansen: That's it, traffic calming. Mayor Mancino: So that everybody does go slow because of all the kids. Councilwoman Jansen: So I mean not to carry on but I guess one of those questions that I got stuck on was is it premature if we can't guarantee that that's going to go out and this is what we're going to be putting in 72 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 there, thinking that this is eventually going to be connected. But at this point if we can't accomplish the transition of density on the property, I'm not comfortable taking this leap with what's there. Mayor Mancino: Councilman Engel. Councilman Engel: Yeah I'm probably going to sound a little bit like a repeat of what Mark said but what I've learned in just 3 years, he's been here almost 8 now, is when you do say no to some projects, you've got to be aware of what could come next that we can't say no to. And when I say can't, if you've been here long enough to listen tonight, there are projects that come in you just can't say no to. They meet all the requirements. And when I look at this, how many families, how many single families go in here? 20? Based on 15,000 foot lots. Kate Aanenson: In this project? No, I think a little bit more than that. Councilman Engel: Okay. And I live in a development like that and just speaking as a homeowner who has three kids, where would I go? No way I'm going to go in there with townhomes, twin homes. I wouldn't want that kind of a development for my family. With kids they need space so they don't drive the neighbors nuts. They're going to go to Highover. They're going to go to Longacres. Going to go to Stone Creek. They're going to go to those kind of homes. If you make this single family, which is what it would have to be, you would start dragging in families like mine and I would increase the traffic and that would be worst. I can simply look at this now and I've seen other developments come in just like this or they're single family. We dealt with this at Walnut Grove and some other places, it's worse to get what you think you want. It may be fewer homes but it's going to bring, I won't say the wrong. It will bring an unattractive mix of traffic into your neighborhood, and it's not going to go through, I agree with that. It's going to be a dead end cul-de-sac. They're going to have to come through the existing streets so I think about that as well, but I wouldn't go for the rezoning unless you want it to. But I just want you to be aware that this thing could come back and it would be single family and it would be lower quality because you won't, you just won't get this kind of a development with fewer homes. I like it. I like what they've got there. I think it's going to get empty nesters just like they're planning and it's going to get less traffic. It's going to get people that want to walk around the trails. But I wouldn't go for it unless the neighbors want it to because they bought based on the zoning they thought it was, but I would advise you to think about it because the alternative I don't think you'll like. You'll like it a lot less, put it that way. Mayor Mancino: Councilman Labatt. Councilman Labatt: Well when I first looked at this I thought, you know it is premature because of the tat situation. And I had some real strong concerns about that. But then you look at it and tat, 5 years or 20 years out, I don't know. I don't have a magic ball. But I also, I mean I also understood Mark and Mark's points on what could be the alternative. And I was in a similar situation where I lived in Brookhill and Village on the Ponds was going to abut me and I moved. And I'm not telling you guys to move but, so I moved and now I live on a street with 17 kids at the bus stop that are between the ages of 8 and 14. So what's going to happen in 5 years? They're going to be all driving and in ta years they're going to be driving and it's going to increase the traffic volume. And I realize that. There will be probably more kids coming to my neighborhood. Scott Botcher: They live at home til they're like 30. 73 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Labatt: I don't know. So I don't know what the best alternative for you is. What impacts you guys the least? This is a good alternative. It's not going to be a perfect world. You know there's things about this, little things that bother me. The houses at the end of the cul-de-sac I think you know, they're just, they're out of place. Having the fronts, the backs overlooking the fronts. And then the question I have is for us at the council is are we setting ourselves up for a whole bunch of variance requests by having the backs of all these units right on the setback point to the buffer. To the wetland. Similar to what we went through with Mr. Radil tonight. You know Longacres created it, or Lundgren Bros created it and they finished the home.., not having the deck and patio he wanted. Now are we doing it here? I think we are. You know these guys aren't going to be, they'll have paver stone patios behind their house because they're right on the setback. Mayor Mancino: They have already taken into the design of these, I'm not sure. Councilman Labatt: Well I don't know. I don't know. Kate Aanenson: Can I just add one comment? That's the staff's position where we felt strongly about doing a PUD as opposed to single family. You get all the individual owners, even if you did twin homes, you've got individual owners with different colors, different designs for the lot. When you have a PUD you have, and this type of a product, you have a tighter homeowners association. For example we've got other projects where they wanted to screen in the porches or whatever. They come in as an association and request the changes and review those kind of carte blanc because they're.., tighter. You have stronger controls. We put the property lines in as such. So we felt like we'd have less problems with that under this scenario as opposed to 10-15 homes along that wetland with different desires for their back yards. Councilman Labatt: Okay. So I don't know, those are my comments. I mean I'm still, I go back and forth either way. In two minutes we have to vote on this thing and you know, I don't know. Mayor Mancino: Well it's pretty evident that we don't have a 4/5 vote to make, doesn't it take 4/5 to make a land use amendment change? Kate Aanenson: Correct. Mayor Mancino: Yeah, so that's pretty, and I guess I agree. Not guess. I know that I agree. There's no question and I've said it many, many times on this council and as a planning commissioner that we certainly do, are proactive in our planning so that when people move in they know exactly what is going to go besides them when they make this investment. Whether it's a business. Whether it's a residence so that is kind of a covenant that we have and I think we do a heck of a job planning ahead and looking at zoning and everything. So number one, state that. But number two, and I feel very much like the other council members that I think this is an excellent, excellent project and I've seen a lot of projects come in being on the council for four years and on the Planning Commission for four years and I think this is a great one and it's a great, the quality of the project. It's almost like buffering the single family from 101. The noise and everything else that you're going to have from a four lane road at some point. And I think that the way that this project is laid out, and kind of clustering it, and leaving all the open space next to the wetland and to the lake is a great amenity and a great amenity for the single family development too. So it's got a lot of very good things going for it. It's one of the best I've seen so you've done a great job. And if this one doesn't work out, I certainly hope that you do look somewhere in Chanhassen because we need this kind of product. We don't have any kind of upper end, clustered, detached single family and then having, I mean it's just a wonderful transition to a highway. And a lot of cities are doing it. Minnetonka, all of them and 74 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 they're wonderful developments. And you know the single family actually seems to like the empty nesters and kind of intergenerational and you know you don't have any crime. You don't have young kids. You don't have teenagers who get into property issues and all sorts of things. Safety concerns so I also want you to really know it because I think it's a great project. Scott Botcher: I think I would recommend that you, and I agree with Mark and Mark. I think that, and Steve. I think probably everybody. Mayor Mancino: You've got to think for the women here. You know you've only turn out.., it's getting late. Scott Botcher: I think I would recommend that the neighbors spend some time with Kate or with Dave with the traffic generation guide book, if I have that thing called by it's correct name because we've done enough of these things. There's simply no doubt and Steve is right, and Mark has kids and you know, I just have two kids and they're 4 and 7 and I just started counting up the trips that between my wife and I, Mark you know what I'm talking about. Councilman Engel: There's ruts in the road between Target and your house. Scott Botcher: It's just a different, I mean I think about it. I would just, I'd really think about this one and I guess if I was to give council recommendation, you have until the 8th, that's your review deadline. Councilman Labatt: The 8th of? Scott Botcher: I guess I'd recommend, I'd just. Mayor Mancino: Table it and give everybody a little bit of time. Scott Botcher: I'd table it and wink at the neighborhood and say, you guys really need to think about this one. Mayor Mancino: It doesn't mean you have to change your mind. It just says. Scott Botcher: No, it does not. There's no obligation. No returns, you know whatever you want to call it. And if it comes back and we don't get a feeling, you don't get the feeling that it's acceptable, then we punt and you can do whatever you want to do. But you've got, like Mark said in the other one, you've got a little bit of time. I'd give primarily I guess the neighborhood time to really think about this. Do some research with Dave and Kate primarily because I tend to agree. Mayor Mancino: And I'd also like to see a little bit, if you don't mind the staff's time really looking at you know how many single family lots could fit back there because you can go into that wetland. I mean you can go into the wetland with the lot line so that, you know you could have pretty narrow lot lines, or pretty narrow lots, frontages and go way back into that wetland and only a little bit of it's really buildable. But you could. Councilman Senn: 10 foot side yards, right? 75 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Mayor Mancino: Yeah, I mean, and then the overall average will still be 15,000 square feet. So know that each lot does not have to be 15,000 square feet. It's the average of the lots in the subdivision, okay. So you can get a lot of square feet in that wetland. Councilman Engel: This gets back to that cautionary point that, if you can do 20, if you're talking 26 buildable lots there Kate, or in that neighborhood. I mean that's not that big a difference between 30 that you're looking at here. So find out. Scott Botcher: ... you have until the 28th. Councilman Senn: I'll move to table this until the next meeting. Councilman Engel: I'll second. Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to table the request for rezoning of 13.41 Acres from RSF to PUD-R, a Land Use Plan Amendment to Change the Designation of Low Density Residential to Medium Density Residential; and Preliminary Plat to Subdivide 13.41 acres into 30 lots for Marsh Glen, MSS Holdings, until the City Council meeting on February 28, 2000. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. Mayor Mancino: So what we'll do is we'll, we will put it on the 28th agenda. Have some time. Talk with the developer if you want to. Staff. Let them show you, you know what else could come in, etc so you have a really good idea. Okay? Fair? Fair enough? Councilman Labatt: I just wanted to ask if the owners would take the position...the barn structure on map, just so you can kind of. Kate Aanenson: Yeah we can do that. Mayor Mancino: Yeah sure. That would be helpful. Councilman Labatt: Can you do that for me? Kate Aanenson: Sure. Mayor Mancino: I can't believe the second thing big tonight we're bringing back again. Scott Botcher: The 28th's my wife's birthday so, Valentine's Day and my wife's birthday. Mayor Mancino: We got a lot done. We got a heck of a lot done. CORRESPONDENCE DISCUSSION. Mayor Mancino: Can I suggest in correspondence that, is there anything just hugely important? Councilman Senn: Yes. One item. Mayor Mancino: One item. Hurry. You've got two seconds. 76 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Senn: Scott. Scott Botcher: Yes. You want golf passes like Labatt? Councilman Senn: Why, does Labatt have them? I told Mancino she couldn't leave that meeting without them. You mean she failed. Some Mayor you are. Mayor Mancino: Yeah. Councilman Senn: So, this deal on DCA. Who picked DCA? Why did we cost it? Did we bid it out? Scott Botcher: We've been meeting with the fire department, or I meet with the fire department on a monthly basis. One of the things that we pursued the pension retirement issues with the fire department. We've been out there for a year or two years or so. We want an idea of what we could do and who would do it and sort of a ballpark deal on what cost is. And so candidly I just called DCA up because they do the Staton Survey. I mean they're known in the industry. Called them and said would you come meet with me? They met with us and we sort of put this together and that was their cost estimate. We haven't committed to anything. We're just, we're trying to formulate, the discussions right now have been whatever is decided, if it's ever decided, will be split between the Fire Relief Association and the City. 50/50. Councilman Senn: Okay. Category One though, why do we have it? It's immaterial. Councilman Labatt: Category one? Councilman Senn: I mean Category One's going to skew the data terribly and it's really immaterial. I mean we should be comparing ourselves to like size cities. You know preferably in. Mayor Mancino: You're saying Eden Prairie and Minnetonka are different. Councilman Senn: Yeah. I'm sorry, we've been through this before. I mean I don't want to get data back on Minnetonka and Eden Prairie and it's going to skew the data way the hell out of where it should be and it just seems to be, it's kind of silly to pay for work to, you know pay for work that's really going to be immaterial. So I suggest you eliminate Category One and go to basically Category Two and concentrate on getting data as it relates to more similar cities. And then one last thing. Scott Botcher: Where's Category One Mark? Councilman Senn: Category One. Councilman Labatt: You mean Group I right? Councilman Senn: Group I, I'm sorry. Scott Botcher: You do not want to do Group I? Councilman Senn: No, I think you should just eliminate it. 77 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Scott Botcher: That's got Chaska, Eden Prairie, Excelsior, Minnetonka, Shakopee, Victoria. Councilman Senn: Yep. Well if any of those are like sized cities to us and fit in... Scott Botcher: Gotch ya. Chaska, Eden Prairie sort of do. Mayor Mancino: But I think we should also look at like sized cities to what we're going to be too because this is, I mean let's not do this again in 5 years when we get bigger. I mean let's you know. Councilman Senn: No, but in 5 years we aren't going to be anywhere, you know half the size of Minnetonka or Eden Prairie. Mayor Mancino: Well I understand those. I understand those. Councilman Senn: Okay. Alright. And last point, just so we understand each other. If you go under Understanding, in the second paragraph. We say we understand the department's desire to compare it's existing compensation and benefits program to those of fire departments in it's marketplace. Okay, maybe this is my, come on Engel, you're going to have fun with this one. My private sector swing but there is only one marketplace. It's our's. It's a monopoly. You're a resident of Chanhassen. You work for the Chanhassen Volunteer Fire Department if you want to be a Volunteer Fire Department person. I mean we aren't trying to attract people from Eden Prairie, Minnetonka or anywhere else. We're the only show in town so why, I guess what I'm... why is a market? Scott Botcher: I think that's where the disagreement is that you're looking to attract and retain employees again over the longer term, who are they competing against? If a person wants to be a volunteer fire fighter and they're paying $12.00 an hour in Excelsior and they're paying $8.00 an hour in Chanhassen, where are you going to go? Councilman Senn: Well if Excelsior, no, no, I'm just saying. But if Excelsior is a community who, well let's not use Excelsior. Let's use Eden Prairie as an example. Okay, substantially larger city. Substantially larger tax base. Substantially larger everything. They can afford to pay more. If that's what's driving that person, then yeah. That's kind of like when you work for the City. That's where you should go get the job if it's a better deal. I mean we can't inflate our marketplace you know at the expense of our taxpayers basically to try to keep up with people we shouldn't be keeping up with. Scott Botcher: No question but I think we need to know what the marketplace is so if we can respond to marketplace demand, that we are able to consider the data and do so if we so choose. You know if we have that, we don't have the ability to do that. Councilman Senn: Okay. Well as long as we keep it in mind, that's all I'm saying. Scott Botcher: And that's part of what we talked about. Our place in the marketplace. Councilman Senn: Alrighty, that was it. Mayor Mancino: It's always good to know what your competitors are doing. Thank you, good night. 78 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Scott Botcher: No, no, no. Sit down. I've been waiting. I've blown my Valentine's. Councilman Senn: You mean he doesn't know this is a dictatorship. Scott Botcher: I'll go real fast. Unfortunately both of them involve money so I need your thinking hat on. Mayor Mancino: Oh yeah right. Scott Botcher: One of them is more timely. Councilman Senn: You see now where we've come with money... Scott Botcher: I know. Just one is more timely than the other. One is, I got a call from Ron Beatty and there is an opportunity for legislative action that might help solve our $700,000 dilemma. There's currently a bill, on the TIF, there's currently a bill sponsored by the League of Minnesota Cities that is sort of a clean-up bill. It has a number of issues in it. One of the issues is the 10 year deal, you know from the date of inception. It's been recommended by Beatty, and I'll certainly and I told him, somewhat self serving for him to do so. Unless of course Roger wants to do it for nothing, that we participate. And we have Workman and Oliver submit a bill of general import. Is that what they call it? General import, with this 10 year clean-up provision in it. That we then sort of watch to see what happens to the League bill. Let them take the lead on it. The concern with the League, and this is not uncommon, is that they serve so many masters, depending on what's important to whom, who knows if this thing will get dealt out in the last second. However, we've got to boogey and apparently we've got to get something in there by Thursday, I was told. Now it's a very simple bill. You just, you know it's...line or whatever. I asked him, I said how much? He said well it depends. If we lay low it could be a couple thousand bucks. If you participate very active in the whole hearing, the whole shebang, it could run 10 to 12. I tend to believe that given that it could, and it would be retroactive. The League bill is retroactive. It could make our little $700,000 problem go away. That's what I've been told by both League and by Beatty. I think it might be money well spent at least to throw it in the hopper. Spend a little bit of money at the outset and throw it in the hopper and just let it trail along with the League bill. You know it would, and I've got my notes. I talked to him again. A retroactively redefine the duration limit for economic development districts dropped to the 10 years after the date of plan. The only thing that will be remaining will the 8 years after the first date of receipt. Mayor Mancino: So again, it's not special legislation. It's just. Scott Botcher: General legislation. Councilman Senn: Well it's general legislation but it's got to be in by the deadline so. Scott Botcher: Got to be in by the deadline. And the deadline's Thursday. Councilman Senn: Don't we pay Beatty already? Scott Botcher: We pay him on an hourly basis for work. Mayor Mancino: But not a retainer. 79 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Scott Botcher: He's not on a retainer. It's not like Campbell-Knutson. Councilman Senn: But who's the guy that we pay at the legislature all the time to lobby for us and do everything? We pay him $1,000 a month. We have for 8 years since I've been here. Mayor Mancino: Then who is it? Councilman Senn: Well that's what I'm asking. Scott Botcher: I don't know of an individual that we do that to. Councilman Senn: Yeah we do. We pay somebody. Scott Botcher: We're a member of AMM. Councilman Senn: No. It's something that there is, this is something that it's a much smaller group of communities. I think it's called the Southwest, I mean not transportation coalition but it's another one of those wonderful names that you get confused with it, but I mean it's like Southwest Coalition or something like that. Mayor Mancino: Let me ask, is that person good? We don't even know who they are. Councilman Senn: Well I assume they're good, otherwise why does staff keeping coming...We pay his whole bill and collect from the other communities every month. Mayor Mancino: Well first, let's check and see. Councilman Senn: I'm just bringing it up. Scott Botcher: I don't know Mark. That's the answer. Councilman Senn: I'm just bringing it up because if we're paying somebody already to do that, let's not double do it. Otherwise let's pay Beatty to do the minimum and not get... Scott Botcher: We have the benefits, since the law of general interest and general import that it wouldn't just be Chanhassen's special legislation so Ron Abrams could say.., and does whatever. Bottom line, I think it's worth a couple thousand bucks at least at the outset, and even if we decide we don't want to do it, we can tell him. We can tell him we don't want to spend any hearing money. We'll just let it go...but I think it's worth going, throw a little seed money up at this face. You've got $711,000... so I will direct him to do that. He will contact Workman and Oliver tomorrow. Mayor Mancino: Good. Good, and they can give us a read on how it's going. There's no question. Our representatives. Scott Botcher: They will present the trailer bill. Second thing is, and you guys can, and this one's not so hard because we can table this or just delay it to the 28th. Lake Ann Park building. Councilman Senn: Now which one are we talking about? 80 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Scott Botcher: The maintenance building. Not the shelter. I'm sorry, it is getting late. We have requested from Engelhardt fee for quote architectural services. If there's an interest on the part of the council to pursue a more architectural building. Now we also are sort of pursuing it and talking to the Butler Building people. You can build a Butler Building and put brick all around it and all that sort of stuff. But I talked with a couple of you and there may, I just got the feeling there may be an interest in pursuing more of an architectural building. Councilwoman Jansen: Instead of metal. Instead of trying to hide it in the woods. Scott Botcher: Well or instead of having even the Butler Building covered with face brick or something as an example. If you want to talk about that tonight, or if you just want to wait until the 28th. I mean we're under a time crunch but I think we can make it til the 28th. But I just, I need you guys to start thinking about that because we can't really go. Councilman Senn: Well somebody's going to probably want to shoot me for this comment but and it's probably the Mayor but that's alright. We won't get into that... I really don't think it's worth our effort to spend a lot of money, or look at spending a lot of money on an architecturally significant building. Okay, so I just think the definition here is important. To me if we were going to undertake the use of an architect to decide whether we could build a far less environmentally damaging and more functional building for the long term, you know such as one built in kind of under, you know partially under the ground, into the hill with possibly a roof structure that would hold storage from the upper level, etc. Something like that where it's a win/win you know environmentally, functionally, everything else. I would say yes. But if it's purely to make something look nice because we want it to look nice, I would vote no to that. Scott Botcher: Well there's, I mean I think honestly there's sentiments on the council both ways. I mean I think that we want it to, we want to have a building that is respectful to our community. We don't want to look like we're, I can respect the fact that we don't want to look like we're throwing up schlock. We don't want to do that. The thing we want to balance out, the fiduciary responsibility of the taxpayers. Even if you do your underground building, which is one of the things we're still talking about. You know the bunker deal. You will need someone to sign the plans. You know draw them up and sign them. So either way you're going to do that. I guess I'm just throwing it out. You need to really start thinking about it so on the 28th we've got to sort of crap or get off the pot on which way we're going with this. Councilman Senn: But we ought to be able to get Engelhardt to, I mean if we're talking about putting together affectively a rough plan and concept that would work without getting into actual working drawings, I mean we ought to be able to get data on a building like this for somewhere for $3,000 to $5,000 at the most. Councilman Engel: I was going to say, what.., cost for this? Scott Botcher: And I think you're probably right in what you said. We've asked for what's the worse case. You know we've asked him for worse case. If they were to do structural, mechanical, electrical design, bid documents and bidding, so we just said you know I want to give you the full picture. That's $16,500. That means that Engelhardt's bid and Brauer, Bower, whoever that guy is, are pretty close. They're within $1,000-$2,000 of each other in the grand scheme of things. If you want to do what you wanted to do, and maybe we can get something less but I want to give you the full picture because I'm not sure that the whole council's on the same page. 81 City Council Meeting - February 14, 2000 Councilman Engel: What's the structure though, the difference in the cost of the structure? Scott Botcher: Well Bill just bid it based upon the 68 x 120 cold storage park maintenance building, which is what the other guy did too. Councilman Labatt: Like a pole barn? Scott Botcher: No, concrete warehouse sort of a deal. Councilman Engel: And what the quote to do that? Scott Botcher: $16,500. Is that what you just asked me? Councilman Engel: Yeah, the bump to go from steel to a brick front? Scott Botcher: Oh, the cost of the building? Councilman Engel: Yeah. Scott Botcher: Don't know yet. Don't know. Councilman Engel: Guess. Scott Botcher: I couldn't guess. I'm not going to. Mayor Mancino: Well let's talk about it on the 28th. Scott Botcher: Be ready on the 28th...we can't table it. Mayor Mancino: The only thing that I can say is, I don't think anybody is talking about an architecturally significant.., that people are talking about. I don't think anybody's talking about an architecturally significant one but again, something that goes in with the, with our public community park that is going to be there for a long time and etc so. Scott Botcher: You know you look at the height of the building, you may go tip up against brick as a labor cost. I mean there's things to be considered. Mayor Mancino adjourned the City Council meeting at 11:45 p.m. Submitted by Scott Botcher City Manager Prepared by Nann Opheim 82