CC Minutes 1999 05 10CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL
REGULAR MEETING
MAY 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino called the meeting to order at 6:30 p.m. The meeting was opened with the Pledge to
the Flag.
COUNCILMEMBERS PRESENT: Mayor Mancino, Councilman Labatt, Councilman Engel,
Councilwoman Jansen and Councilman Senn
STAFF PRESENT: Scott Botcher, Todd Gerhardt, Roger Knutson, Kate Aanenson, Cynthia Kirchoff,
Todd Hoffman and Sharmin A1-Jaff
APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve the
agenda with the following additions: Items 1(1). Authorize staff to initiate a proposal process soliciting
interest from potential vendors for the provision of a needs assessment analysis reviewing the provision of
library service in the city of Chanhassen, and l(m). Authorize the City Manager to opt out of PERA. All
voted in favor and the motion carried.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: PRESENTATION OF MAPLE LEAF AWARDS TO RON
ROESER, PARK AND RECREATION COMMISSION; JANE KUBITZ, SENIOR
COMMISSION; SELDA HEINLEIN, SENIOR COMMISSION; AND BERNICE BILLISON,
SENIOR COMMISSION.
Mayor Mancino and the City Council thanked the following commissioners for their service to the City of
Chanhassen and presented Maple Leaf Awards to Ron Roeser, Selda Heinlein and Bernice "Bunny"
Billison. Jane Kubitz was not present at the meeting.
Mayor Mancino: So as you see we have a lot of wonderful volunteers in our community on our different
commissions. And we do have advertisements for openings on commissions in our Chanhassen Villager
paper when there are openings on them so please look for that.
CONSENT AGENDA: Councilwoman Jansen moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve the
following Consent Agenda items pursuant to the City Manager's recommendations:
a. Bids for Mobile Generator, PW016GGG.
c. Resolution #99-34: Approve Proclamation Declaring May 16-21 as National Public Works Week.
Resolution #99-35: Approve Proposed Change Orders for 1999 Construction Season, Midwest
Asphalt Corporation.
g. Approval of Bills.
Approve City Council Work Session Minutes dated April 13, 1999
Approve City Council Work Session Minutes dated April 26, 1999
Approve City Council Minutes dated April 26, 1999
Receive Planning Commission Minutes dated April 21, 1999
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
i. Resolution #99-36: Approve Budget Amendment for Purchase of Office 97 for City Computer
System.
j. Approval of Donation of $1,000 from Pillsbury for Safety Camp.
k. Resolution #99-37: Approve Gambling Permit, St. Hubert's Church for Annual Festival.
1. Authorize Staff to Initiate a Proposal Process Soliciting Interest from Potential Vendors for the
Provision of a Needs Assessment Analysis Reviewing the Provision of Library Service in the City of
Chanhassen.
m. Authorize City Manager to opt out of PERA.
All voted in favor and the motion carried.
(B). APPROVE PLANS & SPECIFICATIONS; AUTHORIZE ADVERTISING FOR BIDS FOR
INFILTRATION/INFLOW DRAINAGE IMPROVEMENTS, PROJECT 98-2.
Councilman Senn: Item (b) I asked that it be pulled because I would like to suggest that we have a shared
cost basis on any of those projects so we establish that as ongoing policy for future projects relating to
these fixes on the sump pump drainage so, if the rest of you don't want to do that, that's fine but.
Mayor Mancino: Sure. Any discussion on that from other council members? Okay, I think I feel
comfortable going ahead. A motion then.
Councilwoman Jansen: I'll make the motion to approve l(b).
Mayor Mancino: A second please.
Councilman Labatt: I'll second it.
Resolution #99-38: Councilwoman Jansen moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve plans
and specifications, authorize advertising for bids for Infiltration/Inflow Drainage improvements,
Project 98-2. All voted in favor, except Councilman Senn who opposed, and the motion carried with
a vote of 4 to 1.
D. APPROVE SUPPLEMENT TO DESIGN SERVICES CONTRACT FOR TH 5/WEST 78TM
STREET IMPROVEMENTS (POWERS BOULEVARD TO TH 41), PROJECT 97-6.
Councilman Senn: I pulled 1 (d). The original contract on this which we kind of agreed to do with the
consultant was not put out for competitive bid and one of the conditions of that was that we would not see
any changes or whatever to that contract being that the fee was not to exceed. Now this is a change
increasing the fee so I, having been here at least when that happened I can't see turning around and
changing it at this point.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Any other discussion?
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Councilwoman Jansen: I guess I'm comfortable with this from the City Engineer explaining that it was a
change in the scope of the project that caused the increase in the amount for the project.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, any other? Then may I have a motion please.
Councilwoman Jansen: Make a motion to approve l(d).
Mayor Mancino: Second please.
Councilman Labatt: I'll second it.
Resolution #99-39: Councilwoman Jansen moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve the
supplement to Design Services Contract for Highway 5/West 78th Street improvements (Powers
Boulevard to TH 41), Project 97-6. All voted in favor, except Councilman Senn who opposed, and
the motion carried with a vote of 4 to 1.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: None.
CONTINUATION OF BOARD OF EQUALIZATION AND REVIEW.
Public Present:
Name Address
Keith & Pat Gunderson
Paul Haik
Don Sennes
Jahn Dyvik
Eldon Degler
6661 Mohawk Drive
261 Hidden Lane
6680 Mohawk Drive
610 Pleasant View Road
6611 Mohawk Drive
Mayor Mancino: Is there anyone here tonight wishing to address the Council. Sorry, I thought that the
County was going to speak. Is there anyone wishing to address the Council tonight on their market value
for the year 2000? Board of Review 1999. Anyone here tonight? Please come forward. State your name
and address and if you have your PID number. We have a list so we will look through it and try and find
your data.
Don Sennes: My name is Don Sennes. My wife and I live at 6680 Mohawk Drive since 1981. That's ID
number 25.1600500.
Mayor Mancino: Are you on the list? Have you applied? Where are we? Oh, thank you. 37-38.
Councilman Engel: Which appeal number is that?
Mayor Mancino: 37-38. Appeal number 37 and 38. Just excuse me, we've got a lot of paperwork so let
us just get to your appeal. Okay. Is everybody there so we can follow Mr. Sennes?
Don Sennes: I've got some sheets here with some tables of three nearby, can I just give you those rather
than? I've got six copies...
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino: Okay, do you want to review it with us for one minute? And you have a copy of it?
Okay. If you can hold on, we'll all get it in front of us so we can follow along with you.
Don Sennes: You want me to keep standing here?
Mayor Mancino: Hate to make you do it but that way we can. If you want to kind of just go over it
generally.
Don Sennes: Well yeah. The Assessor's proposal to raise the home value 6.25% which is $9,300.00. Ann
from the Assessor's office told me the homes in our price range are really selling good. Like hot cakes. So
the values are going up a lot more than the 1%, the 3% that Mr. Shafer mentioned at the April 5th meeting.
But then there are three homes within 200 feet of our home that are in a similar price bracket. One home at
a 10.2% decrease in value. But that did follow a large increase the year before so I don't know what
happened there. And that one also has an addition that was started last year. Our home is not, had any
changes or improvements since 1985. One of the other homes had a .5% decrease in value and the other a
.5% increase in value so I just don't know why mine is going up 6.25% after 3.25% increase last year.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Ann, would you like to respond at all?
Ann Wise: I reappraised the Carver Beach, you know came through in '97 for the '98 assessments and
most properties went up in value. You know a lot of them quite a bit but it varied depending on the
property. But this year they weren't changed from what we had recommended in '98. But yours had been
lowered down below what we felt is fair market value so this year it was you know raised again. But I did
come out and I recommended lowering it, what was it.
Don Sennes: I think you said 155.
Ann Wise: Lowering yeah, down $3,100.00 to $155,000.00.
Don Sennes: But I mean one of these houses, the house across the street went down 5/10 of a percent. The
other one went up just 5/10 of a percent and the other one went down 10.2%. I realize it had a huge
increase the year before but the other thing, my last line on this, it appears that if you're successful in
appealing a value increase one year, attempt will be made to get it back the next year. My didn't go down
last year. It did go up 3.25% and now with what you were asking for this year, it would be within $200.00
of what you tried to get it up to last year.
Ann Wise: Because the market value that I proposed last year is what, is similar to what I feel the house
would sell for this year. So I didn't change my.
Don Sennes: You're saying you didn't get mine up high enough last year. And the year before so.
Ann Wise: No, that isn't what.
Don Sennes: The one across the street went down and mine goes up...that's what I don't understand. See
when I talked to you on the phone, I didn't know what had happened to the three houses closest to me.
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino: Mr. Sennes, we'll review that as a council, so thank you. We understand your concern
and we will review that. Thank you.
Don Sennes: Thank you very much.
Mayor Mancino: Anyone else wishing to address the Council? Please come forward. State your name and
you can, it will take us a minute to get the paperwork in front of us again.
Jahn Dyvik: My name is Jahn Dyvik and my PID is 25.7300080.
Mayor Mancino: Number 12. And your market value is the same as last year's.
Jahn Dyvik: Right. But in the year prior to that it jumped about $95,000.00 in that one year. Largely due
to what was determined to be new construction. Which was really mis, was determined incorrectly.
Because there wasn't that much new construction that was done in the year prior. There was $80,000.00
of improvements that were listed in the 1999 tax year. I just bought this house in July of '98. So I had my
taxes go from $3,300.00 to $5,800.00 in one year and I know that the comparable houses, my neighbors
are much lower taxes and valued higher based on, well I've got home sales from two years ago that sold for
more than my house and yet their taxes are still lower than mine. They sold two years ago for more than
what I paid just this last year and their taxes are lower than mine.
Mayor Mancino: Well, we'll have to check those other homes...
Jahn Dyvik: You know I spoke with Ann about it and I just felt like there was this inequity in my
neighborhood and then seeing that nothing changed this past year as well didn't seem to say to me that
they're trying to bring these values closer together.
Mayor Mancino: But Jahn when your property sold, I just want to make sure we have this information
right, on 7/10/98 for $261,000.00.
Jahn Dyvik: 51.
Mayor Mancino: We have 261, and the market.
Jahn Dyvik: Well the original offer was 261 but we changed that to 251 because of, they were going to
have a heated driveway put in but that didn't happen so we wrote a separate contract for that so the actual
purchase price was.
Mayor Mancino: Was 251. And the estimated market value that was in '98 for 1999 is $248. So your
market value is lower than what you actually paid for it which is market value.
Jahn Dyvik: But that limited market value I believe should have kicked in on that so that I don't get hit
with an 80% or 90% increase in taxes in one year.
Mayor Mancino: Okay.
Councilman Senn: What was it the year before?
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Jahn Dyvik: $155 the year before. And what had happened was, the owner had been working on his house
over a number of years but for some reason this new construction got lumped into that last year, which is
inaccurate.
Councilman Senn: And there was how much of new improvements under your.
Jahn Dyvik: It was listed as $80,000.00 but it was closer to $30,000.00. I went over it with the builder
and talked to him. I said what, we went through exactly what he did. Actually that would have been in
1997. In the year 1997. And there was about $30,000.00 of improvements made.
Councilman Senn: And do you have receipts or anything to show that?
Jahn Dyvik: Ah no. I just went over it with him. What he did.
Mayor Mancino: There must have been permits too.
Jahn Dyvik: Yeah he had some long, some permits that were outstanding for a long time. In fact I heard he
had the longest running permits in Chanhassen for a while because he started this in late 80's or early 90's.
Mayor Mancino: Any other questions?
Jahn Dyvik: And also there's currently a couple of houses for sale, my neighbors in fact, their house is for
sale for $330,000.00 and they have a contingent offer on that right now so I mean, and their taxes are lower
than mine. Quite a bit lower than mine so it just seems like there's this huge inequity.
Mayor Mancino: Well the tax rate would still be the same.
Jahn Dyvik: Their market value is lower than mine. It's like $220 or something like that. I have the
numbers here somewhere.
Mayor Mancino: And they're asking $300? 330. Okay.
Jahn Dyvik: And there's another house across the way that actually is lakeshore that's listed for $340 so I
mean, I'm just saying that.., there would be this effort to bring these values closer together and I saw that
as either reducing mine or bringing, I mean not that I want to see my neighbors taxes increase but I just
feel like I'm paying too much.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Appreciate it. We will look at that. Review that. Anyone else wishing to
address the council?
Keith Gunderson: Good evening Mayor, Council. Good evening. My name's Keith Gunderson, 6661
Mohawk Drive.
Mayor Mancino: Number 17. Okay, Keith.
Keith Gunderson: Okay I was here the last meeting I dropped off a pamphlet. I don't think I should have
to read it again. Do you want me to read it again at all or? Okay. I guess we're just looking for the results
of the Council's decision on what we're going to do here.
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino: Did you also get a copy of the assessor's hand written on it? Making some notes on it.
And a comparable grid for 6661 Mohawk Drive.
Keith Gunderson: I never got anything.
Mayor Mancino: Mr. Gerhardt, is it possible to make a copy of this so that Keith has a copy? Okay.
We'll just give you a copy so that you can see it. Keith, if you want to take a few minutes to review it and
see if someone else would like to come up and give you a few seconds to do that. Anyone else wishing to
address the council on this?
Paul Haik: I'm Paul Haik. I'm on Hidden Lane. I was here at the last one. I was told to come back to
this meeting.
Mayor Mancino: And we have you as appeal number 18.
Paul Haik: Okay.
Councilman Senn: And yours was reduced from what the assessor originally.
Paul Haik: I haven't seen anything.
Councilman Senn: Okay your current market value is $158,200. No let's see, sorry...value was $161,400
and the assessor's recommending to reduce it to $158,900. You didn't know that?
Paul Haik: I knew that. That the $2,500.00 but that's what I still believe is inadequate.
Councilman Senn: Okay.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Unless you'd like to state any reasons for that before we review it.
Paul Haik: I've gone through it. I submitted it to the auditor's...about $25,000.00 repair and my home,
when you have a water problem and a $25,000.00 repair, if that's not affecting my market value more than
$2,500.00, is just not a valid assessment of the actual circumstances.
Councilman Senn: What kind of a water problem do you have?
Paul Haik: We're part of the Marvin Windows, the PPG litigation and so I'm looking at replacing all my
windows because we're having leakage into the basement, master bedroom, kitchen, living room, and if I
tell some buyer geez, I had a little water problem. Well what's that? Well a little water. Where? What
room? This room. This room. This room. This room. It's going to be an issue. And it's going to be a lot
more than $2,500.00 because the cost is, we've already gotten the bid from Justus Lumber and it's about
$25,000.00. So that's just not a fair reflection to say I'm going to give you 10% of the actual cost for
repair.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you.
Councilman Labatt: How long have you lived in the house?
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Paul Haik: I moved in in November of '96. And I was unaware of this problem at the time where we first
began experiencing the water issue saying well geez, what's the issue here and it took us a while to find out
that it was Marvin and then when I finally identified the window to Marvin, I submitted the claim in '98
and then it took them about 4 to 6 months to first agree that yes, they were Marvin windows. Once I got
them to agree they were Marvin Windows, their inspection team didn't come until in April, this last month
and the inspection team has agreed. Yeah. Part of the PPG problem and what the issue is is the windows
are all rotting out. The wood's all rotting out on it so there's no seals any longer. The water can come
directly through like in today's rain, come right through the window.
Mayor Mancino: Paul, do you have documentation from Marvin?
Paul Haik: What I have received originally is just the materials that we submitted to them. The window
stamps are and the information, I can provide that additionally to the auditor but I have submitted.
Mayor Mancino: But you do have documentation from Marvin that the windows are leaking and that they
will be replacing them? You do have a written?
Paul Haik: They won't replace them now because Judge Montgomery has said that Marvin waited too long
to sue PPG so they said on a Statute of Limitations they will not allow Marvin to proceed with the lawsuit.
So Marvin has to eat all these costs and up until they got that ruling, they were dealing with it. Now it's
my cost. Marvin is not going to pay for it.
Mayor Mancino: Marvin will not do that, okay.
Councilman Senn: Paul, what did you pay for the house in '96?
Paul Haik: I paid $169.
Mayor Mancino: Anyone else wishing to address the Council?
Eldon Degler: I'm Eldon Degler from 6611 Mohawk Drive. And as a senior citizen I would like to... in
regard to that. Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you Eldon. And Ann I see here that on that, on Eldon's piece you had a
value of $90,300.00 and went down to $88,400 after meeting with Mr. Degler. Sorry, Bruce.
Bruce Mulby: Sorry, I'm Bruce Mulby. Yeah, I had a reduction. What I did is I looked at inside the
house and felt there was more physical depreciation on the home than what we had in the system and that's
the reason for the reduction on that.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Anyone else? Keith, have you had a minute? Do you want to say
anything to Council?
Keith Gunderson: Well you guys got the same thing. What do you think here? You know I went over this
last year when I was at the Council. These comparisons, like in Lake Susan Hills Drive, you know this is a
brand new neighborhood. They're only a couple years old. They're 3 years, 4 years old. They've got
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
brand new roads. Concrete sidewalks. They've got street lights. You know I don't know how you could
even compare these.
Mayor Mancino: You have location, location, location.
Keith Gunderson: Well that's good in business, absolutely. And two out of the three comparisons 200 and
400 more square feet of finished living area. Two of them have four car garages. You know I didn't walk
around and I didn't pick and choose my, this stuff last year. You know I went directly to a neighborhood
that was directly related to mine as far as location, location, location. Lake Susan Hills Drive, what this
gentleman here that spoke earlier, you were surprised with the Lake Susan Hills or the houses that were
selling for over $300,000.00. You know these houses are appraised at $222,000.00 and they could sell for
an easy 3 ½. I mean and that's what they're selling for.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, any questions for Keith from Council. We'll review yours.
Keith Gunderson: When are we going to get back together again?
Mayor Mancino: We're going to do it tonight. We'll be right here. We're going to go through our list and
make a decision and pass that onto the County Board. Because the County Board has to take all these from
what we do.
Keith Gunderson: Okay last year Mr. Senn you made this decision at that time. Are you going to be doing
the same thing again here tonight?
Mayor Mancino: Yeah, we'll be passing it Keith tonight. Yeah, we'll be going through all these and
passing them and making changes as we see fit. Tonight. We wanted to wait until we had a big audience.
Okay, thank you. Well let's talk about these. Can I have some discussion and a motion on those that
councilmembers feel we feel comfortable going ahead and passing and those that we want to pull aside and
have some discussion about.
Councilman Senn: Let me, since I'm usually the one with the most, why don't I go ahead and try a list of
ones to approve. If anybody has one of those that they would like to pull, let me know as I go, okay?
Mayor Mancino: Okay.
Councilman Senn: That we approve, I'm going to go by appeal number. Is that okay?
Councilman Engel: Yes, we have the list.
Councilman Senn: Would move that we approve appeal number 2. Now this is as per current
recommendation because some of these recommendations were changed from the original.
Mayor Mancino: Most of them were, yeah.
Councilman Senn: Appeal number 2, appeal number 3, appeal number 4, appeal number 5, appeal number
6, appeal number 9, appeal number 13, appeal number 14, appeal number 19, appeal number 20, appeal
number 21, appeal number 22, appeal number 24, appeal number 25, appeal number 26, appeal number
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
28, appeal number 29, appeal number 30, appeal number 31, appeal number 32, appeal number 35, appeal
number 36, and appeal number 42.
Mayor Mancino: And did you also include appeal number 33?
Councilman Senn: Appeal number 33 should have been included if I didn't say that.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. I would include that in the list. We're just all checking our lists. Just one second
please. Okay, may I have a second to the motion?
Councilwoman Jansen: Second.
Mayor Mancino moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve the following market valuations
as per the County Assessor's recommendations: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28,
29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, and 42. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Mayor Mancino: Now we will go through those that were not in that group and look at each one
individually and vote on them individually. Okay, number 1.
Councilman Senn: I would move.., new valuation of $128,650.00 on appeal number 1. The previous year
was $124,900.00.
Mayor Mancino: Even though it sold on 10/30/98 for $1417
Councilman Senn: Yep.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, any rationale you want to give on that one for me? Yeah.
Councilman Senn: Well it's physical condition, that sort of thing.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, that's your motion. Okay, is there a second to the motion?
Councilwoman Jansen: I'll second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve on appeal number 1 the market
value of $128,650.00. All voted in favor except Mayor Mancino and Councilman Labatt voted in
opposition and the motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2.
Councilman Senn: On number 7...to $82,400.00.
Mayor Mancino: What percentage increase?
Councilman Senn: Percentages on all these.
Councilwoman Jansen: It's again about 3. I did the same.
Councilman Senn: Some are plus or minus.
10
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino: Okay, is there a second?
Councilman Engel: Second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve on appeal number 7 the market
value of $82,400.00. All voted in favor and the motion carried.
Councilman Senn: On number 8 I had a question because I can't get the numbers to jibe. Ann, I think this
was one of yours. You had a, let's see here previous year's value was $141 then you guys came back at
141. Now this is according to your data sheet. And then reduced it to $138,600. But on the homeowner
sheet it's showing different numbers.
Ann Wise: Well he's looking at payable. He's looking at his tax statement.
Councilman Senn: But he's looking at taxable market value which he's shown as $128 and stuff and $140
so I mean I couldn't get the numbers to come out unless his are somehow wrong but I didn't have a
statement to look at.
Ann Wise: Probably limited market value. You know the taxable and the limited are the same. But we
still have our market value. That's what we go by but the taxable could have been less because it was a
limited value. I checked.
Councilman Senn: Well I would move this one as per assessor's recommendation because it was reduced
anyway but I couldn't get the numbers to tie in.
Mayor Mancino: I'll second that.
Councilman Senn moved, Mayor Mancino seconded to approve on appeal number 8 per the
Assessor's market value recommendation. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Councilman Senn: On appeal number 10, which is... value on, I think this gentleman was here. Eldon
Degler. Was at $85,200. I would move an increase to $87,500.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, is there a second? I will second that.
Councilman Senn moved, Mayor Mancino seconded to approve appeal number 10 at a market value
of $87,500.00. All voted in favor and the motion carried.
Councilman Senn: On number 11. I would move an increase from $286,900.00 to $295,500.
Mayor Mancino: Is there a second?
Orlin Shafer: Orlin Shafer, I'm the County Assessor. This was a commercial property. Involved in
remeasuring the building itself. So part of the value change.
Councilman Senn: Square footage?
Orlin Shafer: Yes.
11
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino: So that's why the 16% increase. Because of the square footage.
Councilman Senn: Then I would move approval as per staff's recommendation then.
Mayor Mancino: I'll second that.
Councilman Senn moved, Mayor Mancino seconded to approve appeal number 11 at a market value
per the Assessor's recommendation. All voted in favor and the motion carried.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you Orlin.
Councilman Senn: Jahn Dyvik I believe it is. I pulled this mainly because he was here. I didn't have any
definite thoughts on it one way or the other. It seems like that $248 to $248 is basically a constant but there
seems to be some confusion over the improvements and the improvement value. I wish we had better
information on that because I mean it's not that old a sale at $155 and then you know the years on top of
that as far as a percentage in improvements. I mean I would come up more with a number around 225 just
on a quick calculation that way but again not having data makes that a little difficult because there's a
large span between $30,000.00 and $80,000.00 for the same improvements. I don't know, is this one we
could set aside and get more information on or do we have to act tonight? Could we table this one Orlin?
Orlin Shafer: You'll have to do this.
Councilman Senn: We do, okay.
Mayor Mancino: We have to make it tonight.
Councilman Labatt: He paid $251 in July '98 for it if my number's right. Plus another $10,000.00 set
aside for a driveway so.
Councilwoman Jansen: I think more the question is that the neighbors are valued lower and it's going to
catch up with them eventually.
Mayor Mancino: I think it will.
Councilman Senn: But this is the one that kind of went to the previous year that we didn't have the data in
front of us and it was $155,000.00 value and my point was if you had the start of $155,000 value and
$30,000 to $80,000 of new improvements, which again is a wide disparity with the number on
improvements plus you add in some percentage for basically kind of like a cost of living or something like
that for those years, you still don't come up near to this but I mean it's difficult to get at that without
having a handle on those improvements. That's kind of where I was moving from.
Mayor Mancino: No, I understand that.
Councilwoman Jansen: The sale price in '98 of $251.
Mayor Mancino: Yeah, I mean that's what I would go with and that's a real market value. Orlin?
12
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Orlin Shafer: I'd like to caution Councilman Senn that you cannot disregard the purchase price. $261 was
the number that was paid for that property. We're at $248. The real issue here was the amount of new
construction value found in the latest assessment which amounted to $80,000.00. That was the amount
added that we determined the new construction added to the value. We didn't argue the purchase price.
Councilman Senn: $251 not 61.
Orlin Shafer: I don't care where he starts from. He paid $261. We're at $248.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Well we usually use as our guideline what the house actually sold for if it sold in
the last year or two. It's a good constant and we've used it both ways. So may I have a motion?
Councilwoman Jansen: I'd move we approve staff recommendation.
Councilman Labatt: I'll second it.
Councilwoman Jansen moved, Councilman Labatt seconded to approve appeal number 12 at the
market value per the Assessor's recommendation. All voted in favor and the motion carried
unanimously.
Councilman Senn: That's the 248, right?
Mayor Mancino: Yep. And did you vote? Okay. You're fine with that. Unanimous. Next one.
Councilman Senn: Number 15. Mark, you had a question on number 15.
Councilman Engel: I was concerned, the numbers seem to disagree. There's a note from Mike that says...
on April 21 of '98. When I was looking at the documentation it looked like it sold for $55,000.00 as a
purchase price so I'm just confused by the documentation.
Mayor Mancino: Ann, I think this was yours. Do you know, I mean in Mike's handwriting he's got that he
paid $23,000. And then you've got it down as paying $55,000.
Ann Wise: Well this is the Certificate of Real Estate Value that he filled out and he did pay $55,000. It
included I believe special assessments. I think Orlin talked to him. I talked to him also.
Mayor Mancino: Oh I see that right here. Certificate of Real Estate Value $55,000. Full purchase price,
yeah.
Councilman Senn: So he's taking the assessments off basically in determination.
Ann Wise: Assessments were included, which is part of the market value. And he was okay with our
recommendation. The 54 after Orlin talked to him.
Councilman Senn: Okay. I'll go with staff's recommendation.
Mayor Mancino: I'll second that.
13
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Councilman Senn moved, Mayor Mancino seconded to approve appeal number 15 at the market
value per the Assessor's recommendation. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Councilman Senn: On appeal number 16 1 would a value increase of $101,400 to $104,400.
Councilwoman Jansen: That's a 3% increase. That's the same number I had noted so I'd second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve appeal number 16 at a market
value of $104,400.00. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Councilman Senn: Number 17, I'd move a value from $186,600 to $192,200. And that's on Keith
Gunderson.
Councilman Labatt: Increase it how much?
Councilwoman Jansen: 3%.
Mayor Mancino: 3% increase. Is there a second to the motion?
Councilwoman Jansen: Second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve appeal number 17 at a market
value of $192,200.00. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Councilman Senn: On number 18 I'd move a value of $154,000.00. Since Mr. Haik is here i'll run
through it real quick. That was assuming a purchase price of $169,000 plus $10,000 basically for what we
would have increased normally for two years, '97 and '98. Bringing it up to $179 and then decreasing the
$25,000.00 for the windows. It would bring it to $154.
Councilman Engel: i'll second that.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve appeal number 18 at a market
value of $154,000. Councilman Senn and Councilman Engel voted in favor, Mayor Mancino,
Councilman Labatt and Councilwoman Jansen voted in opposition. The motion failed with a vote of
2to3.
Mayor Mancino: The motion doesn't carry and it stays with the value of $158,900.
Councilman Senn: You have to pass a motion on that to move.
Mayor Mancino: Oh, thank you. Excuse me. Then may I have a motion? That one didn't carry. This is
going to be a long night tonight, i hate to tell you folks. Excuse me, may i have a new motion.
Councilman Labatt: I motion staff's recommendation.
Mayor Mancino: I'll second that.
14
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Councilman Labatt moved, Mayor Mancino seconded to approve appeal number 18 at a market
value per the Assessor's recommendation. All voted in favor, except Councilman Senn and
Councilman Engel and the motion carried with a vote of 3 to 2.
Councilman Senn: Let's see here, on number 23 I'd move the value to $109,450.
Councilman Labatt: What number Mark, 20?
Councilman Senn: 23. $109,450.
Councilwoman Jansen: That's again about 3%.
Mayor Mancino: Second to the motion please.
Councilwoman Jansen: Second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve appeal number 23 at a market
value of $109,450. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve appeal number 27 at a market
value of $191,000. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Councilman Senn: On appeal number 30... to $174,050.
Mayor Mancino: Is there a second?
Roger Knutson: Mayor?
Mayor Mancino: Yes.
Roger Knutson: Two out of the three of us voted that you already approved number 30.
Todd Gerhardt: It was on your list.
Mayor Mancino: Oh, it was on our list. It was on our list. Thank you.
Councilman Senn: Let's see here. 34. From $143,300 to $147,600.
Councilwoman Jansen: Second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve appeal number 34 at a market
value of $147,600. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Councilman Senn: On appeal number 37. I'd move approval of the...to $152,850.00 on Donald Sennes
first parcel.
Mayor Mancino: I'm sorry from, it was previous year was $148,400 to what?
15
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Councilman Senn: $148,400 to $152,850.
Mayor Mancino: May I have a second please?
Councilwoman Jansen: I'll second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve appeal number 37 at a market
value of $152,850 on the first parcel. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Councilman Senn: On Mr. Sennes second parcel I'd move approval from $54,200 to $55,800.
Mayor Mancino: Is there a second?
Councilman Engel: Second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve appeal number 37 at a market
value of $55,800 for the second parcel. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Councilman Senn: On appeal number 39. Move approval from $149,100 to $156,550.
Mayor Mancino: Is there a second?
Councilman Engel: Second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve appeal number 39 at a market
value of $156,550. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Councilman Senn: Move increase from $336,700 to $346,800.
Mayor Mancino: Is there a second?
Councilwoman Jansen: Can I ask a question?
Mayor Mancino: Sure.
Councilwoman Jansen: This one is showing purchased in '97 for $350,000. Can we go to $346? ... down
to the 350.
Ann Wise: Could I say something?
Mayor Mancino: Yes, Ann.
Ann Wise: Since he purchased the property he finished the basement. So you have to add that value on top
of and that is the $16,500. So if you add that on top of what they paid for it, $353,200 seems like a very
reasonable value.
Councilman Senn: This was last year's appeal too wasn't it? This was appealed last year too wasn't it?
16
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Ann Wise: No. I don't think so.
Mayor Mancino: I don't know.
Ann Wise: I can't remember frankly.
Mayor Mancino: But it was purchased for $350 and then they adjusted and finished the basement and.
Councilman Senn: ... note here but I went through my last year appeals and took some information off of
that so it could be. I just, I didn't write it down, sorry.
Mayor Mancino: And you've made a motion. Is there any second? Okay, may I have a new motion
please.
Councilman Labatt: Motion to approve staff's recommendation.
Mayor Mancino: Is there a second?
Councilwoman Jansen: Second.
Councilman Labatt moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve appeal number 40 at a
market value per staff's recommendation. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Councilman Senn: On 43 I would move $145,850.
Councilman Labatt: What was that again Mark? Numbers again.
Councilman Senn: Make sure I'm on the right one.
Councilman Engel: $145,850.
Councilwoman Jansen: I'm showing in their memorandum of February 4th '98 that's attached, paid for our
home was $210.
Mayor Mancino: Yep, I've got that highlighted too. So the estimated market value of $208,500 is pretty
good. Did you make a motion Mark? Is there a second to the motion? May I have a new motion?
Councilman Labatt: Motion to approve staff's recommendation.
Mayor Mancino: Second please.
Councilwoman Jansen: Second.
Councilman Labatt moved, Councilwoman Jansen seconded to approve appeal number 43 at a
market value per the Assessor's recommendation. All voted in favor and the motion carried
unanimously.
17
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Bruce Mulby: Number 41 has not been approved yet. It's not on your original list Mark and you guys
need to deal with it one way or the other.
Councilman Senn: Move approval of staff's recommendation.
Mayor Mancino: I'll second that.
Councilman Senn moved, Mayor Mancino seconded to approve appeal number 41 at a market value
per the Assessor's recommendation. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you very much. And now we're going to close the meeting. No. Quite seriously,
the next item on the agenda under unfinished business is, oh sorry. Paul.
Paul Haik: Paul Haik. Brief question. How, if I'm dissatisfied with the vote taken today can I effect an
appeal?
Mayor Mancino: Orlin will tell you right now.
Orlin Shafer: We will be sending a letter out to everyone that appealed telling them the Council's action
and explaining the next level of the County Board of Equalization.
Paul Haik: Okay, when is that?
Orlin Shafer: June 17th.
Paul Haik: And that letter comes out?
Orlin Shafer: It will be out within two weeks.
Mayor Mancino: It's June 17th and it's at the Carver County Courthouse in Chaska.
Todd Gerhardt: Orlin, doesn't that start in the middle of the afternoon?
Orlin Shafer: It starts at 9:00 in the morning. There's instructions in the letter but please call into the
Auditor's office prior to the Thursday before that. Or Tuesday before that to get on their agenda. They
operate with a rigid agenda. And you can only go there if you've appealed here.
Paul Haik: I have.
Orlin Shafer: Yes.
Mayor Mancino: Now when you say you do a rigid agenda, does that mean you have everybody on a time
slot?
Orlin Shafer: Yes. And they will not move that time unless somebody is here on the tail end that can move
up and adequately supply. I think we need a motion to adjourn the Board of Review.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, may I have that motion please and a second?
18
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to adjourn the Board of Equalization and
Review. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
REQUEST FOR SITE PLAN REVIEW FOR A TWO STORY OFFICE BUILDING WITH
UNDERGROUND PARKING TO BE COMPLETED IN TWO PHASES. PHASE I IS 40,553 SQ.
FT. AND PHASE II IS 31,500 SQ. FT; AND A ONE STORY HEIGHT VARIANCE; LOCATED
SOUTH OF HIGHWAY 5, EAST OF GREAT PLAINS BLVD. AND NORTH OF LAKE DRIVE
EAST; NORTHCOTT COMPANY OFFICE BUILDING, MORTENSON CO.
Cindy Kirchoff: Thank you. This item was tabled at the last City Council meeting which took place on
April 26th so that neighbors could obtain additional information on the application. Two issues were
foremost in this meeting. The first was parking and actually it was traffic. Not parking. And additional
landscaping. Staff has included in the staff report the ITE trip generation manual which shows the average
number of trips for office versus retail. This clearly shows that retail has a greater number of trips than
office uses do. And the second issue was landscaping. A few residents did express some concern about
buffering from their homes along Lake Drive East and the applicant has revised the landscape plan and it
does meet ordinance requirements. Therefore staff is recommending approval of the site plan review and
variance from the one story height requirement with conditions in the staff report. I'd be happy to answer
any questions.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you very much Cindy. Any questions for staff at this point? Thank you. The
applicant, would you like to just wait or would you like to say anything tonight? Can you show us the
elevations? That would be great. Very quickly.
Tom Lander: I'd like to quickly show. I was going to just quickly address the changes. As we had said
last time when we were here, we intend to work with staff to upgrade the landscaping plan to meet the
deficiencies that had been pointed out and.., we were trying to get the tree count up and yet the trees spaced
far enough apart that we'd get the full canopy of the tree and working with city staff, the solution to that
was basically to go to a double row of tree plantings so we basically doubled the number of boulevard trees
along the Lake Side Drive. Those are really the two landscape plans that were incorporated by integrating
the plans... The other issues we were asked for, I had mentioned at the last meeting that I had, there. That
I had site photos. I took them with a disposal camera so I'm the one responsible for the quality of the
photography but what we have done is put together the site photos that really show the situation in the
neighborhood and the sight lines. I'd almost be better if I passed it because of the quality of photographs...
They're color and number coded. But along with that we took three sections through the building, through
the site. One showing the church and the houses on Erie Avenue. One showing the section at the house
before you get to the berm along Highland Lane and then one set through the berm. Let me just take...
addressing the sections. The houses below the church, as we mentioned before sit down below the church
and in most cases are looking through the church property. But if you take the sight line on either side of
the church, basically from their perspective, they begin to see the building about at this point, first floor
windows. And really the significance of that is that puts it well above the service entry and service area
and with screening with berming and planting and it just illustrates the effective nature of that. The houses
at the berm and going to the west literally from first floor looking across, they'll look over the top of the
building. Basically you can't see the building. From their second floor if they look across the fence, they'll
look in at about the floor of the first, I'm sorry, the ceiling of the first floor. Again, well above the service
19
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
area of the building. And then this last section is taken where the house doesn't have the benefit of the
berm along Lake Drive East. But we also have the site berm that we've created and again you can see that
the sight lines and berming block the view of the.., portions of the building and the sight lines to the
building really start about... So on the rendering, the impact of that is literally to say that most sight lines
of the building are going to end up being something like you see here. So I just, that's what we were asked.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you very much.
Tom Lander: I'll answer questions.
Scott Botcher: Can you pass those around as well.
Tom Lander: Sure.
Mayor Mancino: You must use a pretty big tree spade to get trees that big.
Tom Lander: Well they have to grow...
Mayor Mancino: Thank you very much. Now Tom, were you able to visit with the neighbors who wanted
to see that prior to the meeting?
Tom Lander: We had sent out letters for our neighborhood meeting to everybody within the 500 feet plus
the names that had been added to the petition that was presented last week. And we did have a
neighborhood meeting last Thursday night at which there were about 8 neighbors representing 4 families
and we reviewed the project in detail with them. I've had a couple of individual calls. At that meeting and
in response to the calls I've had, we were here at 6:00 tonight with the boards. I have gone through them
with one neighbor that showed up specifically to see them. We've sort of responded to inquiries as they've
come.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Thank you very much. We have had two public hearings on this. One, the
Planning Commission and the City Council had one a couple weeks ago. So tonight what I'd like to do is if
there is anyone here tonight that hasn't come up in front of the City Council or has new information or a
new question or new comment, if they would do so now. I'll probably open it for just a few minutes. Five
minutes to come up and ask us anything or give us a comment. Again, if it's anything new. Appreciate it.
State your name and address.
Paul Haik: Paul Haik, 261 Hidden Lane. We've the triangular lot right by where his cross section ends. I
don't understand the thinking that why they need to go to two stories. If they really need a variance for two
stories, why not just give them their one story which would resolve a lot of the sight line issues. I can
assure you as I sit right now on my porch, what I look directly into is the street light and part of it's going
to be lighting and other aspects of that but I'm going to be staring right into the second floor of that
building. And I don't know of any economic justification why they need a second story. If they're limited
on that basis, I don't know of any duress or circumstance on that property that could justify a variance. No
extraordinary conditions at issue. And the other aspect of it is, that fundamentally the City has to rethink
what they're doing on Lake Drive East. Right now I've got two kids. We use that walkway all the time.
We bike consistently. Right now it's very difficult to cross. There's no sidewalks on the south side of that.
If you're really going to bring in that level of traffic, you are taking away an amenity to the neighborhood
and that young kids cannot go out and cross that street right now without supervision, that there's got to be
2O
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
a better traffic plan or you've got to make accommodations to get a sidewalk on the south side of that
between there and down to where the Total station is because right now you're asking all the 7 year old
kids to cross your bike across that street and then we're going to increase the traffic volume. So those are
what my two issues are, and they're serious issues.
Mayor Mancino: Sure, thank you very much.
Paul Haik: But as to the variance, I haven't heard the staff explanation of why they think a variance is
justified. They can have their building. They can have it as is. They shouldn't have the right though to
increase that height. If I put in a tall tower someone would object.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you very much.
Kate Aanenson: We put that in the staff report and it certainly was discussed at the other public hearings.
We surveyed the other commercial buildings. This property could hold a commercial development. We've
negotiated on this property for several years and there's been less desirable uses put on the property. We
surveyed existing commercial buildings in town and this was equal in height to that. We felt that it,
because of that we could support the two story and the office use did generate less traffic than a
commercial use that we've had looking at the site so with that justification, the height wasn't any greater
than it would be if it was a commercial building.
Mayor Mancino: And one of the conditions is a crosswalk so we will put a crosswalk in and as soon as it
goes in, we also will be monitoring it whether we need a four way stop, or a three way stop at the
intersection. Yes Cindy.
Cindy Kirchoff: The engineering department has informed me that the crosswalk construction has already
started. And after the construction of the office building has been completed they will do a warrant
analysis after completion to see if there is a need for the stop sign.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. So again a way to have children walk across the street safely. Okay. Take one
more comment. Okay, let's go ahead and have any council discussion. Any questions that council has at
all?
Scott Botcher: Kate I have a quick one, just because I can play dumb, which is easy. Is the warrant
analysis and the stop sign installation placement, those costs charged back to the developer?
Kate Aanenson: That wasn't discussed, no.
Scott Botcher: You might want to think about that. It may not be substantial but I'm not sure that's
something, if they're generating a majority of the traffic for the warrants, then maybe they should pay for
that.
Kate Aanenson: Well there's also the Legion property that's developing so I mean, we generally do that
with a signal. We generally do that. With a stop sign we have not done that in the past, but that's
something we can look at, sure.
Mayor Mancino: Good idea, thank you. May I have a motion?
21
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Councilman Senn: I would move approval. Request for the site plan review for the two story building with
underground parking and...
Mayor Mancino: And a variance? It's on page 14.
Councilman Senn: And the variance for the one story construction to two story construction with one
added condition. And the condition that I would like to add.., put a four way stop at the intersection.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. I'll take that motion. You might want to say something about the plans dated
Received April 16, 1999 because I think there may have been different iteration of plans. Do we want to
date the plans Cindy?
Kate Aanenson: It is the correct date in the report.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. So if you'll take that friendly amendment. Now would you say that last condition
again, 32.
Councilman Senn: I'm not sure it's really a condition for the developer but I think it's a statement the city
needs to make to the city itself or to our staff and that is in the council's mind we want a stop sign there
unless somebody basically tums around and tells us we're going to lose a large chunk of.
Mayor Mancino: MSA funding.
Councilman Senn: MSA funding or something like that because... In that case I'd like to revisit it but
otherwise I think the message should be we want a stop sign there. I think it's totally necessary and
essentially and really isn't something that's open for big discussion.
Mayor Mancino: Do you have a problem though of not putting that under a condition for the developer
though and just make.
Councilman Senn: ... maybe it shouldn't be under.., developer. It really should be more something that's in
the motion for staff to take as running orders.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. Is there a second to the motion?
Councilman Engel: Second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve Site Plan #99-3 and a variance
from the one-story height requirement to permit a two story building, Northcott Company Office
Building, Mortenson Development Corp. as shown on the plans dated received April 16, 1999, and
subject to the following conditions:
1. The lighting plan shall be revised to meet ordinance maximum foot candle requirements and to include
existing fixtures that impact the site.
2. The internal sidewalk shall be connected to the sidewalk along Lake Drive East.
22
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
3. Five accessible parking spaces are required for the 155 spaces that are being provided. One space
must have an 8 foot access aisle; the others must have a 5 foot access aisle.
4. The northeast wall of the building is required to be of 1 hour fire resistive construction because it is
less than 20 feet to the property line.
5. The building owner, designer, or contractor meet with the Building Inspections Division, as early as
possible, to discuss plan review procedures and building permit requirements.
6. The fire hydrant as shown on the Utility Plan must be relocated to the center island across the main
entrance. A second fire hydrant will be needed closer to the garage entry access. Contact
Chanhassen Fire Marshal for exact locations.
7. Install and indicate on plans the location of the PIV (Post Indicator Valve). Contact Chanhassen Fire
Marshal for exact location.
8. Submit radius turn dimensions in parking lot to determine fire department vehicle access. Submit
turn dimensions to Chanhassen City Engineer and Chanhassen Fire Marshal for review and approval.
9. Contact Chanhassen Fire Marshal for exact location of fire lane signs and curbing to be painted
yellow.
10. A ten foot clear space must be maintained around fire hydrants, i.e., street lamps, trees, shrubs,
bushes, NSP, US West, Cable TV and transformer boxes. This is to ensure fire hydrants can be
quickly located and safely operated by firefighters. Pursuant to Chanhassen City Ordinance 9-1.
11. Any trees to be removed from the site will either have to be chipped or removed from the site. No
burning permits will be issued due to the close proximity of neighboring homes.
12. The applicant shall provide the city with a financial security in the amount of $5,000.00 to guarantee
boulevard restoration and sidewalk/curb replacement. The security shall be provided in the form of a
letter of credit or cash escrow.
13. The applicant shall enter into a site plan agreement with the city. A condition shall be placed in the site
plan agreement addressing pond maintenance.
14. No berming or landscaping which impair sight lines shall be permitted within the first 20 feet behind
the existing sidewalk along Lake Drive East.
15. The storm pond shall be revised to take into account future expansion to the west. The pond slopes
shall be 3 to 1 with a 10 to 1 slope for the first one foot depth of water or 4 to 1 side slopes overall.
16. The applicant and/or contractor shall notify the city upon encountering any existing drain tile on the
site. The city will determine whether or not the drain tile can be abandoned or relocated.
17. All construction vehicles shall access the site from the westerly entrance off Lake Drive East. Rock
construction entrances shall be installed and maintained until the site is paved with a bituminous
surface. Parking along Lake Drive East shall be prohibited. Haul routes, if necessary, shall be pre-
approved by the city. The applicant will be required to maintain haul routes and clean the streets of any
dirt and mud accumulated from vehicles tracking. Any damage to city streets, curbs or other public
23
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
facilities will be the responsibility of the applicant.
18. The applicant's civil engineer shall provide detailed storm sewer and ponding calculations for 10-year and
100-year storm events for the City Engineer to review and approve prior to issuance of a building permit.
The applicant shall provide detailed pre-developed and post-developed storm water calculations for 100-year
storm events and normal water level and high water level calculations for the proposed pond. Individual
storm sewer calculations between each catch basin segment will also be required to determine if sufficient
catch basins are being utilized.
19. The applicant shall apply for and obtain permits from the appropriate regulatory agencies, i.e. Watershed
District, Metropolitan Waste Control Commission, Health Department, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
and Minnesota Department of Transportation and comply with their conditions of approval.
20. A drainage easement or other recordable document to secure the use of the pond for the parcel to the
west shall be drafted and recorded against the development.
21. A future internal driveway access from this site to the parcel to the west may be required with the next
phase or expansion of the parking lot depending on compatible land uses of the parcels. Such access
may be subject to reasonable restrictions so that the joint access does not materially interfere with the
use and enjoyment on either parcel. This access will not be required if the adjoining land use is a car
wash or facility with gas pumps or other use which may cause vehicular congestion. The access is
specifically not provided to facilitate cross parking. Both properties must meet all zoning and use
parking requirements on their respective parcels without benefit of such cross access. Cross-access
and maintenance agreements will need to be developed and recorded against the parcels to guarantee
ingress and egress to the properties.
22. All areas disturbed as a result of construction activities shall be immediately restored with seed and
disc-mulched or wood fiber blanket or sod within two weeks of completion of each activity in
accordance with the City's Best Management Practice Handbook. The city boulevard areas which are
disturbed along Lake Drive East shall be restored with sod.
23. All driveway access points onto Lake Drive East shall be constructed with concrete driveway aprons in
accordance with the City's Detail Plate No. 5207.
24. A traffic signage plan shall be submitted to the city for review and approval prior to issuance of a
building permit.
25. The applicant shall obtain a permit prior to the installation of all signage.
26. The applicant shall incorporate a crosswalk into the development plans to provide a connection
between Hidden Court and the sidewalk along Lake Drive East.
27. The applicant will have to pay full park and trail fees at the time of building permit.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
PRELIMINARY AND FINAL PLAT REQUEST TO SUBDIVIDE 1.33 ACRES CREATING 2
LOTS WITH AREAS OF 24,029 SQ. FT. AND 33,833 SQ. FT; 1331 ASHTON COURT, SMITH
HILL ADDITION, DAVID SMITH.
24
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Kate Aanenson: Thank you. This lot was originally an outlot created with the Curry Farms Subdivision
in 1987. In order to make this happen we'd have to give a variance on a driveway easement which we did
agree it made sense. The other issue with this is prior to final plat the developer needs to provide tree
canopy coverage. One other issue that we did have, there was a neighbor that was concerned that had a
swimming pool that was concerned about some grading. We are making a condition that a swale be
provided to make sure there is not additional runoff created by this development and that should resolve
some problems. As I indicated, the driveway was an issue and what the engineering and planning
department has agreed to is a private drive so Lot number 1 is being served through the driveway of Lot 2.
And it's a 12 foot gravel surface generally require 30 foot wide. Based on the topography and existing
conditions, we're going to acquiesce on that and make it, leave it the width it is but require that it be hard
surface and again that's consistent with our storm water management policy. Again it does require a
variance which we are supporting and we have the findings in the staff report. The Planning Commission
did hold a public hearing on this on April 21st and they had recommend approval of the subdivision and the
variance. Staff is recommending approval with the conditions in the staff report. I'd be happy to answer
any questions.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you very much Kate. Any questions for staff? Is the applicant here? Would you
like to address the Council? Just don't ask for a reduction in your estimated market value.
David Smith: David Smith, 1331 Ashton Court and just here to answer any questions.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Does any council member have questions for David?
Councilwoman Jansen: No.
Mayor Mancino: Very nice property. May I have a motion please? Or excuse me. Any discussion from
Council members? May I have a motion.
Councilman Senn: Move approval of Planning Commission's recommendations and conditions as attached
in the staff report.
Councilman Engel: Second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to approve the preliminary and final plat for
Subdivision #99-5 creating two lots for Smith Hill Addition, subject to the following conditions:
The developer must demolish or remove from the site the westerly garage, which is in the required
building setback, prior to the city recording the final plat.
In lieu of park land dedication, the developer shall pay full park and trail fees for Lot 1, Block 1 to
the city pursuant to city ordinance.
Prior to final plat approval the developer shall provide the city with canopy coverage calculations for
the entire site. Based on the city's review of the canopy coverage calculation, the city will determine
if additional landscape plantings are required.
Comply with Chanhassen Fire Department Policy regarding premise Identification. Pursuant to
Chanhassen Fire Department/Fire Prevention Division Policy #29-1992. Copy enclosed.
25
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
If any trees are to be removed they must either be chipped or hauled away. Due to close proximity of
neighboring homes no burning permit will be issued.
Demolition permits must be obtained from the Building Inspections Division before removing any
existing structures.
The soil must be tested to determine it's bearing capacity for the new dwelling, if any filling is done
or any other corrective measures regarding the soil are taken.
As part of the building permit application for Lot 1, Block 1, a detailed grading, drainage and erosion
control plan must be submitted to the city for review and approval.
In conjunction with issuance of a building permit for Lot 1, a drainage swale shall be required to
redirect runoff to the northwest comer of the site away from the pool directly north of Lot 1.
10. The existing gravel driveway and proposed driveway for Lot 1 shall be paved with either bituminous
or concrete.
11.
The developer shall escrow $3,000 with the city for extension of the sewer and water service from
Ashton Court to the property line of Lot 2. The developer shall contact the city 30 days in advance
to request extension of the sewer and water service from Ashton Court.
12.
Lot 1, Block 1 will be subject to sanitary sewer and water hookup and connection charges at time of
building permit issuance. The cost of extending the sewer and water service shall be deducted from
the sewer and water connection charges.
13. A private driveway and utility easement and maintenance agreement shall be recorded in favor of Lot
1 and Lot 2 by the developer.
14. The developer shall be responsible for extending a sewer and water service to Lot 1 through Lot 2.
15. The developer shall be responsible for payment of total SWMP fees of $1,533.53. These SWMP
fees will be due payable to the city at time of final plat recording.
16.
Approval of a variance to permit the private driveway width as shown on the plans submitted to the
Planning Commission prepared by Advanced Surveying & Engineering Co. drafted 2/12/99, revised
3/10/99.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
Mayor Mancino: And Kate we don't have to, because it's part of the condition, we don't have to do
anything about the private driveway variance do we?
Kate Aanenson: You do need to make a motion on the variance. I think it was part of that motion.
Mayor Mancino: Well it's part of the condition.
26
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Councilman Senn: Conditions or do you need a separate motion?
Mayor Mancino: She did put the variance in the motion, correct.
Councilman Senn: I would move to amend my motion to include approval of the variance.
Mayor Mancino: Second?
Councilman Engel: Second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to amend the motion to include approval of a
variance to permit the private driveway width as shown on the plans submitted to the Planning
Commission prepared by Advanced Surveying & Engineering Co. drafted 2/12/99, revised 3/10/99.
All voted in favor and the motion carried.
REQUEST FOR AMENDMENT TO THE HIDDEN VALLEY PUD TO ALLOW CHURCH
FACILITIES, ASSISTED LIVING FACILITIES, OR OFFICES AS PERMITTED USES AND
TO INCORPORATE SPECIFIC DESIGN PARAMETERS FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF
LOT 1, BLOCK 7, HIDDEN VALLEY; LOCATED SOUTH OF LAKE DRIVE EAST AND
EAST OF HIDDEN COURT, 275 LAKE DRIVE EAST, FAMILY OF CHRIST LUTHERAN
CHURCH.
Public Present:
Name Address
Roderick & Robin Franks
Dale Klubunde
Jeff Shipley
Vernelle Clayton
Randy Koepsell
Steve Nornes
Bill Vranzen
Tami Gottschalk
Steve & Sharon Olson
Gary Dosdall
Barb Christopherson
Laurie Strand
Charles Pederson
Holly A. Rakoecy
Ted & Ann Sneith
Jeanette Lappen
Scott Ragneby
Carlye Peterson
Adell & Tom Glaser
Susan McCarthy
Dan Lorniser
Jeff Olson
8694 Mary Jane Circle
8160 Hidden Court
261 Eastwood Court
422 Santa Fe Circle
1110 Dover Court
1451 Heron Drive
2370 Stone Creek Lane West
2197 Majestic Way
2320 Timberwood Drive
14952 Williston Lane, Minnetonka
1440 Heron Drive
771 Lake Susan Hills Drive
5940 Mill Street, Shorewood
7250 Creen Ridge Drive, Eden Prairie
901 Nez Perce Court
140 South Shore Court
661 Sierra Trail
750 Preakness Lane
8140 Hidden Court
8001 Hidden Court
8020 Erie Avenue
2520 Bridle Creek Trail
27
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Jill Baumtrog
Greg Gmiterko
Linda Giordano
Pat Hamblin
Lee Kaufman
Kent Kelly
Kelly Woods
Mavis Eiler
Pamela Franzen
Ray Schaul
Steven Wahl
Steve, Jocelyn & Sandra Elfstrom
Josh Nelson
Kevin Bums
Christ Anderson
Dennis Rakoey
Mark Nelson
Teri Bums
Marilyn Koepsell
Julia Ping
Cheryl Douglas
Ronald & Elaine Larson
Lee & John M. Thorson Jr.
Joel Lehrke
Dale & Jo Mueller
Melanie Wegner
7605 Huron Avenue
8121 Hidden Court
8120 Hidden Court
340 Sinner Circle
300 Hidden Lane
6539 Gray Fox Curve
850 Lake Susan Hills
7000 Shawnee Lane
2370 Stone Creek Lane West
1021 Lake Susan Drive
7291 Trotters Circle
6581 Undestad Street, Eden Prairie
566 Kassel Lane, Chaska
1100 Dove Court
16886 Hanover Lane, Eden Prairie
7250 Greenridge Drive, Eden Prairie
6890 Navajo Drive
1100 Dover Court
1110 Dove Court
408 Santa Fe Circle
8650 Chanhassen Hills Drive North
710 Cherrywood Circle
7320 Longview Circle
2329 Boulder Road
2529 Longacres Drive
8727 Flamingo Drive
Cindy Kirchoff: Thank you. This request was reviewed by the Planning Commission on April 21st. The
Planning Commission unanimously approved the amendment to permit a church on Lot 1, Block 7 of
Hidden Valley Addition. However the request to permit an assisted living facility or office was denied by a
vote of 5 to 1. One commissioner did feel that assisted living facility would be a compatible use on the
site. This request basically intends to provide an alternative use for Lot 1, Block 7 in the event it is not
purchased by a church. The applicant has prepared development and design standards for the lot. In terms
of uses they would like to see an office building under 25,000 square feet or an assisted living facility or a
church. Staff does have concerns about office, the traffic and the compatibility with the existing
neighborhood. But is supportive of the church and the assisted living facility. We also did mention in the
staff report that medium density residential would be a compatible use of the site. The amendment to the
PUD would also require a land use plan change and staff has recommended that it be changed to office.
However tonight staff is recommending that the item only be discussed and that it be tabled for a further
meeting. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, and your desire to have it tabled is based on?
Kate Aanenson: Well we'd like to have an opportunity for Council to hear the comments tonight. The
issues. At the Planning Commission there was a lot of information. Maybe some misinformation so we'd
like the Council to hear that and direct the staff in which way you'd like us to clear up any issues you may
have or give you further information. So I guess we'd like you to hear some of the discussion that's taking
place. It's a complex issue.
28
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino: Okay. So again staff has requested that we do table tonight. That we listen to all
comments and questions tonight. I think one of the differences that I just heard is the medium density
housing. Was that in the Planning Commission report? So that's something new. Okay, that we'll want to
listen to. And it gives us time to listen to all of you and your comments. Kind of process it and to also ask
staff if there are comments that you've brought up that we want more information about. And to then make
a decision in a couple weeks and that would be on Monday, May 24th. That is what they are suggesting
that council does. City Manager, any comments you'd like to make?
Scott Botcher: No. Not at this point.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. So tonight we're here to listen to everyone and we know that there are
different opinions, etc. so we'd like to listen to all of them. We do ask that ifa comment has been made
and you're going to make the same one, that because of time and everything else, you don't need to make it
2, 3, 4, or 5 times. The same comment. That we are pretty good listeners. We're going to be taking notes
tonight and I think that's it. Please you know no clapping or laughing. We're all good neighbors and we
all love the community so just let us know how you're feeling and give us your comments and we're here to
listen to you. So when you come up, please state your name and address and we'll go from here.
Kate Aanenson: I think the applicants would like to make a presentation.
Mayor Mancino: Oh! I forgot about that. Sorry. Applicants, would you like to make your presentation.
Steve Names: Good evening Mayor Mancino and councilmembers. My name is Steve Names and I'm a
member of Family of Christ Church and Co-Chair of the Building Committee. We're here to request the
council to approve our rezoning request for allowing a permitted use to include church, assisted living and
offices. Our goal this evening is to outline our reasons for rezoning and to begin a process of working on
solutions for it that will benefit all parties. This is a very important issue for our congregation. A
provision within our lending agreement calls prior to construction of our new site on Bluff Creek that we
must sell our current property. If we do not sell, we cannot move. We need the equity in the current site in
order to help finance the new church. And we do have a buyer for this current property. We are interested
in seeking a zoning change that will benefit the community and are respectful to our neighbors. We've
been very open during this process. We've held a series of four meetings in which we had a total of 10 to
12 people attend. We're relocating from our current site because it's not large enough. And it will not fit
our growth and accomplish our mission. Our congregation is over 1,000 members and we're growing
similar to what Chanhassen is. In your packet you have a petition in which 220 members have signed.
Since then we've had another 137 people sign it so we have over 357 people to sign this petition supporting
the rezoning. Our master plan for our church is to have a building that will encompass at least 50,000
square feet. Our current site has 20,000 square feet. One of the things that we've been looking at for
several years is how churches grow, and there are really two issues that are helpful in church growth.
Number one, you have flexibility in your property that enables you to adjust your programming.., things
change and you need to be flexible to meet that. The second thing is adequate parking. On our proposed
site we do have sharing parking arrangements and we think that's a good use. The current proposed site,
our current site has limited parking. We would be coming back needing variances. We are outgrowing this
area and we need to be able to expand to meet our ministry. Our church ministry goes beyond Sunday
morning. We're a seven day a week church. We've been open to the community and will continue to be.
We've had the Boy Scouts. We've had ECFE. We've been a place for voting to occur. In the future we'd
might be looking at developing some preschool programming. Maybe daycare. Another suggestion could
29
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
be latch key programs. We're connected near the school and as this community has many two family
members working, it could be a good program to support some of those needs. This issue for us is about
the future. In my professional job I'm involved with senior housing and health care and recently I attended
a meeting in Bloomington in which we talked about the 230 Initiative. And the 2030 Initiative is about
what's going to happen in the year 2030. The big issue is the baby boomers. That group or generation is
moving and how are we going to be prepared to deal with that. Currently of the age population in 1990 1
of 8 individuals were over age 65. In the year 2030 1 of 4 will be over age 65. Every body here.
Mayor Mancino: Some of us a little earlier.
Steve Names: ... but there is a need for us to work towards that. One of our proposals will address that
issue and things are going to be changing and we need to be flexible to change that. Family of Christ
Church will be here to support all that change. We're part of this community. We have a proud history of
being here since 1980 and will continue in the year 2030. The question is how will we be here and how are
we going to be part of the community. Right now we have a need for preschool and childrens
programming. It makes sense. We're here tonight and we have kids. We need programming space. This
community needs places where kids can meet.., and that's critical for what, as I feel as a parent, having my
children engaged in part of a program. In the future that may change. With all of us aging, we may feel a
need to be developing adult daycare or some other programs. Earlier this evening you heard about
programs that were great. Meals on Wheels. We must be prepared. Our initiative tonight is to talk about
being prepared. To talk about setting up and our church wants to be part of that. That is our motivation
for relocating. That's our motivation for looking to the future and it's really a future jump. We're asking
all the congregation members to step up and it's not easy raising money to make this move but we know it's
right. Again our role tonight is to present the church request. Our request we believe is reasonable and
thoughtful for the community. We're not asking for special treatment. We believe rezoning offers value to
the community and it meets the comprehensive plans and also provides community, provides tax money
back to the community. Following me we have several people. Randy Koepsell, Jim Sulerud. We have a
couple senior high students, Jocelyn Elfstrom and Jill Baumtrog and our Pastor Josh Nelson just to
conclude and we're going to set the table for what are the issues and we hope to have a good discussion. A
healthy discussion, about what we can do to make this move and make this a great community so thank you
and Randy.
Randy Koepsell: Again our purpose for being here now is that we do, oh I'm sorry. I'm Randy Koepsell
and I live at 1110 Dove Court. Our reason for being here tonight is because we do have an offer subject to
the rezoning of this property and as Steve stated, we do have to sell it before we can continue with the
project on our new site by Bluff Creek Elementary. The criteria for rezoning is set out in the staff report.
There were three items. One, no special treatment. Two, it needs to benefit the community. And three,
comply with the comprehensive plan and be not incompatible with surrounding land uses, if that's not a
double negative. First I'd like to review those three. No special treatment. We believe that our application
meets this criteria. It is the practice of the city to assign underlying and alternative zoning. This meets the
city's desire for adaptive reuse. Churches have been provided with underlying zoning. City staff included
in the report an update on all the churches in Chanhassen and their underlying zoning on page 3. Of the
nine churches indicated, they all have some underlying zoning. Whether it's residential or office
institutional. So again we don't believe that, or we believe that indicates that we aren't asking for any
special treatment by asking for assisted living and an office development. The benefit to the community.
Again we believe this criteria is met regardless of which way the final buildout ends up being. The assisted
living for seniors benefits the community in a number of ways. Council has identified this in planning as a
need in the community. It has low impact relative to both traffic and safety concerns in the area. It
3O
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
provides a place for community families to allow mom and dad to stay close in the community to their
families. Staff found this to be an appropriate use for this site. It provides jobs in the community and it
may be a taxable use as determined by the county assessor. It is an adaptive reuse. Office is the other
main one of contention and the one that we also feel benefits the community. It has low impact relative to
traffic during nights and weekends when most families are at home. Generally traffic is from 8:00 to 5:00,
Monday through Friday so again the impact is during the day. Not as much in the evening when families
are at home. It is safe. All the entrances that have been proposed and discussed.., assessment of
$100,000.00 in taxes per year. It provides a place for jobs in the community. It is again an adaptive reuse
and provides additional, more affordable office space by re-using the existing building versus new
construction. Taking into consideration the development of our new church at Bluff Creek and the buildout
of this particular site, whether it's office or assisted living, you're looking at a financial impact and an
investment in this community of 5 to 6 million dollars. Again that's a significant investment in the
community and a benefit to the community. Finally the third item was complies with the comprehensive
plan and is not incompatible with surrounding land uses. Again, we believe this criteria is met. The 1990
comprehensive plan drafted in the mid to late 80's guided this property for high density residential. We've
not pursued this use yet because this is one of the uses the neighbors least like and because it is not an
adaptive reuse. Apartments, townhouses would not be able to use the building the way it is, where both of
the other major uses that we're proposing would be able to reuse the building. Again we believe it's not
incompatible because you just approved an office building much larger directly across the street, the
Northcott Building, which our understanding is up to an 80,000 square foot building and as indicated in the
staff report, our use has been limited to 25,000 in terms of square footage. Our land use is defined by the
natural topography of the community's infrastructure is the Lake Drive East corridor. We really are
separated from the neighborhoods by the topography. It drops off directly to the east of the building behind
us and directly to the south of us there is one house. The 1990 comp plan recognizes these natural
differences by identifying our property as high density residential and originally Highway 101 was planned
to correspond with Lake Drive East. So things do change. Uses change. I want to show just how close on
one of these diagrams that we are to Highway 5. This is the church property. This is Highway 5. It comes
directly to the south of Highway 5. Very little space between Highway 5 to the north of us. There are
other examples of office use bordering residential neighborhoods such as Villages on the Pond, the National
Weather Service station and post office complex, the southeast comer of Dakota and Lake Drive, and the
downtown areas. And we also have a drawing just so you can get a feel for where those are at. All of the
ones highlighted in yellow are residential neighborhoods bordered by office. You can see at least 6 or 7
spots... Just to give you an idea of our plans and how they fit on the site. Again we're looking here not at a
site or approving building plans but of a zoning issue. The first one I'll show was the master plan of our
church that was put together back when we got site approval for the church. Currently the church is where
this dotted line is. So it's about 7,200 square feet. Built out on this particular diagram is about 20,000
square feet. The reasons for showing this, the rest of it is primarily parking but it gives you a flavor of
more what a buildout of the church might look like. The next one, the buildout of an office complex. Again
it just gives you an idea how it might fit on the site. It also shows the reuse of the existing building. And
again very similar to what the church would look like built out. Not a lot of difference. The final one is
assisted living. Again, looking at the diagram it shows the reuse of the church and much the same in terms
of the final buildout of that particular facility. We've been asked to be a little more specific. I want to
stress that these are just samples of what the building might look like. This one in the lower is the office
building and you saw the diagram. Please ignore the pond. We found out since doing all this work that a
pond is not required in this area. And assisted living facility is on the upper diagram. Basically if these
two uses, assisted living and office meet the same design criteria relative to screening, berming, setbacks,
landscaping, construction materials as the church, then these other uses cannot be incompatible with the
31
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
land use criteria. We believe this demonstrates that we've met the criteria as outlined in the staff report.
With that I'm going to mm it over to Jim Sulerud.
Jim Sulerud: My name is Jim Sulerud. I live at 730 Vogelsberg Trail. Thanks for your participation with
us. We have two primary requests that you've heard and I wish to reiterate. That is that you come to an
understanding of the extreme importance this issue is to our congregation and that you provide value
through an extended discussion period these two weeks. We look for you input, advice, counsel as we work
towards a solution. We may not see it, you may not see it in hand tonight. These proposals we kind of got
stalled out at the planning commission because we felt that that process, or since that decision we've felt
that that process was not bringing together the value that you might have to contribute to this process. We
met extensively with staff so we joined in the request with staff for this two week period and we think it will
be helpful to us all. It's been stated before that we've had residents meetings. Trying to bring out all the
issues. Every last issue that might be of concern to the neighbors. So we looked for a whole list, the full
extent of things that would relate to the zoning issues. That is concerns about noise, traffic, safety,
lighting, odors, nuisances, etc. And then we think we've reflected all of these in our proposals that you've
seen here this evening. We've reflected those through berming, landscaping, setbacks, parking limitations,
and square foot limitations, even moving an access off of Hidden Court so that no longer is an access
shown in our plans, other than for a church use. We would need that for our parking, for buses for
preschool, etc. But this seems to have left a couple issues. Maybe not strictly zoning issues but issues that
have confronted, that you maybe have been confronted with. One of these is that any use other than a
church use will decrease my property values. That may be something that you've heard. A second issue is,
I don't want change. I want a church. A church and only a church. Maybe to clarify the first issue. The
decrease in property values. It has maybe three aspects. One, we've done a study on the different areas
that Randy mentioned around the city to see the impact that such developments adjacent to each other,
office with residential, to see what that impact is. We have some testimony available for you in that regard.
Anything can be argued back and forth on those because we're looking now in another neighborhood.
We're not repeating exactly what happened before but we think that while it may not be conclusive, we
think that it sufficiently refutes that issue and certainly we haven't seen anything on the other side that
where there's any empirical evidence of a hardship. So we're acknowledging that that issue's out there but
we don't think it's substantiated. Secondly, if a hardship exists because of your rezoning of our property,
if a hardship results upon the neighbors, we think that a limitation on our ability to rezone should also be
considered as, our hardship should be considered as well. While in fact we haven't championed that
hardship issue and we think it isn't one that we want to, it may need some clarification but we don't want to
dwell on that. There's also the claim that what hardship we might have is self imposed by our lack of
effort to sell the church or by the fact that we're seeking an inappropriate price for our church and therefore
we haven't seen a sale. In the materials you've received there's some background information on that but
relating back to our appraisal which is dated in January of more than two years ago. Land was valued at
$2.00 a square foot. Do you remember those days? That's some time ago, right? $2.00 a square foot land
is what we had in our appraisal. We had $112.00 per square foot construction that was depreciated
because it is an existing building and it was depreciated by 18%. The resulting value of that depreciated
construction cost and the $2.00 a square foot value two years ago was a million dollars. We have had an
asking price in the marketplace in general terms for $895,000.00. We've been having ongoing discussions
with some more actively interested parties in the 700 plus to 800 plus range depending on how long our
occupancy might remain. A whole variety of issues. So we're certainly discounting by 15 % to 25 % what
was the marketplace two years ago and a modest marketplace so we think that that adequately takes care of
that issue. We have been actively marketing. Five years ago we began our inquiry for looking for new
space. At that time we were in touch with the other congregations in the community. In fact we were
considering, we had proposed to some that we have some initial conversations about joint use of space.
32
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Some congregations joint parking. Whatever. St. Hubert's and others that we talked to. We were looking
at innovative approaches to that kind of land use back then. Other churches were aware that we were going
to be selling sometime in the future. Obviously that joint use of church doesn't work so well because
everybody uses the space at the same time, or wants it at the same time so that didn't last very long. But
we were looking towards unique solutions and so we pursued aggressively the shared parking which on our
new site will be a benefit. There are no shared parking arrangements in the current location. Those have
not been obtained from the developer across the street prior to their development so it would be something
that someone would have to give up. It's not been a part of the city process or any development process in
that area to have shared parking. We've continued our marketing to churches. Particularly it's been
suitable to those, maybe towards those congregations which wouldn't experience initial large growth rates
and a particularly interested party was the Episcopal Church. And they saw that they might grow to a
certain ultimate size over these next 10-15 years and, but that interest diminished in the past and they don't
have a current interest. Otherwise it becomes churches. We can't really attract churches from other
communities. Churches want to develop from within a community and so we're looking for those. The
word is out. People know of our interest to sell. But as was pointed out before, we do have an offer that
includes our requirement that we have zoning for office and assisted living and the church use. The other
issue that has been brought up is that well, we don't want change. We like the church. We like always
there to be a church there. Randy's pointed out the fact that some things do change. The neighborhood
has, there was concern earlier this evening about the increased traffic on Lake Drive East. Well actually
that's a diminished plan from before. That was going to be 101 at the time these neighborhoods were
originally designed and built. At the time I moved into the community, zoom in on that just a little bit. But
here it says the Village of Chanhassen. Things change.
Mayor Mancino: None of us were here.
Jim Sulerud: Let me point out a couple of things. One is the 212 alignment came across in this location
on Pioneer Trail. That survived for a while. And changed more recently, but a special note is this
Southdale like facility at 41 and Highway 5 that was planned. It's a major shopping area that was going to
be developed out there. We don't see that on any plans any more. Yet you might have a resident in that
area saying I've been counting on that. Where is it? We want the city to produce that. Since then the city,
this is in the 1990 comprehensive plan. That shopping center's gone but you can see a couple alternatives
for the river crossing that's still shown in the 1990 comprehensive plan showing that the 41, or not the 41.
17 maybe extension down across the river crossing was going to be happening there. This one is the one
that shows the high density residential for our particular piece of property. Almost all of it except what
would be the equivalent of the south lot is designated on here as high density residential rather than
moderate density. This is to say that things change and things will always change. The main point that I
think Steve made earlier was, one of the points that he made earlier that I think is a main issue is that if the
church remains there, the church will change. It isn't a church a church a church as what you see today but
that will also entail change. I think that just to reiterate again the two main points that we're looking for is
your sense of our, of the importance of this to our whole congregation. That like you are elected members
at large. All of you have an equal voice no matter what's going on. Wherever it happens in the
community. You don't just represent your neighborhood. We all from our congregation come from
different neighborhoods. We feel we have an equal voice in the issues that happen around the community
and we're not in a second position if we don't just live next door to our church but our value that we bring
to the community, the concerns we have, all have equal standing. We look forward to working with you
over these next two weeks. Resolving the issues and coming up with a solution that meets all of our
objectives. Thanks.
33
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino: Thank you.
Jocelyn Elfstrom: I'm Jocelyn Elfstrom and I live on 6581 Undestad Street. This past year our
confirmation class has had to meet in the Chanhassen Recreation Center because there just wasn't room at
our church. That caused some big problems in our family because I go to choir at church on Wednesdays
at 6:15 till 7:15 when our confirmation starts at 7:15. So I have to drive, I go straight from confirmation
over to, or straight from choir over to confirmation and me and the other boy who was in the choir with me,
always showed up late to that class and caused sometimes a commotion when we were walking in. So it's
just, it will be nice when our church like has a place to move to and has room to like, room to grow so I'll
be able to, instead of having to get in the car and drive across town, I'll be able to just walk down the hall.
That's it.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you.
Jill Baumtrog: Good evening. Hi. My name is Jill Baumtrog and I live 3 blocks east on Huron Avenue
and I'm almost 19 years old, which coincidentally happens to be the age of the church. I was the second
baby baptized in this church family and I have a younger brother who's also in 8th grade and gets to the do
the same thing that Jo Jo does basically and go all the way from the church to confirmation mainly because
I'm his chauffeur and I'm in the choir. I can remember our old church at the old St. Hubert's in downtown
Chan and I can remember the day that we broke ground for our current building. Mainly I remember this
because my dad brought his pitching wedge because he figured he could move more dirt with that than a
shovel. I'm student director and stage manager.
Mayor Mancino: Took me a little bit to get it so. Explain that to me would you.
Jill Baumtrog: The only explanation I can give is my dad's a pretty poor golfer... I'm the student director
and stage manager at Chaska High School for the drama department and last night was our closing night
for A Midsummer's Night Dream which was a big success. And right now actually I'm supposed to be at
the high school striking the set and clearing the stage so we can have band concerts and so forth go on there
and to tell you the truth I'd much rather be there with my friends.
Mayor Mancino: You shouldn't be saying that tonight.
Jill Baumtrog: However I'm here. For the sake of all the younger kids that go to Family of Christ and
that's why I'm here. And there are a ton of them. Let me tell you, there are hundreds of kids in our church
and I came personally to ask that my church congregation have a chance to make as much possible making,
selling our present building. Everything costs money and that includes youth programs. But I'm here for
the kids and I firmly believe that kids stay out of trouble when they have a healthy home, a healthy school
and a healthy community and I thoroughly think that churches are part of that healthy community. And
when kids have someplace to go, it's a safety net and it will keep them out of trouble and I think churches
are a big place where kids can go for that. I have a friend that goes to Mt. Calvary in Excelsior and they
just put in a new indoor gym and they just put up the basketball hoops this last week and this whole last
weekend all I could hear from my friends was that all of their younger brothers and sisters were hanging
out at church playing basketball. And I thought how cool is that. How cool that kids just want to hang out
at church and they're right there to hear the word of God and yet still have a really good time and it is a
safety net for them. So I thought that was really cool. I just thought that instead of making things harder
for my church to have that coolness, I thought it'd be great if you would help us and support Family of
Christ in our growth in every way possible. In a couple of years I'd like to tell my 8th grade brother Ryan,
34
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
hey you know, you're really lucky. Look at all these opportunities you have. Look at all the space. Look
at what you get to do. How unfortunate, how jealous am I that I had to miss out on that because I'm way
off in Madison at college. Look at what you get to do. And I want to be able to tell all the other younger
kids that they're so lucky too and I think that you should give them a chance and give me a chance to tell
my brother that and give Family of Christ a chance. Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you.
Josh Nelson: Mayor, council members. I am Josh Nelson. I'm a Pastor to Family of Christ Lutheran
Church. I'm the one that invited JoJo to speak and I'm the one that invited Jill to speak and I said Jill, 5 to
7 sentences max. Aren't you glad I didn't tell you more? Thank you both JoJo and Jill. A short while ago
Jill was confirmed back in 9th grade. She's 12th grade this year. There were 9 students in her class.
Jocelyn will be confirmed next year. There are 21 students in her class. A couple of years after her there
are 40 students waiting to be confirmed. And it keeps going up from there. Ours is a very young
congregation. There are as many children in fact under the age of 21 as there are adults over the age of 21.
We have so many children that we run multiple Sunday School sessions but we don't have enough room or
space in our building to run anywhere from third grade on up over the weekend. So they have to come to
our church on a Wednesday night when we hold a religious training for them. And even with that they're
sitting in both pastors offices on the floor with clipboards in their hands. You get a sense of our space
crisis. We certainly don't want to come off however as whining or complaining about this. In truth every
one of us feels that this is a tremendous gift from God and a blessing and it's an opportunity for us to be in
ministry to youth and families. We wish to do more. We wish not to be constrained by physical space so
that we can expand our efforts and be creative in meeting our members families but also in meeting the
larger community's families as well. Nearly everyone across the country agrees that asset to building
programs and opportunities for children for youth are absolutely necessary for the health of a strong
community. We feel our church can help do this and it will best happen if we are allowed to sell our
current space. Sell it to a buyer who will be as respectful of their environment as we have tried to be. So
please help us meet the challenge that we feel God has given to us. For 5 years our Building Committee
has worked diligently and conscientiously. We feel we are at a watershed moment and that is why the
rooms are full tonight and the petitions are full. We very much appreciate you giving us a hearing and we
stand ready to answer any questions you may have.
Mayor Mancino: I think we have heard from the applicants. Now we will open this for again anyone else
wishing to address the council. And whatever you say on either side is accepted. So please everyone have
a chance to speak. Sue.
Sue McCarthy: I'm Sue McCarthy at 8001 Hidden Court in Chanhassen. I am a lot that adjacents the
church, directly adjacents to it. You know I would like to bring this focus of the meeting back to the point
of the meeting and the point of the meeting is the rezoning. And the point of the meeting is whether or not
we're going to move ahead with rezoning that property for assisted living, office or church. And one point
I want to start off with, and I think it's very important that we start off with this point because I think it
really reflects the mood of the neighbors, is that we are not opposed to the Family of Christ Church
moving. I mean we are so excited that they have property and honestly we are excited. We're excited that
they're going to expand into daycare, preschool, youth programs. That is exciting that you've outgrown
but that is not the point of this meeting. The point of this meeting is whether or not we should rezone that
property so you can sell your property to move to that location. Your zoning has been approved for that
new location. You've purchased the property for that new location so it seems like it's a given you're
going to get there. The question is, what are you going to do with your property that remains? And so my
35
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
husband Doug and I, as well as many other members in our neighborhood are not opposed to the move.
We are opposed though to the request for rezoning and we would like to make a request now to the City
Council that they uphold the Planning Commission's recommendation that the Hidden Valley PUD #85-1
be revised to permit a church as a permitted use only. And a petition of 74 residents who are directly
affected by this rezoning was submitted to the Planning Commission from Erie Avenue, Hidden Court,
Hidden Lane, Hidden Circle and Marsh Drive and we expected tonight that a decision was going to be
made on whether or not that rezoning would take place. The residents did not attend this meeting in the
numbers and droves like they did on Planning Commission because we were not notified that they were
going to have an opportunity to speak. So I feel like I'm speaking for them. We do really appreciate, as I
said during planning commission, the opportunity to hear directly from the church in those four meetings. I
attended all of them, as well as every other house that was directly affected by that attended. I won't say
every. Maybe 5 or 6 of those houses directly attended that so we are very cognizant of what went on and
appreciate the voice. However, if you look at the number of petitions and letters and e-mails send to the
planning commission, that clearly demonstrates the opposition to the rezoning. I stress to the rezoning.
Not to the move. We understand that the Mortenson property across the street on Lake Drive is zoned for
business but the church's location makes it more closely identified with the neighborhood, even though the
map that you saw shows it abuts Route 5. That is just truly at the very end. It's not where the
neighborhood is. Most of it does abut people's properties. An ongoing church use has been a reasonable
expectation of surrounding home owners in purchasing their homes. The neighborhood character would be
fundamentally altered by the rezoning. The neighborhood character is not changed by just adding berms or
by adding a lake or subtracting a lake for runoff. It truly is the type of property and it's use. And we do
not think the church means any harm by making this request for rezoning but we don't feel like we any
obligation to underwrite their move through the destruction of our neighborhood value. We understand that
the city has an interest that the good land does not go vacant and that you do get the tax revenue. However,
the fact that the proposed uses are not in the recently updated comprehensive plan indicates that it was not
considered in the community's best interest as a secondary use at this location. Nor a secondary zoning for
church is a consistent city wide policy. As was stated in the Planning Commission's meeting, two other
churches within Chanhassen are zoned for church use only. The Jehovah Witness as well as Our Family of
Christ. I believe that's Our Family of Christ Lutheran. Oh, that's you. Okay. Those are the two
churches. The church naturally sees it's growth as a community benefit and so do we and we want to be
able to completely support them in their move. However, as neighbors we want to also preserve our
neighborhood and think that the church should look out for our interest as well as was stated here. We
think it is a mistake to believe that this site is inadequate for any other church simply because this one has
outgrown it's usefulness at this particular physical site and we firmly believe that a solution can be found
that helps both. Both the existing church as well as the new buyer for a church. So with that in mind we'd
like to submit before you the petition as well as e-mails and letters and request that you uphold the decision
by the planning commission to keep it as a church use only. Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Anyone else wishing to address the City Council?
Kevin Sharkee: My name's Kevin Sharkee. I'm a resident at 380 Deerfoot Trail here in Chanhassen. I'm
also the owner of Independent Brokers Realty here in Chanhassen. We've been doing business for about
12 years. Mostly in the residential area. I've been an agent for 12 years myself. Hopefully have a fairly
good handle on the impact of the commercial on residential. You know what I think and what I feel doesn't
have a lot of impact or doesn't carry a lot of weight. So I went through a house by house evaluation of the
properties affected by commercial. Two of the areas that I picked out were in the Hidden Lane itself, right
along the corridor with the convenience store, the daycare center, Dominoes Pizza, the Dance Studio.
There's a lot of traffic being generated by that and if it is true that property values are devalued by that
36
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
type of commercial property, this would have been a real prime example for it. The other area that I chose
was along Cheyenne behind the McDonald's, down towards Youngsted's and that whole corridor going that
way thinking that they're probably the most likely candidate to be affected by this type of activity. So I
went house by house from 1992. Houses that have sold in those areas and compared them with other
houses. Same style. Same size. They were built in the same general geographic location and did a market
analysis on them. House by house. And if you ever want I do have the information that supports this. But
what I've found that 70% of the houses grouped in 1% of the average market price. Across the board.
Year after year. All these houses, 7 out of 10, 1% variance either up or down. The other 30% that went
beyond that were no more than 4% either above or below the appreciated value with a market value
average. So to me that tells me that the market, houses that have sold in Chanhassen, it just doesn't
support the claim or the belief that your house is going to be devalued by having this type of commercial
property in close proximity. It just, the facts, at least the facts I pulled up here, just don't indicate that.
Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Okay.
Linda Giordano: My name's Linda Giordano and I live at 8120 Hidden Court. And what these guys have
all said is true. It's great that they want to expand and do whatever but all of us in our neighborhood
bought our house with the assumption that it was going to be a church and that was all it was supposed to
be. And all the petitions that they have, none of them live on our street or in our neighborhood. Maybe
Erie but that is in the other neighborhood, and we're not happy about it. It should stay a church and leave
our value that way it is. Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Anyone else wishing to address the City Council?
Tom Glaser: My name is Tom Glaser and I live at 8140 Hidden Court. I'm on the end of a one way street.
Or dead end street. And at the other end sits a church. Now I have to tell you this is the first time I've
been to a council meeting and I found it quite interesting. I have not followed the activities of the church.
Primarily because I haven't been notified about the four meetings that they had. It's my understanding that
those meetings were only for the properties that were adjacent to the church. Had I know what the plans
were, I probably would have become more actively involved. Anyhow, to make a long story short, we've
listened to five speakers representing the church. One speaker representing real estate. We've heard a lot
about what the church plans are. Vision 2030 is a great plan. I guess my question would be to the church,
what happens if you don't get the rezoning? Will you close the church?
Mayor Mancino: Just one second. We'll ask that later, thank you.
Tom Glaser: Now the church people stressed by changing the zoning the taxes would increase. Or tax
base by I believe $100,000.00. The down side of that is they're going to build a new property in the city.
You won't get taxes on that. What guarantees do we have as citizens and neighbors that if it is rezoned to
either an office building or a health care facility, that the drawings that we saw up there are going to be in
reality what is finally built there. We sat here in the first part of this meeting and watched a one story
office building go into a two story office building. I see that too by the way every day I go out. I guess to
keep the neighbors more comfortable I think if indeed the plan is to change the zoning, and I know that's
still up in the air, to present to the area people drawings, plans, traffic studies similar to what the office
complex did across the street. Those of us that attended the meetings there sat and listened and found no
fault with it. I think that covers it.
37
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino: Thank you and I did take down your questions and we will answer those at the end.
Have our Planning Director answer those for you. So anyone else with questions just please know that.
That we are trying to take them down and we will answer.
Larry Schrader: Hi, my name is Larry Schrader and actually I live in Chaska but I go to Colonial Church
and you guys are my landlords. The old St. Hubert's Church. These people over here had a humble
beginning at the old St. Hubert's Church and that's where we are now and we're in the midst of raising
money. We have raised quite a bit of money in a very short time to be a buyer for this church that we're
talking about. Unfortunately when we first started negotiating, Randy and I were talking about it. We had
an appraisal of between $645 to $750,000.00 for the church and they had an appraisal between and $800
and what, and a million dollars. As you can see the X's did not cross. When you start talking about
churches, unfortunately when you talk to the banks, we're poor risks. Don't ask me why, but we're poor
risks. So therefore more money needs to be raised up for a down payment. Where a 10% down payment
for a house might be adequate, 20% is asked of a church. 30%, excuse me. I stand corrected. So as you
can see, the raising of funds becomes quite very expensive and we're in the process of trying to raise on a
national level, on a personal level in our small group that we have, and also with our Mother Church to
raise monies to approach Family of Christ. To find out where those X's really do cross. To find out what
the value of the church is. As of yet we've had no negotiations with them to find out where the new X's
are. The price has come down. It was originally, I can agree with a person. I've had the same problem
too. When you buy a lot and it looks over a lake and somebody comes and puts a bigger house in front of
you and you do not see the lake, and it wasn't supposed to be there, you become disappointed. Same
likewise is we would like to take and have the possibility, how slim it may be I don't know. Is to negotiate
in good faith with Family of Christ to find out what that price is and to have it remain as a church. I think
this could be a solution to a problem. Hopefully I don't become the problem itself and therefore that's the
only thing I really have to say but we want to go on record saying.., church still from Chanhassen, we're
still interested in keeping it as a church because it does meet our needs. Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you.
Randy Koepsell: My name is Randy Koepsell and I'd just like to address a couple of the things that have
come up so that we can clarify some of the different issues. We have in the zoning and in this purchase
agreement we were asking for it to be a church. We would like nothing better than ultimately to have our
buyer sell it to a church. Our problem is we can't wait forever to receive an offer from a church. I mean it
just isn't going to work. Larry has been in discussions and I think I have a letter from him dated in 1996 so
you can see that we've been discussing it with that church and also one other church for a very long period
of time. But at somewhere I've been on this building committee for five plus years for a two year
commitment so it's been a long period of time as well. So we are trying to just keep this project moving
and we had to make a decision somewhere along the line. Let's move ahead. So we would be happy to
have it ultimately sold to a church. It's more than likely going to change whether it's Colonial or any other
church. More than likely there's going to be some building on that. The reason we're not up here with
plans similar to the Northcott Office Building is because we're looking at zoning. We're not looking at a
site plan at this point. Obviously if it is rezoned or even if it's a church down the road, they're going to
have to come back with a site plan and a development plan and say this is what we really want to put here
and there will be obviously time for input on all of that at that point in time as well. The question was
raised and is it appropriate to answer what happens if not approved. If not approved, at this point we
would not be able to move. And I say that at this point. Nobody can predict the future but at this point we
would not be able to move.
38
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you.
Tami Gottschalk: Hi, I'm Tami Gottschalk. I'm at 2197 Majestic Way and I came here to ask the Mayor
and the Council to please consider the rezoning, which is the issue at hand. We've all agreed on that. I
think we can also all agree that.., big issue, okay. The community is changing. The community is growing
and with that comes a lot of opinions and ideas and thoughts and wants and desires. And I came to this
community for a big desire to grow my family. And part of my family is the Family of Christ family. I
want to see them grow because my personal family, my blood family, my one daughter and hopefully in the
future another daughter or another son, I want to see them grow as well. Not only do I want to see them
grow individually and personally and religiously and also continue to be a member of Family of Christ, but
I want to see them grow away from the worship services just on Sunday. I'd love, and that is one reason
why I have volunteer to be a co-chair on a preschool committee for the Family of Christ. I think there's a
high need for that in the community. I believe that there are other needs as you've heard our own
congregation going, and as I think we can all see, the growth within the community of more and more
families moving out here, the need for not only programs for our children, but possibly programs for adults.
And I strongly believe that if the council could look at the good idea, I really believe it's a good idea to
rezone. The possibilities that could come from an assisted living facility, how that could possibly benefit
one of us. I personally have a parent that's aging. My husband's family are aging too and he is an only
child. What are we to do? Build onto our house and have our families move in? I don't know. Maybe
that would be it. But I think it's a great idea to see possibilities such as the rezoning may bring to our
community. I also want to say that in the past week the meetings that I have been involved in, I've heard
that if another church is interested in purchasing our property, it may also be a good thing for them to think
about having that property, to be able to be rezoned. Again so that they can acquire a higher loan value.
So it's not only in the best interest of us as a congregation at Family of Christ, it's in the best interest of the
community. And I please ask that you do consider this and if we need to work together, which I hope we
can all as a community for the next two weeks to come up with the right decision, I hope that's what we
can do. I think that's in all of our best interest. Thank you.
Karen Cook: Hi, I'm Karen Cook and excuse me. I have terrible laryngitis so just bear with me. We live
at 260 Hidden Lane and we are the second house across the street from the church. And we bought our
home and moved into the community last summer and we have done our homework and we knew about
the.., we knew all about that and when we looked at our property as a potential place to live coming from
Wisconsin, we inquired about the church and we were told it was zoned as a church. And my husband is
an Episcopal Priest in Minnetonka and being a clergy wife, believe me I'm the first one that will stand here
and agree with the wonderful growth. But I just have one question. We'd really like to see the church stay
as a church, just selfishly it really affects their property and our family, but I do have a question. I was
just wondering if it would be possible to rezone our home if we couldn't sell it should our family grow out
of out's?
Mayor Mancino: Thank you.
Barb Yache: Hi, I'm Barb Yache and I live at 8181 Hidden Court and I was going to bring up the same
suggestion as far as the rezoning. What if my family grew in size and I needed to move and couldn't afford
to buy the house I needed to buy for my 8, 9, 10 children. I mean again the issue right here is about the
rezoning. What's happening to our community? I didn't move to Chanhassen to have all of our
neighborhoods being bordered by offices or retail businesses. I know growth is happening and that it just
happened around us but tell me one neighborhood or one neighbor that is excited about an office building
popping up right next door to them. Because it's happened in the past, do we need to continue doing this in
39
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
the future? When I moved to Chanhassen, I mean a lot has happened in Chanhassen. A lot of good things.
Maybe a few negative things but should we always look at everything that has happened in the past and say
well it happened here, it happened, let's continue and continue. Pretty soon everyone is going to be
alienated and want to move away and go to another town to live because of the damage that has been done.
I'm all for the church moving. I think it's a wonderful idea. I'm a church goer myself. I go to St.
Andrews if anybody's familiar with that. It's a huge community. I feel for all the youth. I have children.
I would love for it to happen. I may consider joining the church, but again, look at who you're leaving
behind. Look at the community. Look at your neighborhood. You guys are a church. You're Christians.
I'm just, I can't, the feelings I have tonight, I don't believe that I'm listening to a church as far as what
they're thinking about who they're leaving behind. This conversation sounds more like a business decision
than some Christians talking about what they're doing to the neighborhood behind them.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you.
Pat Hamblin: My name is Pat Hamblin. I live at 340 Sinnen Circle which is just off of Marsh Drive in the
Brookhill Addition. I hadn't planned on talking tonight so I'm not really prepared. As a member of the
neighborhood, although I'm not real close to the church, I still am part of the neighborhood and I do
understand the neighbors concerns about this. My main idea wondering is, even if it was zoned office or
assisted living or whatever, what is to guarantee that that building is not torn down and something
replaced? I mean you know a whole different office building could be put in there. I haven't heard
anything to say that it definitely would not be torn down. Another thing is that I am also a member of
Colonial Church at Heritage Square and when we first heard about this, about Family of Christ being for
sale, like Larry said, the appraisal came in to be much higher than the one that we, that our person that we
had hired came in at so we basically thought then well we can't afford this. We're a young church. Then
later when it looked like the price was going to go down, we started thinking about it again and stuff and
we heard that some office building was coming in. That would be a higher price so we thought well, we're
out of it again. We can't afford to be you know in competition with some other building. Well then earlier
this spring when we found out that yes, there was a good chance that you know it was available again. One
of our members in talking to Lotus Realty was told, you know we have, we could have until June to raise a
$250,000.00 down payment to buy this building for an agreed, for a price. So we bit the bullet. We
started our major fund raising campaign and so it was like a couple weeks later, you know to our surprise,
we find out that there was a rezoning request on it and it's kind of oh boy. You know here it comes to this
office. We're going to be out of luck again. And so that's basically what our fear is that, then tonight to
even a little more frustrating to hear that there is another buyer. So it's like okay, what are we up against
now. We really do want to buy this building. We do, we understand of Family of Christ feels and I
sympathize with them, but we are very serious about this and we think we do have some good possibilities
that we're working on and I just want, also I'm sorry I got ahead of myself. Another problem was that
when we were originally looking at land we found out there's only like about, I don't know, 4-5 pieces of
property in Chanhassen that the City is willing to build a church. That's not very much property for the
way this city is growing and also you look at the price of property in Chanhassen right now. It is rather
difficult. So it's like you already have a property that.., shame to lose one more piece of property that a
church could go into. And so that's kind of where I'm at. Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you.
Jack Thorson: My name is Jack Thorson. I live at 7320 Longview Circle. Things do change. We've lived
there since 1978 and when we first moved there there was nothing between us and North Dakota .... gone
through the ponds and out in the fields and out in the woods and we look at the deer and tigers and the lions
4O
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
and the elephants and everything. But a lot of things have changed. Some of the things we weren't quite
happy with. There were some lower priced houses being built next to us but by golly you know, they're
pretty good neighbors. And a lot of things did change. They rezoned to allow that to happen. Couple of
other things I'd like to put into perspective. First of all, I think we need to at who's asking. The gentleman
from Chaska was a feeling that we not rezone. There's about 400 voters from Chanhassen in Family of
Christ Lutheran Church and I think we also deserve consideration. We need to optimize the price of our
building so that we can move. What is the true valuation? It's probably up around $800,000.00 isn't it
because we have an offer for that. We need that. I've been on the financial resources committee long
enough that I've worn out several. The other one, I was co-chair of the last financial drive we had for our
building and I know what it takes to raise money. We had two drives to buy the land. We had a drive last
year, two years ago for the building. Now we find we're not having quite enough so we're having to go out
and tap our members once more. I don't think we can get there the fifth time. So we're probably going to
have to stay where we are. We'll either have to go up, out, around or not grow. And to us not growing is
not an option. I don't think it's an option for the community of Chanhassen either. You have a very active
community minded church and we want to stay that way and we want to help our community. Yes, you
talk about the plan 2030. As you can tell from my gray hair, I probably won't see that. But somebody
here will. A lot of you will. And it might even be nice to have that facility available for me in another 5 or
10 years. And you know when you think of it, we have what, 1,100-1,200 in our congregation. Lots of
kids and I take great pride in the fact that all these little kids running around. And that there's only 18 of
us that over 65. But I think it's important that those of us who are mature can help these young people and
I was really pleased and proud of our young people telling about what that church meant to them. Please,
let us optimize our church value so that we can move on and help Chanhassen grow.
Teri Bums: I'm Teri Bums. I live at 1100 Dove Court. I co-chair the Childhood Ed Committee and
between myself and that committee, we're in charge of roughly 300 Sunday school students. And probably
about 100 from 3 and under. Five of them are mine. We're out of room. I can't talk to all the specifics of
the zoning and the money and all of those kind of things. My appeal is purely emotional. We have five
classrooms. We have 300 students. We literally have them in every single comer of our building. In four
different services plus two on Wednesday night. Our nursery is so crowded that we can't even have infants
in it. They'd get trampled. My 2 year old won't go in there because it's too busy. We need... We've been
working for five years to try and move. We really, in my understanding, had no idea that this was really
going to be an issue. We just kind of thought this would just happen. Only two churches, ourselves and
the Jehovah Witnesses, and I've just learned this tonight, aren't zoned other than church only. Being on
Council for four years, never had a clue in my mind that this was going to be a big deal. When we were
denied at the last meeting, you were all.., what do we do now? We've got the land. We've got the buyer to
our own building. We've been working for five years to try and sell it to a church. That would definitely
be our first choice but so far nobody has been able to come up with the money. And let's face it, this is an
issue of money. We have to have a certain amount to be able to sell to be able to move. Back to the kids.
We've got 300, 400 kids that are sixth grade and under. We can't provide for them right now. We cannot
minister to them in a way we'd really like to. We have huge dreams but we can't do it because we don't
have anywhere to put them. We literally are renting out spaces to put our children right now. With the
new building we'll be able to minister to them and being five of them are mine, that's very personal. I
would really like you to consider our motion to rezone and look at it from more than just a pencil and paper
issue. Look at it as a personal issue. There's a lot of people that this is affecting. A lot of neighbors too
but there's a whole lot of members of Family of Christ that need to be taken into consideration. Thank
you.
41
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Ted Smith: Ted Smith, 901 Nez Perce Court. My wife's going to kill me for coming up here. At any rate,
the point I wanted to make I guess is I'm sitting here and it's kind of interesting. You know there's an
emotional battle and a fiscal battle and I was sitting back there having lived in Chanhassen now for 6 years.
Looking at the incredible appreciation that happens here on houses and the fact you could probably put a
tent up outside and sell it for 120 grand doesn't hurt anything.., couple things I wanted to point out was the
fact that we're also... State of Minnesota, as a taxpayer, I guess you know the tax relief that would come
from this building doesn't.., but the point I wanted to make is I would be more concerned about a recession
and an incredibly higher tax in the City of Chanhassen on the valuation of your house as opposed to a
building going up next to you.
Steve Elfstrom: I'm Steve Elfstrom. I live in Eden Prairie, 6581 Undestad. It seems that we didn't intend
as a church to become trailblazers in a financing, question of financing but it seems like we are. It seems
like we have another church following in our footsteps trying to address the community with lack of funds.
Our new church that we're talking about moving into, there was, I think we talked about building an
additional 10 classrooms with sweat equity to address even what we need at this point. But I guess the only
thing I'd like to say is it looks like Chanhassen itself has to find a way to deal with this problem, a long
term for the good of the community. As I understand it, our question comes up as a zoning question but
it's also something along the lines of what's good for Chanhassen. It is a fiscal question because land is
very difficult to get in Chanhassen. It's very expensive. There was just an article in your paper about two
weeks ago about the churches and how they're growing, but the difficulty of how they're growing is
something that has to be addressed also so it's a very difficult question. It's been thrown right in your laps
and we'd like you to just consider it in terms of what's best for Chanhassen.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you.
Brad Johnson: Brad Johnson, 7425 Frontier Trail. I'd like to just answer one thing. We are the marketing
firm and we were brought in to try to solve the problem. The problem is as we were told that the church
could not move until they close on their transaction. And remember after they close it will be another 18
months before they're able to move in. We said well it's difficult to find somebody that will buy a church
and not move in when they close. That's a tough assignment. We have attempted to do a bridge loan
which simply says we lend, somebody lends them the money. They take their cash from their church and
they move. Their lender refused to allow that. The new lender would not allow that to happen. They
wanted the church to close. So what we did is we did what is called a bridge purchase through Lutheran
Brotherhood which simply says Lutheran Brotherhood will buy the church if it's rezoned so they don't feel
like they get stuck with it a year and a half from now. And Lutheran Brotherhood, all the members of the
church, the neighborhood and everybody would like to have it stay as a church. In our investigations we
said well how could this happen that there's a piece of property in this community when you put it on the
market there can be only one, two or three buyers. You know that doesn't create value. If you put a home
on the market today I would guess the average selling time in Chanhassen is 30 to 60 days. Put a church
on the market here or anyplace where it's zoned just church, it may take two, three, four, five years to do it.
We thought we were pretty creative. We've met with all the neighbors. Showed them alternatives, you
know the planning kind of stuff and that's why we're not saying much tonight because we think we can
solve the traffic and the looks and you know those are things that are little less probably emotional but if
we just simply said it has to be a church, then there has to be a church buyer. I personally believe, based
upon my financing of about 55 million dollars of stuff here in Chanhassen that it will be easier for a church
to buy this if it doesn't have just church zoning because there's a secondary use to it. If I'm a lender, I'm
going to look at it from that point of view. But if it's only a church and there's only one or two buyers over
a two or three year period, there isn't much use. The Planning Commission wanted us to try to reuse the
42
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
existing facility. It's kind of crazy to throw away something that was just recently valued at about
$750,000.00 in just the building. To throw it away to build single family homes in that area or something
like that. The value's just not there. As part of our purchase we have plenty of time for somebody to come
forward and purchase it as a church because that's the zoning. We have a bridge purchase, I want you to
understand. It's a bridge purchase which allows us then to resell it to somebody else. And so if somebody
wants to step up in the next two, three, four months, that's fine. I think there's one or two, I know I've
counted two people in the audience that are listening to this. One church that's interested in it wants it
rezoned first. That's why they're not speaking. Then they may be interested in buying it but they do not
want to find themselves in the same position that this particular church is. Having a product that is not
marketable. And we have, this is just a problem. St. Hubert's is zoned what, office industrial. The old St.
Hubert's, yeah that's what it is. Or office, OI. Right. Still they could not find a buyer. They had to lease
it. There's a couple other churches over in Eden Prairie for sale right now. They're not selling because
again they're small, inadequate. So just realize that we have put together a program that will not punish
other churches in this community that would like to be an owner. We just need to get on with things and
we're more than willing to wait. That's the buyer, Lutheran Brotherhood, to look. We asked if Lutheran
Brotherhood could finance the next church, taking away the financing situation. He asked if it's Lutheran.
So you even have a limited number of financing, Baptist finance Baptist church. The Congregational
finance Congregational church. You have a very limited world out there as far as this type of transaction' s
concerned. I think we've got the best of both. I think we can take the next two or three months and ifa
church wants to purchase it, fine. A couple of them have told me, I told them what the price could be. And
Lutheran Brotherhood is going to sit around and wait for a year and a half and hold while they put together
their world. That's the way it is. It's not a bad transaction. We've tried to think everything out except we
did not come up with a conclusion that we could leave it as a church, which a lot of the neighbors, you
know direct neighbors want it to be. We could not solve that problem. The rest of them I think we can
solve. Even to the point of offering it to the two churches that are in this room tonight, one of which has
spoken and one of which has not. That it is for sale and we'll give two, three, four months for them to
figure out how to buy it. But that's the zoning is the issue. Lutheran Brotherhood will close with the
zoning. Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Anyone else?
Joel Lehrke: Hi Mayor Mancino, I'm Joel Lehrke. I want to thank you for returning my call earlier today.
I live at 2329 Boulder Road. I just wanted to say that while you're here you think about city, you think
about your responsibilities to the City Council and I'm going to use the old adage, you want a warm fuzzy
and that's the whole purpose of city is to create a warm fuzzy. A community, a surrounding for people to
develop and do different things. I get to see you laughing here Steve but that is the purpose of the city.
One you guys ran for election. You want to help the city. You have to look, what will help the city grow
here. What we are capable of doing by moving, by rezoning our property. By rezoning the property which
has precedence, I believe in Hutchinson, Minnesota right now they have churches being rezoned as assisted
living. I think you'll find it's a nice transition. When you get into the facts of rezoning, they'll talk about
will it become an island? How does it affect the other area? What we're asking in the rezoning I think
you'll see is a nice transition and that's what you'll always tell me when you want to build by my house or
something, how does it transition to the areas, residential, to industry and things like that. I think the
rezoning that we are asking for is a nice transition. And I guess you have to look once again as a city
council we've talked change is happening. Change does happen. What it was originally zoned I'm finding
and we're getting more confirmation it was a high residential type zoning initially and the zoning of the...
change does happen and how will it happen that, can we help the city? Does it help a lot of people in the
city? Does it help our community grow? Thank you.
43
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino: Thank you.
Jell Olson: I am Jeff Olson. I live at 2520 Bridle Creek Trail in Chanhassen. I'm a member of Family of
Christ and also I was on the committee to try and sell the church. I bet there's not too many people that
have tried to sell a church, and it's not very easy to do. There's a very limited market. A couple things I
want to clear up. Earlier tonight Randy mentioned that we had been talking to a couple of churches.
We've talked to a lot of churches. We've talked to anyone who would listen to us and tried to convince
them to come in and purchase. We've not had any solid offers from anyone. There was some discussion as
I recall from one church that they were thinking a price somewhere that wouldn't even be replacement
value. There's just a very limited market. One gentleman talked about not being invited to the meetings.
Maybe he slipped through the crack. That was not the intention. A couple of the earlier meetings we
focused on properties adjacent to the church, but we really sincerely wanted to involve the community, the
neighborhood. Prior to that some months before we had sent mailings out, what we thought was to that
whole neighborhood. I got a mailing list from staff here at the city of those neighborhoods and we sent
mailings out saying this is our predicament. This is what we're talking about doing. We tried to contact
and be in touch with them as good neighbors. Now out where I live, I've been to meetings before which
were nothing more than window dressing. People coming in and trying to do something in the area and
there was no sincerity at all. There were meetings held because it would look good to you that they had had
meetings with the neighborhood. That's not the case here. We honestly wanted their input and it may be
indicative of that is when we first found out there was a problem, potential problem, that we were a non-
conforming use. In discussions, this goes back several months now. There was discussions with city staff
and I recall probably my first discussion on this issue, that my recollection is that if you go way back, that
this property was guided OI. And that staff would support that. As time went on and we looked at the
issue, you look at the 1990 comp plan and you see that it's multi-residence. That's what it's guided for.
Neither one of those are acceptable to the neighborhood and we're not here asking for an OI rezoning.
We're not asking to put up a big multi-residence apartment building or what have you. We tried to take in
the neighborhood's concerns. Address them as best we could. That's why we're not here with asking, in
fact we were here about five months ago. Maybe longer. We initially filed an application to rezone OI.
The neighborhood did not like it. We pulled that back and we adjusted. Tried to come up with something
that everyone could live with so we are trying to address those problems and I think what we've proposed
is for all the comments that have been made tonight, staff did a good job in the report showing that these
uses are something the community needs, but be mindful that our efforts with the neighborhood to come up
with uses that can work. They're not here today and we can't say that this is how it's going to look, but all
of you are going to have something to say about that down the road. We know we've gone through months
and months of site planning, etc, etc, getting approvals, so there is going to be a lot of control yet down the
road and there will be input again then. But if nothing else, know that our efforts with the neighbors were
sincere being on the front lines of a number of those efforts. And so it kind of disappoints me when I sit in
the audience tonight and have people in the neighborhood sigh and make gestures and I think, I don't think
they realize how sincere we have been in trying to address their needs. But as long as we are proposing
change, you know there's going to be, we need to have change. They don't like it so they're disappointed
but know that we were very sincere in our efforts to accommodate where we could.
Mayor Mancino: Anyone else wishing to address the council?
Dale Klabunde: Dale Klabunde. I live at 8160 Hidden Court. I'd just like to comment that I bought my
house about 10 years ago and with the idea that the church was at the end of the block. They're great
neighbors. We enjoy the church. Even attend the church occasionally. However, we don't really
44
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
appreciate the fact that this now may be changed into a high density type development. The council tonight
approved a building at the end of our street that will be a big, have a big impact on our residential area and
I don't think we need another building similar to that almost at the same time which is really going to
change our residential area. We already have a lot of traffic on Lake Drive East down at the McDonald's
intersection there and with additional development that's going to do nothing but increase that. So I think
we've got to consider the amount of people that we can push into this small residential area, and I guess I
object to the change and would like to see the property stayed zoned as a church.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Is there anyone else?
Rod Franks: Rod Franks, 8694 Mary Jane Circle. I'm a resident who's also directly affected by the
request for rezoning. I'm not going to talk a lot about the facts and I've not been on the Building
Committee or the Finance Committee but I am a member of the church. One of the facts that strikes me
though is people talk a lot about change. Change is hard. Change is difficult. It can be a struggle. I know
in our family we've struggled with how to change our finances to be able to give financially to the church
to create this new building, and that's been a struggle and that's been hard. I watch the faces of every one
up here today, hearing all these comments, and I can see that it's a struggle trying to balance out. Take in.
Hear everything. The one thing that I do know about change though is that you can't avoid it. It's going to
come. It's going to happen. So to think about resisting change or trying to stop change is wasted energy.
But what strikes me is what we can do. And what we can do is manage change effectively and I think
that's what we've looked at with the comprehensive plans in this city. What you've tried to guide this city
as a council and as a body, is to really manage the change that is coming to our city effectively. We saw
the maps that were put up when the city was not a city. It was still a village. We've seen how things have
changed. I think they have been managed pretty effectively. The one change that I don't think is really
being considered though is that whether we stay or another church moves in and tries to stay, it's very
likely as they grow, as our community grows, that there's going to be maximum buildout even as a church
of that property. I don't know if people are considering what the impact is going to be. I've heard a lot
about traffic and of an office and the increased use. We heard earlier that our church is used basically
seven days a week and as our membership grows and as the building grows and the facilities expand and
the opportunities for service expand, that involvement, that usage is going to expand. We're probably
looking at a facility that's going to be used seven days a week up to 18 hours a day. From morning into the
evening. I know there's been a number of evenings that I've been there pretty late myself. When I think of
some of the alternative uses, there again managing some of the change, we're looking at typically business
hours. 8:00 to 5:00 and not on weekends. So we're talking about traffic during the day as opposed to
what, we have 1,200 members now. How many are we going to be looking? Maybe twice that much.
Twice that much usage. Twice as many cars. Twice as many parking problems. Twice as many
everything. Twice as much parking lot. Twice as many Sunday school wings rising, you know we saw the
Sunday school wings going out in each section. A new sanctuary that's 40-50 feet high maybe you know
with a nice vaulted ceiling. Change is going to happen on that site, whether it's by us or by someone else.
So there again I'd like to make the point that we have a responsibility not only as a congregation being a
good neighbor, but as our city leaders managing and guiding that change effectively. You know there's
one change though that I'm not willing to accept and I'm a little fearful of that hearing some of the
comments today, and that's the change of being a neighbor. We've been a good neighbor to the city, to the
families, to the community and to the people directly adjacent to the property. I'd hate to see that change.
Those families that live by that church are the families that I shop with. My kids are going to go to school
with their kids. We're going to be involved in park and recreation activities together. We're going to meet
on the road and maybe I'll even run a stop sign in front of one and I hope they're going to remember that
I'm a neighbor and not take down my insurance information. But that's the change I don't want to happen.
45
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
And how we're going to do that if we're going to address... Anything new brings along fear with it. I think
we can all remember from change that has happened to us that it can be fearful, that it can be a struggle.
Even when the outcome has had a positive affect, but I like the struggle because the struggle brings us all
together. It brings us together as a community and as neighbors and as government and as citizens and it
helps us bring clarity and definition to the issues. And I think that this has really mobilized our
congregation to really define things. To define the request. To define the goals. To clarify, and I think the
case has been made pretty effectively that the reasons for requesting the rezoning are very compelling. I
think they're pretty clear and it's my hope that you'll see it that way also. Thank you.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you. Anyone else wishing to address the council? I know who I'm going to talk
to as I get grayer and grayer about all this change. I'm to embrace it?
Rod Franks: Along with your dark side...
Mayor Mancino: That will be fun. Okay, thank you.
Rod Franks: I'm sure you're feeling better now.
Mayor Mancino: Anyone else? Last call kind of for everyone. Then we'll, oh. Okay.
Melanie Wegner: Melanie Wegner, 8727 Flamingo Drive. I want you to please rezone our area.
Mayor Mancino: Clarity there. We'll bring this back up to council. We talked about, or it has been a
recommendation of the staff to take some time and table this. I'd like to hear what councilmembers feel
about that and also if you have questions about things that you, comments that you've heard tonight or
from reading the staff report, if there is some more due diligence, questions that you have from staff that
you would like to have them report back to us on. Councilman Senn.
Councilman Senn: Kate, one question in my mind is we've heard it referred to a few times tonight. Two
churches only zoned as church only.
Kate Aanenson: Actually we have quite a variety of different zonings.
Councilman Senn: That's what I thought.
Kate Aanenson: Churches actually are a conditional use in any residential zone. As has been talked about
tonight, there is a depleting land supply. In the last number of years people have gotten very creative in
trying to do land sharing, i.e. the Jehovah Witness, St. Hubert's where we did shared parking. It's a way to
reduce their cost and gotten more creative because the residential land is what was moving so fast and had
been tied up by large property owners so it was difficult for churches to find properties. But all residential
land, whether it's high density or low density, churches are a conditional use so it's just a matter of
mitigating or attaching conditions, reasonable conditions to mitigate any impact so. But we have quite a
few. We put in, Cindy put the table in the updated staff report. From PUD to OI, which is generally a
quasi public use, a lot of the city owned properties is guided that. PUD came from where we've done the
more creative, mixed use projects where we put the churches.., special exceptions. For example St.
Hubert's, where that is in that the Villages on the Pond and we did an the environmental, we also said, we
said institutional so if St. Hubert's was to go away, it could be something like a hospital. It's not limited to
46
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
that. There are other ones that are more restrictive so we're basically kind of all over on that, how we've
applied that.
Councilman Senn: Okay. So churches are allowed basically with any zone by conditional use?
Kate Aanenson: Any residential zone conditional use. We've exempted them from industrial. We've
exempted them from commercial because we wanted them to go to the land values that were less.
Mayor Mancino: So any residential, okay.
Kate Aanenson: That's why we've done the PUD where we've limited them only to one lot or you've done
shared parking. Put conditions on there.
Councilman Senn: Right. Understand. Not necessarily for tonight but I think it would be nice if, at least
as far as the question goes on the rezoning as far as assisted living goes or as far as office goes. What
mechanism exists and how could it be done if it were to be done to safeguard issues that were raised like
reuse or rehab only of the existing building. Or limitations on size or limitations on future use or
rebuilding. You know again a lot of those things I'm not sure we have a lot of leeway on and I know that's
not necessarily an easy question to answer.
Kate Aanenson: Well we did that, and that's one of the reasons we recommended a PUD. We wanted to
come up with some architectural designs and setback designs as far as, I mean you'd have to get a legal
opinion on requiring the re-use of the building. Obviously there is a mortgage on the building but that was
the reason why we went with the PUD is to try to shorten the list of those uses that would be acceptable to
the neighbors and then also put the standards in there such, no matter what came in, we could live with that
design and we'd still go through site plan review to set the framework up to say this is what the height, this
is what it'd look like. So that was the attempt and we did put that in the staff report and the applicants did
do that. I think that was it for the moment.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. Councilwoman Jansen.
Councilwoman Jansen: I guess I could maybe just start with my questions of staff. I have comments then
to some of the things that were said tonight. I'm curious when we went through the last project you were
able to get numbers for us out of the manual, the Institute of Transportation Engineers Trip Generation
Manual. Do they also have studies in that manual for church facility traffic?
Kate Aanenson: Yes. And we also put the parking standards in here. That was one reason why we felt
comfortable with the assisted living. Based on the 60 units, we looked at 30 stalls would be required.
That's what we felt, I mean that's really.., as was indicated tonight, the amount of trips that are being
generated.
Councilwoman Jansen: Right.
Kate Aanenson: Right. Something certainly that we can look at.
Councilwoman Jansen: And I would be curious whether they can do a projection or if they have a
projection in that manual for the church as it stands today, not fully developed but what are we looking at if
47
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
it expands out to that maximum. If you could maybe quote that footage as well for use. Does that, is that
a possibility?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah, we could do trip generation. Again we put the parking standards in there but
ultimately 150 stalls approximately is what they're looking at but we can look at trip generation.
Scott Botcher: The trip generation manual allows you, it has all sorts of different uses in it but you do have
the ability based upon some of the square footages of the proposed building, to make extrapolations and
guesstimates as to what the impact will be. Obviously with a church, even though churches are 24 hour
you know a day business anymore, your traffic impact is a couple times a week. I mean for all practical
purposes. Your Bible study courses, you may have 20, 30, 40 people there but in the grand scheme of
things it's not a lot. But I think the trip generation stuff is something that we could provide.
Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. Great. And then mention was made at the start of the meeting of the
medium density housing. Could you maybe expand upon that a little bit as to, I mean were you referring to
this property being able to, I assume you're demolishing the building and putting up, didn't I hear mention
of medium density housing as an option?
Kate Aanenson: Sure, I think we were looking at if someone, a smaller church was to buy it without the
expansion capability, the lot could be split. That discussion was held even a number of years ago.
Subdividing the property.
Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. So it'd be multi-use on the property then. The church would still be there
but there would also be homes. I see. Okay. And did you have a chance to look over, the expanded list of
activities. I'm just curious. I was surprised as I went through the church's last memo that they presented
to us which was the other issues dated May 4th.
Councilman Labatt: What page is that on Linda? What attachment?
Councilwoman Jansen: Attachment # 10. And if you go to their point 3. Actually point 3 under Other
Issues.
Kate Aanenson: I guess that was our concern about just strictly using the ITE and trying to guesstimate
because the new phenomenon now in the planning industry, mega churches and larger churches. I mean we
still, in this community we do have Eckankar which draws 200,000 people a year to that church facility.
But churches are also be service organizations. As they've indicated here they have Girl Scouts, Boy
Scouts so it's not just the Sunday activity. That's why it's a little bit harder to go strictly by trip
generation. They do use that building for a lot of other purposes besides their own.
Councilwoman Jansen: So as long as it's zoned the way it is, and let's just say everything stays the say for
conversation sake. They would be able to have a food shelf, homeless shelter, rallies, revivals, or
denominational conferences and programs. Well some of these things that.
Kate Aanenson: You look up the definition of church and there is a church that was, back to Roger's
opinion on that. When you use the definition of church, a lot of those things are associated. Even a
daycare or a preschool are generally found with a church or school activities so in our opinion we had
already told him that some of those uses could be found in that without rezoning the property because that's
associated with the church activity.
48
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Councilwoman Jansen: Okay. Okay, and I guess where I was going with that question, and I'm trying to
put myself in the neighbors shoes as to what's going on nearby. And the question that I'm asking myself is,
if the church remains, then what? What kind of impact will there be on the neighborhood because we're all
hearing here tonight it's not going to remain the same. So if we go down what we've heard, they potentially
would be expanding to, if our concern is the impact of traffic that's going to increase, it will be increased
activity. Increased hours. And I wonder as you're looking at that type of an expansion on that property, if
we should be taking into consideration how we can reduce those negatives which is what I'm hearing the
neighbors say. They don't want the increase in traffic. They don't want the increase in activity that you
might have from an office complex. Both of those activities are reduced if it's a senior assisted living. So
that would be expanding upon the residential feel up against the neighborhood and I'm agreeing with some
of the comments that staff had put in the report to suggest that by having it be assisted living, or in my
mind that's like low impact residential. You know not, thinking of it necessarily, I don't know if there's
negatives that come from.., assisted living. I guess I would have to hear that spoken to a little bit because
I'm seeing the positives to that. The reduced amount of traffic. You've got neighbors, 60 units. Of those
60 units are we talking about individual units? So we're 60 people. I mean those were some of my
thoughts as I was looking at this piece of property in relation to what is the best thing for us to do for the
neighborhood and for the church. I hate to sit here and think that it's a church versus the neighborhood.
And in fact it's neighbor versus neighbor. So what can we do that might be in the best interest of everyone
involved? But I'm also asking myself as to when that time comes and with a specific proposal, because
what I'm grappling with also is how do we get comfortable with a concept that we're only seeing some
hypotheticals for. But if I were asked tonight to try to come up with a best answer for both parties, I would
want to hear more comment along the lines of the assisted living. The pluses and the minuses because it's a
definite need in the community. So if we're also trying to do what's best for the entire community in
making, if we were to make a change, then the assisted living units are a real need. And they're a real need
today from what we understand. It's not an eventual. It is a need in the community and would that be a
good neighborhood correlation for the housing units next to it? It would seem so. So I'm seeing it as a, the
assisted living being a compatible land use. It limits the traffic. It's a good transition into the
neighborhood so that we've got a buffer for the families and if anything, we're not introducing a new use.
I'm looking at the office complex and ironically the two projects have come before us at the same time and
you're being impacted by the traffic from 8:00 to 5:00. You wouldn't have that across the street. So it
seems like you get a balance of hours and the amount of activity. Just some of my thoughts.
Councilman Engel: It's been a long night for you guys. I remember when I first got elected to this in '96
and my wife and I kind of chuckled about it and thought these were going to be some fun nights and there's
been a lot of uneventful nights over the last couple of years. This isn't one of them. And there's been a
couple of issues as Mark will know and the Mayor will know and Steve and Linda are going to find out.
You'd like it to always be black and white. Most things in my life politically still are pretty black and
white. Don't see a lot of shades of gray. This isn't one of them and they usually come down to areas that
always have to do with a neighborhood issue. So there's too many strings out there for me to address any
one of them tonight. We're going to have time to do that later and staffs got a lot of work to do. I think so
does everybody else out there. But just to set the table for you. I've been doing this a couple years now
and it really doesn't change once you get hit with that first one that really is gray and we're not going to
make, and I'm speaking for probably, I'll speak for myself. I'm not going to make the best decision that I
think is in the best interest of the church and I'm not going to make the decision I think is in the best
interest of the neighborhood. The gray area really commands someone who gets elected up here to take into
account what's in the best interest of the whole community and it sounds a little trite and it sounds a little
oh I thought defensive when I used to hear it. When I ran for a chair like this. But after you're sitting in
49
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
here, you find it's really the only right thing you can do because there's no way to play a favorite in an
issue like this. So I think everybody else will probably tell you the same thing. We'll look at it from both
sides and we'll do what we think is in the best interest of the whole community. Sometimes you win and
sometimes you lost and I've been on both sides. As a neighbor I've got things around me I'd rather just go
away, but it's not going to happen and there's things I'd like to see be built. Nobody wants to do that
either so.
Mayor Mancino: We always say no to him.
Councilman Engel: That's enough.
Mayor Mancino: Thank you.
Councilman Labatt: One of the speakers towards the end there said it best, is that we can't avoid change.
It's always going to happen. But it's our job I think as a council to effectively manage that change and to
mitigate the impact on those that are affected. Unfortunately those that are going to be affected are not
only the neighbors but the church. But, this is obviously going to be a tough decision for us as a council.
Somebody's not going to walk away happy. A couple of things that have come up tonight that I personally
want to look at is the assisted living. What mechanisms are in place right now, and I'm aware of a place
up in Osseo, I think it's called Steeple Chase. It used to be an old church that converted and retrofitted for
an assisted living. Right on main street there. So it's been done. Ultimately, yeah I'd like to see it stay a
church and have a church by it and everybody walks away happy. The issues and questions that are going
to be raised that were brought up tonight by the residents...
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. I don't have too much more to add that you all have said. I would like
to thank everyone that came tonight and spoke and didn't speak and just sat. I appreciated everyone being
here. And listening to you and taking it all in. A couple things for staff that I have that I'd like to see in a
couple weeks and that would be on May 24th, is that our next council meeting? Two weeks away on a
Monday night. And please correct me if, I've been listening for a while. On the assisted living definition,
is it generally thought of as being just for seniors or can assisted living be for, I mean did your suggestion
staff of the assisted living, was it just for senior assisted living?
Kate Aanenson: I didn't think we qualified that.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. I'd like to know when you do say assisted living, what all that means. What all
that entails so just one having a definition of assisted living. Also I saw the, some of the design standards
for the office was like 25,000 square feet and parking stalls, etc. There were specifics there. For assisted
living I don't have a feeling of the size of the building for 60 units. I know the max is 500 square feet and
the beds and the parking. Can you kind of show us a minimum, a max that you feel is respectful of the site
for assisted living? What that would be and again a little more specific definition of it I think would be
helpful and I think would also be helpful for the neighborhood too. And then I suppose at our next meeting
we will come back on May 24th with a new staff report answering some of your questions and our questions
and we'll have a discussion and make a decision at that time for rezoning. In the interim, in the next two
weeks, please feel free, both church members, neighbors, on both sides, please feel free to e-mail, call, send
us nice letters. I mean whatever contact that you would like to make with individual council members.
This is your time to do that. Steve has asked can we get the real estate information reference, I'm sorry.
Councilman Labatt: Mr. Sharke.
5O
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Mayor Mancino: From Mr. Sharke to the property.
Councilman Labatt: If you could mm those into maybe Scott and you could photocopy them for all of us.
Mayor Mancino: Okay. And certainly anyone can come to the City Hall and speak to our Planning
Director, Kate Aanenson or our City Manager, Scott Botcher about the plans and ask for questions, etc in
this two week interim. So with that, thank you very much and may I have a motion please.
Scott Botcher: Can I just one second?
Mayor Mancino: Yes.
Scott Botcher: I just had, and I don't know Kate if these questions go more to you or to representatives of
the church or the neighborhood. I'll throw these out rhetorically. It's too late to want any answers at this
point. And just Mayor, just so you understand the building footprint on assisted living has almost as much
to do with the definition that's applied to it so depending on what you use with the building. If it's senior.
If it's you know fully ambulatory individuals. Not fully ambulatory individuals. The type of ancillary
services that have to be provided to those facilities really has as much to do with the footprints and the
layout as anything else so what you will get in two weeks is probably going to be a guesstimate based upon
an assumed definition. If the assumed definition changes, all bets are off and we punt. I mean that's just
sort of how it's going to have to be because they do have distinctly different support services that need to
be provided based upon again the uses. I'll go real fast. I have the distinct pleasure of having rezoned 40
acres for a church site for a 50,000 square foot church and have neighbors complain about the amount of
impervious surface area. It's like a pimple on the middle of a planet. It was successfully rezoned. It is
still not built. They paid a million bucks for that thing. That's alright. I also have the distinct pleasure of
having just left a church in Wisconsin that went through the moving process. I've shared this with the
council and it's just a different perspective on how to do things. Generally my experience with commercial
properties and my own personal experience with my own church, which was a Lutheran church and it's the
only times I've seen so many Lutherans sit in the front row was, communion follows right after. Was that
the sale is contingent. We had to go through the rezoning process, the PUD process as a contingency to the
sale. That's life. That's life in the big city. Church is part of the big city. We had to do it and part of my
question is, and I know Kate and I will continue this discussion and representatives of the church, why
that's different here. Why that is different now, because I think Mark said it very well. This is a gray area.
I think the church adds such a high quality value to our community. Mark, I know you guys know that I
have two little kids, 6 and 3. They're not yet in prison or anything so you know going to Sunday School's
a big deal for them. They enjoy it and our refrigerator is covered with all sorts of you know finger paints
and that sort of stuff. But you know it is your job to look out for the greater good of 20,000 people. Like
it or not. So here's some of the questions that I have. Is the purchase offer written and accepted and
available for review by city staff? I assume that's written by Lutheran Brotherhood but I don't know that.
I had the same thing on my list. I'd like to, I mean Kevin's testimony is the closest thing I've heard to
expert testimony tonight insofar as valuation is concerned. I think that's important to make part of the
record. Obviously you know persons who have opinions to the contrary have the same opportunity to
provide expert testimony and also please submit it to Kate or myself. Have alternatives using the existing
site been considered? I've not heard anyone really address the issue of if we were to add a second story,
what financially that does. Is it possible? What that does to the site. I think, again I don't know if that's
of value but, and maybe Kate that's been addressed, but I think that's another option that needs to be out
there. When we have our staff meetings, and I'm not sure Kate who ought to be in there and I'll really just
51
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
defer to you as to who all we're going to invite to our nice party. But should Lutheran Brotherhood,
assuming they're the buyer and the bridge purchaser, should they be at the table? Who else, and again I
don't want answers to these questions in public because some of them are proprietary candidly. Who else
besides Lutheran Brotherhood did you guys talk to? Did you talk to AL? Did you talk to anybody else?
What would they do? Lutheran Brotherhood's tradition is to be probably less flexible than others in some
of these areas now and I understand because I was involved with some of the same things that some of you
guys were. How the heck do you finance a church? It's tough. It's really tough. You make the offering
plates a little bit deeper and that's the only thing I could come up with. Finally again the assisted living
thing I think is important. It does make generally a good transitory zone between the two parties. I
generally support the assisted living but I think the definitional issues need to be addressed. Our church
was converted to a residential assisted living for early term Alzheimer patients. And it was a fantastic use.
The support services were somewhat limited and after the initial outcry, and we only had it from a couple
people. We don't want those kind of people in our neighborhood. You ask them today, they wouldn't give
it up. Quite candidly, they would not give them up. They're a valued part of the neighborhood and I think
the operators of the assisted living facility, and we told them up front, needed to make an effort to
assimilate these individuals into the neighborhood. Take them into the neighborhood. Take them around
and meet the neighbors. They're people just like anybody else and so whatever goes there, I think the city
has an opportunity here to really make some positive recommendations on how to make this work for
everybody. Because you're right Mark, this is not a win/win. We're just going to try to make the best deal
we can for the city. So those are my rhetorical questions and honestly, when you, please call. Please call
or e-mail myself or Kate and we'll talk to anybody. That's it.
Mayor Mancino: Okay, thank you. And their numbers are 937-1900, extension 112. Extension 118. So
with that, did we have a motion and did we vote?
Scott Botcher: One more thing, I'm sorry to do this to you.
Mayor Mancino: Okay.
Scott Botcher: From the church people and from Roger, and this is.
Mayor Mancino: Nobody can leave until the motion is done. No.
Scott Botcher: On the definitional thing, the only thing on this list that's scary and I think Linda you found
this. Parochial schools have a substantial and much different impact on neighborhoods than anything else
on this list, both in terms of traffic, lighting, utility and all that sort of stuff. We need to as a staff really
make sure whether or not school's a part of church or not because they are a different duck. So I guess
that's a question that you can answer tomorrow in the morning when I'm walking through the hallway half
asleep.
Councilman Senn: I move to table.
Councilman Engel: Second.
Councilman Senn moved, Councilman Engel seconded to table the request for an amendment to the
Hidden Valley PUD to allow church facilities, assisted living facilities or offices as permitted uses. All
voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously.
52
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS: LEWIS ENGINEERING NOISE STUDY UPDATE.
Cindy Kirchoff: Thank you. I'd just like to provide a short history on this issue. Approximately about a
year and a half staff had been given... Lewis Engineering. An industrial facility located in the city of
Chaska. Staff has been working with David Braslau of Braslau and Associates... few occasions and did
provide us with some options for controlling the noise. However, staff has been requested by a neighbor in
Trotter's Ridge that a noise reading.., so we did contact Mr. Braslau and there was a significant charge for
the service so we did contact...to rent a dosimeter and have staff measure the noise and the MPCA would
download the data and... We would like to do this sometime next week and we are just updating the council
on this issue. So if you have any other questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you.
Kate Aanenson: Can I just add one thing too. The reason that we put this on originally is Mr. Braslau
charges, as you recall when we originally came before you.., the city covered that cost. Originally we
thought it was going to be approximately $4,000.00 to measure for a week. What we found out is there's
two different ways to measure the noise and the way it was done previously by Mr. Braslau... infrequently
over a 24 hour period. The intent was to leave it out there. We tried not to incur that expense and... It's
still an ongoing issue but we are going to try to measure. Now the most we can get it is for two days.
We've asked the neighbors to try to figure out, if they've.., days would probably be best to measure and
we'll... The one concern we do have is that this piece that we're borrowing from MPCA is measuring...
measuring at the right frequency and that we need the right data. Or the best data that we can because
when it was measured before it wasn't...they were just doing periodic. We're trying to do for, at a
minimum 48 hours so.
Mayor Mancino: And what do we do with this information? Do we give it to Mr. Braslau?
Kate Aanenson: ... noise ordinance. Then we've got reason to charge them. Violated noise ordinance. Up
to now we haven't been.
Scott Botcher: Aren't they in Chaska? Is this the same one? How can we charge them if they're in
Chaska?
Kate Aanenson: Turn it over to Chaska to cite them. They can...
Scott Botcher: I think this is one, just for the council's two cents worth, we're doing a good deed for the
neighbor but I wouldn't hold your breath. To be candid.
Kate Aanenson: We've been working on it for over...
Scott Botcher: I know you have and you guys have worked really hard on it but Chaska's going to tell us
to go blow.
Mayor Mancino: No. They said that they would participate. We'll see.
Scott Botcher: I'm you know, just don't get your hopes up. And if I'm wrong, I hope so for their sake.
Mayor Mancino: It depends on your relationship with Chaska's City, no.
Kate Aanenson: ...the same county.
53
City Council Meeting - May 10, 1999
Scott Botcher: Somebody else can, that's fine. I just.
Mayor Mancino: Any questions on the administrative section that's going forward? We've been here a
long time. Any questions on administrative at all? Thank you for it all. I think that's it.
Mayor Mancino adjourned the City Council meeting at 10:00 p.m.
Submitted by Scott Botcher
City Manager
Prepared by Nann Opheim
54