CC 2013 04 22
CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL
REGULAR MEETING
APRIL 22, 2013
Mayor Furlong called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to
the Flag.
COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT:
Mayor Furlong, Councilman McDonald, Councilwoman
Tjornhom, Councilwoman Ernst, and Councilman Laufenburger
STAFF PRESENT:
Todd Gerhardt, Paul Oehme, Kate Aanenson, Todd Hoffman, Greg Sticha, Jill
Sinclair, Jerry Ruegemer, and Roger Knutson
PUBLIC PRESENT:
Lance & Diane Erickson 7735 Vasserman Trail
Daly Myers 7421 Windmill Drive
Cathy Meyer 7662 Ridgeview Way
Kathie Price 7569 Ridgeview Point
Miron Marcotte 7240 Galpin Boulevard
Tom Bell 7381 Fawn Hill Road
Ken Wench 8412 Waters Edge Drive
Anny Heggelman 7712 Vasserman Trail
Kathryn Peterson 7713 Vasserman Place
Roger Van Haafter 2102 Clover Court
Norma May 2050 Clover Court
Denn Kelly 9100 Overlook Court
Dan Bock 7677 Vasserman Trail
Stacy Beno 7563 Ridgeview Point
William Brown 7676 Prairie Flower Boulevard
Chuck & Loretta Gaetzing 7521 Windmill
Joel Robertson 7596 Walnut Curve
Lori Moser 7632 Ridgeview Way
Joe Kieffer 7602 Ridgeview Way
Andy Maus 7656 Ridgeview Way
Keith & Regina Deanes 7651 Ridgeview Way
Nicole Muschewske 2241 Hunter Drive
Eileen Kieffer 7602 Ridgeview Way
Craig & Nora Stacey 7699 Ridgeview Way
David & Shawna Kersten 7561 Beacon Court
Jinjun Xrao 7704 Vasserman Place
Brad Hodgins 7633 Vasserman Trail
Mike Shields 7759 Vasserman Trail
Larry Martin 7725 Vasserman Trail
Laurie Susla 7008 Dakota Avenue
Paul Brady 2028 Clover Court
Ron Kleve 7307 Laredo Drive
Cole Kelly 1556 Bluebill Trail
Luke Thunberg 1701 Mayapple Pass
Brent Carron 7059 Highover Drive
Debby Tysdal 7661 Arboretum Village Lane
Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Stephanie Klein 7710 Ridgeview Way
Melissa Crow 7663 Ridgeview Way
Mike Muffenbier 7675 Ridgeview Way
Scott Yager 2351 Hunter Drive
Jeff Weyandt 7626 Ridgeview Way
J.P. Meyer 6980 Lora Lee Lane, Eden Prairie
Art Roberts 7762 Vasserman Place
Dave Callister 7541 Windmill Drive
Mark Magnuson 7715 Vasserman Trail
Doug Allen 2250 Lukewood Drive
David Windschitl Vasserman Ridge Neighborhood
Matt Thomas 2555 Longacres Drive
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Mayor Furlong: Thank you everybody and welcome to the meeting this evening. We’re glad that you
joined us here in the chambers as well as those watching at home. I don’t know about the other council
members but it’s always nice when you have a full crowd and you say the Pledge of Allegiance and you
hear it from all around you so thank you for participating with me in that. I’d like to start with some
public announcements and start with an invitation to our Arbor Day Celebration. Since 1876 Minnesota
has been, was the fourth state to adopt Arbor Day as an annual celebration. Each year Chanhassen
celebrates Arbor Day in order to set aside time for us to appreciate our trees and the forest around us
within the community. Planting trees as beauty and character to our neighborhoods, reduces energy costs
and provides other benefits as well. I’d like to invite all area residents, their families, friends to
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Chanhassen’s Arbor Day event which is coming up on Saturday, May 4 at Lake Susan Park. We’ll
gather at the picnic shelter there at Lake Susan Park to welcome everyone and volunteers there will be
gathering to plant shade trees around the north half of the park. Refreshments and tree, Arbor Day related
information will be available after the plantings. The event is held rain and shine and trust me last year
when it was raining, we still held it but I encourage everybody to dress for the weather and please come
out and join us. Bring a shovel if you have one. Gloves. Working gloves are helpful as well. Boots if
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it’s wet and Mr. Gerhardt has guaranteed that the snow will be gone by May 4 so thank you Mr.
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Gerhardt for stepping out on that one. Saturday, May 4, Lake Susan, 9:00 at the picnic shelter. I
encourage everyone to join me. At this time, let me back up real quick here. I got ahead of myself.
Members of the council, are there any changes or modifications to the agenda? If not, we’ll proceed as,
without objection. At this time we have some presentations to make so I’m going to step down in front
and have some people come up and join me.
PRESENTATION OF ARBOR DAY POSTER CONTEST WINNERS.
Mayor Furlong: I think we have, we’re going to start with presenting for the Arbor Day poster contest
and we have a couple members of our Environmental Commission here this evening. Matthew Myers
and Katie Mahannah. Good evening. Thank you for coming. Alright, what I’d like to do is, I hope
everybody can hear me. On behalf of the City Council and Environmental Commission this evening I’d
like to congratulate the winners of this year’s Arbor Day poster contest. The City’s been sponsoring this
contest for 14 years in order to express our City’s commitment to trees. Every year local fifth graders are
invited to submit drawings about the annual theme. This year’s theme was Trees are Terrific and My
Favorite Tree Is, so we’ll see what the favorite tree is. The City would like to thank the fifth graders from
St. Hubert and Bluff Creek Elementary for participating for all their wonderful drawings. We’d also like
to thank the Garden for the generous donation and price winner of a potted tree of their choice. The
framed winning picture will hang in City Hall along side past winners and if you have a chance to see
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
them, there are some down here, outside council chambers as well as upstairs outside the Fountain
Conference Room. At this time I’d like to invite some students to come up. These are the runners up for
this year’s poster contest and when I read your name if you could come up here and receive a certificate.
We’ll start with Brandon Acosta. Is Brandon here tonight? No? Next one. Adam Beer. Hi Adam.
Carley Connelly. Is Carley Here? Excellent. Sydney Curtis. Is Sydney here? Hi Sydney. Miguel
Lantigua. Is Miguel here? Allison Sosa Lopez. Is Allison here? No? Not tonight. Adelaide McGinnis.
Elizabeth Murphy. Is Elizabeth here? Dain Nelson. Rocky Paullus. Rocky. Nora Wagner. Is Nora
here? No? Okay. Thank you. And now I’d like to invite this year’s grand prize winner to come forward
and that’s Lucy Treat. Why don’t we pull in here. Can you get everybody. Parents if you want to come
up, this would be a good time. Very good. How about one more round of applause for everybody.
PRESENTATION OF AWARDS/CERTIFICATES FOR OUTGOING COMMISSIONERS.
Mayor Furlong: We have some more seats if people would like to come and fill in on the seats now.
Thank you so much to those children for coming. This evening we’d also like to make some
presentations, Certificate of Appreciation as well as some Maple Leaf Awards to some of our outgoing
commission members. The City has four commissions. The City Council has four commissions to which
we appoint residents. Those commissions include the Park and Recreation Commission, Senior
Commission, Planning Commission and Environmental Commission. Each year anywhere from 2 to 3
seats associated with those commissions come up. We have a number of people apply for them and part
of our toughest job throughout the year is deciding who out of the great people that are applying for
positions are coming. We do have a few people leaving and so I’d like to start by inviting Peter Aldritt up
from our Park and Recreation Commission. Is Peter here? There he is. Good evening Peter. Peter was a
member of our Park and Recreation Commission beginning in 2011 through 2013. He proved to be a
wonderful addition to the commission and served residents with enthusiasm and pride. He provided
insightful comments and recommendations throughout the meetings and was always eager to hear from
residents. Having grown up in Chanhassen Peter brought a valuable sense of history to the commission.
During his tenure Peter volunteered to work at many of the community special events and was once
spotted I’m told supporting a Cat in the Hat outfit for Halloween. Is that true?
Peter Aldritt: That’s right. That’s right.
Mayor Furlong: That’s true, excellent. Thank you. That position’s still open each year even if you’re not
on the commission so you’re welcome to come back. Peter supported new investments in the City’s park
and trail system, having worked on the Highway 41 project, tennis court resurfacing, disc golf project and
other components as well. The City of Chanhassen’s a better place because of Peter’s efforts. His desire
to serve and make a difference so Peter on behalf of the City Council thank you so much for your service.
Peter Aldritt: Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Robert Kircher, is Bob here? Did Bob make it? No? Okay. Bob served on the
Environmental Commission since 2010 and we appreciate his service as well. Let’s go to, now we have a
Maple Leaf Award for Kathleen Thomas. How are you?
Kathleen Thomas: Good, thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Kathleen was appointed to the Planning Commission in 2006 and her
service involved numerous development projects including code amendments, conditional use permits,
interim use permits, site plan reviews, subdivisions, variances, wetland alteration permits and has
participate in the ebb and flow of development of the city. During her tenure the commission
accomplished a number of projects including the update of the 2030 Comprehensive Plan and the
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
amendments of commercial and industrial residential planned unit developments incorporated into the
City Code. Kathleen served as the commission Vice Chair in 2011 and 2012 as well. Kathleen’s been a
resident of Chanhassen for approximately 10 years. Brought a unique perspective and valuable insight to
the Planning Commission and her passion for the city was evident in the way she participated on the
commission and prepared for the meetings and served our goals. She helped us with the City Council
with establishing goals and policies and code requirements and contributed to the discussion of
development. Kathleen, on behalf of the Chanhassen City Council thank you so much for your service on
the Planning Commission. We really appreciate it.
Kathleen Thomas: Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: And we have another Maple Leaf Award this evening for Tom Kelly on the Park and
Recreation Commission. Is Tom here? Tom Kelly served on the Park and Recreation Commission
member from 2002 through 2013. A long time resident of Chanhassen Tom brought with him a true
passion and dedication to serve his community and fellow citizens. Tom was not just a commissioner, he
was a participant and a leader in nearly all the activities and programs sponsored by the program. Young
at heart, blessed with boundless energy Tom eagerly volunteered to do the heavy lifting on dozens of
projects big and small. Throughout his 12 years of service Tom was considerate to all. Welcomed the
input and assistance from others in order to better accomplish the task at hand. During his tenure Tom
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volunteered hundreds of hours to work on all the department’s special events, including 4 of July
celebration, Halloween Party, February Festival, and Easter Egg Candy Hunt. Tom excelled in the July
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4 and February Festival activities. He actively supported the creation of the new recreation offerings
throughout the city and the establishment of the Rec Center Sports program, Minnewashta Off Leash Dog
Park, the Chanhassen Red Birds baseball team, the newly remodeled skate park and above all Tom
chaired the efforts and the annual bike ride in the city as well. Tom was undeterred when the City’s first
disc golf course proposal failed to reach approval quickly. He assembled a group of people and the disc
golf course advocates and crafted a second and even better plan for a disc golf course here in Chanhassen.
The new Bandimere disc golf course opened to the public in May of 2012. Looking for his next project
Tom went on to be this area’s first youth ultimate Frisbee league open to all fifth and eighth graders.
Tom has been a big supporter, or was a big supporter of the Dave Huffman Memorial Run and chaired the
effort to incorporate kids for a fun run into the event. Pioneer Pass Park, Riley Ridge Park were acquired
with Tom’s help. These new neighborhood parks will serve hundreds of families in the community
starting this year and he also played a major role in the expansion of Bandimere Community Park and the
City’s trail system. The unique thing about Tom is his commitment to a new idea. Tom wasn’t just
dreamed up good ideas but he followed through on them and saw that they happened. Tom it’s a great
pleasure that we honor you this evening retiring from the Park and Recreation Commission with the
Chanhassen Maple Leaf Award. Thank you so much for your years of service.
CONSENT AGENDA:
Councilman Laufenburger moved, Councilwoman Ernst seconded to approve
the following consent agenda items pursuant to the City Manager’s recommendations:
a. Approval of Minutes:
-Joint City Council/Planning Commission Work Session Minutes dated April 2, 2013
-City Council Work Session Minutes dated April 8, 2013
-City Council Verbatim and Summary Minutes dated April 8, 2013
Receive Commission Minutes:
-Planning Commission Verbatim and Summary Minutes dated April 16, 2013
-Park and Recreation Commission Verbatim and Summary Minutes dated March 26, 2013
b. Approve Purchase of Riley Ridge Park Playground Equipment and Picnic Shelter.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
c. Approve Amendment to City Code Concerning Park and Recreation Commission Membership.
d. Award of Bid: Replacement of City Hall Copiers.
Resolution #2013-24:
f. Approve Trunk Highway 5 Signal Painting Quote.
Resolution #2013-25:
g. Approval of Resolution Proclaiming Arbor Day as May 4, 2013.
h. Approval of Fireworks Display Permit for Lake Minnewashta Fireworks Committee, July 4,
2013, Americana Fireworks Display Company.
Resolution #2013-26:
i. Approve Resolution Accepting 2013 Community Events Sponsorship
Donations from Area Businesses.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS.
Laurie Susla: Hi, my name is Laurie Susla. I live on Dakota Avenue in Chanhassen and I just wanted to
thank you all for the productive conversation that happened during the working session this evening
around AIS. We do appreciate the conversation. There’s a lot of very strong ideas around the topic and I
think the idea that was put forward tonight of putting together a task force or a sub-commission to gather
people from different points of view and try to come up with a plan that may be a little stronger than the
one that’s currently proposed would be a wonderful idea. I know there’s a lot of support for that type of
thing in the community. And as I said at the working session there is no perfect plan. There is no perfect
anything but we can really strive for better and so that’s what we’d like to see. We’d like to see some
next steps come out of this that maybe we could put together a commission or a task force that would pull
together people with all sorts of opinions. Not to draw this out for another 3 years. Nobody wants that
but just to get this done. Get it done quickly. Get it done with a variety of points of view. We’d really
like to see some next steps come out of this. Thank you very much.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Anyone else for visitor presentations this evening? No?
LAW ENFORCEMENT/FIRE DEPARTMENT UPDATE.
Mayor Furlong: At this time then we’ll move forward with our monthly updates from law enforcement
and the fire department, and I see Lieutenant Enevold is trying to work his way in from the hallway.
Good evening Lieutenant. Carver County Sheriff’s Office.
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Good evening Mr. Mayor, council. Lovely evening.
Mayor Furlong: Where have you been?
Lt. Jeff Enevold: I’m on the golf course right now. I was supposed to present a Citizens Coin tonight and
I want to make sure that Judy Frane is not here. I didn’t see her come in. Okay. Then we’ll have to
reschedule that but I’ll at least talk about what she did to deserve the coin and then we’ll invite her back at
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a different time to present it so move onto the next one. What Judy did is on Saturday, March 23 at
about 9:30 in the evening she called 911 to report an erratic driver. She witnessed the vehicle strike a
pole on Great Plains Boulevard near the Kwik Trip and the vehicle actually shredded the tire and
continued driving on. She agreed to follow the vehicle and updated dispatch on where it was going so the
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
deputies could intercept it and track it down. She followed it to a business on Coulter Boulevard. The
deputy was able to get there and identify the driver and arrest him for DWI and the test came back over a
.20 so she did a great job for us. Got a DK driver off the road for us and we’ll reschedule her and get her
back here so we can present that coin. Next slide, real quickly students are excited about prom coming
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up. It’s May 4. It’s the end of the school year. You wouldn’t know it obviously by looking outside
there but the months of April, May and June combined for the highest percentage of unbelted teen deaths
in the past 3 years in Minnesota. There have been 30 teen deaths in April, May and June in the last 3
years. 63% of those or 19 of them weren’t wearing a seat belt. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of
death for Minnesota teens. You can see there were 103 teen deaths in the last 3 years. Some of the
contributing factors, poor seat belt use. I have two teen drivers and I get in the car. I’m driving and my
daughter will sit in the passenger side and I’ve seen her do it. She’ll take the seat belt and throw it under
her arm and I’ll have to give her the look. And she looks back at me like what are you talking about? I
say put that seat belt on right so it happens. Driver inexperience. When I get in the car with my son and
he’s driving, it’s like having an invisible steering, invisible break peddle. You know I’m doing this so it
happens but these young drivers are risk takers. They’re over confident. They’ll do stuff that they’re not
ready to do yet. Distractions. Texting. Radio. They’ve got friends in the car so this is really a great time
and a great opportunity for all of us here to remind our teens about the importance of seal belt use and
good driving habits. The last thing I want to update you on is a burglary update. On April 10, 2013 we
got a call to Gina Marie’s Pizza that had been burglarized. They smashed out the front window. At the
time we had a pretty good idea of who the suspect was. Today he was arrested in Hennepin County. One
of our investigators went over to Hennepin County Jail and interviewed him. Got a confession from the
suspect and charges will be pending here in Carver County so it was a great way to solve that case. And I
think that’s all I’ve got. Questions. Comments.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Questions for Lieutenant Enevold this evening. Lieutenant and Judy
Frane’s activities probably explain it better than anything but one of the items that you’ve talked about
before is encouraging people, encouraging residents to call in when they see something suspicious or
wrong. As we get into the spring months here and the summer months, do you want to take just a few
minutes and talk a little bit more about what you’re looking for and the help you’re seeking from
residents.
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Absolutely. The statistics for Chanhassen is that, what I’ve seen is June, July and
August are the three highest months in calls for service and that involves some of the thefts and vandalism
and stuff in the neighborhood so if anybody sees anything unusual in their neighborhood, driving in their
car, you know don’t be hesitant. Don’t be afraid to call 911. Let us know about it. We can send a deputy
there to investigate it. Call 911, the same dispatcher answers the phone as if you call the non-emergency
number so don’t be hesitant to call 911 and we’ll send somebody there to investigate it.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Crimes of opportunity are also an issue. Probably one of…
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Absolutely. Yeah, boy we could certainly use the public’s help in you know if you’re
going to leave your car outside, lock it up. Take any valuables. Computers. Anything out of there
because that’s what the burglars do or the thieves do. They’ll go through and they’ll look in the cars. If
there’s nothing of value they’ll move onto the next one. If they see it they’ll smash a window, open the
door and take that stuff out so crimes of opportunity we can eliminate those. We can eliminate a lot of
crimes in the city.
Mayor Furlong: Very good, thank you. Any other questions? Lieutenant, thank you.
Lt. Jeff Enevold: Thank you Mr. Mayor, council.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Mayor Furlong: This evening we’ll get an update too from the Chanhassen Fire Department. Chief John
Wolff is here. Good evening Chief.
Chief John Wolff: Good evening Mayor. Good evening council. I’d like to dispense from the regular
report tonight. 3 weeks ago our most senior fire fighter, Dale Gregory announced his retirement. Dale
served the fire department for 42 years. I’d like to invite Dale and his wife Roseanne to the front along
with the Mayor and the City Manager and my two assistant chiefs. Dale joined the fire department on
March 31, 1971 and he’ll be retiring on April 30, 2013. Along with his wife Roseanne, who was a
Chanhassen business owner and also a great supporter of the fire department. She headed up our
Chanhassen Fire Department Women’s Auxiliary for many, many years while that organization was
active. Dale’s served in a variety of roles on the fire department. He was an Assistant Chief from 1979 to
1987. He was the Fire Chief from 1988 to 1991 and he served as a Battalion Chief for us for the past 15
years so 27 years out of the 42 as a chief officer for the Chanhassen Fire Department. The fire
department’s only been around for 47 years and Dale’s been, and I took a look at the list of members and
half of the current fire fighters weren’t even born when Dale joined. Dale’s a fire fighter and a leader that
certainly led by example. He did this by setting high standards for himself and never asked anything of
anyone that he wouldn’t personally do himself. You could always count on Dale to be there. He was
passionate and he was also a big advocate for fire fighter safety and making sure that we did things right.
While Dale served as our fire chief he took delivery of Ladder 11, one of our largest capital purchases
ever. He also spearheaded the Station One renovation in 1990 and he was a key implementer of our
health surveillance program back in the early days. After his term ended he served in the ladder company
for many years and led that group. Dale’s been a great asset for the Chanhassen Fire Department and to
the citizens of Chanhassen. We will miss his commitment. His dedication. His experience and his
passion. Thank you Dale. Thank you Roseanne.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you Chief. For those at home, I don’t know if the camera showed but the entire
perimeter of the council chambers were lined with members of our fire department so we’re certainly
going to miss Dale’s service to the city and we thank him for the many, many years and his wife as well
for supporting him during that time. Yep, he’ll be continuing as an employee of the City, correct? Okay.
Just the fire department. And we’ll let the hallways clear as people come out and others come in. Thank
you and welcome to our council meeting. Let’s move forward with our agenda this evening.
CHANHASSEN APARTMENTS, LOCATED ON THE NORTHWEST CORNER OF HIGHWAY
5 AND GALPIN BOULEVARD, APPLICANT: OPPIDAN, INC./OWNER: AMERICANA
COMMUNITY BANK-CHANHASSEN:
A. REQUEST FOR REZONING APPROXIMATELY 14 ACRES FROM AGRICULTURAL
ESTATE (A-2) TO PLANNED UNIT DEVELOPMENT-RESIDENTIAL (PUD-R);
B. SITE PLAN REVIEW WITH VARIANCES FOR A 155-UNIT APARTMENT BUILDING,
LAND USE MAP AMENDMENT FROM RESIDENTIAL-LOW DENSITY AND OFFICE
TO RESIDENTIAL-LOW AND HIGH DENSITY AND OFFICE AND RESIDENTIAL-
HIGH DENSITY PLANNED UNIT DEVELOPMENT (PUD).
Mayor Furlong: Let’s start with a staff report please if we can Ms. Aanenson and then we’ll probably
have some questions from council. I know we have a number of residents here. I’m guessing that they
have some questions as well. We’ll certainly have an opportunity for the applicant to talk and we’ll
probably have some public comment. I don’t want to, members of the council received the Planning
Commission minutes. The verbatim minutes so we’ve read all those comments so we don’t need a repeat
of the Planning Commission but if there are some public comments of something that’s occurred since the
Planning Commission, tonight we’ll have that opportunity as well so Ms. Aanenson, thank you for sitting
through my introduction and let’s go with the staff report please.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: Yes, yes. Thank you Mayor, members of the City Council. This item did appear before
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the Planning Commission at their April 16 meeting and they did recommend unanimously to recommend
approval of this project. As you stated Mayor there’s a number of actions required. Amending the City
Code. Defining a conservation area. A site plan review with variances. A rezoning and then a land use
amendment. So with that, we did talk about this project in a concept review in a modified, where we
didn’t give the formalized recommendation but a public hearing was held before the Planning
Commission last year for a concept and as did the City Council review the concept and gave some
directions to the applicant to come back through but I think it’d be helpful to go back and, I don’t know if
that’s you or me that’s hitting. To go back through and revisit some of the things that we talked about in
the concept to kind of continue to frame up the discussion points here. So this property is guided, or
excuse me it’s currently zoned Agricultural. We consider that a holding zone until a project comes
forward. Again the site is guided for office. It was done in the last Comprehensive Plan guided for office
on the south side and low density residential. I know there’s been a lot of discussion and I’m sure you’ve
gotten some correspondence regarding changing of the Comprehensive Plan. It’s been stated that it
should only be changed during the time of when we do a comp plan amendment every 10 years but
historically changes have been made. Whether a request comes from the City or for an applicant to revisit
that in and of itself and I just wanted to reiterate that you do have a level of discretion. It is a policy
decision of whether or not you want to change the Comprehensive Plan. Again it does take review by the
surrounding jurisdiction and then obviously the Met Council and this project would be subject to approval
by those agencies. But I also want to point out, if you look at what it states in our Comprehensive Plan,
this is on the City’s website, that the Comprehensive Plan is designed to serve as a guide for decision
making, and again we’ll go through those discussion points but in the concept review and in this report
too we talk about the goals and policies that this project would meet. Again the Comprehensive Plan is
designed to be flexible depending on policy changes that would come into place but our goal through this
process was to explain to you what goals and policies this project would meet coming forward as it is
shown to you today. So again the land use change would be required for this project to move forward.
The subject site, Paul and I are trying to figure out who’s got control of the mouse here so sorry about
that. So the subject site, the site is currently vacant. Was used as a business. This is Bluff Creek runs to
the northern edge of this property and relatively flat. It does have woods around it. There is the high
tension power line that also runs through the site. As we talked about in the other site, it is surrounded by
a neighborhood commercial on the east. On the west is a subdivision. The Vasserman Ridge subdivision.
Twin homes and single family. Low density project and then the Walnut Grove neighborhood which is
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also a mix. Is bordered by Highway 5 and a county road and then a collector street, West 78. So the
history of the site, it was used as a golf course and a driving range and pitch and putt and kind of a
miniature golf. When Highway 5 was built in order to accommodate the golf tournament out on
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Hazeltine, the State advanced the construction of that and actually pursued building West 78 to
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accommodate the re-routing of traffic through this site so West 78 was acquired and built as that by-
pass. I know it’s been brought up that the underlying property owner was compensated. That’s a
standard practice. Property owners were compensated along 212, Powers Boulevard, 101 for the
improvements. The gap project. All those projects so that’s a normal course of business. Whether Mr.
Pryzmus was compensated because he had a loss of business, we can’t, I can’t definitively state on that
but that’s a normal practice on that, for that to happen. That property owners are compensated. You’ll be
seeing a project we talked about on concept, Mr. Klingelhutz who was completely compensated for taking
is still coming back for a project on that so, for us as a staff we don’t see that as a point of whether or not
the land use should be changed. We’re looking again at the Comprehensive Plan. So this street is
classified as a major collector. That is one of the statements in the Comprehensive Plan that apartments
should be located on collector streets or they have good access to the downtown. This collector street
runs all the way from 41 to Powers Boulevard and ultimately ties back in through downtown over to 101,
another major collector so again that’s consistent with one of the goals in the City’s Comprehensive Plan.
We talked about in the Comprehensive Plan that this was guided for office institutional and in really kind
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
of framing up how we, the city staff saw this project is looking at potential uses that could go on it as an
office institutional. We gave you some examples of Park Nicollet, Ridgeview Clinic, a church that could
potentially going on that site. Looking at the acreage, the amount of parking. The trips being generated.
Looking at that things being equal and location, that’s where we said that you know if you looked
apartment and maybe peak hours of some of these uses may be more conflicting as an apartment where
there may be more distribution of trips that we felt that the office institutional use going to a residential
would actually not be an up-zone in our mind. If you look at the hierarchy of zoning residential than
office then commercial, industrial so we did not see that as a up-zone. Again tying that back to the
Comprehensive Plan, in the availability of office institutional you’ll note that that was one of the zoning
districts that we actually added quite a bit of in the last iteration when we looked at what was happening
down in the 212 corridor. We added a significant amount of office industrial so taking this acreage out
does not deviate or hurt what the goals were stated in the Comprehensive Plan. Again the height under
this was 2 stories but we noted in several situations where we’ve actually granted additional height in
those office institutional that are abutting Highway 5. Specifically on Park Nicollet who can go to the 47
feet high. The neighbors behind that actually were supportive of that. Again we talked about that in the
concept for the buffering and the noise attenuation that that provided ultimately when that strip center
goes away, they will provide the additional story when they do additional would need to be provided for
that. Again just talking a little bit about the density transfer. How that works. I had some examples of
that and again we talked about this at concept but just kind of make sure that we’re tracking this through.
How we do a density transfer. There’s different applications of this. This is an example where our
Centennial Hills where the City chose to do a senior housing project and transfer the density. The 2 acres
up to 30 units an acre to get the 65 so it’s at 30 units an acre. Again spreading that over the entire PUD
stayed within the frameworks so that’d be one application of a density transfer. Another application of a
density transfer was Villages on the Pond. In this application we mixed the number of units. Transferred
what was on the, again divided by a state highway so what’s on Highway 41, on the other side of 41 we
preserved those trees and then there’s a piece of property on the north side that is also preserved. Did the
density transfer so it compressed the zoning, the number of units here and provided that open space. Lake
Susan Apartment, this would be another example of where we have an apartment that is adjacent, 162
units adjacent to a state highway. There’s 3 buildings. In this circumstance there is no public amenities
on this project. Again looking at each project as they come in, what the unique attributes would be but
this project does not have any public community gathering spaces. They do have access to the trail to go
around the lake but that is 16 units an acre, 162 units. And then Powers Ridge Apartments. We showed
the height of those, similar to the height that we’re looking at today. Measured at the midpoint of the roof
line. Ultimately there’ll be 334 and they’re adjacent to Powers Boulevard, also a collector road. So when
this item went to the Planning Commission and you saw it in the concept review and just gave direction,
you gave what we understood and the developer understood to make some changes on the project. One
would be the number of units and looking at the setting on the site and what could be done to modify
some of that. I think some of the other questions came in regarding number of children and I’ll talk about
that in a minute but I just want to clarify for you, I put this in when it went back to the Planning
Commission and I’ll clarify this a little bit more. So we, on the gross acreage of Parcel A we took out the
wetland so we’re just giving them the density credit of 3.3 units an acre. On the Parcel B there’s a small
wetland so it’s 7, .7 units, 7 acres that they would get credit for so we multiply that by the 16 units so if
you take the northern piece you could get 53 but in actuality it’s 10 units an acre because they only took
the 32 units. Their goal was to come in at around 155 so if you took the 16 units on the southern parcel,
123 plus the 32 gets you to the 125. If you’re tracking me on that. So the total acreage is then.
Audience: No.
Kate Aanenson: Okay so what.
Mayor Furlong: Yeah, please explain again. Thank you.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: Okay, so what we do when we transfer density is we take the net acreage. So there’s
two wetlands on this property so the net acreage there is 3 units.
Mayor Furlong: And by this property you’re talking about the northern parcel, is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: The northern parcel, correct. The northern parcel.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. So even though it’s 6 acres total buildable there without the wetlands, it’s only
3.3.
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. That’s the only part they’re getting for use. That they’re only getting
credit for those 3 acres.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: Okay? In effect they’re using 10 units an acre because they’re only using 32 units so it’s
not, if you looked at the math it’s not at 16 units an acre. It’s at 10 units an acre effective so that would
be 32 units. The 3.3 times the 10 gets you the 32 units.
Councilman Laufenburger: So Kate the implication here or what you’re saying is that that 3.3 acres could
support 16 units an acre?
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: But with acceptable use, but the density that’s being transferred is only a
density of 10 units per acre.
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: So on the southern piece it’s 7.8 acres gross. There’s a small wetland so we took that
out of the mix so the net acres of buildable is 7.713. And to be clear we do this on every project to take
the net and gross so we multiplied that times the 16 units an acre to get to the 123 so you take those two
parcels, while the northern piece is not being built on, similar to the transfer I showed you on the other
projects, the same process that we’ve done gets you to the 155. Now let’s go back and talk about the
Comprehensive Plan’s goals and policies. The goals have always been on this property is not to build on
the north side. Similar when we looked at the Pulte Home project over on 41. The goal was not to have
units that are not associated with the rest of the project on that side of the parcel.
Mayor Furlong: Can you back up to that picture of the Pulte development. So.
Kate Aanenson: So not to have a few units sitting over here or a few units backed up in here so we said
let’s take those units that have value. The City could purchase those because they have value. And when
we looked at the overlay district we talked about this at the Planning Commission, the goal was at the
time we could either buy everything along the Overlay District when we created that. We went to the
attorney’s office and talked about what are the implications of doing that and because of some properties
in the MUSA some properties not in the urban service area. Excuse me for the, some does not have sewer
and water to it so you really have different values trying to compute it so what the council at that time
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
decided to do is to take each project incrementally and decide what’s the best way to manage that. So
we’ve done different types of density transfer to preserve things along the Bluff Creek corridor.
Mayor Furlong: And Ms. Aanenson, with regard to this picture then and the areas that have yellow ovals
over them, those are areas that were high ground. Were buildable but as part of the planning process and
the approval process those now cannot be built upon, is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Furlong: Those are permanent and in most cases tree stands.
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Furlong: Stands of trees.
Kate Aanenson: Yep, and so those were the environmental features that we wanted to preserve. You
cannot get credit for the wetland. That’s why we took it out because you can’t build in a wetland, just as
we’re looking at this project. We did not give the developer credit for that but we took that out of the mix
and compressed that so we, the desire was to save that corridor and preserve those trees for the amenities
to create a better project. So we’re following the same process on this project. Taking out.
Mayor Furlong: Now, excuse me for interrupting.
Kate Aanenson: Yep.
Mayor Furlong: This process, or project the northern parcel doesn’t necessarily have any trees on it.
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Furlong: But it will still be preserved in it’s current and present state.
Kate Aanenson: Correct, and that came out of the Comprehensive Plan process. What we heard from the
neighbors is that their desire was to try not to have development on that and what we did, if you
remember the underlying property owner wanted to pursue a commercial use on that site and so during
the, the staff was opposed to the commercial use but we, the council settled on the office institutional use.
They were hoping to get some support commercial inside those office institutional type uses. Maybe
some support commercial with those but the goal that we heard was to preserve that northern parcel so
that’s why we transferred the density over to make it work.
Mayor Furlong: Question.
Councilman Laufenburger: Please. Kate, in the council packet there was mention about, at one time, was
it ’03 there was a project that came forward that had some construction townhomes in the north parcel, is
that correct?
Kate Aanenson: Correct. Correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: That was never approved, is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: It got conceptual review. We looked at it as part of the Comprehensive Plan but it never
got entitled as an approved project.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Councilman Laufenburger: Did that come forward in conjunction with the office on the south parcel?
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay. So approval was given to the office, the building of the south parcel
but that building was never done, is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: When I say approval, conceptual approval.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay, conceptual approval.
Kate Aanenson: Again conceptual approval means it doesn’t have legal standing but in good faith you’re
trying to give direction on what you would support.
Councilman Laufenburger: But that didn’t go anywhere obviously.
Kate Aanenson: No it did not.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay, thank you. Thank you Mr. Mayor.
Kate Aanenson: Any other questions on that part of it?
Mayor Furlong: Perhaps later but let’s keep going.
Kate Aanenson: Okay. I just wanted to point out too, there was some questions regarding persons per
household and how many kids would be generated in an apartment building. I stated that rental units
have the lowest number of children and I just wanted to show this to you. From a data point this is taken
from the 2010 census. If you look at persons per household, the highest number is actually a traditional
single family house actually has the highest, our average family size 3.23 and actually apartments have
significantly less. You know 90% less of children per household. So I stated that. I didn’t have the data
here to show it but that is, anybody can look that number up. It’s in the census so. I also wanted to just
give you a comparison of where we are in rental units. You know we talked about this in the
Comprehensive Plan. I went through our housing goals and policies. Those are stated in the staff report
and I just want to maybe illustratively show it in a different way besides the goals and policies of where
we are with kind of some of the surrounding areas as far as percentage of rental at the 13.36 where we are
with the rest of the surrounding communities and that was one of the goals that we did say that would be
consistent with the Comprehensive Plan. The variety of housing choices. We mentioned that the one at
Lake Susan went condo and so we have a pent up demand. We talked about at the conceptual plan, the
vacancy rate in this area around 2% and that there was some demand in this market when we looked at the
market study that the applicant provided for Chanhassen so again looking at those factors came into play.
Mayor Furlong: Ms. Aanenson, quick question on that. The percent occupied column.
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: Shows 96.2% so does that suggest that 3.8% of our homes, whether rental or non-rental
are vacant currently?
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: Correct. So that was a snapshot in 2010 in the census so you may have had some vacant
properties that weren’t captured so just want to keep that data point just to make sure that everyone
understood not everything was full at that time. And again that’s just one snapshot.
Mayor Furlong: Understand, thank you.
Kate Aanenson: Okay. So again following up from the concept moving forward, asked the developer to
make some changes and I think we were, we took the applicant’s drawing and tried to just illustratively
show you the changes. So if we look at the first we actually had, this is the first proposal that came in at
the concept. Two separate buildings with a swimming pool. Kind of stretched the PUD to meet the
standards but I think there were some concerns from the surrounding property owners regarding lights
shining in. Proximity to the high tension power lines, etc. Number of units. So the revised shows the
one driveway as opposed to the two. Trying to move that away from the lights and then the lights coming
out, two entrance points. One entrance coming out and then compressing the number of units, the 155
from the 224 to elimination of the pool. Providing more of a playground area and so again greater, 80
feet instead of the 50 foot. Greater setback from the property lines. Again the PUD requires a minimum
of 50 but greater setback from the property lines. So this again would be an illustration of how that would
lay out with the stormwater pond and the site in and of itself.
Mayor Furlong: Ms. Aanenson?
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: Councilwoman Ernst has a question.
Kate Aanenson: I’m sorry.
Councilwoman Ernst: That’s okay. Kate, you had mentioned the power lines because that was a mention
of concern in the previous meeting. How far away did they move the project from the power lines? Do
you know that off the top of your head?
Kate Aanenson: The closest point now is 80 feet from the property line of the site so the minimum is 50
so they moved it another 30 feet in and that would be along Highway 5. It’s moved in another 10 feet
along Galpin but that’s now where the high tension power lines are.
Councilwoman Ernst: Okay, thank you.
Kate Aanenson: This perspective here, because we put in and made it a little bit bigger. This is actually,
this point is actually from right at the end of the building to that first house is 406 feet, and I think that
was also part of the goal by the number, reduction number of units allowed you to re-orientate the
building to give a greater setback from the houses here so while this, we stretched that photo to make it,
this line was actually touching here to here which is showing this line. So then the other dimension
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would be the closest point from this corner of the building at the corner of West 78 and Galpin would be
then to the closest unit there was actually 600 feet. Again trying to give a better understanding of the
separation from the buildings and the perspective of the homeowners and that’s also shown illustratively
right here in these two drawings showing the spacing on those. Okay. Architecture. So we’ve got the
Hardy board. The brick around the windows. The wood decks. Three different colors and there’s a lot of
movement in the building with the windows and balconies on all those. We believe it’s a highly
articulated building and meets all the city ordinances as far as the material selection and believe that it
meets and exceeds the city ordinances as far as the design standards. So the one issue on this with the
height variance, the mid point of the roof is measured as the height and so we looked at the other
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
apartments in the community and felt like they’re coming in at 35 at that, excuse me, 37 1/2 at that
midpoint and because it’s 35, the staff is supporting, the PUD ordinance which would accommodate
that…to actually be the 38 so with this project we’re putting an ordinance together that’s, we’ve attached
as part of the staff report. So if we look at the midpoint of the roof here, we’re at that midpoint going
across would be the, shown at 37 1/2 and so we put into the PUD ordinance the 38 feet so we are
recommending that and the PUD that does not require a variance but just put into the ordinance in and of
itself. The project could be accommodated by a flat roof but typically you see a flat roof, you’d look at
the three stories that are over on Lifetime. That’s a flat roof. That’s typically associated with an office
type setting and felt strongly about the residential character to this perspective and felt that architecturally
it makes more sense. There is one variance proposed on the site and that’s for one parking stall. It does
meet all the parking requirements for number of units. You have to have at least one stall inside, one out
and then guest parking. It does meet all those standards on this project. They are putting the recycling
and the trash inside. They could accommodate the parking requirements by putting in a couple of
compact stalls to accommodate that. Sometimes those end up being other storage issues and the like.
Staff would support the one stall variance and are recommending approval of that in order to
accommodate the parking. Go ahead.
Mayor Furlong: Question on the parking then. That’s just a variance of the normal requirement for
underground parking, is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. They meet all the standards for the exterior.
Mayor Furlong: And exterior parking, I saw in the staff report and I can’t find it right now but what is the
requirement for exterior and what are they doing exterior?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah, I had that.
Mayor Furlong: Do you have that?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah I do and I’m sorry it’s kind of coming at the end.
Mayor Furlong: No, that’s fine. If it’s…keep going.
Kate Aanenson: Yep, I’ll go through, talk about the landscaping and the like.
Mayor Furlong: You just keep going.
Kate Aanenson: Yep, I’d like to turn it over to Brandon Bourden with Kimley-Horn who’s going to go
through the traffic study.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you.
Brandon Bourden: I’ll do a little bit of a review related to the proposed development which has been
addressed pretty well. Talk a little bit about how the traffic analysis procedure is completed. Trip
generations calculated. A little bit about how the results of the traffic analysis ended up and we talk a
little bit about a multi way stop warrant and some recommendations and conclusions at the end. As
discussed the proposed development is located at the northwest corner of Galpin Boulevard and Trunk
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Highway 5. It’s a 155 unit apartment building and it has a single access proposed off of West 78 Street.
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This is just an image of the site plan with the single access. To the west of the median that is on West 78
as you approach Galpin. Galpin runs north and south to the east of the site and Trunk Highway 5 is a
MnDOT facility that runs east and west to the south of the site. Generally when we do a traffic analysis
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
we collect existing data during the a.m. and the p.m. peak periods. In this case we collected data for 2
hours each period and that data was collected in early March of 2013. We will estimate the trip
generation that we would anticipate that a facility such as this would generate and so we’ll talk a little bit
about that. Trip distribution, where is that site traffic going to go so we’ll talk about where we anticipate
that site traffic going. Because we’re going out into future years, particularly in this case we look at a
2033 scenario. We do consider background growth that would be reviewed as part of other traffic
analysis, and then we model the traffic for both existing conditions, opening day conditions and then a
longer range, 2033 future conditions. Just really briefly the study area. We have one signalized
intersection that exists at the intersection of Trunk Highway 5 and Galpin Boulevard. As you go to the
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north there is a side street controlled intersection at Galpin Boulevard and West 78 Street so the
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approaches from West 78 have to stop at that location. Inbetween the two there is a right-in/right-out
access that serves a gas station as well as a pharmacy, or a medical type store. And then the single access
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is located to the west off of West 78. And then the lane geometry is showed on there but the main items
are what’s signalized and what isn’t. We did take a look at the background growth and when we review
this various agencies have Comprehensive Plans. In this case we looked at what Carver County had in
their Comprehensive Plan which did, or was consistent with what the City of Chanhassen had in their
Comprehensive Plan so we have growth along Galpin Boulevard of 2.2% per year roughly. Along Trunk
Highway 5 there is actually a decrease in traffic forecasted based on some other roadway improvements
that are planned as part of some of the more regional roadway facilities. As you can see on the bottom,
the traffic volumes anticipated along, or Trunk Highway 5 today are in the neighborhood of 30,000
vehicles per day and they would be anticipated to be in the neighborhood of 25,000 vehicles per day in
the future. Along Galpin there’s 5,000 vehicles per day and that would be anticipated to increase to about
8,600 vehicles per day. In terms of trip generation, generally or the process is to look at the size of the
facility. In this case the information is based on the number of dwelling units so there’s 155 dwelling
units. There’s then factors based on the studies that are collected across the nation where we estimate,
based on the size of the facility how many trips there are. In this case there’s about 1,000 daily trips and
they result in about 79 total trips during the a.m. peak. We would anticipate about 16 trips going to the
site and 63 trips leaving the site. Generally most people are leaving residential type of development in the
morning and they’re returning in the afternoon so when you look at the p.m. peak we kind of reverse
things so we’ve got 62 vehicles during the peak hour coming into the site and we have about 34 going out
of the site for a total of 96 vehicles in and out during the p.m. peak hour. In terms of the site distribution,
we take a look at what the existing volumes are in terms of turning movements at the various adjacent
intersections. We take a look at what some of the regional roadways have in terms of volumes adjacent to
the site and in this case we estimated that the majority of the people are going to be exiting or coming to
and from the site from Trunk Highway 5 to the east to Galpin Boulevard at 55%. We anticipate about
25% will be destined to or from the west on Trunk Highway 5. To the south on Galpin Boulevard
roughly 10% will be coming to and from the south, and we have 2 1/2 percent going to the east on West
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78, or to the north on Galpin, and we have 5% going to the west on West 78 Street. As we do analysis
what we do is we use software programs to estimate what the delays are in terms of operations on a per
vehicle basis so we look at how many seconds per vehicle the delay is anticipated to be. This table shows
what for an unsignalized intersection the criteria are a little bit less but in traffic engineering generally if
things are operating at level of service D or better we would consider that to be acceptable so in this case
anything that has 35 seconds of vehicular delay or less is considered to be acceptable. Anything more
than that would be in the E or F range and that would be undesirable. For signalized intersections,
because signalized intersections often you have a cycle length of you know 2 minutes on many of the
facilities in the metro area those delay thresholds increase and so in this case anything level of service D
or better would be 55 seconds of delay per vehicle or less. Anything higher would be undesirable. When
we do the analysis of the various intersections within the study area we looked at the column on the left,
there’s the 2013 baseline which would be what would happen if the project so we look at that and we
anticipate that the level of service during the a.m. hour and p.m. hour at Trunk Highway 5 and Galpin
would be level of service C during both periods. All of the unsignalized intersections would operate at
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
level of service A, which include the access road, which is the right-in/right-out. It also includes the West
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78 and Galpin and it includes the actual apartment facility. Similarly in the p.m. peak period those
results are nearly identical. Level of service A at the unsignalized facilities. Level of service C at Trunk
Highway 5 and Galpin. As we go out to 2033 there is additional growth in the area and so those, the
operations with and without the project do change a little bit. Particularly at Trunk Highway 5 and Galpin
we would anticipate that the a.m. level of service at that intersection would increase so it would be a level
of service D. We anticipate the p.m. would still operate at level of service C without the project. When
we add the project traffic, we cross over a threshold so we have level of service D both during the a.m.
and p.m. peak periods and all the unsignalized intersections are anticipated to operate at level of service
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A. We did look at a multi way stop warrant and what we do with this is we’re looking at West 78 Street
and Galpin to see if we were close to having an all way stop. The criteria for that is we need to have the
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total entering traffic on both of the minor approaches from West 78 Street equal 300 vehicles per hour
for any 8 hours of the day or larger, and during that same period on the minor approaches we need over
200 vehicles per hour for those same 8 hours of the day and we need delay on that minor approach to be
30 seconds per vehicle. Or over 30 seconds per vehicle. And so in this case when we looked at the
volume warrants, this table has quite a few numbers but in general when we’re looking at 2013, which is
the table on the left half of the screen, essentially when we look at the minor volumes there’s not enough
traffic on those minor approaches to get over the threshold of 200 during any of the hours and so we
wouldn’t satisfy any of the warrants for an all way stop any of the hours. We did look at what the major
volumes would be and if we were looking at major volumes, that threshold is crossed 5 times but, 5 hours
but we need to have both criteria satisfied. So in this case we satisfy all way stop criteria for zero hours.
When we go to 2035 you can see that there’s more green on the right side so in that case we would satisfy
the major volume for 11 hours I believe but the minor volumes would be satisfied, again we don’t get
over that 200 vehicle threshold total so during that period we don’t anticipate meeting any of the minor
warrants so an all way stop would not be warranted at that location. One of the things that has been
discussed and when we collected data we did take a look at some U turn movements because of the
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facility on the southeast quadrant of West 78 and Galpin. There is a right-in/right-out so people frequent
those businesses. They often go in and then they make a right turn. To get back to Trunk Highway 5
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they do a U turn at the intersection of West 78 and Galpin and so there are U turn movements there in
the neighborhood of 25 to 35 during the a.m. and p.m. peak periods respectively today. We would
anticipate that volume to increase in the future, just due to an increase in background growth and traffic
along Galpin that would use that facility. So out in 2033 we’d anticipate that volume to be in the
neighborhood of 45 to 55 vehicles making that U turn. Really at this point based on what we see, and
there are U turns there but from a level of service operation, looking at crash data, there’s no indication
that there’s a significant problem based on U turns. It is higher than normal and there’s probably some
occasional observance like yeah, there’s more U turns here but we haven’t seen anything that indicates a
significant problem. This is something that could be monitored or should be monitored in the future as
things change in the area there could be potential changes that could be done but at this point it’s more of
a monitoring activity rather than a recommendation. One thing that we did look a little bit, there have
been concerns related to the traffic operations and some of the safety at Trunk Highway 5 and Galpin.
This is more related to the northbound, left turns and southbound left turns. As you go to an all way, or a
traffic signal in the metro area, whenever’s there protected and permissive phasing you often see a 5
indication signal head and when you’re permitted to go the green ball will come up. You won’t have an
arrow. We have that, those same similar signal heads for the northbound and southbound approaches to
Trunk Highway 5 at Galpin and there’s some concern and there’s been research that has shown that
there’s times when people find it confusing when there’s the yellow ball and sometimes people don’t
yield and there can be right angle crashes so MnDOT’s in the process of changing over in the
neighborhood of 800 traffic signals within the metropolitan district to what they call the flashing yellow
head. It’s a 4 section head where there’s a green arrow that’s up when there’s protected left turns.
There’s a flashing yellow arrow, which is when you have the permissive left turn which is what most
people are used to having a green ball today. The solid yellow arrow would come up before you go to the
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
red face so it’s what we would traditionally call a clearance interval prior to the red and then we have the
all red. That’s been found to be a little more clear and so this is a recommendation that the developer
fund a portion of these signal modifications on those north and south bound approaches. There would be
timing that would have to sorted out because MnDOT would be improving the facility on Trunk Highway
5 and there are some controller modifications and the like that have to be done. It’s not just putting in
some indications so that’s one of the things we’re looking at. From an operation standpoint that signal
head also provides some other flexibility for those of us that operate signal heads so when you’re in the
middle of the night you might be able to have it permissive so when you’re waiting for a green arrow, or
you’re in the middle of the light and you’re waiting for your green arrow, we could operate that with a
flashing yellow when there’s no opposing traffic so there is some benefit from an operational standpoint
that MnDOT tends to like. In terms of conclusions, in terms of the analysis and what we saw, we have no
operational concerns that stand out with or without the project. We have no off site roadway
improvements that are recommended as a part of looking at the project. We did look at a multi way stop
warrant which does not, doesn’t satisfy any of the warrants so an all way stop is not warranted so that’s
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not recommended at West 78 and Galpin. We did look at a round about. Traditionally when we look at,
that’s another intersection control that would provide some opportunity to handle the U turn movement,
mostly due to geometric changes. Traditionally we don’t, when we’re looking at warrants, if a multi or
an all way stop warrant is satisfied, that’s kind of, that is the threshold when a round about could be
considered. In this case because everything operates level of service wise at a level of service A at all the
movements, we’re not recommending a round about at this time. It’s quite, you know it’s a lot of
infrastructure at that location for something that operates pretty well from a volume perspective. We are
recommending flashing yellow arrow improvements, like I just mentioned at the Trunk Highway 5 and
Galpin left turns at that signal. So with that if there is any questions.
Mayor Furlong: Some questions. Okay, let’s start with questions by the council.
Kate Aanenson: I’m just going to interrupt and to say if you, if you want to just take the traffic questions
otherwise I just had a couple more slides to go through before we take questions.
Mayor Furlong: Well let’s finish up your presentation then and we’ll save our questions. Thank you.
Kate Aanenson: Thank you. So for the utilities, this property is serviceable by City, municipal services.
Sewer and water have been in place for a number of years. So for the landscaping plan, this is where I
was going to talk about the parking. It does meet the, with the variance would meet the required
underground parking, surface parking as stated in the staff report. An additional 110 with the guest
parking, another 35 so that can all be accommodated on site. The one thing that we wanted the developer
to look at was some additional sidewalks. At the Planning Commission we did show one coming out the
back of the property, entering the back door I think for security reasons the applicant and the screening
that they’re trying to accomplish there would kind of defeat that but we certainly want anybody in this
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building to be able to get to West 78 Street and then also across. This project does not require a
subdivision, therefore the City typically would take sewer and water, storm water fees and park and trail
fees as extraction with that. As a part of this project for the park fees they were established to one half of
the 155 units be paid at half that rate of the 155 for park and trail fees and that is a condition of approval.
Again that’s non-standard because it is not a subdivision which is where we attach those. We requested
that from the developer who did agree to that. In addition on this landscaping plan, one of the points that
was made by the City Forester is there is a significant amount of mature ash on the property, and just kind
of a heads up. We’re working with their landscape architect just to look at that to, what would be the long
term plan for that if they wanted to try to maybe thin some of those out and put in some other species so
in case we have some problems down the road when they’re relying on that as a significant screen. Now
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the developer’s goal is to heavily landscape this area, including from West 78 where you wouldn’t see
the parking lot so most of the heavy ash fill in would be along Galpin Boulevard and Highway 5, so just
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
we have a condition in there that we continue to have that discussion to see what they want to do so we
don’t have to come back and have those trees removed. So with that, the last one would be the Overlay
District. Again we identified the wetlands. There are conditions on those for we’re not touching anything
on the north side. We’ve accommodated in your condition of approval that were modified, additional
code defining conservation areas. It’s our goal then to make that a conservation area. Transfer that
density across. In addition on this we are taking stormwater fees based on a 8 unit an acre. We actually
took that on the gross on that south side. And then the other thing we would do then is take the
conservation easement on the north side. So the developer will be contributing to those fees. In addition
our standard conditions of approval in there so with that to clarify for this project to go forward, this
would be the last time you would see this because you’re approving the site plan. There’s not a
subdivision. Typically it comes back for the detailed engineering. The City will enter into a site plan
agreement. That is one of the conditions of approval and that would spell out that they’d have to meet the
landscaping requirements and then when they would apply for building permit all those fees would be
paid. All the park and trail fees and stormwater fees. Any additional hook-up fees would also be required
at that time, which are spelled out in the staff report. Again after you approve this it cannot be finalized
as a condition of approval. The land use amendment would have to be approved by the Met Council so
that’s subject to your final adoption too so any action you take tonight would still require some additional
approval from an other agency so your condition would be predicated on that. We don’t see that, we’ve
got most of the majority of the approvals in already from the other agencies so we don’t see that as a
problem as again it does meet the goals of the City’s Comprehensive Plan. So with that we are
recommending approval with the amendment to the City Code for the definition of the conservation area,
the rezoning, the site plan review with the variance and a land use map, and I did provide for you the
revised PUD ordinance with the conservation area so if you have any questions I’d be happy to answer
them.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. I’m sure we do have some questions. Questions, Mr. McDonald. Why
don’t you go ahead and start.
Councilman McDonald: I’ve got questions for both Kate and the traffic study. Let’s start with the traffic
study. You put together factors that were based upon I guess traffic flow taking into account the
apartments, is that correct?
Brandon Bourden: Correct.
Councilman McDonald: Were you aware of any other, there’s other land uses to the east probably within
about a half a mile that would have rather high density. Were any of those taken into account? And right
now I know of no plans for anything down there but you know there are future plans that could be a high
density area. Was that taken into account?
Brandon Bourden: When we look at the background growth, those forecasts in terms of whatever is in
the Comprehensive Plan for the City and the County, the growth that’s planned for the various traffic
analysis zones within the city, that should all be factored into that background growth. So specifically we
don’t get into the level of looking at every individual site but that’s what backs into that overall
background growth that we use to look at the operations.
Councilman McDonald: Okay, and that’s pretty much standard practice and policy for anytime you do
any one of these.
Brandon Bourden: For a traffic impact study, that’s correct.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Councilman McDonald: Okay. Then I’ve got a couple questions for Kate. You used the term up-zone
and you kind of sped through it. Can you explain exactly what up-zone or down zone means?
Kate Aanenson: Well the way we look at it, and in the hierarchy of zoning residential, you know low
density. A large acre lot would be the lowest use. Then you’d move up through the low density, medium
density, high density then you’d go into an office use. Then you’d go into a commercial use. Office
industrial use. So the way the staff was looking at the application, and if the issue was the traffic and the
preservation, those things being equal or less, we did not feel that it was actually up zoning or.
Councilman McDonald: So we’re not actually going to a higher level of use or.
Kate Aanenson: That was the staff’s opinion and that was where the traffic study came into play too is
looking at the, you know trying to address those issues and being consistent what we said in the comp
plan.
Councilman McDonald: Okay. And then you also talked about the density transfer from the north to the
south and right now what we settled upon were 10 units but, and I guess I’m a little confused about this. I
thought we were talking, wouldn’t they have had the option for like 16 units if it were high density?
Kate Aanenson: Correct. Again the developer took into consideration the comments that were received,
as did the staff, the direction that we thought we heard was you wanted to see the density less so that’s
what the applicant came back with and that’s what the staff directed him to come back with is less units
so not to capitalize on that.
Councilman McDonald: Okay so would you say that that was a compromise on the part of the developer
then?
Kate Aanenson: Right. Right, I think in getting the direction of the concept to come back and reduce
those number of units, correct.
Councilman McDonald: Okay. And then on the fees, you talked about those and because there’s not a
subdivision certain fees are not collected and I know you went through it but could you go through it
again maybe a little bit slower and you know, because you know me I’m kind of slow on some of this.
Kate Aanenson: Well you know me I talk fast so.
Councilman McDonald: Yeah, together we make a good pair.
Kate Aanenson: So typically at the time you, we would call it an extraction where you would have
someone pay a park and trail fee is when they subdivide. In this circumstance because it’s all one
property they are not subdividing. But as a part of the negotiation for this project the staff had requested
that we get some compensation. We said right away we didn’t need additional parks. I didn’t spend a lot
of time on it but there are amenities in the building. The applicant did take out the swimming pool but
there is a community room. There’s an outdoor patio. A play area and then also a community room
inside the building so fitness area and a community room inside the building so they’ve accommodated
their needs. But then they also have access to additional parks but we felt that, asked the developer to
compensate at a rate that we normally wouldn’t get without a subdivision so we are asking again for
stormwater fees at the 8 acres. Those numbers and then we are asking for park and trail fees at half the
rate for the 155. So we are getting something we normally wouldn’t get without a subdivision.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Councilman McDonald: Right, so then if I’m hearing you correctly we are getting something in return
that again it’s a compromise as far as the developer. They are paying some extra fees.
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Councilman McDonald: Okay. Density transfer. Traffic. I guess that’s all I have Mr. Mayor at this
time.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Other questions. Let’s go ahead and Councilwoman Ernst and then
Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Ernst: So thank you. My question is related to the traffic study as well. Based on the U
turn monitoring and the right in, the right out and the traffic study in general, I’m curious to know how
you do your analysis and how do you determine what’s acceptable and what’s not.
Brandon Bourden: Well in terms of the analysis there’s a whole methodology by the Transportation
Resource Board that’s documented in the Highway Capacity Manual. Essentially it’s a bunch of
numerical formulas where we type in what the volumes are and the various movements at an intersection.
Based on those movements at the intersection we get an estimated delay that comes out and occurs for the
various movements so in this case we look at what are the volumes today. We then increase the volumes
that exist today to account for what that background growth that’s anticipated in terms of the County or
the City’s Comprehensive Plan. In this case they matched. We get what that’s going to be in 2033 and
then we add our site traffic onto those various movements and run the analysis so when we look at the
level of service, let me go back a little bit. So when we look at the level of service for the various
movements we end up looking at criteria’s that are in that Highway Capacity Manual in terms of what the
average delay is for a particular movement and vehicle so if we have, at a signal over 55 seconds of delay,
we would be at a level of service E that we would say is undesirable or not very good. In this case our
level of service at these intersections are in the C or level of service A range so they operate at an
acceptable level of service with and without the proposed project. They’re very similar either way.
Councilwoman Ernst: So this analysis then takes into consideration based on what’s in our
Comprehensive Plan the potential estimated growth for the future as in 2033?
Brandon Bourden: Yeah, that’s what we factor that existing traffic based on background traffic to say
what’s going to happen in 2033. What’s in the Comprehensive Plan so the growth of 2.19% that occurs
annually on Galpin, that’s how we go from roughly 5,000 vehicles per day today to roughly I think it was
8,600 so yes, that volume on Galpin increases.
Councilwoman Ernst: Okay, thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: This is for Kate. With the new adjustments to the plan and the developer only
having access, one access point, do you find that to be any safety concerns?
Kate Aanenson: Well we did discuss that. I think one of the issues that we had on that, let me go back to
the access point was making sure that we had both garages being able to access out. I think the first time
they came in all the traffic was coming through, out one side of the garage. We thought that might be
problematic. Let me just go to a different slide here. And I think the other thing is we had the median in
here kind of restricted turns so moving that further away I think helped reduce some of the conflicts there
and for stacking that may be perceived at that intersection. Again part of the goal of moving it to the
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
center would be to I think some of the concerns were lights and things turning into here that would give a
greater buffer there. Again the developer’s goal is to buffer this such that you wouldn’t see the parking
inside so we do think it’s desirable to have the one driveway in the center.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: In the previous plan where were the access points?
Kate Aanenson: I’ll go back to the comparison there. So they were quite a ways apart so this driveway
was past the median at that point but having it further and centered certainly works.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Because I know it’s kind of our policy, at least it’s been ever since I’ve been
on the council, to have two access points for neighborhoods so you don’t see any problems with, I mean
obviously.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah and I think this is something certainly if it became a problem and you wanted a
secondary, it could be accommodated on the site but I think with the turning movements, and see if Paul
has some additional comments on that.
Paul Oehme: Yeah I can try to address that comment. We do have a code that states that our cul-de-sac
lengths should be less than 800 feet. This is kind of a quasi dead end roadway here having about 1,000
trips per day on this access point. Access road. It’s roughly within the range, recommended range for a
local roadway access point. Access street so I think volumes are fine from that perspective. It is always
nice to try to reduce as many access points onto collector roadways as we can, especially in this case
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where we are on a curve. Less access points, less potential conflicts along 78 Street we had envisioned
so that’s kind of the criteria, some of the methodology that we went with in determining that one access
point is probably sufficient in this location.
Mayor Furlong: Any other questions at this time? Mr. Laufenburger, any questions.
Councilman Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Mayor. I’m going to talk a little bit about the traffic study
too. Kate, in one of the pages, I’m just going to read this so you don’t have to look for it. It says a traffic
analysis was done comparing the current proposal with the Galpin Crossings proposal. Galpin Crossings
was the ’03 proposal is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: Correct, yeah.
Councilman Laufenburger: And it says the study found that the a.m. and p.m., let’s see. A more detailed
traffic study would need to be completed. Is this traffic study that Kimley-Horn did.
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: Is that the more completed one?
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: So there’s no need or no plans for any further traffic study?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay. And who paid for that traffic study?
Kate Aanenson: The developer.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay. Alright. Now, Mr. Bourdon is that right?
Brandon Bourden: Correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: You stated that you take the reality of today, which you captured in an a.m.
and a p.m. testing back in March and from that you add the estimations from comp plan, Carver County
and Chanhassen, plus estimations from the new site and that gives you the predicted, right? Is there any
possibility that that prediction might be wrong?
Mayor Furlong: It’s okay to say yes.
Councilman Laufenburger: It’s okay to say yes, yeah.
Brandon Bourden: I mean sometimes we’re a little bit like meteorologists but I mean we’re forecasting
things.
Councilman Laufenburger: Oh wait, don’t make that comparison please.
Brandon Bourden: Especially not tonight.
Councilman Laufenburger: Not tonight.
Brandon Bourden: No, I mean when we’re looking at things there is some variability in what we do and
what we estimate. There are forecasts that if you were to compare them in the future there’s some
variability as to what happens in reality and the timelines of it but based on the methodology of what we
have in the metropolitan area and the procedures that we use, this is the methodology we always use and
as it refines we continue to use refined processes.
Councilman Laufenburger: I appreciate that honesty. I think that’s fair. We can’t know what the future
will hold but there’s one way we can determine and that is to do a traffic study perhaps in another year or
2 years to see if the predictions which seemed to be the basis for action or inaction now need to be
reconsidered so I guess based on that I don’t see anything in here but if this development were to go
forward I would recommend that part of the development be predicated on a future study to substantiate
what we predict would go on right now and if some actions would be necessary I would expect the
developer to step forward and say, we didn’t know. The best thing we could have done is what they told
us at the time in 2013 and if there’s additional activity or additional changes, especially at Galpin and
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78, that the developer would be prepared to step into some of that so that’s just a recommendation that I
would offer at this time. Okay. Comment on that Kate, have we ever done that before?
Kate Aanenson: Well I think part of it is, the challenge would be, as we’ve stated in the concept too, this
is one development on this corner. As the traffic study stated, there’s a lot of background. It’s continuing
to grow so are there other changes in that area that are causing that so you have to really try to model it
more precisely as is. Who’s adding to. We do anticipate other subdivisions north on Galpin so you know
we have to look at all those factors.
Councilman Laufenburger: So there’s other variables that could come into play that could change that?
Kate Aanenson: Right, so I think just to say that it’s all onerous because this property was approved, I
think we have to look at that carefully.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Councilman Laufenburger: Well the important thing for me is not so much that we get this developer to
kick in for any future work but that we be diligent in checking the traffic in one year, two years to see if in
fact the predictions that Kimley-Horn gave us come to fruition.
Kate Aanenson: Right, can I just add to that too. I believe the engineering department does periodic trip
analysis on certain streets so I think we could have that as a data point anyways.
Paul Oehme: Yeah, absolutely. I mean that’s something we could work into our bi-yearly traffic
documentation that we do in the city.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay. Brandon, this may be unfair to ask you this question but I’m going to
do it anyway. The long term traffic study shows that Highway 5 traffic would actually go down in the
future years. Do you understand why that is?
Brandon Bourden: I mean I didn’t redo every part of the analysis but it has to do with some of the
improved connections north and south to allow people to get to other parallel arterials.
Councilman Laufenburger: Like?
Brandon Bourden: 212 to the south or 7 to the north.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay.
Brandon Bourden: I mean that’s the bulk of it and as you look at what is proposed, there’s a variety of
projects both by the DOT and by the County that would.
Councilman Laufenburger: So it’s not unreasonable to think that Highway 5 could just take less traffic
because that traffic is going elsewhere.
Brandon Bourden: That’s correct. That can happen.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay, but I realize that’s not your analysis. That’s the County is actually
making that traffic estimation, is that right Mr. Oehme?
Paul Oehme: That’s correct, yep. And the traffic model that we used from the County was the base
model. That’s what the County thinks will happen with in terms of improvements in the County area
wide. That’s basically what’s been theoretically funded and what their best estimate of what’s going to be
built. We also did look at kind of a worst case scenario as well for the, for Highway 5 as well. And I
don’t know Brandon if you want to.
Brandon Bourden: We can do that.
Paul Oehme: Okay. Is there some slides back here?
Brandon Bourden: I mean we did look at another one because Carver County is relatively, they looked at
a whole variety of scenarios so they did look at a scenario that had, what we did was we looked at a
scenario that had State improvements. They had a scenario that looked at an unconstrained model. Say
we had all the money in the world and we built every project what would things look like. We took one
that had an increase on Trunk Highway 5 in terms of traffic volume so we did look at something that
increased. This was on the higher end of increases. More to be conservative so as we look at this, before
we had a decrease in volumes on Trunk Highway 5. Under this we’d have an increase of about .4% per
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
year to the west of Galpin so that volume would go from 30,000 vehicles per day to 33,000 vehicles per
day. To the east it would go from 30,000 to 36,000 or about a .75% increase per year. And then in this
case Galpin wasn’t quite at the 2.19 that was used before but it was at 1.75 so that went from 5,500 to
7,700 vehicles per day. Before I believe it was 8,600.
Councilman Laufenburger: Then you put this in your model?
Brandon Bourden: We did. We did an analysis and we increased our background growth using this
information and we put that same site traffic onto that background growth. So in this case we’re still
operating at level of service A at all the unsignalized intersections. In this case we’ve got level of service
D during 2 of the a.m. I think someone might recall that one of the intersections operated at level of
service D in the p.m. There’s a little bit of variability at how the models work and quite honestly, if we
have more volume on Trunk Highway 5 because the signals will more on Trunk Highway 5, the level of
service generally improves. We did look at the warrants briefly just to get an idea of how things would
change. It’s kind of a pretty lime color all the way on the right and in this case we would satisfy the
major approaches on Galpin the same number of hours I believe I said 11 before and in this case we
would hit the minor warrant for one of the hours so we would satisfy the all way stop warrant for 1 of 8
required hours.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay, thank you Brandon. You answered that question. Mr. Oehme, how
much does it cost to put in that flashing yellow head?
Paul Oehme: When I did talk to MnDOT about that improvement, it’s about $20,000 to install the new
signal heads. MnDOT’s policy is that they would pay for the Trunk Highway 5 legs and then the locals
would pay for the other legs.
Councilman Laufenburger: So $20,000 is for the full thing. MnDOT absorbs half which is 10. We’re
responsible for the other 10 and that’s why the City.
Paul Oehme: And the County, right. The County would participate in it as well.
Councilman Laufenburger: But the 10 that the County would be responsible would, half of that would
come from the developer.
Paul Oehme: Correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: Thank you because I, I thought it was more than just 10. This is really small.
Page 189 you talk about a curb radius. One of the findings Kate was increase the curb radius at that
entrance point to the, but there’s nothing that says how much to increase it. I just think that we should put
a number there rather than, you know I don’t know anything about curb radiuses but that seems too
vague. If we’re going to specify that the developer increase the curb radius to an acceptable size for that
entrance to accommodate large trucks, let’s tell them what we want it to be. Does that make sense?
Mayor Furlong: Can we defer to staff on what’s acceptable?
Councilman Laufenburger: Absolutely.
Paul Oehme: Well I don’t know if we’ve put the turning templates on there yet to find out exactly the
radius but we’ll put that in there.
Councilman Laufenburger: Well change the language so it’s acceptable to staff would be appropriate.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Paul Oehme: Okay.
Councilman Laufenburger: Let’s see. Oh I probably had one or two other ones. Oh yeah, can you go
back to the picture, it was the picture of the site. Little bit bigger than, well keep going. Right about, this
was one of your’s Kate. There. Okay. So Brandon I saw your turnaround said something like 28 to 35 U
turns there, okay. Is it possible to eliminate those U turns?
Brandon Bourden: I mean to eliminate the U turns would fundamentally mean a change in access from
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the right-in/right-out off of Galpin between West 78 Street and Trunk Highway 5. So if that access.
Councilman Laufenburger: So what, let me just, what you’re saying is, it is possible to eliminate those U
turns by eliminating the right out from the Kwik Trip and CVS?
Brandon Bourden: It would eliminate a far bulk of them, yes. Correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: Well I can’t imagine people making a right turn on Galpin in order to go
southbound on Galpin.
Brandon Bourden: It would be people that made a pure error you know.
Councilman Laufenburger: We don’t have any of those in Chanhassen.
Brandon Bourden: So yeah, but it’d be very low. It’d be very low.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay. So Mr. Oehme, what would it take for us to eliminate, if we wanted
to, to eliminate that right out out of the CVS and Kwik Trip? So that they would have to, they would
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have to go kind of to the northeast. Go to West 78 and make a left turn onto Galpin to go south on
Galpin. What would it take to do that?
Paul Oehme: Well we’d have to coordinate with Carver County first.
Councilman Laufenburger: Oh that’s right, it’s their road.
Paul Oehme: Galpin Boulevard is Carver County so, but in order to eliminate that movement an
extension of the curb at the access point would have to be constructed so only the right in’s could get in
and then proper signage would have to take place as well.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay.
Mayor Furlong: Can I follow up on that?
Paul Oehme: Absolutely.
Mayor Furlong: Because we’ve got property owners there with the gas station, Kwik Trip and CVS.
Paul Oehme: Right.
Mayor Furlong: I mean that was, that right-in/right-out was approved as part of their development plans
was it not?
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Paul Oehme: Correct and we’re, right now we’re not recommending making any changes to that access
point based upon the traffic study. We haven’t documented any safety or accidents that have occurred
based upon, in those turning movements right now so you know what we’re planning on is monitoring it.
Working with Carver County to document any issues out there. I know that there’s been some, a lot of
concern with the turning movements but in order to justify making some improvements out there, I think
the County and the City would have to really document that there is a need for that change.
Councilman Laufenburger: Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Furlong: Mr. Gerhardt.
Todd Gerhardt: You may want to get an opinion from the City Attorney on eliminating the right out.
Councilman Laufenburger: Yeah, Mr. Mayor and City Manager, I wasn’t advocating that. I was just
trying to understand conceptually what it would take to make that happen. Now I certainly understand
that if we’d have to go to the CVS and Kwik Trip and that doesn’t even include talking with Mr. Knutson
about this. Could be a problem. Thank you Paul very much. That was my last question Mr. Mayor.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. I have some questions too and in no particular order. Let’s stay with traffic.
What’s being proposed is a change in land use for this parcel. Did you take a look at expected traffic,
number of trips per day as well as trips during peak areas for the current guiding which would include
some residential on the north piece and some office and retail on the southern piece?
Brandon Bourden: We did not do a trip generation comparison.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Is there any, knowing that you didn’t do that, is there any sense based on your
experience of typical differences between a high density residential and an office retail in terms of trips
during peak hours for example or trips overall?
Brandon Bourden: To be quite honest I’d have to calculate it based on the size of those facilities to see
how they weigh. They can vary a little bit based on the size. Some of the curves are expediential based
on the size of that facility so they change a little bit so it’s not just a black and white answer.
Mayor Furlong: Not having a plan in front of you I can understand that. Is it, do you have any sense on
whether by making this land use change that we’re creating more trips out of it or that the peak times may
be more?
Brandon Bourden: I mean again.
Mayor Furlong: You don’t know.
Brandon Bourden: Depending on the size, I would say the peak periods generally are similar but the
patterns in and out of the facilities could change. So your office is generally going to be pulling more
people in in the morning instead of sending people to Trunk Highway 5 so there’s some reverse
movements that definitely occur based on the change in land use but.
Mayor Furlong: But depending on how the development occurs for the other type of land use and the
intensity of that development it could be more or less.
Brandon Bourden: It could be more or less, correct.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Mayor Furlong: Alright. The levels of service you talked about some of the indications that in the future
if the predictions hold true are C or a D level of service. Was that strictly on, if I saw that correctly, that
was on, or at the intersection of Galpin and Highway 5, is that correct? The C’s and the D’s.
Brandon Bourden: Correct. The C’s and the D’s were all at Trunk Highway 5 and Galpin.
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Mayor Furlong: And Galpin, okay. So the intersection at West 78 and Galpin was operating in the A
category if my memory serves.
Brandon Bourden: Correct.
Mayor Furlong: Mr. Oehme, do we have any examples, pictures help me and personal experiences help
me. Do we have any intersections currently that are in a C or a D type service right now? Either roads or
intersections that you know of or that you can recall.
Paul Oehme: Well the intersection that comes to mind is Powers Boulevard and 5 I think and Market and
5. Those are I believe the lowest rated level of service intersections we have in the community.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. What are those?
Paul Oehme: They’re at least D’s right now.
Mayor Furlong: At least what?
Paul Oehme: D’s.
Mayor Furlong: D’s as in David?
Paul Oehme: David, yeah.
Mayor Furlong: That level of service at Market, I’m assuming you’re talking both ends or northbound,
from the northbound side or southbound or both?
Paul Oehme: Both. Both sides.
Mayor Furlong: Both sides. And Powers Boulevard at 5 and Market and 5 would be examples of what
this might be if the predictions are true.
Paul Oehme: Correct, and I mean don’t quote me on D level.
Mayor Furlong: I’m not going to put you on the spot.
Paul Oehme: So but.
Mayor Furlong: …I’m asking you estimates so just for a mental mind. No, I won’t quote you on that.
Mr. Bourdon.
Brandon Bourden: I mean if I could add a little bit. I mean traffic signal wise in terms of level of service,
it is not uncommon to have level of service C intersections in the metro area. I mean the signal cycle at
120 seconds, that’s relatively common. I think one thing that can help give people a little bit of a
threshold is generally if we have any movement operating at level of service E, that’s when we’re starting
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
to get our volume and our capacities approaching one and so we’re going to start to have a breakdown. In
terms of how many people can get through a particular movement during that time period so when we’re
at level of service E we’re certainly seeing longer queues. We might see some what we would call cycle
failures so you’ll sit through an intersection a full cycle and get to wait another cycle to get a green again.
When we’re at level of service F, our…is over one so we would anticipate that queue to continue to build
during that peak period so that might only occur over 15 minutes of the hour but there’s going to be a
building, not a dissipation and so E and D you generally know things are relatively bad and we can look
at that on a movement basis, an approach basis and overall intersection basis.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. But you’re not anticipating that situation at Highway 5 and Galpin based upon
the?
Brandon Bourden: No. No, we’re not anticipating.
Mayor Furlong: The information you have.
Brandon Bourden: That’s correct.
Mayor Furlong: The observations that you made for the traffic study, I think you mentioned a couple
hours a few different times. Do you think that was sufficient to gather good information based upon
when that occurred as well as the length of time that you made those observations?
Brandon Bourden: I mean when we look at, when we look at traffic data we try to avoid weeks that have
storms. We try to avoid things like spring break so we weren’t during spring break. We were definitely
during the school year. It is not uncommon to do a count during one peak period in the a.m. and the p.m.
In this case when we add some data on Trunk Highway 5 we then look at it and kind of make sure things
balance because MnDOT had some data we could use so in terms of the amount of data collected, it’s
typical what’s done in the industry.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Thank you. Ms. Aanenson, again I may be back on some traffic questions as I go
through my list. The roof height and the average roof height. You showed a list of other apartment
buildings that were the same or higher. Did all of them require the same, was it a variance that was
provided or just part of the PUD standards?
Kate Aanenson: Part of the PUD standards.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: Correct. If you look at the Lake Susan, that’s a long standing PUD that has single
family. It has twin homes. It has townhouses and the last component of that was, excuse me the Powers
Ridge was actually the apartments so that was built into the PUD ordinance.
Mayor Furlong: And I guess the question is, how would the height, and my house is a walkout so if I’m
in the back yard of my house, I’m looking at the basement floor, full second. First and second floor and
then the roof. Is that similar type of height that we’d be seeing?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah. Interestingly enough single family residential does allow 35 feet. That is often a
complaint we have from some residents when they are facing the back side of a single family walkout that
sees the 35 foot and maybe the garage is on the other side with the two stories but the person behind sees
the 35 feet so we do have houses that do have that.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: On one side per se.
Mayor Furlong: Alright, that’s helpful. Thank you. I asked before about the parking. There’s a variance
of one stall within, underneath.
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: What’s the required amount external and what’s provided by the plan?
Kate Aanenson: Yes. I had that page open. It’s in the staff report and I’ll go to it quickly here. It’s the
155 internally so they provided the 154 with the variance. Then they needed additional 110 surface with
39 guest parking so that’s all accommodated on site.
Mayor Furlong: So the 110 and the 39 are the standard and they’re providing it?
Kate Aanenson: Correct. So you have.
Mayor Furlong: To our standards.
Kate Aanenson: Based on bedrooms you have to have at least one per unit so there’s 155 so one covered.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: Then there’s a ratio based on 2 or 1 bedroom if you need the additional. Then there’s a
guest parking ratio so that’s all accommodated on site.
Mayor Furlong: So they are meeting the requirements based on our ordinance except for one
underground stall?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Another question, shifting topics a little bit here and that relates to the
northern parcel. Understand the density transfer. This is a single PID is it not?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Furlong: It’s a single property for tax purposes and so I’ve heard, in some areas of the staff report
there was the suggestion that that northern parcel be dedicated to the City. I heard conservation easement
tossed, and I guess my question is, with this PUD from a zoning standpoint, from an ordinance
standpoint, they’re not going to be able to do any sort of development if this goes forward as it’s planned.
Any development on that northern piece, is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Furlong: So I guess I’m, you know I don’t know that we need to have public ownership of that
parcel and I guess I’m trying to understand, does the PUD ordinance preclude any development on that
parcel anyway? Do we have to layer on more?
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: Yes. That’s a good question. We looked at it as a staff for a couple different reasons.
One is we want to improve the function and value of that property to improve it’s, the water quality in the
two wetlands and maybe look at the creek in and of itself as we’ve done on some other sites. Some
remandering so if it’s in the HOA that’s something that you’d have to negotiate with the underlying
property owner so as far as the conveyance, if we did the conservation easement as we’re recommending,
then it gives understanding of how it will be used. We do want to improve that property so could it be left
under the ownership? Yes. Similar to what we’ve done on the HOA, the homeowners association have
control of some of those conservation easements so there’s no development rights. It’s just a matter if
you want to approve how you want to go about improving the function and value of that property to
improve it’s water quality.
Mayor Furlong: And if it’s a dedication of that property to the City, is it a dedication of an easement or
dedication of ownership of the property?
Kate Aanenson: You could do it either way. You could do it as an easement over it and we define
conservation easement which allows us to go in there and do some improvements. Or you could, they
could dedicate it to the City. The developer had suggested doing that. Just dedicating it to the City as an
option. Regardless there’s no development rights with it. It’s just a matter of how do you improve it
going forward and who has that management.
Mayor Furlong: And I guess maybe this is a question for Mr. Knutson. When we were working with
another development north on Galpin there was discussion on whether you do a conservation easement or
some other type of easement. In that case we were looking at again stormwater management issues so is
there another preservation easement option that’s available that keeps the control at the City Council level
as opposed to conservation easement? Doesn’t that have different statutory or legal?
Roger Knutson: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: Are they different?
Roger Knutson: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: I guess is the question.
Roger Knutson: What we have right now is an ordinance. If you were to pass the ordinance in front of
you, I can’t remember is it A or B?
Kate Aanenson: We’re working on Parcel A.
Roger Knutson: A is the north parcel.
Mayor Furlong: The northern parcel.
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
Roger Knutson: This says you can’t do anything on it. You can’t build a structure on it. You just
maintain it. Period. It’s not an easement. It’s a law. It’s the ordinance.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Okay. But some of the conditions of the staff report, one of the conditions, I
think it was 24, if I wrote it down right, is a staff recommends that it’s dedicated I think was the way it
was phrased.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: I said we dedicate it or preserve.
Mayor Furlong: Staff is recommending a portion so the portion of the property north to be dedicated to
the City and that the density be transferred to the south. So I understand the transfer of density. I guess
I’m just trying to understand when you’re taking ownership is there a?
Kate Aanenson: Sure, I guess we also tried to not use the same wording as the legalistic approach so we
came up with our own definition and that’s conservation area as opposed to the typical conservation
easement so it would be different in our code which if you look in that definitions it’s our intent to leave it
a natural area except for if we want to do, for the existing features, improve the quality and the selected
species, that sort of thing. If for some reason they wanted to put some special feature in there. That was
the intent so that’s parochial just to Chanhassen that definition.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, so I guess.
Roger Knutson: This is not a conservation easement in the terms of the statute.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Roger Knutson: The difference between the terms of the statute is if you want, if you decide, the City
says and owner says we want to change something, you’ve got to go to District Court. You can’t do it on
your own. This ordinance, you can change if you decide it’s appropriate to change it.
Mayor Furlong: So that agreement that the, I think you said the construction agreement or development
agreement that’s occurring with this.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah.
Mayor Furlong: Could include some language with regard to the northern piece about, well the ordinance
will say no development but we could also include language in there that allows the City the opportunity
to make some improvements along the Bluff Creek corridor, is that what you’re looking for?
Roger Knutson: Sure.
Kate Aanenson: Sure, if I can read it for you. It’s a conservation area that was the first item we needed to
amend in our definition again to be clear that we weren’t making the most restrictive one that’s in the
State law.
Mayor Furlong: Where are you?
Kate Aanenson: I’m the, I passed this out. I added this one so the conservation area is the land that
remains in a natural state by means of preservation of existing features and vegetations as well as by the
means of city approved restoration of selected species and targeted features, so that would be the wetland
enhancements.
Mayor Furlong: Where are you reading, I’m sorry?
Kate Aanenson: That’s alright. Section 1. The very first as part of the PUD that we’re amending.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: And then, so no building or structure would be allowed except essential services for
public improvements so that might be something if we wanted to put something in there for water quality.
If we want to put a structure in there for that so that was the intent of that definition to meet the City’s
goals.
Mayor Furlong: And does this language then allow for the opportunity for the City to do some water
projects or some projects relating to Bluff Creek?
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: Without obtaining future approval from the homeowners association?
Todd Gerhardt: Without some modifications.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, so there’d need to be some modifications.
Roger Knutson: If you want to do that we should modify this.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Do you understand Mr. Knutson?
Roger Knutson: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: What I’m asking, and I don’t know if the rest of the council understands or not but the
idea is to keep the property there but if there’s a project that the City wants to work on along Bluff Creek
we’d make that possible but the ordinance prevents any development of, and that’s what you’re saying
here. No buildings or structures allowed.
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. And that keeps it obviously within the control of the council.
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Furlong: Is that the goal? Thank you.
Councilman McDonald: Then I’ve got a point of clarification.
Mayor Furlong: Yes, Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: I thought that’s what a PUD did.
Mayor Furlong: Well and that’s why I’m trying to ask these questions. I think the PUD is, it’s still going
to prevent the develop, well. Will the PUD restrict?
Kate Aanenson: The PUD does not allow any development. There’s no units available for density.
There’s no density allocation. That’s been voided so what now we’re trying to clarify is that if the City
wants to enhance that without taking ownership of it by creating a conservation area, we’re saying but for
those activities that we want to do to restore the function and value of the creek, specific species, we want
that ability to do that. That was the intent of that language.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Mayor Furlong: So Mr. McDonald what I understand is, if the City in the future wants to do a project to
improve Bluff Creek corridor, since this borders on Bluff Creek, we’d want to have that opportunity to do
that without necessarily owning the property. Is that?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Roger Knutson: That’s why we will need an easement in addition to this to go on there to do that. If you
want to go on there.
Kate Aanenson: And that’s what the other condition was to get an easement, correct. So we’ve got that
as a condition of approval and then this defines what that, the terms of that.
Mayor Furlong: So how does the condition number 24, and I realize this out of the Planning Commission
staff report that’s here but I think that’s the only one we have. Does condition 24, does that, that speaks
to dedication so does that need to be re-worded?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah, easement created.
Mayor Furlong: If that’s the way the council wants to go.
Kate Aanenson: There should be an easement created I believe.
Mayor Furlong: An easement to the City’s satisfaction.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah.
Mayor Furlong: Conservation area or. We’ll let Mr. Knutson work on the wording here, or Kate, one of
the two.
Todd Gerhardt: Mayor just for clarification.
Mayor Furlong: Yeah, please.
Todd Gerhardt: Roger the easement allows us access to Parcel A. The ordinance allows us what to do on
Parcel A.
Roger Knutson: Correct.
Kate Aanenson: Yep.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, so we have to make sure those two things are working together.
Roger Knutson: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Todd Gerhardt: Yeah, we need both.
Kate Aanenson: So just to clarify, we don’t want to use the word dedication. We want to use the word
easement.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Todd Gerhardt: Correct.
Roger Knutson: That’s correct.
Kate Aanenson: For the record we’ll strike that word where it says dedication.
Mayor Furlong: Or easements if necessary. Multiple easements. Okay. In order to keep moving I may
have some other questions but they may be answered here as we move along so let’s, if there are no other
questions for staff at this time, Mr. Tucci good evening. Representative of the applicants here this
evening. Good evening. How are you?
Paul Tucci: Good evening Mr. Mayor, members of the Planning, or of the City Council. Paul Tucci. I’m
with Oppidan. Thanks for having us back.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you.
Paul Tucci: I’m going to try and keep my comments short. There’s some people in our office who say I
can’t do that but I’m going to try. I’m going to focus first, there are four things that I want to hit on.
Traffic, the unit count, the height of the building and the positioning of the building. We went through,
we had a neighborhood meeting to start this process, boy it’s been a while since we’ve had that back in
the fall of 2012. We had the residents in and we had a good showing at that. We heard a lot of
comments. We then came through with a concept plan review to the Planning Commission and to this
body and again we heard a lot of comments. We tried to shift through those comments. Read the teal use
as you might say and figure out what we needed to focus on and from an onsite layout, the things that we
focused on were the positioning of the building in relation, especially to the homes to the northwest of us
and the number of units. We came in previously with 224 units. We have cut our unit size about a third.
Down to 155 and in doing so we have a mix of approximately 101 single bedroom and 54 two bedrooms.
You know the primary, in our opinion the primary renter for us is going to be an individual or a couple.
With the one bedrooms we don’t see that there’s going to be kids in there. Could be kids. I’m not going
to steal your thunder Mr. Roberts. I know that’s coming up with the kids. We’ll have 54 two bedrooms
and that will be more for the kids. The positioning of our building, as you can see on the screen and as
Kate pointed out earlier, we have moved it further away. We’re approximately 400 feet from the nearest
home in the Vasserman Ridge area and we’re approximately 600 feet to the northeast so we’ve tried to do
that. In also setting this up we moved our access point to the center trying to redirect some of those
headlights in the old plan, when you came out the western side, the headlights were somewhat pointed
into those back yards so this kind of takes some of those headlights away. As Kate mentioned also we did
add a second access point to our underground garage so we wouldn’t have a single in and out in case there
was an incident. You could still get out a second route so we really focused on that and we tried to listen.
We tried to read the comments we heard from the bodies as we came through to get our mix appropriate.
The height of the structure, as Kate said, we’re just under 38 feet to the midpoint of the roof and that
hasn’t changed a whole lot from where we started this process so you know with a three story building
that’s kind of the height we need. We talked about a flat roof internally. You tend to see those more in a
denser, urban setting than you do in a residential setting in a suburb. Especially when our neighboring
properties here for the most part, the two commercial to the east aside, have pitched roofs on them so we
decided that it was best to stay with that pitched roof look. Traffic, a couple of things. There’s been a lot
of discussion on there. Yes we did pay for the traffic study but we did not have any input other than to
tell the City and the traffic engineer that we had 155 units. You know the traffic study was independent.
The City wanted to control that and add in the intersection of Galpin and 5 to this, which was all part of
what was paid for. In the results I think we’ve talked a lot about the methodology and how it was done
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but the level of service at our access point onto West 78 and at the two way stop at Galpin, I think we
saw that the level of service was an A at those today and into the future. The use of this versus what was
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
there. I did, as that question came up Mr. Mayor, I did find. We had sent a letter in, and we found it
electronically, I don’t have it with me so I could throw it up but when we had the old plan in with, that
had a bank and some office and some residential on it, we had given an approximation based on a quick,
just what would that generate of 1,288 trips. Today the traffic study that you have in front of you shows
1,031 trips for our use and as a point of reference, when we had 224 units it showed 1,490 trips so when
we were at the neighborhood meeting and at the concept plan we talked about we were adding a little bit
more than what the previous plan that was conceptually approved was. Now we’re about that same
amount less, just as a point of reference.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you.
Paul Tucci: Fees were talked about. I will add, we did negotiate and agreed to pay the fees that Kate said
and in addition to that we do have a number of city connection fees that we’ll be required to pay and I
think those numbers are in excess of a million dollars on those fees alone. When you add them all
together we’re at about $2 million dollars in fees just to give you an idea of the fees that we are paying in
this. And then jumping back to traffic, you know one of the things and anecdotally we as a number of
you know, Oppidan we’ve done a lot of commercial development. Retail development and we are doing
some residential development now. We’re up in the Bakken Oil Region doing them and we’re doing a
couple around here. One of the things that we’ve noticed, and I don’t know that the traffic consultant will
have a comment on this, is that you know in an office or in a commercial retail environment, the traffic
seems to be not as spread out. It seems to be a little more condensed at certain peak times. You know we
think that not only did we reduce traffic from what was conceptually reviewed previously, but we’re
helping to spread it out throughout the day rather than have it all come in at a couple of times during the
day so just wanted to make that point. In our history of doing more commercial retail based projects, we
see it a little more intense at, you know you don’t go to the grocery store at 9:30 in the morning. You
tend to go to the grocery store at 5:00-5:30 on a weekday or you go at noon on a Saturday or 10:00 on a
Saturday so this helps spread it out in our opinion. Again we tried to listen to what we heard from the
residents and from the body, this body and the Planning Commission. Tried to read those comments the
way we thought appropriate and tried to come back and think we have come back with a very scaled
down plan that’s a little more friendly to the neighborhoods and to the intersection as far as traffic goes
and we think it’s a viable project and we’re excited to get going. I do want to keep comments short.
We’ll answer any questions we can because I know a lot of people want to speak behind us.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Tucci? Just a real quick one. The conditions in the
staff report are what we’ve discussed tonight. Any concerns about those or are you comfortable?
Paul Tucci: No. No.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright, thank you. Let’s go ahead as I mentioned earlier. The public hearing
occurred at the Planning Commission so we’re not looking for a repeat of that but if there’s additional
information that residents want to share with the council we’d be happy to open it up for public comments
at this time.
Larry Martin: Mr. Mayor, council people. My name is Larry Martin.
Mayor Furlong: Good evening.
Larry Martin: I live in Vasserman Ridge and I’m just going to make some quick little bullet things here.
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I’m not going to draw it out. One of the things that I see along 78 Street is we have increased bike
traffic and the way those roads are now and the way they’re going to operate I think it’s going to make a
pretty dangerous condition for bikes in there. We encourage the kids to ride bikes. When they go over to
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
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school they take bikes and stuff like that. I think in our planning we should do it. Where 78 Street goes
into Galpin there, it’s pretty narrow and it’s curved and it’s narrow. There is a center median there. One
of the other things we see is as you come down Galpin, there’s no median to the north. The speed limit
coming down Galpin there is 45 miles an hour. 45 miles an hour all the way down that hill, all the way
out to Highway 5. You can see why the parents around there are fearful of their children using that
intersection. One thing we just, you just talked about here was that Parcel A I guess you call it there and
the landscaping. In the neighborhood we’d like to see that that is probably kept up and landscaped and
stuff like that. I think that should be at the expense of the development. We shouldn’t throw that
maintenance back onto the City to do. Let’s let them use their landscape people to take that. In looking
at the plans that they’ve provided so far we have several little elevations and they’re, they don’t show you
a lot. I’d like to propose that around the site there we put berms. I don’t know what the proper size berm.
Whether it’s 4 foot, 5 foot or even up 6 foot berm. The reason is is those cars in their movement in the
parking lot there are going to have lights going and even if we put deciduous trees up there that have 2 or
3 inch trunks, it’s going to be many years before they are shielding anything. Also the trees you’re going
to trim up a ways so the lights are going to shine right through there into people’s home so I think berms
could be in order for that area there. In the presentation at the Planning Commission on the observations
that they made in traffic, I think they did one day of observation. Only one day of observation and
they’ve drawn all those conclusions from that. Outside parking. I think in these units, if you have a
young couple in there, there’s going to be a need for more than one parking space. This area is not served
by public transportation. Therefore if you have 2 people working people there, they’re all going to have
to go together or if they have 2 cars, the second car is going to be on that outside lot and I think I heard 39
spaces. Correct me if I’m wrong there so.
Mayor Furlong: I think, how many spaces are outside? There’s.
Councilman McDonald: 110 plus 39.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah.
Mayor Furlong: 110 plus 39 so. 149 outside.
Larry Martin: 149, okay. Okay, I missed the other part of that so, so my concerns are bikes and the
movement of children. Also up on Galpin there, there’s no sidewalk so if a kid wants to go up to
Sugarbush Park up there, he’s got to cross Galpin. He’s got to go up and stuff so I think the sidewalks
and the widening of Galpin as it comes down the hill there could be in order so.
Mayor Furlong: Alright. Thank you Mr. Martin.
Larry Martin: Okay.
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Mayor Furlong: A quick question Mr. Oehme regarding the bike traffic along West 78. Are there any,
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what trails or sidewalks are along West 78 currently? Do you know?
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Paul Oehme: On West 78 Street there is a trail on the north side.
Mayor Furlong: Oh there is a trail on the north side?
Paul Oehme: Correct. A 10 foot wide trail.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. And that runs Galpin west over towards Century?
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Paul Oehme: That’s correct. I believe it’s runs all the way.
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Mayor Furlong: Is there a trail on the north side of West 78 east of Galpin as well?
Paul Oehme: There is and that runs all the way into the downtown, Powers Boulevard.
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Mayor Furlong: Okay. Okay. Why do we have the medians at that intersection at West 78? What’s the
purpose of those?
Paul Oehme: Medians are there to channelize traffic. They can be used as a safety improvement as well.
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I’m not, I think the medians that were put on 78 Street and Galpin were in conjunction with the Highway
5 construction project when that was taking place. Everything north of there on Galpin, for whatever
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reason MnDOT did not think it was necessary to put a median north of 78 Street at this time.
Mayor Furlong: But the primary purpose is to channel traffic.
Paul Oehme: Channel traffic.
Mayor Furlong: Through traffic in it’s lane so they don’t slide too far over.
Paul Oehme: Right.
Brandon Bourden: I mean it’s also to restrict access so just a perfect example of the right-in/right-out to
the Kwik Trip area, I mean that was put in by MnDOT to restrict access and to prevent left turns out of
that facility.
Mayor Furlong: Right.
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Todd Gerhardt: It also protects the left hand turn, the ones on West 78 Street.
Brandon Bourden: Yeah, correct.
Mayor Furlong: Is there any landscaping, the other item Mr. Martin brought up was landscaping on the
northern parcel. Is there any landscaping planned for the northern parcel?
Kate Aanenson: There is an existing wetland adjacent, so this area adjacent to them is existing wetlands.
Mayor Furlong: So there’s nothing to landscape there.
Kate Aanenson: No. Again that’s what we’re talking about with the conservation area. Description that
at some point we want to improve the function and value of those and then you know do the right type of
species and so that would be a public.
Mayor Furlong: But there’s no, the landscaping is planned is intended entirely on the southern piece.
Kate Aanenson: Right, and again there is some berming on there. It’s, the developer did state at the
Planning Commission if you look at the plans, it’s intended to screen so you don’t see the parking lot.
Mayor Furlong: Where is the berming? Can you point it out?
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: There is a wetland here and there’s also a stormwater pond so there’s some berming
around that.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: And then as we get to this area, again the goal was to, again I’m going back to if this
was an office park you wouldn’t have the same, you’d also have lights and that sort of thing so I’m trying
to go back to, as I told the Planning Commission, try to compare apples to apples here.
Mayor Furlong: Yep.
Kate Aanenson: And so the goal then would be you know if you look at how the building was re-shaped,
which is the staff’s opinion really encompassed, so you’re protecting as much as you can of the parking
and everything to the interior. Creating a buffer around it and then with this additional landscaping and
some berming around the stormwater pond as it drops down in elevation, and then also on this side too.
Is it going to be fully mature at day one? No but it’s the goal to try to accomplish that.
Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you. Sir.
Art Roberts: Okay, I’m Art Roberts, 7762 Vasserman Place. I’d like to back up to a basic question that’s
arisen among a lot of the residents out west as we’ve listened to the presentations at the planning
committee and here and that is this. In the interest of openness and transparency, maybe I’m hearing a
rumor. Maybe I’m hearing a misunderstanding but a number of people have come up to me and others
and said, you know what’s really going on here in the debate between office and multiple family is that
there’s a lot of pressure in the city from the merchants in the center of town to say geez, please city
officials don’t put more commercial out west because that would be a competition to us. Now I don’t
know if this is, this may be absolutely untrue but people have come to me and said you know the reason
that there’s no discussion at the planning committee and the, it’s sort of a fait a complit that we’re not
even going to entertain the issue of whether it’s safe to have the kids, as we’ve discussed before. Is that
fair that really what’s happened is that we’re putting multi-family out there because there’s pressure from
the center of town to avoid putting commercial out there? I raise the question because it, that may be
dead wrong but the people out there are running under the assumption that we’re sort of being backed into
a corner on the west side of town by the people in center city. Is there truth to that or not?
Mayor Furlong: In my opinion dead wrong would be a good way to describe that.
Art Roberts: Alright.
Mayor Furlong: For an answer standpoint. Mr. Gerhardt or Ms. Aanenson or anyone else on the council.
Art Roberts: Okay. Well that’s good to hear because that was a question I just wanted…
Mayor Furlong: And I think probably a good example of why that isn’t the case, right across the street
are two commercial properties in terms of Kwik Trip and CVS.
Art Roberts: That’s true.
Mayor Furlong: Just last meeting I think it was we approved the expansion of neighborhood commercial
down at 212 and Highway 101 near the Kwik Trip down there with a new building going in and we
expect more so there are certainly as part of our Comprehensive Plan areas in town outside of downtown
that are guided for other types of office and commercial activities.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Art Roberts: Good. Well I appreciate the clarification because I didn’t know whether we were running
on bad information or not and that was.
Mayor Furlong: It sounds like it’s bad information.
Art Roberts: That was bad information.
Mayor Furlong: It sounds like it.
Art Roberts: Okay, thanks.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you Mr. Roberts.
Cathy Meyer: Good evening Mr. Mayor, City Council. Cathy Meyer, 7662 Ridgeview Way in
Chanhassen. Kate, may I move this to use?
Kate Aanenson: Oh, of course.
Cathy Meyer: So I did ask this question before but I don’t feel like I’m still getting a gray answer so, oh
you probably can’t see that. Oh can we?
Mayor Furlong: We can get there.
Cathy Meyer: So I just to Kate, your chart from the Planning Commission report, when it gets there. So
it’s the same math that Kate had walked through on what’s available and what the developer is using and
my question is still, there’s a sentence in here that says within this category an average density of 10 units
per acre is used for land use projections and so I understand that there’s discretion on whether it’s 8 or 10
or 16 but as we talk about the feedback originally from the developer, or to the developer, and I
understand we went, he went from 224 to 155 but the subjectivity and why isn’t 8 or 10 acceptable to be a
more, to be a smaller complex with a little bit more fit in that environment and still you could get
somewhere between 90 and 110. I’m not going to speak to the north parcel because I know that the
gentleman after me is going to address that but just wondering you know where the line drawn in
understanding 8, 10 and 16 and so I don’t know if that’s a question or a statement but something I would
just like to bring up for consideration.
Mayor Furlong: Ms. Aanenson.
Kate Aanenson: Sure, again the way the land use looks at is, anything above 8 is high density so then it
comes into whether or not, what the applicant is pursuing. Again for this project, looking at similar sized
projects adjacent to state highway, we looked at the one, 162 which was the Lake Susan project. You
know similar sized. Same size parcel. That was, so we felt it was really, fit well within same kind of
siting. Fit well within that so that was the choice on that.
Mayor Furlong: Do you have other examples Ms. Aanenson?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah I mean.
Mayor Furlong: Do you know for example with other similar developments what their.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: Well that’s what, we can go back through those again but that’s what I was trying to
show on like for example on Powers Ridge but the one that would be the most similar would be the 162 at
Lake Susan Apartments which is adjacent to 101. As I stated before that project doesn’t have a lot of
amenities on that project. Again it meets the same ordinance requirements as far as.
Mayor Furlong: And that was on about 9 acres wasn’t it?
Kate Aanenson: Yep. And this one also too has one underground parking space per unit and then the, if
there’s more than one person living there, they have to figure out who gets the outside unit but that’s our
city ordinance so yes, could it be, could the council have or the Planning Commission said less units?
That certainly is an option. Yeah.
Mayor Furlong: And I think when the original proposal came through, through the concept, if I’m not
mistaken the 224 units were gross acreage multiplied by the 16 so the high end of the range.
Kate Aanenson: Yep.
Mayor Furlong: And I think the, each development though, if I’m not, if I’m speaking out of turn let me
know but each development you evaluate the entirety of the development and I don’t know that there’s
necessarily been a limit or a drive to move to one end of the range or the other end of the range. Low
density residential for example, that’s a range of up to 4 units per acre, is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: Yes, and you know the interesting thing on Walnut Grove, which was a very interesting
process too. That took us a number of years to get that project approved, that one had mix of high and
low density so we actually mixed those both together. Stirred the pot and so it kind of put you know
single family detached to the north. Then we have kind of the patio style homes in the middle. Smaller
lots. Very small lots and then the townhouses towards the bottom so the average density came out
somewhere just north of you know the high end of medium but you actually had two different zoning
districts. High and low and we kind of mixed them together so there’s, every project’s unique and a lot of
it again is not staff. Is development driven. A developer comes forward. Does a market study and says
this is what I believe I can do. Ran it through the concept and the council said, and the Planning
Commission I believe that’s too high so from there we go forward to say what seems to be, what works.
Our direction we understood was to make sure that the traffic worked and that was kind of the challenge
to say if the traffic can work and it’s staying within the range of other projects we have in the city, we
know how to manage that, then that was where we ended up landing so that was kind of the rational basis
for that.
Cathy Meyer: Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Does that answer your question?
Cathy Meyer: Yes and no. I think it’s still a lot between the developer and subjective and so I mean it is
kind of what it is so.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah I guess we go back to saying, what the market study said, it could handle more so
you know we, the council asked for less units and understood you’d like to see less units.
Cathy Meyer: Less units.
Kate Aanenson: I got it. Yeah, not…understood.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Cathy Meyer: Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you.
Dave Callister: Mayor, council members, Dave Callister, 7541 Windmill Drive, Chanhassen. First of all
I wasn’t able to make the Planning Commission meeting so I want to thank the Mayor and council for
allowing me the opportunity to speak. I’ve got several concerns with regards to the project and I’m not
going to get into traffic. I’ve heard enough about traffic and I think you guys have too so I’ll focus on a
couple of different issues that I would like at least the council to take a look at. One would be the biggest
question here is why, why are we entertaining a change to the Comprehensive Plan. An amendment to
the Comprehensive Plan. I guess you would look at, and it’s been mentioned before about what the
City’s going to get. What kind of trade off the City’s going to get and based on the north site, which it
runs along the creek and it’s part of the Bluff Creek Shoreland Overlay District so the creek itself is
protected. There’s also a sanitary sewer easement as well as the normal setbacks that might apply in that
particular project so I think, I haven’t heard a real good reason because this site can’t be developed for 32
or 44 or whatever units, the north site, I haven’t heard a real good reason for the City to, a good trade off
or a good deal for the City. That’s s my opinion. The other thing that we talked about last time was the
concentration of medium and high density residential in this particular corridor. This map was prepared
last time so the 224 has gone down here to 155, and I’m not saying this is too much. Not enough. I guess
I have concerns, or I shouldn’t say right or wrong. I think it’s too much but if you look at the property to
the east, which most people believe won’t be developed for a long time, and that very well may be the
case but between Highway 41 and Lake Ann Park you’ve got 2,000 units of medium and high density
residential. Now I’m a strong believer that you have to have a diverse housing stock. When I moved here
23 years ago we probably had 1%. Now we’ve gotten up to 16. That’s laudable and it’s through the
council and staff’s hard work to diversify the housing stock. What I’m asking you to take a look at is
the concentration of this and maybe it’s not something you can take a look at until the next time you go
through the Comprehensive Plan but it’s concerning to me and I know it’s concerning to others in the
neighborhoods here that everything’s kind of concentrated here, the number of units and so I would ask
that you take a look at that going forward here. The other major issues that I would like to talk a little bit
about is the piece of property to the north, and what I’ve done here is, the sanitary sewer easement runs
along the north side. You can kind of see that there and back in, I think it was back in the 80’s the City
purchased that sanitary sewer easement and nobody’s sure quite what the amount was but the previous
property owner was compensated for that which means basically that they couldn’t build on it because it’s
a utility easement. They need to get in there to dig if they need to fix the line so there’s no development.
That takes value away from the property and the property owner was duly compensated at that particular
time. Don’t know what that cost was. In addition you’ve got the Bluff Creek Overlay District and the
wetlands on the northwest edge and you’ve got setbacks which are kind of around the front so if you
really look at that, and this is I think the 2006 proposal, there were 10 units and there were many
comments at the Planning Commission in 2006 and at the City Council level, including from some of
those here tonight, that thought 8 to 10 units was way too dense for this particular site. So what I’m
struggling with is some sort of nexus between what could actually go on that site, which 8 or 10 units
apparently was not, was too dense. So how can we, how can we justify 32 units being transferred from
the north side to the south side and you’ve got an overlay district already in place and if you looked at that
bigger map over towards here, that’s not on there but if you look over here, the townhomes here are much
closer to Bluff Creek than these would be even if they were built so I don’t think that is really an issue.
The other issues I wanted to bring up, which was brought up earlier but I disagree with it’s relevance is
this used to be one piece of property. All the way around this site used to be one piece of property. Back
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in 2000-2001 when the frontage road or 78 Street was constructed MnDOT had to condemn this piece of
property and the piece of property is right where the street right-of-way is right now from here down to
here. About 2 acres as far as I can tell. I found out today that MnDOT, which means all of us that pay
taxes, paid $1.8 million dollars. $1.8 million dollars for that road and for 2 acres, unless you can tell me
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
that land 10 years ago was selling for $900,000 an acre, a lot of that went towards damages and what
those damages, what that means is the property owner at the time was compensated for the break-up of
the property. Okay, one piece of property, you can develop it much more intensely much more easily.
The damages were that the property to the north is very limited and as you can tell here, it’s a very, it’s a
very limited or what I would call an inferior development site so the fact that we’re getting this, the creek
and the area around the creek are already well protected and you can see that there wouldn’t be any
development even maybe 6 units because there’s problems with right-of-way. Snow removal. There’s a
lot of issues so what I’m saying is this site is very problematic no matter how you look at it and I’m
asking that you take a look at it closer because we don’t feel there’s any justification for 32 units to be
garnered from that site because it is not a good development site. That’s been proven. That’s why we’re
here tonight partially is because that site is a tough one to develop but it’s tough because there’s
easements on it. There’s other regulations with shoreland and so those restrictions bring the value down
but what we’re doing here, it appears if this is approved is we’re allowing that value, which is down here
to become up here in transferring that in the form of more units for the development to make it feasible
and I’m thinking since this property has been through disclosure, or foreclosure that obviously the
property, they paid too much for the property and I’m thinking that maybe this, if they need that kind of
density on this property then I don’t know what they’re paying for the property but obviously they may be
paying too much because if they have to have a lot of units and they have to have this density transfer, I
think that that certainly could be the case so, I am opposed to the comp plan amendment. However if the
council makes it’s determination and goes forward with this project I would hope that you would consider
lowering the density of this particular project. Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you Mr. Callister. Ms. Aanenson, a couple questions that Mr. Callister raised.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah, sure.
Mayor Furlong: One with regard to the type of residential uses. Low, medium and high along this
section map.
Kate Aanenson: A couple of points there. When that commercial piece went in, I think when the office
industrial, when the office use went in with some quasi commercial, banking and the like, I think at that
time, similar to what we did at Kwik Trip, we took all of this. This property was also owned by Kwik
Trip.
Mayor Furlong: We’re not, can we see what you’re looking at?
Kate Aanenson: I’m sorry.
Mayor Furlong: Nope, that’s fine.
Kate Aanenson: I’m sorry. So if we look at this property here that was owned by Kwik Trip, we took
that in preservation.
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Mayor Furlong: Farther north of West 78.
Kate Aanenson: Right. Because there was an easement on the property it still has, you can still count it
towards density. That doesn’t take it out of the mix. You can have your, everyone’s property has an
easement going through it but that’s counting towards your green space so that doesn’t take it out of the
mix.
Mayor Furlong: So an easement is considered developable.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: Well you can’t put a building on it but it certain counts towards your lot area.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: So it’s not taken out of the mix.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: In addition, what I mentioned before is in the Overlay District we talk about that. We
want a setback from the creek. Again that has, there’s a setback requirement but you can again count that
towards your density or towards your green space. The goal of the overlay district is to build out of it.
To take the density out because that’s a compensation method for acquiring that, as we’ve done
historically since we adopted that ordinance so we haven’t changed anything here.
Mayor Furlong: And I guess that’s my question because I think with other developments there have been,
and maybe the Pulte might be a good development as an example. Some of those areas that were
preserved with density transfer within the Overlay District.
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Furlong: I know the, or I recall that the Miss Rosie’s Farm right next to Pulte was another one that
there was development.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah.
Mayor Furlong: You were at the Planning Commission at the time.
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
Mayor Furlong: And there was a…
Kate Aanenson: Yes, that would be this project right here and so we preserved this back in the Overlay
District so what we did is we compressed those.
Mayor Furlong: It was originally a low density but we moved it into medium density type of
development where the development occurred.
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct. So I guess.
Mayor Furlong: Because otherwise with the Overlay District you have to compensate in some form.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah, so I guess on that matter I would respectfully disagree in how that interpretation
was made. Being presented to you tonight, how the Overlay District. I think the 4 units an acre were
problematic in the fact that how they were laid out but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t do another type of
product on there. They had individual driveways. Those are some of the things that were talked about.
You know we talked about one access point, how that would work out but certainly you could do another
attached project that would fit on that site using that green space to make it work. So the 4 twinhomes I
think was, part of that discussion was if you’re going to get the office on the south side, then the City
would expect the development to try to protect that and so what happened on that one, why it got
separated is the developer came forward with the twinhomes separately. He tried to take a run at the
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
twinhomes so then we kind of felt, the City kind of felt like well wait a minute. If we’re going to give the
office, we want to make sure that we weren’t you know losing that. That was the discussion so I think
you have to step back and put that both in context. Is the Council said no, it’s too high. The expectation
was if you were to get the office, that you would do the same thing that we did on Kwik Trip and provide
that buffer or that green space is what we’re trying to accomplish and that’s been the goal from the
developer. The first time we met with the developer is to say we don’t want to see any development on
that site so how do you work it? So we’re using that same methodology. That hasn’t changed and we
showed what we’re taking out, the gross versus the net. I understand that the residents still feel that’s too
high but the methodology’s still the same so it’s that number.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: And then just to talk about the compensation of properties, you’re going to see other
projects where people have been compensated. If that was a taking because it had no value or a taking
because he lost his business, I can’t answer that question but it put Mr. Pryzmus out of business so there
was other people that had the same situation. We’re doing that all over town. On 212 we have a project
again that’s coming in on 212 that was a total taking and still coming in for development project so that is
not unusual so I can’t, to say this is the first time that’s been done, no.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright, thank you. Good evening.
Mark Magnuson: Hi, I’m Mark Magnuson. 7715 Vasserman Trail and I’d like to compliment the prior
gentleman for his excellent presentation. I remember being here in 2006 and when we talked about the,
how that site was going to be developed on the north parcel and I think it’s an easy concession to throw
that in and can see those units because you couldn’t do anything with the property anyway. And the
water table was such, it wouldn’t work and we talked about how those apartments, how the townhouses
would go in there and how you’d try and do snow removal. There wasn’t enough room to get anything in
that narrow strip there so it was really kind of an unusable place. So I think the other thing is that to me
the size of this project, I mean the one slide you had that kind of shows the horseshoe, you know the
building. No, no, no. Keep going. There you go. One of those. It doesn’t look that big to me looking at
that but 155 units, that’s about the size of Lake Susan, which is massive. That’s 162 units on 16 acres.
This is 155 units on 14 acres. I mean to me Lake Susan is immense and the roofline, when we were here
you know a few months ago, when we had the 225 units, it was the peak of the roof was about 50 feet. It
was 48.
Paul Tucci: It was always 37…
Mark Magnuson: So it was never, so the drawings were wrong. Is that what we’re saying the drawings
were wrong? Okay. Well the drawings were mislabeled I guess. Because it said 48 feet and we even
talked, had a big discussion about that at that time but in any event, for myself and I’m one opposed. I
don’t know that anyone is, from the neighborhood is really been in favor. Something of the size of Lake
Susan on this property, which is smaller than that is quite an effort and is going to overwhelm what is
there currently. And then I will speak a little bit to the traffic. I do think, did you say, you thought 25 to
35 U turns at peak hours, our traffic engineer.
Brandon Bourden: During the existing conditions, that’s the volume. In the future I think it was more
around 45 to 55.
Mark Magnuson: Okay, well I would just say that being one who’s lived there for 7-8 years that, I mean
there’s that many there right now as we sit here. It’s constant. In fact I’ve never seen as many U turns
anywhere as I see there and Kwik Trip better hope there are because if they only get one person an hour
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
buying gas they’re in trouble. If you put them out of business that would help solve this problem but I
don’t think that’s going to happen. I think the idea of coming around and making people you know go
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over to West 78 Street and take a left onto Galpin would be a solution that would work but people turn
around there more than once a minute right now and it’s, they’re lined up to do it so. In fact there was a
nice accident there over the weekend where somebody got whacked really good and so I don’t think that’s
really all that rare so that was my only comments. Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Alright. Thank you.
Lori Moser: Hi, my name is Lori Moser. I live at 7632 Ridgeview Way and I’m just going to go where
you left off and that is I think we’re putting the cart before the horse here. I don’t even think we need to
be talking about a project. We are turning a blind eye to dangers at that corner. On Friday night at 4:30
we had a 3 car accident with a 17 year old girl who was shaking in her boot and I can’t believe the
Council has allowed this to continue in conversation until we take care of the problem that is there. I
came to his meeting tonight 6:50. Visibility was terrible with snow. It’s dark. I had someone do a U turn
on me with no headlights on. It happens. You have to come sit and live in our neighborhood to
understand the dangers that are at that corner. We are so scared for our kids. You cannot put any, I’m all
for progress. I don’t care if it’s the apartments right now. I don’t care what goes in there. I would love to
see those golf things out of that, hey. I moved here from Dallas. I’m like what are these round tubes and
these 150 mark yards all throughout that. It’s been sitting there for 10 years. I’d love to see that gone.
I’d love to see progress but we cannot put anything there until we, we are, it’s a pressure cooker. I am
going to use the Boston analogy of there are dangers there and we have to take care of those before we
put anything there. One other thing, my son’s 14 years old. A little bit of independence. Let’s support
the City. He wants to ride his bike to Buffalo Wild Wings. You know what the most dangerous part of
his journey? Right outside my front door. I took my car and I took it all the way to Buffalo Wild Wings.
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He can cross. There’s a stop sign. There are lights. There are sidewalks except for right there at 78 and
Galpin. He’s 14 years old. I feel like I have to drive my car down there to make sure he can get across.
It is the only part of his journey and I just think this is wrong until we fix this traffic problem. That is our
main problem there. I’ll leave it at that.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Please. Please. Mr. Oehme what, there seems to be a big difference in
opinion between the traffic data and residents observations. What can you do to help us?
Paul Oehme: You know it’s a difficult circumstance when the data is showing us to, leads us to believe
that this intersection’s functioning properly. We aren’t seeing a lot of accidents at this intersection. I
don’t know of any pedestrian accidents have occurred at this intersection as well. The accident that was
referenced on Friday night, I did have a chance to talk to Carver County about that accident and that was
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a failure to yield issue on a driver heading what was it, westbound, or eastbound on 78 Street trying to
go northbound on Galpin and didn’t yield at the stop sign. Went through the intersection and a
southbound car hit that car making that turning movement.
Mayor Furlong: They didn’t stop at the stop sign?
Paul Oehme: They didn’t stop at the stop sign basically so it was not related to any U turn movements at
that intersection so those are, we always look for accidents at these particular circumstances that we can
correct with a signal or a round about or some other improvement at this intersection. You know at this
time we’re not seeing any infrastructure that really can help alleviate some of the concerns I think that
some of the residents are seeing out there, and we have talked to the Carver County about other potential
improvements out at this intersection. Those are kind of unrelated to what the apartment complex you
know we’re considering for tonight so we are talking to Carver County. We are looking at you know
what if’s and what other potential improvements we can make at this intersection but at this point in time
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
you know we have to rely on our experts for traffic analysis and data collection and give us
recommendations to move forward and is there based upon what we’re seeing with the new development,
you know we’re not really seeing a lot of improvements that we can make at this time to improve the
situation that’s out there.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you.
Brandon Bourden: Mayor?
Mayor Furlong: Yes.
Brandon Bourden: If I could add a little bit to that.
Mayor Furlong: Please.
Brandon Bourden: In terms of looking at some of the things that we did some additional review. I mean
we had somebody go out and watch traffic for an hour since the Planning Commission to get an idea in
the morning in addition to the traffic counts that we did, how that operation is and I wanted to look
specifically for the sight distance for traffic coming down Galpin and people making that left turn so we
got the distance. We did measure it. From a sight distance perspective for people going northbound to do
a U turn back to southbound on Galpin, there’s about 900, over 900 feet. At least 920 feet. Calculated in
a conservative fashion that distance needs to be about 800 feet so there is adequate sight distance there.
We did watch things. There are times where a truck might turn right out a little bit more from the center
instead of in the left turn lane to make the U turn so they geometrically can fit. We looked at the turning
templates. You can turn a standard passenger vehicle which would be more like a Yukon without leaving
that lane so we looked at that. In terms of crash history we’ve had 3 crashes. There were 4 crashes in one
year, 2010. Zero crashes in 2011. And two crashes in 2012. We’re looking at what’s susceptible to be
corrected by a change in traffic control and typically there has to be a certain number of crashes over that
time so it doesn’t reach that threshold.
Mayor Furlong: And what was your source of the number of crashes because we’ve heard different
opinions that there have been many more than what was in your…
Brandon Bourden: Well mine wouldn’t include the crash that just happened.
Mayor Furlong: Understand.
Brandon Bourden: But we used, there’s a Minnesota has a crash mapping analysis tool. I think it’s
Minnmat. We can go in there and get GIS data and look at crashes. We then compared it to what Carver
County provided in terms of some crash data and they match very well together so we’re getting the data
from Carver County and we’re getting the data from the MnDOT system and the MnDOT system would
query more than just the sheriff’s department. Now it happens to be that the sheriff’s department would
respond most often at that location due to jurisdictional reasons. And we did look a little bit at peds. I
mean I will fully acknowledge.
Mayor Furlong: I’m sorry, you look at what?
Brandon Bourden: We looked at the peds count.
Mayor Furlong: Pedestrians?
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Brandon Bourden: Yeah, pedestrians, I’m sorry. So when we look at the pedestrian counts, yes we
counted data in March. I will acknowledge that there aren’t as many pedestrians in March but I mean
we’ve got, there’s definitely more pedestrians going north and south along Galpin. We had at that time
about 16 pedestrians that crossed over a 12 hour period because we counted the data a lot more than just
the 2 hours a.m. and p.m. at that particular locations because we had to look at the warrants. We had 4
pedestrians cross east/west during that time period so again I’ll acknowledge there’s more in the, not
during March but there are areas in town that certainly have more pedestrian activity.
Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you. Anyone else? Good evening.
Cathy Price: Good evening. Cathy Price and 7569 Ridgeview Point. I wasn’t going to talk about traffic
but a neighbor of mine asked me to ask if we could find out the date the study was taken.
Brandon Bourden: The study was completed on April 9, 2013.
Cathy Price: Oh, we thought it was March. Okay.
Brandon Bourden: The data was collected in March for the traffic counts.
Cathy Price: Right, when was the data collected?
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Brandon Bourden: March 7.
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Cathy Price: March 7, okay.
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Brandon Bourden: Spring break was the 22 through the 29.
Cathy Price: Right. Right, right, right. We just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t over spring break but
it is in March and I wasn’t, like I said I wasn’t going to speak to traffic but there is a human factor here
that he spoke to just a little bit and I think it’s really important to understand that in March you’re not
going to see the human factor here. If you know the surrounding area you understand that our
neighborhood and all the neighborhoods to the north on Galpin, you know there’s hundreds and
thousands of kids in these neighborhoods, okay. They’re riding their bike to the Kwik Trip or the CVS
because that’s the fun thing to do so it is an extremely dangerous intersection for the kids to cross. I, like
my fellow neighbor here have a 14 year old and I still feel nervous about her crossing that intersection to
go to Kwik Trip. Every time she goes I ask her to text me when she gets there and you know as soon as
she comes home to come in the house and let me know that she’s home because I still, at the age of 14
don’t feel comfortable with her crossing that intersection so I did want to say that but what I really wanted
to address was the zoning. The fact that the project is being requested to be rezoned and even through the
conceptual plan that happened in 2012, I don’t feel like the planning department did a good job of
explaining why it is acceptable to rezone this property and for the council to make a concerted decision on
this large project I think that you have to know where the other high density capabilities, zoning
capabilities are in the city. Are those going to remain high density? And in our Comprehensive Plan are
we going to consider that we’ll have that much more high density now in the city because we’ve rezoned
this piece of property? Or should we be telling the developer that this isn’t the right piece of property
because there are other high density pieces of property in the city that were looked at under the
Comprehensive Plan and decided and determined at that time that this was where high density should go
and that is where the developer should be looking at. I don’t think we’ve ever gotten a really good
answer as to why it’s acceptable to change the zoning on this piece of property so that’s, it’s my question
and I’ll leave it to you to figure out if it’s important. Thank you.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Mayor Furlong: Please don’t applaud if you can. We’re trying to get the information and keep moving.
Ms. Aanenson though with regard to percent of property within the city that’s high density residential.
Kate Aanenson: Sure.
Mayor Furlong: If you could talk about that.
Kate Aanenson: Yep, we talked about the property immediately to the west. Again we don’t know how
that’s going to come in and develop. Some of that is guided high density. A majority of it is low and
medium.
Mayor Furlong: I’m sorry, and where is that located relative to this?
Kate Aanenson: That would be the property immediately to the east.
Mayor Furlong: To the east, thank you. Towards Lake Ann.
Kate Aanenson: Which is two significant property owners there. The other question that came up was on
the 212 corridor. There isn’t a lot of high density on. We have a mixed use. A regional commercial with
some office zoning down there. If it came in as a regional, there is a potential for some residential. We
don’t know how that will come in at this time so the other two property owners have stated they do not
want to be on the active list for available properties in the long run. They don’t see developing their
property. That doesn’t mean in 5 years they could change their mind but they’ve asked not to be on. We
have a list of available properties in the city so that was the rationale for that. Why we said that we felt
based on again, if we’re looking at the traffic numbers again I’ll go back to the same thing we discussed
in the Planning Commission. This project aside, if this project came in as an office, if the traffic issue
was being similar than we’d have the same discussion on the traffic so I’m trying to separate some of the,
is it the traffic? Is it the land use? Is it.
Mayor Furlong: Do you have a sense?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah, we do have residential on that north side. If you look at the north side of the city
it’s predominantly residential.
Mayor Furlong: Along the north side of Highway 5.
Kate Aanenson: Correct. I’m sorry, along Highway 5.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you.
Kate Aanenson: Everything on the south side is always historically been an office park. We do have a
few pockets of residential built in that. Actually right across in the intersection there.
Mayor Furlong: Just south of here.
Kate Aanenson: Correct, and then you have some pieces on the other side of the elementary school but
predominantly on the south side has been guided for the office parks. On the north side has historically
been residential. The City did put in a few pockets areas of support commercial where you can get your
convenience that we talked about. Gas and those sort of things to service the neighborhood. And those
were located strategically in areas for that purpose.
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Mayor Furlong: Do you have a sense or do you know, not a sense or do you know if this parcel is
rezoned as requested, what that would do to the percent of our land use in the city that’s high density
residential? What that would move it from and to?
Kate Aanenson: Well this would be you know the 8 acres, if you look at that percentage. I don’t have
that number in front of me.
Mayor Furlong: You don’t, okay.
Kate Aanenson: No. But it’s a pretty small percent of that. If you looked, we looked at the percentage of
apartments in the city, we’re at 13% of our overall housing stock is apartments so it’s on that lower end.
Again we had other projects that were apartments that went condo so there is some pent up demand. That
was the other rational basis that we said for making the change. That was the market study that said that
that demonstrated that. Would that same market be in place if the, in 5 years? Maybe not. Maybe that
window’s gone and there’s another opportunity. We’ve seen a wave of different housing types? We
know also there’s a pent up demand for some smaller lot, single family. That’s also very popular right
now so we do anticipate some of those properties to the east would probably come in, if those were to
come in in the short near range that we’d probably see some of that too.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright, thank you. Anyone else? Good evening Mr. Allen.
Doug Allen: Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you council members. My name’s Doug Allen. I live at
2250 Lukewood Drive which is approximately one mile south of Highway 5 and Galpin and I’m
intimately familiar with the intersection. I travel that way every day to work, 365 days a year so the
gentleman that did the traffic study did at least acknowledge my concern that the pedestrian numbers
which seem to be rolled into the traffic numbers were only taken one day in early March so really what I
can add is anecdotal. That with the school, the community center and it’s associated recreational fields to
the southeast of the property and just to the north off of, off Galpin is Sugarbush Park. There’s quite a bit
of young people that ride their bikes or their skateboards or whatever else, as well as my wife and myself,
we use the pathways for our bikes or for fitness purposes as do many of my other neighbors so I do have a
concern that the study itself really doesn’t adequately address pedestrian use of this area, particularly in
the context of moving it from a low density use to a high density use. There are clearly safety concerns
with vehicle traffic but I think there’s also should be great concerns relative to the young people and
families that use that corridor as well relative to high density use there so thank you for your
consideration.
Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you.
David Windschitl: Hi, my name is David Windschitl. I live in the Vasserman Ridge neighborhood. I’m
putting this document back up that Mr. Callister had put up earlier. I have a question. I think it was
alluded to by a couple different council members but I’m not sure that I understood the answer and this is
in regards to the traffic study. There’s a large section that is zoned for high density, and it’s not available
right now, which I understand but in a couple years that may change very well which would change the
outlook. There’s a large parcel here that apparently can have 1,000 some odd units so my question is, I
think my understanding was he put some formula and methodology into this study but did your study take
into effect the local planning where there is a possibility of 1,000 high density units?
Brandon Bourden: What I can say is what I can model is what’s in the Comprehensive Plan so whatever
is planned to be done by 2030, 2030 would be what the Comprehensive Plan had and some adjustments
based on that is what I assumed for background growth. I did not get into every single TAZ and look at
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every one individually to see how they all compared. But that’s why a Comprehensive Plan is done and
that’s why Carver County does a Comprehensive Plan to look at that longer term growth.
Mayor Furlong: Fine, Mr. Oehme, go ahead.
Paul Oehme: Yep, so what the City does, we look at what the area is guided for. Estimate out what the
potential density is. We look at, we actually give Carver County TAZ’s and what potentially traffic in
this area would be. They put it into their model and that’s how we generate the future forecasts is through
that model so yes, the future development potential in this area is included in the Carver County’s model.
David Windschitl: So that 1,000 units should be accounted for in the traffic study.
Paul Oehme: Correct.
Kate Aanenson: Can I just clarify? We don’t know if that’s 1,000 units. Somebody just took an
estimate. You know you have to take out road right-of-way. You have to take a lot. That number was
put up there but if you look at the City’s Comprehensive Plan, all the TAZ’s, the traffic analysis zones are
broken down in the Comprehensive Plan so you can go in there and look at what the estimated number of
trips were and that was the background data so we take out that number so I don’t know what that number
was based on. Somebody put that in there. The other one’s are existing projects and I haven’t verified
the count on that either so I’m not sure what that 1,000, how that was computated but we do have all our
traffic zones and if you go to the City’s website you can open up the Comprehensive Plan under traffic
and they’re all in there.
David Windschitl: Okay, I’m assuming the units was based off 16 units per acre which according to what
I’ve started to learn about this is that could change and multiple a little bit higher depending on the project
too.
Kate Aanenson: Yep. Go could go lower, yep.
Mayor Furlong: Well be careful. I mean the limit is 16 per acre. I mean the particular project, you know
in this particular case what’s being proposed is less than 16.
David Windschitl: In this particular case.
Mayor Furlong: In this particular case. But I think if I’m hearing, what you guys are saying for Mr.
Windschitl’s benefit and others, that the way the properties to the east that are undeveloped currently are
guided, and they expect the traffic flows off of those properties as they’re currently guided, were taken
into account for the traffic studies.
David Windschitl: Correct.
Paul Oehme: Correct, yep. We gave that information to the County. They put it into their model and
then we utilize that model for future forecasts.
David Windschitl: Okay, thank you. That was something I was not sure of. So with that I’m not going
to belabor a lot of the additional points because I agree with a lot of them that came up so all that I will
say is I was curious to see when we saw that there was a new announcement, you know the new proposal
came about and somewhat surprised that we were still at the 155 unit mark. Still quite dense for this
particular parcel but even more so, I was more surprised that we were still at three stories out of that and
if anybody knows the area, there is I think city planners and things of that nature, you know where you
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
ramp up or whatever so it’s not just a big building standing out in the middle of a field so I guess those
are my biggest two things still that I struggle with is the amount of density and the overall size and scope
of the height. Any time that we have a comprehensive change that we’re looking for I think it’s very
difficult and there should be a higher standard used to that where we don’t have separate variances
moving forward and it appears we do have that with the height so thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you.
Matt Thomas: Matt Thomas, 2555 Longacres Drive. I wanted to, I have a question but a comment too is
you have referenced the Comprehensive Plan numerous times and stated it’s importance yet when it suits
your needs you’re willing to consider changing it so on a whim, as far as I’m concerned so what is it? Do
you stand behind your Comprehensive Plan? A lot of work went into that piece of work every 10 years
yet you’re so willing to consider a change where I’m sorry Kate, you don’t live there. You don’t
understand that so.
Mayor Furlong: Why don’t you address your comments to the council.
Matt Thomas: Sorry, so my point being is, do you follow the plan that you signed off on? And I think
earlier statements that elude to the Met Council has to sign off on it too. We all know they’re very
supportive of high density housing and there’s going to be no issue with that so I don’t like the fact that
we infer that we’re passing the burden onto another body. It’s you guys. You guys are signing off on it
and it bothers me that we would not stick to the Comprehensive Plan. There’s a plan for a reason and yet
we want to change it and I know there’s fees involved but once it’s there it’s there and like they
mentioned down the street, at 2030 that’s going to be a big area. I mean are we thinking long into the
future? And the other question I had is, in the packet documents there was something that stated that the
State would not fund a sound dampening wall along Highway 5. Is that didn’t qualify for a residential
property so if those residents do desire a sound dampening piece and the State isn’t willing to pay for it
because if it’s not a qualifying property, who’s going to pay for that? Is that the developer? Is that us?
And I’ll leave it at that but.
Mayor Furlong: You’re saying sound dampening for this development?
Matt Thomas: Yes. There was something in the packet that eluded to that the State would not cover
funding because it did not meet their qualifications and that’s another burden. And the last thing I’ll say
is with the traffic studies there was a lot of recommendations but there was nothing put in where you
would have to say this has to happen before you build. The yellow arrows, is it going to happen? We
don’t know. If you put that in there that all the stipulations be addressed and that the 48 turn around’s,
it’s going to get worst. We’re just saying there’s a concern there. Four hours of study in the winter may
not be adequate so revisit that. The sound dampening and then what is the Comprehensive Plan if it’s
willy nilly changed. Thanks.
Councilman McDonald: Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Furlong: Yeah.
Councilman McDonald: Can I address something?
Mayor Furlong: Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: You know I wrote, I was involved in the Comprehensive Plan. I signed off on it
both at the Planning Commission level and when I got to City Council. Can you show me in the
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Comprehensive Plan where it says we can’t make changes and we’re locked into things? A lot has been
brought up about that and I’m sorry, I just don’t remember it being in there.
Matt Thomas: Just because you.
Mayor Furlong: If you could come back to the microphone so people at home can hear.
Matt Thomas: Yeah, when you lay out a plan, this is surely something that doesn’t fit there and yes, the
Comprehensive Plan can be changed but why wouldn’t that have been updated in, when was the last time
the plan was updated, 2010?
Kate Aanenson: 2008.
Matt Thomas: 2008. Why wasn’t it updated then to take on residential, high residential there? That’s my
questions Mr. McDonald so, you say yes it’s better to be changed but it doesn’t fit. Why wouldn’t you,
the reason that the development has been asked to go there is the land is available. You don’t live there
either so.
Councilman McDonald: I take exception to that. I live very close to that area and I live in other areas of
this town where there are traffic issues. I understand what everybody is going through. Don’t try to tell
me I don’t live there. I went there yesterday. I’ve gone there numerous days.
Matt Thomas: I guess I’m a little troubled by your accusation, or your earlier comments that say that the
builder is making accommodations for us. I think that’s what I’m taking to offense to earlier. Thanks.
Councilman McDonald: Okay.
Mayor Furlong: If I can real quick. I want to try to address some of Mr. Thomas’ questions. With regard
to the sound dampening, Ms. Aanenson do you want to just address that and what’s been the practice in
the past.
Kate Aanenson: Sure. That’s standard language that they give and that means the developer has to
accommodate.
Mayor Furlong: Is that because it’s along a state highway?
Kate Aanenson: Yep. And so that would mean that through the construction design the developer has to
meet certain construction standards which means air conditioning units so they don’t have to have open
windows. High grade windows. Those are standard. That would be similar to other projects we’ve done
along Highway 5 so we do not have a noise wall along Highway 5. We never will I don’t believe so it’s
through construction techniques and that’s standard language.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, and those techniques would be requirement as part of the building permit?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Furlong: And does the City pay for any of those additional techniques?
Kate Aanenson: No. No.
Mayor Furlong: So it’s the full burden on the developer.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. And then with regard to the collection of traffic data, I’ll go back to Mr. Bourdon
and also Mr. Oehme with regard to this. You collected, well I had asked earlier if you thought it was
reasonable what you did. People are saying that they disagree but help us understand from a professional
standpoint how the data that you collected, and over the time period you collected, you believe you can
make your estimates.
Brandon Bourden: I mean for nearly every study that we do, you collect one day worth of traffic data. In
this case we had traffic data at Trunk Highway 5 and Galpin so we had a baseline of data that was
collected by MnDOT.
Mayor Furlong: That had been collected at a previous time.
Brandon Bourden: That was collected at a different date altogether so we didn’t have to re-collect data.
We’re always looking to see what data exists. One, because it gives you some point of comparison. Two,
because we’re trying to be cost effective for whoever pays for the study. We then collected the data at the
other location and as we look at the numbers we have some, I mean we can then kind of see do the
numbers balance between the intersections. Are they jiving? Is there a big bust? If there’s a big bust,
well then something may have gone on. An example would have been, years ago before the 212
extension was done, numbers changed a lot then but it gives us something to look for. In terms of data
collection, we can always be wrong but we collected during the school year because if we collected in the
summer, that’s really wrong. We don’t have the activity with school patterns change so we want to make
sure we hit the school year. We want to make sure we do not hit a week that has a holiday so we’ll
th
always avoid you know Labor Day week, 4 of July week because you know families have different
patterns in particular so we picked a school week that wasn’t spring break that would be relatively
representative of what you’re going to see during the year. There’s slight variation throughout the year.
We think the data’s pretty reasonable.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you. Ms. Aanenson, with regard to the Comprehensive Plan process and
changes, can you explain that process a little bit?
Kate Aanenson: Sure. It’s a policy decision. The City does have discretion on that and this is the
process that we’re going through is to evaluate based on our Comprehensive Plan does it make sense and
that’s what I’m trying to go back to say, originally you know certainly people had some issues regarding
the height and the number of units but really what they seemed to focus on was the traffic so if this was an
office park, what I’m saying is some of those same issues would be brought by the neighbors saying they
have concerns about the number of trips and the turning movements so we’re trying to make that being
equal. Then we’re saying if it’s residential, which most of this is on the north side, then in our opinion,
you know we had a property owner advocating for that commercial piece and we said we really wanted to
be more of a residential style. The council at that time agreed for conceptually for the office with some
support commercial in that and as we talked about in the concept, the turn movements really were slightly
higher with the number of units so that got reduced down. As we see now we’re below what that
threshold would have been and to make that happen so the Comprehensive Plan again we stated that
because it’s a residential going, if you look at the hierarchy of zoning districts, we believe that the
residential from the office is not an increase as far as the hierarchy of you know uses. So again it’s a
policy decision. But there’s times when there might be something that comes to the City that we never
thought of that we would, someone wants to come here that we would certainly entertain an opportunity
to explore whether or not it makes sense, which is why we went through the concept process to say does it
make sense? Is it a realistic? So again it seems a lot of it is based on the traffic. If we can manage that.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Certainly we understand that some people still think it’s too high and too many units, certainly I’ve heard
that.
Mayor Furlong: When the Comprehensive Plan was last updated, I know there were but I’m going to ask
it in the form of a question here. Did you meet with property owners around the city? Did you meet with
residents I mean or did you just, you didn’t just sit at City Hall and say here’s what we’re going to do.
Kate Aanenson: No, we actually had a couple open houses. At the library. At the Rec Center. We had a
lot of meetings on different chapters. Public hearings on all the different chapters. Took that into place.
I also state too, if you look at what happened in 2008, there’s been a lot of changes in the economy from
2008 to 2013, which is another reason just to go back and examine our policies. I mean we try to put in
some, you know what our goals are and again if you look at what the, and the Comprehensive Plan what
it says on our website is that these are the goals and that it’s a flexible tool that we have to adapt and so if
you look at what’s changed from 2008 to 2013, things have changed. One of our biggest projects.
Mayor Furlong: You met with property owners too, right?
Kate Aanenson: Oh yes.
Mayor Furlong: And if the property owner had a desire for one type of use.
Kate Aanenson: Right.
Mayor Furlong: Did you try to accommodate it?
Kate Aanenson: Sure, and one of the biggest ones we were talking about was the potential for regional
mall back in 2008.
Mayor Furlong: Right.
Kate Aanenson: That’s changed completely too so we talked about that and that was driven by a property
owner so we also put that in our question that we for the community survey. We asked the question of
that, to poll our residents to say what do you feel about having, being a regional draw. Having more
people come here. Increasing more traffic so we talked about that. It was a very public process and while
10 years is a long time to kind of go through a cycle, you know there’s no reason to say you can’t go back
as a policy maker to say does it still make sense? Should we re-examine that thought? So that was the
intent.
Councilman Laufenburger: Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Furlong: Mr. Laufenburger.
Councilman Laufenburger: Kate, has the council, how long have you been with the City? 20 plus years,
is that right?
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
Councilman Laufenburger: Has the council ever considered a change to a comp plan in the past through
other PUD’s or anything like that?
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Councilman Laufenburger: And have we actually made changes to the plan?
Kate Aanenson: Yes. Yes.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay. One of the questions that Mr. Thomas asked was, you know who
owns our plan? Do we own the plan at the council or is it owned by Met Council? If I’m not mistaken I
think, don’t we actually as a courtesy to the jurisdictions surrounding us, including the Met Council, we
inform them of anticipated changes to our land use, is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay. And didn’t we, I think the council authorized a jurisdictional review at
our last meeting, is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay. So as a matter of courtesy we share our plans, our land use plans with
those surrounding so that they, they have a chance to see what it is we’re doing in Chanhassen.
Kate Aanenson: Right. And I would just add too that, it is the city’s plan. It’s everybody in the city’s
plan. It’s not my plan. It’s not your plan or the Planning Commission. It’s all the city’s plan and
certainly there’s push and pull in different neighborhoods. We were having this kind of same discussion
2 weeks ago on a different topic and so it’s, obviously it’s more heighten in a neighborhood. I can only
say, try to say this as, I’ve been through a lot of these discussions and we continue to be the great
community that we are and we want to continue to be the great community that people want to live here
and raise their families and certainly that is my foremost. I wouldn’t want to do something that would
jeopardize that.
Councilman Laufenburger: So you’re saying we’re not considering this proposal because we want to
drive people out of Chanhassen, is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: No. No. No. No.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Thank you for that clarification Kate.
Mayor Furlong: Anyone else?
J.P. Meyer: My name is J.P. Meyer. I do not live at Vasserman Ridge. I don’t even live in Chanhassen.
Mayor Furlong: What is your address, if you could?
J.P. Meyer: 6980 Lora Lee Lane, Eden Prairie. But my Remax office is here in Chanhassen. I have sold
real estate for over 20 plus years in the southwest and I’m going to tell you, if I’m showing a property and
I’m driving by an apartment building getting to that property, it will be discounted. And none of us want
to have an apartment building or a big complex in our front yard or our back yard. I have a question for
you.
Mayor Furlong: If you can address your questions to the council please.
J.P. Meyer: Well I was wondering if he’s ever done any other work for the developer?
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Mayor Furlong: By you meaning the traffic study?
J.P. Meyer: Traffic. Yes, and so I don’t know your name.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. Alright. You’re Kimley-Horn, correct?
Brandon Bourden: I’m with Kimley-Horn. We were hired by the City to do the study so how payment
worked I’m not working for the developer at all.
J.P. Meyer: Oh, okay. You work for the City?
Brandon Bourden: I’m working for the City, yes.
Mayor Furlong: The City engaged you.
J.P. Meyer: Okay. I wasn’t sure. I just heard that he was paying for it. Or the developer was paying for
it.
Brandon Bourden: The developer is paying for it but that’s, the City is controlling what I do in my scope
and you know we work back and forth that way.
J.P. Meyer: Chanhassen is really in it’s infancy state of growing. I’ve lived in Eden Prairie for 45 years.
I’ve seen a lot of growth and they’ve been very, I have to say ahead of theirself for keeping green space,
parks, paths, trails. It makes it a very desirable city yet for people to want to come to. I know you’re
anxious to develop Chanhassen, and it’s good tax revenue but you have to look to the future and make
sure that the aesthetic value as you blossom and continue to grow and fill out, that you still have green
spaces and people still want to come here because it looks nice. Maybe like what your projection is. It’s
not all about buildings. I know it helps for the taxes and the value and the money coming in but whatever
you do now, you’ve got to think about how it’s going to impact the future and how other people coming
wanting to move out and it’s moving west, do they want to live in a city that looks nice or not? Thank
you.
Dan Bock: Hi, my name is Dan Bock. I live at 7677 Vasserman Trail in Chanhassen. I’d like to thank
the council and the City Managers and the Planning Commission and the planning folks and Mr. Tucci.
This is a good iteration just with any research and development plan, there’s many iterations and
iterations. I think we’re heading in the right direction but I don’t think it’s done yet and I can’t approve
this plan. I’ve got my investment to protect and that investment has gone down over $150,000 in the past
5 years due to the recession. My concerns are the same as my neighbors. Traffic. I won’t reiterate all
those because we’ve talked a lot about that. Density’s still a concern. I did like going from you know the
225 down. What I was looking at was something lower but my biggest concern ends up being the height
of the building, and I’m glad, the last time the City Council met and it was talked about looking at Lake
Susan Hills as a comparison. I go to St. Hubert’s Church so I drive by that every day and when I noticed
that wait, that’s the building that you’re talking about. That thing’s huge and just as mentioned before,
it’s actually on a much bigger, or it’s on a couple more acres and it has roughly the same amount of units
so to me the biggest concern is the height of the building. I was ready to come here and actually start
helping convince my neighbors, if we got down to roughly 125 units, two stories, I think it’s a good plan.
I like the architecture. I like the green space. Too bad he had to take the pool out because we’ve got a
pool in our neighborhood and I love it and I know that that’d be a major attraction but good iteration so
far but we’ve got to keep going. Thank you.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Mayor Furlong: Thank you Mr. Bock. Ms. Aanenson, Lake Susan Apartments.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah, I think there’s a little misunderstanding on that. Lake Susan Apartments is
actually on 9 acres. It’s only 1 acre larger.
Mayor Furlong: Right.
Kate Aanenson: It’s also on a very steep slope so it’s sitting up quite a bit higher so. Oops, I’m sorry.
Mayor Furlong: Do we have in the schematics here, is the.
Kate Aanenson: It’s sitting up. It’s up quite a ways. You have to go up the driveways so it’s sitting up
higher so it has a higher presence but it’s on 9 acres at 16 units an acre so.
Mayor Furlong: Most of the schematics that I’m looking at in our packet show the first floor units to be
at ground level and not to be, not that there’s a basement or underground parking above ground.
Kate Aanenson: Correct. Parking’s below grade.
Mayor Furlong: Below grade.
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, so the exits from the parking lot will actually have to come up a hill to get up to
grade, is that right Mr. Tucci? Okay. Whereas with Lake Susan Apartments I think the exit drive out is
at grade. There is no, because it’s basically a walkout type of, because they built it into the hill is that
correct?
Kate Aanenson: Correct, on that perspective you’re correct. It was exposed more on that side.
Mayor Furlong: From the height standpoint.
Kate Aanenson: Right.
Dan Bock: Mr. Mayor, can I make one more comment then?
Mayor Furlong: Yep.
Dan Bock: So the height of Lake Susan Hills is how high then?
Kate Aanenson: It’s, what you’re looking at from the 101 side is the exposed, is the exposure of the
parking garage so that adds an extra, you’re looking at an extra elevation. An extra floor.
Dan Bock: But when we compared heights I thought we were only off by a few feet when we were doing
the height comparison.
Kate Aanenson: I’m just talking about your visual perception. If you look at the height we take average
grade from the midpoint of the roof so.
Mayor Furlong: Average of midpoint of the roof.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: I’m just telling your perspective looking up from 101 is going to appear that the
building’s higher.
Dan Bock: So the average grade is what we’re talking about when you’re making a comparison?
Mayor Furlong: You mentioned averaged height of the roof. Is the grade at the point where it’s at the
ground level?
Kate Aanenson: They’re both going to be approximately, well they’re both three stories but when you’re
looking at it from 101, you’re looking at four stories because you’re seeing the, you’re seeing the parking
garage.
Dan Bock: Okay.
Mayor Furlong: You’re seeing the garage.
Dan Bock: Alright but.
Mayor Furlong: And you’re not going to see that here.
Dan Bock: I guess maybe the comparison was a little misleading because when you’re looking at 40 feet
and 35 feet, that doesn’t seem to be very far off. Anyways, one other comment too about Lake Susan
Hills is the distance between the apartments and the nearest residential area. Our’s is what we said, 400
feet? This looks to be quite a bit further than that.
Kate Aanenson: Correct and that’s when we looked at the Lake Susan one you have single family homes
right behind, right adjacent to them. They’re within a couple hundred feet also right behind. That would
be these houses in this area.
Councilman Laufenburger: That’s Powers Ridge.
Kate Aanenson: Powers Ridge, correct.
Dan Bock: And that one’s still pretty big as well.
Kate Aanenson: Yep, that will be about 16 units an acre. 334 units.
Dan Bock: Okay.
Mayor Furlong: And again I think you’re dealing with the topography there. That one’s, when you’re
driving by Powers is on a hill.
Dan Bock: Yep. Understood. To me that one doesn’t seem as bad as Lake Susan Hills and, I mean just
even the expanse and if you look at the L shape and then compare what part of our neighborhood that
would take up, it’d take up about a third so just, like I said before, you knock it down to two stories and I
think you’ve got a plan and like I said, good iterations. Let’s keep going. Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you Mr. Bock. Anyone else? Try to get this finished up here. We’ve got two
more?
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Joel Robertson: Hi, my name is Joel Robertson, 7596 Walnut Curve. The only item I wanted to mention
concerns specifically the high density created with the existing traffic that’s there. If somebody could
please cut on that. As I was driving home Friday night, unfortunately this is what I saw that was
referenced earlier and this is without the high density. Putting the high density in there is just going to
increase these type of accidents that are out there. Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Okay, thank you.
Josh Kimber: Good evening. My name is Josh Kimber. A homeowner at 2060 Majestic Way which is
just north of the proposed development. My wife and I moved to the neighborhood about 2 years ago and
when we moved to the area we did look at the different zoning and the different developments that could
be happening. We were excited of all the developments happening to the north and the build out of
Vasserman and things like that. We were also encouraged by the businesses that, what we were hoping
were going to be in this area. We moved there 2 years ago but we’ve got our anchor here locally. We
shop at CVS. We gas up at Kwik Trip. We are members of Lifetime Fitness. My wife visits the skin
care center. We were looking forward to a hospital, businesses, offices being in this area. I’m a local
guy. I grew up in a small town. I was hoping to get that from this development too. I don’t think putting
the high density here is the right solution. I have, I echo a lot of the same concerns as my neighbors
which is traffic, the density, but also just the major eye sore. I mean I think a three story property to the
person two before me is right that says you know a two story or a gradual increase to a three story I think
would be alright, but a very large three story property there, after traveling you know a mile outside of
town is just going to look out of place and devalue our homes. Thanks.
Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you. One last comment then ma’am.
Eileen Kieffer: Eileen Kieffer. I live in the Vasserman Ridge neighborhood also and I know you’re sick
about the traffic issue but I do have a couple points I want to make. We do not cross Galpin Boulevard
either. We have a dog we walk. We walk him up to 41. Don’t want to take the risk of crossing it. We
turn around and go the other way. We can’t go north on Galpin because we don’t have a sidewalk on our
side of the street. It’s only on the east side of Galpin so we are pretty much blocked off. We’re kind of
locked in that corner so we have all these great facilities and you know along that way into town that our
kids could be using but we can’t take the chance to risk crossing it to go use it so it’s kind of unfair that
we’re blocked from using that. And another point I want to make is I do have a high school student and
he could be driving to school but we don’t allow him to because the traffic is so bad at that intersection in
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the morning. Between 7:30 and 8:00 the traffic is backed up from that intersection light to about 78
Street and the kids are all trying to get to school at the same time so it’s just like really kind of crazy so,
and you’ve got to pull out. They don’t come 45 miles an hour down that hill. At that time of day they’re
traveling whatever they need to to get to the light because it’s going to, we wait so long for that light.
Everybody’s always in a hurry. It’s like I’ve got to wait 3 minutes for that light so I’m going to quick
rush down this hill and get that light when it’s green. They don’t, you know they’re not paying attention
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to anybody that might be turning onto Galpin from 78 Street so it’s just too dangerous to let him drive
and I think that’s really unfortunate. It’s like a 5 minute drive. It would be a really nice thing and when
we moved to this neighborhood we assumed our kids would be able to do that. There’s an elementary
school across the road and the high school’s 5 minutes away now. Why, it’s unfortunate that we’re not
able to do that. We’re just kind of that neighborhood gets kind of locked in there because of 41 busy on
the other side and then the Galpin being so busy, it’s just a big issue and someone said earlier, we really
need to address that before we can even consider adding more traffic to this intersection. Thank you.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Thank you everybody for your comments. We appreciate it and I hope, I
certainly heard some answers to your questions and I hope you did as well. Bring it back to council. Any
follow up questions at this point for staff or others based upon the public comment or other comments? If
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
not then, let’s bring it to council and thoughts and comments on the development. Anybody like to go?
Mr. Laufenburger.
Councilman Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Mayor. I can be pretty brief here. I have appreciated the
dialogue that I have had with many of the residents in the area who have expressed their views with me,
both face to face as well as by email and I will say that many of their comments caused me to look deeper
into the plan. Ask more questions. I asked a number of questions of staff prior to this evening and I
thank staff for giving me answers to those questions. But I’m going to go back, just conclude very
quickly here. I’m going to go back to my comments in December when I also looked at this very closely
and I essentially said that from my perspective I felt that the north parcel, Parcel A needed to be
preserved. Clearly it’s going to be preserved and protected. I felt that the density was too high and I felt
that the density, and I’ve looked at my verbatim minutes so I knew exactly what I said, but I felt that a
density in the 128 or slightly higher would be acceptable, though I was not inclined to approve the project
the way it was. And the traffic was a concern to me. It’s still a concern to me but I can’t fault the traffic
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study. I can appreciate that the citizens think that March 7 may not be a predictable time. I don’t know
that any individual day is a predictable time but the traffic study, coupled with the information that
they’ve been provided by the County and the matrix that they used, they’re professionals in this. I would
say as I mentioned earlier, the traffic study is important right now but I think it’s also important that we
do a traffic study after the unit is in place, if in fact it is built and to determine whether or not the
predictions, which our meteorologist, excuse me, our traffic study guy, Brandon conveyed so from my
standpoint what the developer, Mr. Tucci has done, I think it will be an attractive building. It’s not going
to be an eye sore. I believe that they will take steps to make the property marketable with appropriate
sound dampening through landscaping so I believe Oppidan is going to develop a project that we as a
community can be proud of and will bring people into this community that the community needs to have
in the community. So as I said in December, the predication of my approval would be based on change of
the density, protecting the north parcel and a comprehensive traffic study so Mr. Mayor, I like this
project.
Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you. Other comments. Councilwoman Ernst.
Councilwoman Ernst: First of all I want to thank all the residents who have taken the time to write
emails. I got hundreds of emails. Thank you and attended meetings regarding this project. There have
been a number of concerns that have been raised by all of you and I feel for the most part they’ve been
addressed. The traffic and the safety issues, the study shows that the increased traffic generated from this
project is very well within reason. In looking out to 2033, staff is working with MnDOT to modify
existing signals to include flashing yellow lights which the developer is paying half. They moved access
points further away and moved the development approximately about, I think it’s 400 feet at the nearest
residential location. Another issue was the noise. There’s going to be landscaping. There’s going to be
trees planted to serve as buffers. In addition most of the trees are going to be saved. Power lines was not
mentioned this meeting which kind of surprises me because it was mentioned clearly in the meeting in
December. So those were mentioned as being too close to the units and the complex structure has now
been moved further away. The number of units being proposed for the density is too high. That was
another issue. The developed reduced the number of units by 31% or 69 units. The project and it’s
requirements compared to our Comprehensive Plan was raised by just about everyone in this room. Our
Comprehensive Plan is a guide and we know that within that period demographics change. The economy
changes. Obviously things do change. In addition quoting verbatim from the documentation provided to
us it is in our 2030 Comprehensive Plan that the request for a PUD plan allows the applicant to seek relief
from the standards of the conventional zoning districts rather than asking for a variance. As we strategize
and we think about the future of Chanhassen, we need to think about the new norm that was presented to
us, the City Council a couple weeks ago, and this project fits that strategy. Seniors and young couples
and/or individuals are moving into apartments. I previously did not support this project because I felt it
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needed more work and this was in order to address the residents concerns as I mentioned previously. I
believe with the work of the developer and staff, including the residents involvement, which I appreciate,
all issues have been addressed and I applaud everyone involved and I will support this project.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Thank you. I’m going to be brief also. I’m going to be supporting this
project but I also feel like I want to be supporting the residents also when it comes to traffic because I
actually believe you. I’ve spoken to a couple people that live in Vasserman Ridge and I’ve heard how,
you know while there probably aren’t accidents on a regular basis, there are near misses all the time and I
don’t think that we solved this project tonight obviously, and I’m not sure what the answer is to really
solve it. Stop signs. The study says that they’re not warranted. A round about is something I would like
to think about. That would really solve that U turn problem and some other speed issues but that I guess
is not why we’re here tonight to decide on the best way to resolve this ongoing issue and I believe in the
years to come and more development arises it’s going to be a bigger problem so I really do feel you have
a legitimate issue and a concern and I’m hoping that, as Mr. Laufenburger said that this situation can be
reviewed again in the future to see if counts have changed or if situations have arisen where it really
needs to be addressed. I think the developer was given, he was given some insight by the council of what
we expected in our town and I think the council spoke to him and said we didn’t want that many units and
he came back with a respectable plan. I think that it’s healthy in our community to have different types of
housing for everybody and I think this is going to be one of those projects where the building seems to be
set back enough from the other houses or the residential houses. I’m a little concerned about the one
access in and out but I guess we’ll see how that works but I want to thank the developer for coming back
with a plan that I can support and I know right now tonight, while it’s snowing and it’s late and we’re
tired and we’re all thinking this is going to be a bad thing for our community, I think we’ll find out that it
really is an asset and I think that it will be something that we can be proud of so I will be supporting it
also.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you. Councilman McDonald, thoughts.
Councilman McDonald: Well I too have talked to a number of residents and I want to thank you for the
conversations. They were quite civil and we were able to discuss some issues and I tried to raise some of
those issues tonight. I’m not sure that I completely succeeded in getting the answers everyone wanted but
I did try to raise the answers. There are concerns about traffic. I guess I wouldn’t, and I’m not sure if Mr.
Laufenburger wants to make it part of the plan. I couldn’t support a requirement that there be a traffic
study and the developer pay for it. I can support that there needs to be additional work in that area and I
think that’s what city staff is tasked to do anyway. I see that as part of their job. Anytime there is an area
within the city that has been identified as potential problems, I think they need to look at it and sometimes
you do have to look at it more than once so I would expect that the City will, you know now that
everyone’s been put on notice about this corner, you will continue to watch and monitor this area and if
there is a solution that would work, I would hope you would bring it up before the council so I do expect
to continue to be updated on this intersection but again after tonight I think we’ve tasked the developer for
everything he needs to do and he’s completed his job but that doesn’t mean the City’s done. I too have
gone back and forth. I know how everyone feels about this and again sometimes I get a little short in my
opinions about things but I do live here too and I do have some of the same concerns you have. I just live
in a different part of town. Different problems but the thing you have to look at is what’s best for the
overall community and I’ve also heard a number of stories that again, Chanhassen doesn’t have this kind
of housing available and there are some quality people that don’t come to this town because of that. I
think they could add to the community. There are things that they could contribute that would benefit all
of us so again this is not, this is not a high rise or this is not a development where I think we’re looking at
you know below market rates or anything such as that. This is something that’s meant for young
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professionals, which is what we’re trying to attract to this community anyway. So I think with all that
having been said, I too wanted to make sure that the north part of this was protected. It is, a lot was said
about that and the previous developments and everything but one of the reasons that that was brought in
was we couldn’t stop it. We didn’t like it. The guy could have brought more units in and you know he
could have fit something in there but it was a compromise. Again the City was trying to get something on
the south side. That particular developer probably didn’t really want to develop the south side. He
probably had something else in mind but yeah, I didn’t want to see that developed either and right now
it’s not. A lot of concerns before about lights and those things. I think by moving the entrance we’ve
solved most of those problems and I guess you know based upon that, there is no perfect development
that comes into this city. There’s problems with all of them but again we can’t just bar people from
coming into the community. We’re trying to grow the community. We are trying to you know make this
again a community for life and a lot of concerns that people have hit me with is why aren’t there certain
businesses in this town. Well they tell us there aren’t enough people. There aren’t the right
demographics. I can’t have a successful business because I need a certain you know class of people. One
of our jobs here is to try to make sure that we do have a community that could bring in all types of
businesses. I mean we’re trying to make sure that the residents of this community have available to them
the conveniences they want. So I guess with that and with the issues that I’ve brought up and the fact that
the traffic is not going to go away. You have our word about that. That will be a continuing issue that
we’re going to be looking at. I could support the development also.
Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you. Lots of issues that have been raised, and thank you to all who spoke
this evening and at the Planning Commission meeting and earlier council meeting as well back in
December and Planning Commission then. The emails. The phone calls. We appreciate that. I think one
of the first questions that has come up a few times tonight, and comes up anytime a council or Planning
Commission considers this type of development is the land use. Since it isn’t consistent with the guiding,
is there justification to look at changing the land use. The Comprehensive Plan is just that. It’s a plan.
It’s not set in concrete but clearly to move away from it is something that takes significant amount of
thought and consideration. None of us approach this project this evening or over the, I know the Planning
Commissioners did not in their two meetings and neither did any of us on a whim or in an arbitrary
manner. Really the Comprehensive Plan is just that. It’s a plan but it tries to provide a balance in my
mind between the rights of the property owner to improve their property and the rights of the public and
make sure that we have similar types of uses together. But I think we have to always be careful when we
look at the Comprehensive Plan and say there can be no changes, no deviation. I’ve certainly supported,
well I’ve certainly opposed changes to the Comprehensive Plan as I’ve sat here at different times. I have
supported some changes as well and so there is some discretion. There is some thought that goes behind
it. That’s part of our legislative policy making as a council. One of our biggest ones along with our
annual budgets and prioritizing spending, Comprehensive Plan development is part of the legislative
process and again having been involved a number of times, both in terms of the establishment of the
current plan as well as request to change from that plan, I can certainly insure everybody here that we
don’t approach that lightly. With that, so the question is here, can we try to accommodate what the
property owner is looking for? Having been involved in some of the prior versions of this property in
particular, I know that there were requests by the property owner the staff didn’t necessarily like but the
council tried to accommodate the property owner. We try to do that as much as we can across the city.
As a property owner, as all of us being property owners I think that’s good for a council to try to
accommodate and support what a property owner wants to do with their property. I received one email
that suggested that unless there’s public benefit development shouldn’t occur. I think that’s a little
backwards. Development should occur, you know property owners have the right to develop the property
for their personal benefit first and foremost. That’s part of property rights to develop that. Now can they
do that without undue burden and cost on other people? That’s where the council comes in and that’s
where the legislative process comes in to try to find that balance. Not everybody will agree. We had a
gentleman saying you know height was an issue. Density was an issue. A number of people talked about
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that. Some may be okay with what’s there. Some are not. That’s going to be a change. I think in terms
of type of use, residential use, residential use and surrounded by residential areas makes some sense. The
density is an issue and I understand that but as was mentioned earlier, one of the things we try to do in
preparing the plan, the Comprehensive Plan is look for different types of housing choices. To provide
housing choices. Provide different types of choices. Ownership versus rental. Different price points and
this will fill part of that need for the people who live there. When we look at the surrounding
neighborhoods to the north and south, east and west, there are residential properties all around. Different
types of density though. Some low density. Some medium density. This just happens to be higher
density. I think there are some advantages to this development in terms of preserving the northern parcel
from development, as we talked about earlier and I think hopefully Mr. Knutson or Ms. Aanenson we’ve
got some language there of what we talked about earlier when we get to the point of a motion that we can
do that. I agree with the comments that were made earlier that the traffic issues are not going to go away.
Again I think different people are viewing what exists there today at different levels. I do tend, I drive
Galpin quite frequently. Not on a daily basis but multiple times every week. I know my family does as
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well and so I am familiar with that intersection at West 78 and Galpin. Over the last several months
since this development first, proposal first came through in November-December timeframe I’ve tried to
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make a point of driving that intersection, east and west along West 78. I’ll cut off at Century and drive it
rather than going up 5 to Galpin if I’m coming from the west or instead of going up Powers on my way
home I’ll come back all the way to Galpin and drive up Galpin to get there so I’ve tried to make a point.
Every single time I drive there, there’s different flows of traffic and I understand that but I’m not seeing
everything that people are seeing and expressing so that doesn’t mean that it’s not there but I think that’s
something that we have to as a city keep monitoring, and I can’t just go off my personal observation.
Certainly I’m relying on the traffic study and that was an important piece I think for this council that
wasn’t available to us or to any of the residents when we first talked about this in December so traffic is
something we’re going to have to look at there and see how that how, and that includes pedestrian traffic
and bike traffic that was raised. I think we have to look at that and see what the options are but in my
opinion I don’t think this development in itself will significantly alter the traffic flow in that area. If it’s
bad now, then it will be bad. Does that mean that we shouldn’t go forward? I think the question gets
back to whether it’s bad or not and that’s the difference of opinion for many people. I think overall it’s a
good development. Improvements have been made and I think that it is worth while supporting. It’s not
exactly what was in the Comprehensive Plan that was approved in 2008 but I think it’s a reasonable
request and the property owners have changed and I think they’ve made reasonable accommodations to
try to fit within that, finding that right balance so I also will support the plan this evening and look
forward to the development. Mr. Knutson, do you have some language or some replacement language for
that one condition?
Roger Knutson: Let me grab it.
Mayor Furlong: I just want to make sure we have the right language.
Roger Knutson: I would suggest the easiest place to put it is in the ordinance itself. You could put,
amend section 9 to say, this ordinance shall be effective upon the recording of a conservation easement
satisfactory to the City over Parcel A.
Mayor Furlong: And so you want to say conservation easement or is that?
Roger Knutson: That’s broad enough.
Mayor Furlong: That doesn’t put us into a.
Roger Knutson: We’re not going to use the statute.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: Okay, we’re not going to use the definition we created?
Roger Knutson: Yes, but that’s different.
Kate Aanenson: Okay. I couldn’t hear what you were saying on that. Can you repeat that? What
condition were you amending?
Roger Knutson: I’m amending the effective date. Section 9.
Todd Gerhardt: It’s in your handout Kate.
Kate Aanenson: Got it. Okay, got it.
Roger Knutson: You’ve got to record an easement, conservation easement before this ordinance is
effective.
Kate Aanenson: Okay. Okay. Got it.
Roger Knutson: This document.
Mayor Furlong: Oh Roger, oh okay. I’m sorry. Mr. Laufenburger, would you like to make a motion?
Councilman Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Mayor, I will. I’ll make this in the form of 3 motions Kate,
alright?
Kate Aanenson: Yep.
Councilman Laufenburger: First of all I move that the City Council approve rezoning of approximately
14 acres from Agricultural Estate (A2) to Planned Unit Development Residential (PUD-R) subject to the
conditions in the staff report and adoption of the attached Findings of Fact. Secondly, I move that the
City Council approve a site plan for a 155 unit apartment building with a variance for parking subject to
the conditions in the staff report and adoption of the attached Findings of Fact. Thirdly, I move that the
City Council approve an amendment to the City Code rezoning site plan, with variances, and a land use
map amendment for the Chanhassen Apartments subject to the conditions in the staff report and adoption
of the attached Findings of Fact and Recommendation with a modification to Section 9 as follows: This
ordinance shall be effective upon a conservation easement being placed on Parcel A.
Roger Knutson: Satisfactory.
Councilman Laufenburger: Satisfactory placement of a conservation easement on Parcel.
Roger Knutson: Can I suggestion, the ordinance shall be effective upon the recording of a conservation
easement on Parcel A satisfactory to the City.
Kate Aanenson: Got it.
Councilman Laufenburger: What he said.
Mayor Furlong: What he said?
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Councilman Laufenburger: Because that’s not what he wrote.
Roger Knutson: No. This is version 2.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay. Alright, well I have version 1.
Mayor Furlong: Alright, thank you. The motion’s been made. We’ll consider those in a single motion if
that’s without objection. Hearing no objections, is there a second?
Councilman McDonald: So moved.
Mayor Furlong: Motion’s been made and seconded. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, let’s
proceed with the vote.
Resolution #2013-27: Councilman Laufenburger moved, Councilman McDonald seconded that the
approve a Land Use Map Amendment from Residential-Low Density
Chanhassen City Council
and Office, to Residential-Low and High Density and Office and Residential-High Density
Planned Unit Development (PUD) subject to the following condition:
1.Approval of the Land Use Amendment subject to the Metropolitan Council determination of
consistency with system plan.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
Councilman Laufenburger moved, Councilman McDonald seconded that the Chanhassen
City Council approve Rezoning of approximately 14 acres from Agricultural Estate (A-2) to
Planned Unit Development-Residential (PUD-R) subject to the following condition and
adoption of the attached Findings of Fact and Recommendation:
1.Adoption of the Chanhassen PUD Ordinance, which shall be created to govern the site and
design standards.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
Councilman Laufenburger moved, Councilman McDonald seconded that the Chanhassen
City Council approve a Site Plan for a 155-unit Apartment Building with a Variance for
parking subject to the following conditions; change to Section 9 of the ordinance to read as
follows: T
he ordinance shall be effective upon the recording of a conservation easement on Parcel
and adoption of the attached Findings of Fact and Recommendation:
A satisfactory to the City;
1.Approval of the Land Use Amendment subject the Metropolitan Council determination of
consistency with system plan.
2.Adoption of the Chanhassen PUD Ordinance, which shall be created to govern the site and
design standards.
3.Execution of the Site Plan Permit.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
4.Payment of $294,500 park and trail fee and $116,500 stormwater fee prior to the issuance of
a building permit.
5.Parcel A shall be dedicated to the City, or have a conservation easement placed on it, for
management consistent with the Bluff Creek Management Plan, the Bluff Creek TMDL and
nd
the 2 Generation Surface Water Management Plan.
6.The applicant and the City should work together to develop an appropriate mitigation
scenario.
7.Any portion of the wetland presumed to be impacted under an alternate development
scenario, which would require the use of Parcel A and is subsequently transferred to Parcel B
for density calculations, be mitigated for at a 1:1 ratio. This mitigation should occur within
the Bluff Creek Overlay District but does need to be in the form of wetland. The developer
must calculate the net developable acres of the site and wetland acreage.
8.The wetland delineation report shall be finalized.
9.All existing trees proposed to be saved must be protected with fencing during construction or
replaced after construction if damaged or dead.
10.The selections of Colorado spruce must be replaced by a different evergreen species in the
plant schedule.
11.Before final approval for the project, the applicant will need to determine future management
plans for the existing ash trees. If preserved, the applicant will be required to chemically
protect or, if infested, remove and replace the trees. If the applicant decides to remove and
replace the trees at this time, a revised landscape plan will be required.
12.Staff recommends that the curb radius at the driveway access be increased to facilitate the
turning movements of larger vehicles.
13.Appropriate signage must be installed 10 days prior to and for the duration of the work
within West 78th Street.
14.The developer must coordinate the closure of West 78th Street with the Engineering
Department minimum 72 hours prior to the closure.
15.A $10,000 escrow must be provided to ensure that West 78th Street is properly restored.
Once the street has been restored to satisfactory condition, 50% of the escrow will be
released; the remaining 50% will be released if the patch is in satisfactory condition after one
freeze-thaw cycle.
16.Minimum 18-inch vertical separation is required between the private watermain and the
private storm sewer crossing.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
17. The developer shall submit $5,000 with the site plan agreement to cover half of the cost of
the signal modification at TH 5 and Galpin Boulevard to accommodate a flashing yellow
passive-permissive signal.
18.The developer shall pay one-half the cost of the traffic study.
19.City trunk sanitary sewer hookup fees (City SAC), City trunk watermain hookup fees (City
WAC) and the Met Council Sanitary Access Charge (Met SAC) are due with the building
permit at the rate in effect at that time and shall be based on the SAC unit determination per
the Met Council.
20.A “General Permit Authorization to Discharge Stormwater Associated with Construction
Activity Under the National Pollution Discharge Elimination” will be required for this
project. Proof of permission from the PCA must be provided to the City before grading can
commence.
21.A Surface Water Management Plan is required and shall be submitted to the City for review
and comment. This plan shall incorporate the required elements of Parts III, IV and
Appendix A of the NPDES permit.
22.Both the Bluff Creek Total Maximum Daily Load Implementation Plan and the NPDES
Permit require that a portion of the Water Quality Volume is infiltrated on-site. The
Stormwater Management Study shall be modified to address this requirement and
incorporated into the SWPPP.
23.Because the site discharges to an impaired water, the discharge rates for the one-year design
event must also be equal to or less than the existing discharge rates. The Stormwater
Management Study shall be modified to address this requirement and shall be incorporated
into the SWPPP.
24.In order to protect Bluff Creek, meet the goals of the Bluff Creek Natural Resources
Management Plan and the Bluff Creek TMDL Implementation Plan, staff is recommending
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that the portion of the property north of West 78 Street be preserved through an easement to
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the City and that this density should be transferred to that portion south of West 78 Street.
25.Sheet C-3 GRADING AND EROSION CONTROL PLAN shall be amended to include the
following:
a.The swale draining into the proposed pond shall be stabilized for its entirety as it is less
than 200 feet in length.
b.An appropriate perimeter BMP shall be shown and installed around the proposed outlet
modification for the southern wetland.
c.Silt fence or another acceptable BMP shall be installed on the north end of the culvert
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under West 78 Street.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
d.The EOF from the pond to the wetland shall be permanently stabilized. This is addressed
in the Drainage Report but is not included in the Grading and Erosion Plan. A turf
reinforcement mat is an acceptable practice as is called out in the drainage report.
26.Minnesota Department of Transportation will need to review and approve the drainage plan.
27.The applicant shall revise the plans to incorporate sidewalk connections to existing trails.
28.The building plans must be prepared and signed by design professionals licensed in the State
of Minnesota. A “Code Record” is required (Code Record schematic plans may be same
scale as architectural). For “Code Record” information go to MN Dept. of Labor and
Industry: http://www.dli.mn.gov/CCLD/PlanConstruction.asp
29.The building(s) must be protected with automatic fire sprinkler systems.
30.An accessible route must be provided to buildings, parking facilities, public transportation
stops and all common use facilities.
31.All parking areas, including parking garages, must be provided with accessible parking
spaces dispersed among the various building entrances.
32.Accessible dwelling units must be provided in accordance with Minnesota State Building
Code Chapter 1341.
33.The building owner and/or their representatives should meet with the Inspections Division to
discuss plan review and permit procedures (in particular, type of construction and allowable
area issues must be addressed).
34. Due to the large size of this building, class III Fire Dept, standpipes will be required. Have
developer contact Fire Marshal for exact locations. MSFC Sec. 905.3.9.
35.“ No Parking Fire Lane “ signs will be required. Have developer contact Fire Marshal for
exact locations. MSFD Sec. 505.3|
36. An additional on site fire hydrant will be required. Contact Fire Marshal for location.
37.A PIV ( post indicator valve ) will be required.
38.A three-foot clear space must be maintained around fire hydrants. MSFC Sec 508.5.4.”
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you everybody for your involvement in this process. We appreciate it.
Let’s, looking at the hour, I know everybody wants to get home but let’s take a quick break. We
have one more item before us tonight so.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
(The City Council took a short recess at this point in the meeting.)
TH 101 (LYMAN BOULEVARD TO PIONEER TRAIL) IMPROVEMENT PROJECT:
ACCEPT BIDS AND AWARD CONSTRUCTION CONTRACT; APPROVE
RESOLUTION AND PROJECT FUNDING AGREEMENT CONTRACT WITH
MNDOT.
Mayor Furlong: This is a project that’s been in the works for many years and so long time
coming but here we are so Mr. Oehme, let’s start with a staff report please.
Paul Oehme: Thank you Mayor, council members. Like you had indicated, this project has been
on, staff and the council’s been working on this project for many, many years so I’d like to just
go through maybe a little bit of the background. Here’s the agenda. Go through the bids that the
City has received for the project. Look at the financing of the project. Construction phasing and
staging and then also view the schedule of the project as well. So the purpose of the project,
staff and the council did start reviewing this corridor for needed improvements back in 2007 but
the impetus for the project really is to improve traffic safety capacity and connectivity along the
Highway 101 corridor from Lyman down to Pioneer Trail. We did look at the rest of the
corridor as well. We’re trying to piecemeal improvements along the Highway 101 corridor as
funds allow so basically you know with the growth that we’re anticipating in the area and the
safety issues that are identified along the Highway 101, it has been a top priority of the City to
look at improvements along this corridor. So the background again. Why are we doing the
project? Currently it’s a two lane undivided roadway with several safety deficiencies including
steep grades, sharp curves, inadequate sight distances at intersections, blind intersections, blind
driveways and just a host of other issues that documented, the court has been documented to
have numerous accidents. There’s been a fatality along the corridor as well. Back in 2007 the
City did start or complete a corridor study and looking at the deficiencies and how to best
improve this section of 101 and we looked at you know several alignments, several different
alternatives. Two lane. Three lane. Different configurations. The one before you proposed
tonight is consistent with that 2007 study and then back in 2009 the City did apply for Federal
grant dollars and we did receive over or $5.4 million dollars back in 2009 to build this section of
roadway so it just shows you how long it takes to plan and develop a project and finally construct
it. So those improvements, what are we planning on doing? Reconstructing the roadway to a
four lane divided section. This section is consistent or similar to the section of 101 north of
Lyman Boulevard with a raised median turn lanes. We are flattening out the curves.
Straightening out the roadway as much as we can, however we are somewhat consistent within
our following the current alignment of the roadway. There are a lot of topographical challenges
or restraints. Wetlands along the corridor that we tried to not impact as much as we can. We are
adding turn lanes where appropriate at intersections and at driveways and we are adding
stormwater improvements, including 3 ponds along the corridor to treat the runoff of the
roadway to meet our MP3, MS4..as well. We are looking at, we are planning on making
additional improvements to the park and trail system along the corridor. Currently there is a trail
on the west side of 101 in this corridor, or on the east side. We are looking at adding a trail to
the west side as well to plan for growth in the area and for safety. We are looking at, we are
planning to put an underpass under Highway 101 by Bandimere Park as well. There are also
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
some Bandimere Park improvements associated with this improvement. We are relocating the
access point of Bandimere Park farther to the north with turn lanes, better sight distance and
much improved access to the park as well. To plan for future growth in the area we are
proposing to construct a 12 inch trunk watermain along the west side of 101. Plan for growth
and then to hook up future services to existing property owners as they wish to hook up in the
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future, and then there are also some sanitary improvements at 96 Street that we’re also making.
Relocating a force main as well. So this is a drawing of what the proposed improvements to 101
would look like. Again Lyman Boulevard’s to the north here. Pioneer Trail’s to the south so
again you know relocating the access to Bandimere Park. The State did buy a parcel just north
of Bandimere Park. That has been acquired where the new access point will be located. That
will tie into the west driveway of Wilson’s Nursery for future development of that parcel. And
turn lanes associated with both of those access points. There is an underpass shown here again
just south of the current location of the access to Bandimere Park right now. Again the trail is on
the west side. The ponds are shown here in blue and then the corridor will be re-landscaped as
well with some trees and shrubs as well. Not just along the corridor but also along the pond as
well so to try to re-establish some vegetation out there. So the City did receive bids back in
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March of, March 19 of this year. We did receive two reputable contractors that bid on the
project. Eureka Construction was the low bidder on the project. They did, they are responsive to
the bids and did meet all the requirements. MnDOT has looked at the bids, reviewed them as
well as Carver County and both of those agencies have concurred that the City should move
forward with accepting a bid by Eureka Construction. I should note Eureka Construction did get
the bid for our 101 and Pleasant View Road project earlier this year so they will have two
projects within the city this year. If this project moves forward staff has reviewed their
background and references and they seem to be a reputable contractor. They have not worked in
the city in the last 10 years though. So for financing, like I mentioned previously a bulk of the
project will be financed by the Federal dollars that the City, grant dollars that the City received
back in 2009. Almost $5.5 million dollars. The rest of the money, the bulk of the money after
that will be paid through by State funds. State SRC money. Basically operations of funds and
then also some County turnback funds. Flexible Highway account money that the State also has
put towards this project. There is an Agreement in your packet tonight to approve those funds
tonight as well so, for this project to move forward that agreement needs to be approved as well
so in conjunction with the State and the Federal dollars the City has budgeted for funding our
portion of the project, including watermain improvements like I previously talked about. A little
over a half million dollars there. Sanitary sewer improvements for a new force main and
stubbing out a sanitary pipe to the east to Foxford Road for future hook-up’s to that
development. Municipal State Aid Funds would help pay for our share of the trail cost, the
underpass, and then some landscaping as well. Park dedication funds, almost $6,000 would help
pay for a little parking area within the park there. Stormwater funds again would help to pay for
some storm sewer improvements and then also some landscaping along the corridor as well.
Carver County’s responsible for a little over $100,000 of this project. Now originally they had,
were budgeted for almost a half million dollars. $466,000. That funding has, or that budget
number has gone down considerably after we received the contract and actually we have, we’re
allowed to get more Federal dollars to help pay for Carver County’s improvements to the
intersection of Pioneer Trail so that’s why that number has gone down significantly there.
Carver County’s also planning on putting in conduit along the corridor for potential future fiber
optic improvements.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Mayor Furlong: Is that included in their $105,000?
Paul Oehme: That’s included in their $105,000 so the City’s not, City or Federal dollars, State
dollars aren’t paying for that conduit.
Mayor Furlong: So how much of the $105,000, how much of that is related to the conduit
improvements and how much to the road project?
Paul Oehme: It’s about $34,000 for the conduit.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Paul Oehme: And about $75,000 for the intersection improvements. 80% of the intersection
improvements and the signal is now paid for by the Federal dollars and some it’s now going to
be paid for by the State as well.
Mayor Furlong: So Mr. Oehme, looking at this picture if I’m looking at it correctly, the bids
coming in where they did at almost 25%, a little over 25% below what was originally estimated,
the Federal funds were available up to a certain point, is that correct? Or to a maximum amount
as long as they were applied towards appropriate types of expenses.
Paul Oehme: Yep, and that’s correct and when we applied for the funding there was a set dollar
amount that up to a maximum amount that the Federal grant dollars would apply, would go
towards. After talking to Met Council there is actually some extra Federal dollars available in
their pot that we were actually able to leverage for this project so we were able to pick up a little
bit more in Federal dollars for our project and then help offset the County’s project, or
improvements at Pioneer Trail as well so that’s the difference.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. So this does include the improvements to Pioneer Trail intersection and
101?
Paul Oehme: Correct.
Mayor Furlong: That originally was, we were unsure if we’d be able to complete them at the
same time.
Paul Oehme: Exactly, yep. So that intersection’s going to be raised about 3 feet from it’s
current elevation to plan for future improvements to the south. There’s some grade changes in
there that we have to try to balance out so that’s the plan.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Paul Oehme: So, okay go ahead.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Councilwoman Ernst: Paul, so these numbers that are here, are these actual numbers or is the
additional funding that you’re talking about yet to come?
Paul Oehme: No, this is the actual dollar amounts that we’ve received and are going to go
towards the construction so the budget numbers are over here at $10.4 million. This is the, this
$7.4 million dollars ties into what the Eureka Construction bid was.
Councilwoman Ernst: I was just looking at the City’s portion of it wondering if there was any
more funds coming in towards that.
Paul Oehme: No that’s, this is it.
Councilwoman Ernst: Okay.
Paul Oehme: So again major construction phasing of this project, it is a significant project
within the city so there are going to be many impacts to the associated property owners.
Construction is anticipated to take place this summer and into the fall so we’re going to get the
bulk of the project done this year. There is a surcharge area down by Kiowa Trail that we cannot
dig out the muck material or the softer material so there’s going to be a year’s worth of dirt piled
up to try to compress the material as much as we can and then remove that material in the spring
of 2014 and repave and pave that area and construct that roadway. There is going to be a two
lane section of roadway there for over the winter months but access to, along 101 will be opened
by the end of the year 2013 and continue to be open in 2014 as well during the final construction
of the roadway. Unfortunately though 101 will have to be closed for the duration of this year.
There’s just no way that we can build this roadway with all the topographic and challenges and
the reconstruction work that has to go on here under traffic so we are going to be closing down
101 and I’ll get into detours and that staging in a later slide. But we are maintaining access to all
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the local property owners along, especially on 96 Street and some of the driveways that are
access onto 101 as well. Through traffic will be detoured to Powers Boulevard. That will be the
official detour. We’ve been working with Carver County on that. Four construction phases will
be maintained through the project and local traffic to access onto Pioneer Trail or to the north so
that there’s a staging plan there. We just did not want to have a contractor just come in and
completely reconstruct the roadway all at one time. It would just be too chaotic. Temporary
construction access to Kiowa Trail is planned to go through Springfield Drive. As council
knows there’s a barricade there. We’re going to be removing that for access for Kiowa Trail
residents and then again 2014 work will be completed under traffic. So this, I’m sorry.
Councilman Laufenburger: When are you taking down that barrier Paul?
Paul Oehme: As soon as the contractor, actually as soon as Phase II and III are started. Once the
contractor starts working in this location along 101, again north is up here.
Councilman Laufenburger: So when you block that entrance to Kiowa Trail, that’s when you’re
going to take down the barrier.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Paul Oehme: Correct. Right, that’s correct. So Phase I is shown in yellow here. Access to
Bandimere Trail, Bandimere Park will be open at all times so the current access to Bandimere
Park is about this location right here so the plan is to close 101 at this, in the yellow area. Have
the contractor focus then on reconstructing this area up until I think the end of July that work
should be done. All access to Bandimere Park will have to come from the south during this time
to Bandimere through the existing access points. Once this section of roadway is done, the
contractor will shift to the green area and close down this section of roadway. At that time Mr.
Laufenburger that access point will be opened up. Kiowa Trail barricades will be put up and the
contractor will have access to this section of roadway for reconstruction.
Councilman Laufenburger: Where’s the two lane that you’re going to be talking about?
Paul Oehme: Right here.
Councilman Laufenburger: Is that a narrow spot right there?
Paul Oehme: Correct. If you can see there’s a little red area right here.
Councilman Laufenburger: Yeah.
Paul Oehme: That’s the surcharge area.
Councilman Laufenburger: And you’re going to pack dirt in there so it goes, so it packs in.
Paul Oehme: Yep, and we’re removing as much material on the northbound two lanes of traffic
as we can. The southbound two lanes it’s right against the wetland there and we just can’t dig
down. The water table is really high in that area so we’re just going to have to try to compress
that softer material as much as we can. It’s probably going to be about 8 feet of dirt along that
southbound lane of roadway over the winter months so.
Todd Gerhardt: Is that green dot a round about?
Paul Oehme: It is not.
Mayor Furlong: Not yet.
Councilman Laufenburger: I think it’s late so nobody’s watching.
Mayor Furlong: Oh I’m sure they are.
Paul Oehme: So moving south again, the blue area will be constructed. That second phase.
This phase is the end of August, early September and then the more the pink area is into
September-October and November timeframe. What I’ve shown on this drawing is, we are
going to be reconstructing the intersection of Pioneer Trail. Raising that grade up. Getting the
curb and gutter in there prior to the end of August so we want to have this intersection open prior
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
to the school start and then wait, or have the contractor wait on this section in here after, as the
last section of roadway to be reconstructed so.
Councilman Laufenburger: But you’re going to have to close that east/west Pioneer Trail
intersection for a while.
Paul Oehme: We will and I think in the contract I think we have two, the contractor has two
weeks to reconstruct that intersection so there is going to be another detour associated.
Mayor Furlong: What’s that detour going to be?
Paul Oehme: It is, it’s going to be 101 and then we’re going to go over to Audubon and then
come back on Pioneer Trail so we’re going to go all the way to Chaska I believe.
Mayor Furlong: What about, where’s the, what about traffic going to the east of that
intersection?
Paul Oehme: To the east.
Mayor Furlong: Yeah, how do they get around it?
Paul Oehme: To the east there is.
Councilman Laufenburger: They’ve got to go north.
Paul Oehme: Yeah, we’ve got to go north and I think we have to go into Eden Prairie. County
Road 4 I believe.
Mayor Furlong: County Road 4?
Paul Oehme: County Road 4, so I think there’s two access points that we’re going to be working
with that so there’s, there’s different stages. I don’t have all the detours with me but I know
there’s going to be some significant detours associated with the intersection. That’s why we
limited the amount of time that the contractor has to reconstruct that intersection as much as we
could so, again in the middle of November we’re going to try to have everything substantially
completed except for the surcharge area by the end of the construction season.
Councilman McDonald: If I could, you know I read in your report one of the reasons you only
got two bids was there was a lot of concern about the timelines and stuff that you put out there.
How confident are you that you know if you give them two weeks to do that intersection, and I
mean things are very time critical, how confident are you that this company’s actually going to
be able to do that?
Paul Oehme: Well Eureka is a fairly big contractor. They do have a lot of resources in this
company. If it were to be a smaller contractor I think we’d be a little bit more concerned but you
know talking to the contractor, we actually had the pre-construction meeting last week already
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
with this project and that was one of the items that we did talk about so we are, we are, we’ll be
monitoring that and making sure that they do meet their staging requirements. You know
weather is always a big factor that we can’t have any control over so we have to you know take
that into consideration but you know we’ll be on them. There’s going to be a full time inspector
out here making sure that the staging and the access is maintained so that was one of the biggest
concerns that we have is trying to get this thing built in one year’s time but talking to the
contractor again, you know as long as there’s no significant amount of, there’s not going to be
any traffic associated with this section of roadway during construction. They think they can
move a lot of dirt.
Councilman McDonald: This is going to be a major disruption. What plans do we have as far as
a project manager or someone who’s phone number is out there and residents can call them?
Mayor Furlong: Besides your’s Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: Yeah, besides mine because I won’t know anything. Besides that I’ll
have been impeached by then so it will have to be somebody else but I mean I just anticipate
you’re going to shut down Bandimere Park. It’s going to be difficult to get in and out of when
we just heard today in work session about yeah, the dependence upon Bandimere for recreational
stuff so that’s going to cause a heartache.
Paul Oehme: Yeah, just to be clear we’re not going to be shutting down Bandimere Park.
Bandimere Park will have access all the time. It’s just going to come in from either direction.
Councilman McDonald: Yeah, but you’re going to have to go way around everything to do it.
Paul Oehme: Right. Right.
Councilman McDonald: I mean yeah, you have to go around through Springfield is probably not
going to be too happy about that because.
Mayor Furlong: Well I think the detour’s going to be over on Powers Boulevard. So you’ll have
Pioneer Trail, Powers Boulevard and Lyman over the detour. Main detour for local traffic
you’ve got you know the Kiowa Trail connection there to Springfield and once that opens up that
will create opportunities for residents both in Springfield and along Kiowa Trail to have better
access during the construction period so.
Councilman McDonald: I’m just concerned about getting the word out to people about, you
know really laying out what expectations should be.
Todd Gerhardt: There’ll be a neighborhood meeting.
Paul Oehme: Yep, and we do have a neighborhood meeting tomorrow in the library if this
project moves forward so we are going to be talking to neighborhoods about that and there is
going to be you know press releases that will be going out. It’ll be on our website. It’ll be on
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Facebook. There’s a litany of things that we’ll be working on. The school district will be
notified tomorrow about the project.
Councilman Laufenburger: What time is that meeting tomorrow?
Paul Oehme: It’s from 4:00 to 6:00 I believe.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay, so we should be done by then.
Paul Oehme: Yeah. So moving along here.
Councilman McDonald: Point taken.
Paul Oehme: So again here’s a schedule that we’re having. A neighborhood meeting is
tomorrow. I think again it’s from 4:00 to 6:00. Construction starts, you know this is tentative
right now. The contractor wants to get going on this as soon as they can. It sounds like the
weather might be breaking. You know clearing and grubbing and those type of things would
start as soon as the weather permits. Again there is public notifications that have to go out. Not
just the police and fire but you know press releases. MnDOT has a permit that we have to work
through for notifications as well so that permit has to be worked through starting tomorrow with
the potential acceptance of the bid. So there’s, that shutdown date of 101 for the north half is
still a little bit tentative but there’s going to be signs out there.
Mayor Furlong: What do you think that might be? When will it first be shut down?
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Paul Oehme: Well it could be shut down as early as April 29 which I think is a Thursday but.
Mayor Furlong: One week?
Paul Oehme: Yeah, there’s a 7 day notice, notifications that would have to go out so there’d be
signage that would go out fairly quickly to notify the traveling public that the roadway would be
shut down so, but realistically again it’d probably be the first week in May before we’d really,
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before the contractor gets out there so, you know April 29 I just want to make everybody
understand that that is the earliest date that it would be shut down.
Mayor Furlong: Okay.
Paul Oehme: So and then construction substantially completed by mid-November and the final
completion September of next year for that surcharge area.
Councilman Laufenburger: That surcharge area, you’ll put a, that will be tar won’t it? Will it be
asphalt or is it going to be, stay gravel?
Paul Oehme: Over the winter months it’s just going to be dirt basically. Compacted dirt piled
up.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Mayor Furlong: And traffic will just be going on two lanes.
Councilman Laufenburger: Oh so the surcharge, it will be in place.
Paul Oehme: It’ll be in place.
Councilman Laufenburger: It will not be driven on.
Paul Oehme: Correct. Yeah, exactly.
Councilman Laufenburger: Okay.
Mayor Furlong: Until it comes off.
Paul Oehme: The northbound lanes will be open so there’s two northbound lanes.
Councilman Laufenburger: Yep.
Paul Oehme: So we’re going to be transitioning, have that median open so they’re going to be
transitioning from four lanes to two lanes through that surcharge area for the winter months so
with that, the proposed motion is before you and if there’s any questions I’d like to see if I can
answer them.
Mayor Furlong: I’d like to see if you can answer them as well. Questions for staff. On Kiowa,
when is that, that’s in our current local road reconstruction schedule.
Paul Oehme: Correct.
Mayor Furlong: When is that?
Paul Oehme: 2014.
Mayor Furlong: 2014, so next year.
Paul Oehme: Next year.
Mayor Furlong: Okay. So when those barriers come out they’re going to stay out until, and then
go through the road construction process, is that your plan?
Paul Oehme: If you like, yes.
Mayor Furlong: That’s fine. Okay.
Councilman McDonald: As long as you’re making requests and everything. When this is all
done and it’s successful I want to have pistachio cake at the ribbon cutting for all of this just so
everybody knows that’s what I’m ordering.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Mayor Furlong: Pistachio cake. Do you want to make that part of the motion? No. Okay.
Other questions. First of all, comments. Thoughts. I know it’s late but this is a major project
that this City has been undertaking for years. Has been in the planning and development and I
know all of us have supported improvements along the 101 corridor for many years and it’s nice
to see that this one’s coming. It’s great that in conjunction next year we’re going to see the river
crossing upgraded and the lower Y improved. It creates a gap so we’ll let you, since it’s your
birthday we’ll let you go home tonight but maybe tomorrow before the neighborhood meeting
you can start planning on the next segment.
Paul Oehme: Absolutely.
Mayor Furlong: Once this is done, but this is really it’s, you know when we talk about the
growth of our city, it’s in the southern part of our city below Highway 5. South of Highway 5
and this is just a great project so thank you Paul for all you’ve done and Todd and I know
everybody’s been involved in getting us to this point. This should not be anti climatic though it
tends to be so really appreciate everyone’s efforts.
Councilman Laufenburger: Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Furlong: Yes.
Councilman Laufenburger: I think bravo Paul and not only to you but to your interface with the
County, Kimley-Horn, the State, everybody but it really comes to, it comes to the leadership that
this council has provided and this was underway long, long before I came in and I was just
looking forward to it as kind of a citizen’s, citizen of the community and to see us to be this close
I just think all of the council members need to be commended for your leadership, your
demonstrated commitment to this so my thanks to Mayor and Councilwoman Ernst and
Tjornhom and Mr. McDonald so thank you. On behalf of those of us who live south of Highway
5.
Mayor Furlong: Any other thoughts, comments? Would somebody like to make a motion?
Councilman McDonald: I’m just glad to see it happen. I’ll make the motion.
Mayor Furlong: Please Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: Okay. I make a motion that the City Council approves Resolutions
awarding a construction contract to Eureka Construction in the amount of $7,434,402.60 for the
Trunk Road 101 improvements, Project 12-06 and approving the MnDOT funding agreement.
What I didn’t read it right?
Mayor Furlong: No, you read it exactly right.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: It’s just the 60 cents.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Kate Aanenson: You can see engineers don’t round up.
Paul Oehme: That was the bid. What do you do?
Councilman Laufenburger: Second.
Mayor Furlong: Is there a second? Thank you. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none,
let’s proceed with the vote.
Resolution #2013-28: Councilman McDonald moved, Councilman Laufenburger seconded
that the Chanhassen City Council accepts bids and awards a contract to Eureka
Construction, Inc. in the amount of $7,434,402.60 for the TH 101 (Lyman Boulevard to
Pioneer Trail) Improvements, Project 12-06. All voted in favor and the motion carried
unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
Resolution #2013-29: Councilman McDonald moved, Councilman Laufenburger seconded
that the Chanhassen City Council approves the Funding Agreement with MnDOT. All
voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0.
Mayor Furlong: Thank you Paul. Happy Birthday.
Paul Oehme: Thank you.
COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS.
Councilman Laufenburger: My family and I experienced Chanhassen Dinner Theater at it’s
finest this weekend. To members of the council as well as members of the community that may
be watching, Joseph is just a phenomenal production and one of the most exciting things was
seeing two young kids invited from the audience to be part of the production during the
production and it was just, it was wonderful. Our kids and grandkids enjoyed it and I think it’s
just an example of the incredible cultural montage that we have available to us. Chaska Valley
Family Theater. Chanhassen Dinner Theater. The concert series that Klein Bank supports. This
is a great community and Joseph and the Chanhassen Dinner Theater I think of Brindisi, Michael
Brindisi, Tamara Kangas-Erickson and Steve Peters, they’ve just done a wonderful job of
making the Chanhassen Dinner Theater really just a mantel demonstrating the leadership that
Chanhassen has in the southwest metro area so I would encourage all of you to go see Joseph.
Mayor Furlong: Excellent, thank you. Other comments? Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: I’d just like to say this weekend I attended the Rotary’s Gala, which is
much anticipated within this community. Vernelle Clayton was awarded the award for
Distinguished Citizen.
Mayor Furlong: Distinguished Service Award.
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Councilman McDonald: Distinguished Service Award, we changed the name and everything
went quite well. Kept looking for the Mayor but I’m sure he was with you at the Dreamcoat so
that was good but I just want to say thanks to the Rotary for what they do for the community.
Mayor Furlong: Good, thank you. Any other comments? Last week the Chanhassen Historical
Society had their annual meeting and there was a good turnout but more importantly or as
importantly I want to thank Mr. Gerhardt for working with them to make available the Maple
Room for the Historical Society, which is the old senior center before the library got moved out
so it should give them a little bit more of a place to gather and, as well as a place to display some
of the historical aspects of our city and I know that there’s been, all of us appreciate the historical
pictures along the hallway and Fountain Conference Room as well but thank you to, I don’t
know if Karen’s involved in that or the Historical Society or just everybody but we appreciate all
their work to remind us where we’ve been as we keep looking forward so thank you.
Todd Gerhardt: Another great attribute to the community.
Mayor Furlong: Yep, great group doing good things.
Todd Gerhardt: Is the Historical Society and you know keeping those records and making
history every day is great.
Mayor Furlong: Absolutely. Thank you. Any other council presentations?
ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS.
Todd Gerhardt: Just a couple of things. I’m pretty excited about Tony Abernathy. Tony is one
of our plow truck drivers and Tony had a little bit of fun this last snowstorm. He was out
plowing and some kids in the cul-de-sac built a snowman and Tony had two choices. To plow it
under or to leave it and to the disappointment of the kids I think, based on the play by play, Tony
left the snowman, which his name was Lucky. So we had 2,779 individuals saw this post on our
Facebook page and of those 2,779 they passed it onto their friends so 4,706 people saw the post
or the video and 59 people have seen it on YouTube so it is on YouTube and.
Mayor Furlong: Not quite viral.
Councilman Laufenburger: I heard reports that it actually showed up on a news station too.
Todd Gerhardt: Channel 11 broadcast it at the end of their show on I think it was Friday.
Councilman McDonald: Wow. He chose wisely.
Todd Gerhardt: Yeah. They said it made them smile and I also shared it with my list serve to all
city managers in Minnesota to say you know this snow’s going to go away sooner or later.
Hopefully this will put a smile on your face and got some positive comments back so Tony did
have his picture taken with Lucky and Lucky did have his hat on and nose before the plow truck
came but the play by play announcers thought they’d better take that off because they thought
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Chanhassen City Council – April 22, 2013
Tony was going to do Lucky in. So the last thing, upstairs we do have a display on the 101 river
crossing. Picture of the new bridge and it’s pretty amazing to see that image. It has 41 seams so
that equates to 410 pilings that are going to go in place and gives you a perspective of how high
the bridge will be and so we put that on display for the public to view and that came from the
open house that was last Thursday in the middle of the snowstorm but we still had 43 people
show up at the open house over in Shakopee and a lot of positive comments came from that and
so good meeting and that’s all I have.
Mayor Furlong: Great. Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Gerhardt? Or Lucky. No.
CORRESPONDENCE DISCUSSION.
None.
Councilwoman Tjornhom moved, Councilwoman Ernst seconded to adjourn the meeting.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. The City
Council meeting was adjourned at 11:30 p.m.
Submitted by Todd Gerhardt
City Manager
Prepared by Nann Opheim
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