CC 2016 10 03
CHANHASSEN CITY COUNCIL
SPECIAL MEETING
OCTOBER 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. The meeting was opened
with the Pledge to the Flag.
COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT:
Mayor Laufenburger, Councilman McDonald,
Councilwoman Tjornhom, Councilwoman Ryan, and Councilman Campion
STAFF PRESENT:
Todd Gerhardt, Chelsea Petersen, Paul Oehme, Kate Aanenson, and Roger
Knutson
PUBLIC PRESENT:
Kim Huston 18977 Twilight Trail, Eden Prairie
th
Kristin Kokkila 13875 85 Place No., Maple Grove
Anna Bader 18903 Hanus Road, Minnetonka
Denise Choiniere 8481 Bittern Court, Chanhassen
rd
Teawanna Burton 3425 53 Avenue No, Minneapolis
Letitia Nadine Dyer 8280 Market Boulevard, Chanhassen
Nardos Yeuie 312 Larpenture #6
st
Sheila Clayton 1074 1 #708, St. Paul
Linda Paul 8696 Stonefield Lane, Chanhassen
Lisa Gillespie 183 West Sidney Street, St. Paul
Erin Adler Star Tribune
Matt Sepir MPR
Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you and I want to welcome all of those of you that are in council
chambers tonight and if it’s the first time into Chanhassen, welcome to Chanhassen and there are
many of you watching at home on Mediacom cable channel or also watching live stream so
welcome to this proceeding. First thing I want to note is that we have all council members
present this evening so we are a full quorum. We also have City Manager Todd Gerhardt and
our lawyer, attorney Mr. Roger Knutson and you’ll be meeting and hearing from other members
of the city staff and consultants in a little bit. This is a City Council meeting and we have a
normal and orderly process that we follow and I hope to make it easy for those of you to follow
along as we navigate through this process together. The primary purpose of this meeting tonight
is to act on or to review and consider an act on a proposal to rezone property located at 7801
Audubon Road from Industrial Office Park to a Planned Unit Development to facilitate the use
of the building as a museum. We will hence forth refer to this as Paisley Park okay. But the first
item on our agenda is a little different. It is our custom here in Chanhassen whenever we have a
council meeting we offer the opportunity for a visitor presentation so if anyone wishes to speak
to or address the council tonight on a matter unrelated to the specific item, Paisley Park on the
Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
agenda, now would be a time to do so. Now some of you are thinking I wanted to speak tonight.
Is the time that I’m supposed to get up and do that and the answer is no. We’re welcome to hear
from you about any other item except Paisley Park. If you want to tell us about the food you had
at Davanni’s today or how much you like the Arboretum fine. Alright there being no visitor
presentations we will close visitor presentations.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS.
None.
PAISLEY PARK MUSEUM: REQUEST TO REZONE PROPERTY LOCATED AT 7801
AUDUBON ROAD FROM INDUSTRIAL OFFICE PARK (IOP) TO PLANNED UNIT
DEVELOPMENT IOP TO FACILITATE THE USE OF THE BUILDING AS A
MUSEUM.
Mayor Laufenburger: Just a brief comment on our role as a City Council this evening. The
action that we as a City Council take is called legislative. That means the council will decide if
the proposed ordinance will be approved or not. If that legislative action or approval is complete
then there’s a second element to the opening of the museum called administrative. This is the
responsibility of city staff and not the council so city staff ensures that the actions by the
applicant to prepare the site for it’s approved use complies with city ordinances and city code
such as are the emergency lights in place and are they functional. Are the emergency exits
clearly marked and identified? Are the assembly ratings and the occupancy signs in place? Are
all of the conditions of the use satisfactorily met according to city staff? So these elements are
related to granting a certificate of occupancy and these administrative actions are not the
council’s jurisdiction. So this is the sequence of events we’re going to follow tonight. First of
all I will ask for a staff report for the application and the proposal for rezoning to a planned unit
development and this will be very thorough so it will be time consuming. Number two, after that
staff report is complete I will ask council members if they have any questions. This is
customary. There may be things that they read in the report that are unclear to them. Maybe
things we hear tonight so that will be very, very thorough. That will be council questions. I will
then ask if the applicant is present, and I believe the applicant is present tonight and I would ask
if they would like to address the council. They will then come up and make a statement as they
choose. Then I will return it to the council and say any questions for the applicant. Now this is
a standard process that we use for virtually every development or anything like this so we’re
following a procedure here. Now I also just want to remind people, after we ask the applicant if
there’s any questions then we have to remember this. The council has had an opportunity to
review all matters of the public record including the proceedings from the Planning Commission
th
held on September 20. Some may have actually viewed that Planning Commission meeting.
We also have verbatim minutes for that. We’ve also reviewed all of the emails. In some cases
people may follow social media but we’ve reviewed all of those proceedings and at this time I
would normally say a public hearing is not required because that was part of the Planning
Commission meeting but I know there are people here tonight who have an interest in sharing
their views so I will take a period of public comment. The only request that I ask is that as you
speak to the council, remember you’re addressing the council, you treat us with respect due of
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
the council, the applicant and also this chamber. Also one more thing, if there’s anybody present
tonight that spoke at the Planning Commission I would ask that you reserve your comments until
those who were not at the Planning Commission and spoke have a chance to speak. I will do this
for about 30 minutes. I’ll be a little flexible on that but it’s important that we listen to and hear
the things that are said as long as they’re presented in a respectful way. And then when the
public comment is concluded then I will bring it back to the council for any further discussion,
motion or action so that’s the sequence of events tonight. So let’s begin. Our first item is under
new business is the Paisley Park Museum. Is there a staff report?
Kate Aanenson: Yes thank you Mayor and members of the City Council. As you indicated
everything on this project has been disseminated. I also want to remind people that the city staff
report is available online. Anybody that has questions about some of the technicalities so what
we gave to you tonight is an executive summary. Included in that was emails that we received
after the Planning Commission meeting. With the Planning Commission meeting that staff
report is attached also. There were numerous emails sent and so all the emails that we did
receive were also attached. So also included in that is the proposed zoning. Some other
documents which I’ll go through in a minute but all those are part of the record and anybody
that’s interested in that can go to the City’s website and navigate to find that. So again the
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Planning Commission held a hearing on September 20 and I’ll go through a little bit more detail
on that and the application is from PRN Music Corporation. The property is located at the
southeast corner of Highway 5 and Audubon Boulevard. It is a 9 acre site. Paisley Park was
built in 1986. There’s been a few alterations to it since that time and the addition of a small out
building which we’ll talk about in a little bit more detail. So the goal here is to, the majority of
the site will not be altered. There will be some provisions for additional site planning which
we’ll detail in a little bit more later and then also potential for some security items. So the
request for the PUD zoning district arose from the fact that the museum is not permitted in the
current office industrial park. This property is guided for office industrial so by creating a PUD
which is allowed if it’s a 5 acre or more larger site is permitted as long as it’s consistent with the
underlying guiding which this is. So the PUD rezoning attempts to regulate how this property
will be used so as a part of your packet then we included the PUD zoning district. There was
some changes from this before it went to Planning Commission and I can go through that if you
will just really quickly. Offices were added as a permitted use in the zoning district when it went
to Planning Commission that was not there. So that was the main change in that, in the PUD
zoning district. Again the PUD zoning district is to allow the museum which could have, which
also allowed for other things that could happen in the IOP district including 20 percent retail
sales which we allow in other industrial office districts and then also permitted the, it being used
as a recording studio if that’s what they choose to. To allow the current use of the property and
then modifying that with that. The other thing that was presented when we asked them for a
business plan was the existing round building on the site. To allow that to potentially become a
boutique hotel. Again that would come back through the city for administratively, internally for
the building permit so they’d have to go through that process so again any changes to that again
would have to come back through the city. Again there’s prohibited uses. It’s not intended to
have outdoor events, liquor sales or anything like that so we believe that the PUD is the
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
appropriate tool to allow this application to go forward as a museum. In the executive summary
on the beginning, first page we did talk about reasons why we did support the PUD. It provides
for limitations on the building and how it can be used, hours of operation and traffic and parking
and we’ll get a little bit more detail from the traffic consultant on that. Again that was to
understand how the change in use and the occupancy would regulate how the building works. It
preserves the existing building and how it exists today and there’s limited expansion. Preserves
existing trees. Creates additional jobs and tourism will be created. So that’s the reasons for
supporting the PUD. This is how the site looks today. The current layout of the building so
looking at the traffic study there was recommendations being made. I went through the PUD but
one of the things that we talked about in the traffic study was some changes that need to be made
to the site and the conveyance tool for that to make sure that they got done is on this slide here.
We did reference, we put together a site performance agreement. In that agreement the concern
was, it said we can measure the traffic into the future. Level of service. How it’s operating.
Right now there’s certain expectations. I’ll let the traffic consultant talk about that in more detail
but assume maximum development and operational. So we’d go back and measure that.
Security has been put in place. There was a security requirement so there is cash escrow in place
with the City right now to maintain that so what the agreement says is that as a part of the
ordinance that we would measure that, how it’s operating so if it appeared that it was maxing
capacity and we wanted to look at some improvements of the level of service then we would
study that. At a minimum we’d go back and study it in October but if we needed to do it sooner
than that then we’d have that opportunity too which is why the escrow is put in place. In
addition that escrow ensures that the improvements are being made to the site including the
additional parking and the additional access onto Audubon. Again I’ll let the consultant talk a
little bit more detail in that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Ms. Aanenson?
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: When you use the term level of service, are you referring to car traffic? Is
that what you’re referring to?
Kate Aanenson: Yeah, vehicular, car or bus traffic. How people are exiting and entering the site
and how the rest of the operations work on the road.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, thank you.
Kate Aanenson: So that’s one of the attachments then. This site improvement agreement is one
of the attachments that will be executed as a part of this PUD agreement. The zoning itself, the
zoning ordinance is what we’re also recommending tonight so with that I’m going to turn it over
to the City Engineer to go through the traffic.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Paul Oehme: Thanks Ms. Aanenson. Good evening Mayor, City Council members. So we’d
like to just spend a little time on the traffic study as Ms. Aanenson had indicated. Traffic study
was, is typically completed for these type of developments and change of usage as well. SRF did
complete the traffic study for this development. Tonight Matt Pacyna is here from SRF if you
have any questions for him. One of the first things that we look at for traffic study is looking at
the, is what the new site would generate in terms of traffic so based upon information that we
gathered from the applicant there’d be upwards of 65 guests per hour maximum visiting the site
and a 10 minute tour basis. We’re estimating that about 2.5 guests per vehicle would be entering
the site and then upwards of 60 employees would also be working on the site on any given day.
Based upon that information we did also gather site information with gathering trips and turning
movements at the intersections off Highway 5 and at the intersections along Audubon Road as
well. Knowing the background traffic information too that MnDOT has and also that the City
acquires every 2 years, we looked at that information. Put it into a computer model and
generated what projected traffic volumes along Audubon and turning movements into the site
and along Highway 5 would be. This slide here shows what the existing traffic volumes
currently are and what the projected maximum trip generated volumes would be if the PUD for
Paisley Park were to move forward. As Kate indicated this is the concept plan that is being
looked at. I’ll get back to that slide a little bit later on but knowing that traffic, those traffic
impacts or the traffic that’s been generated we looked at what the potential impacts along
Audubon, Highway 5 and then also on Paisley Park potentially would be knowing the, putting
that information into the model. For example at Audubon, Highway 5, the guest traffic going
southbound onto Audubon making those turning movements into the site there potentially would
be a queuing issue. Basically a back up onto Highway 5 at the weekend peak period timeframe
or the weekday which is, we’re projecting it to be at 4:30. Between 4:30 and 5:30. The problem
with the traffic and the queuing at this intersection, at this time is that the intersection or the main
access point to Paisley Park is in close proximity to Highway 5 so there’s not much stacking that
potentially could take place along Audubon as it is currently configured. This potentially would
impact the traffic again on Highway 5. Saturdays we also are anticipating there might be some
problems as well during the noon hour based upon the traffic volumes. Existing traffic volumes
plus the generated traffic volumes for the guests. So what staff is recommending basically that
the north access point, which is shown right here, that be moved farther to the south about 220
feet away from Highway 5. That gets the access point out of the turn lane. The right turn lane
that’s currently on Highway 5. That access point would be proposed to be restricted just to right
out only since we do have a left turn lane that potentially would be going in there at that location.
We also would like it to restripe Audubon Road south of Highway 5 to allow for more stacking
to get into the facility. The main access point to the facility would be the south access point that
is currently here today. As Ms. Aanenson had indicated that connection would be parking lot,
the south parking lot would be connected with the north parking lot to facilitate parking for
guests and that would be the main location. The limit of the tour sizes for the facility onto the
existing parking spots that are currently available. In the future the parking could be expanded
on site to accommodate more guests but at this point we would request that the parking, the
guests would be limited to the amount of parking that’s available on the site as well. We have
been in contact with MnDOT about the traffic potentially generated by this facility and they are
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
aware of the traffic study. They have a copy of it. What MnDOT would, could help out with is
the timing of the left turn lanes onto Audubon Road. Their signal is tied into the main traffic
center and the turning or the green arrows could potentially be adjusted during peak hours as
well so MnDOT can monitor the traffic at this intersection if there were to be problems in the
future. With that the site that is, site improvements are shown here again so the, again the
access, main access would be to the south. South access point is currently today. The north
access be closed and the right in or right out lane would be constructed at this location since
there is a left turn lane that would be obstructed. Additionally parking potentially would be
added in the future as needed by the applicant.
Kate Aanenson: Thank you Paul. Just a couple other comments on the site plan itself and the
Planning Commission summary. So the Planning Commission requested that you consider the
proposed transportation plan. Not all of the parking will be put in place as shown on this
rendering. This is the ultimate. That was one of the things the Planning Commission asked for
too so it’s referenced in the ordinance. This is the ultimate build out so right now anything that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Just could you, when you say ultimate you’re saying this is the completion
of the buildout of the parking on this site, is that what you’re saying?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: But at this time due to the time of year it’s not feasible to get all that done. It ha
been restriped which is one of our requirements. The other one we had is that they put a
connection between this parking lot and this parking lot. Not all the parking in there but there is
a connection which creates a circulation through. So the other one was that in order to
accommodate guests coming to the site but not enough parking they would work through a
transportation system and they have worked on that so as a part of that again the site
improvement agreement, that’s where the striping had to occur and then the additional
improvements would have to be made that the City Engineer just went through so that’s what the
security is for to make sure those improvements are done next year because we’re into winter
time now so they just got what they need to to make the circulation work and the parking on site
so it’s pretty close as far as meeting the current demands of parking but if it were to continue to
expand so those were the Planning Commission comments to make sure those had been done.
There were some other ones regarding making Highway 5 the designated route. If you look at
the traffic study I believe the majority of the traffic is coming from Highway 5 and if it’s coming
by bus that wouldn’t be as many trips so with that recommend that the City Council approve the
rezoning of Lot 11, Block 1, Chanhassen Lakes and that you also approve the PUD ordinance,
the adoption of the Findings of Fact and the site improvement, Site Improvement Performance
Agreement. So with that I’d be happy to answer any questions that you have.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: Alright thank you Ms. Aanenson and Mr. Oehme. Let’s bring this to the
council. Let’s begin with questions. Anybody have any questions? Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald, your questions please.
Councilman McDonald: Yes. I guess the first one I have is for Kate about the PUD. Normally
whenever we do these we’re doing them for a reason of, there’s some concession being made for
a PUD. What are the concessions here if we grant the PUD for this site?
Kate Aanenson: In your staff report that went to the Planning Commission I believe it’s also in
the updated staff report that you received separate from the executive summary. The findings for
the PUD are in there starting on page 4 of the updated staff report. So because the site is not
changing the characteristic, we’re preserving the building and other existing characteristics so
the only thing really that would be changing additional parking. Otherwise the trees and existing
building are being maintained. If a different use went in there that could alter significantly.
Again some of the PUD things are not necessarily applicable so high quality unique design.
Again the building is unique in the city so this does again preserve the uniqueness of that
building. It is guided office industrial and again it is creating, the PUD does, is consistent with
the Comprehensive Plan parks and open space, again preservation of existing trees. It’s not
necessarily applicable to the preservation of a park. Not applicable to affordable housing. Not
applicable to energy efficiency and a traffic management, that’s what we’re getting. We’re
getting improved traffic management on the site with the implementation and the construction of
the additional turn lanes and moving of that intersection. If you remember when this building
was built in 1986 we upgraded Highway 5 and so additional right-of-way was taken along that,
in front of the property so that northern entrance has always been close to that. Anybody else
using that so because of the change in use in the PUD we were able to move that driveway. Well
the driveway will be moved, the most northerly driveway will be moved south which as the
traffic engineer indicated gives better access to the right hand turn. You’re not in that turning
lane which you are today.
Councilman McDonald: Okay. Mr. Mayor if I could.
Mayor Laufenburger: Please do. Please continue Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: Also I’ve received a lot of emails as I’m sure you’ve received a lot of
emails concerning the fence. The only thing about the fence that I guess I would ask is that are
we as a City requiring the fence and what I mean by that is the opaque fence or is that a decision
that the management company can make and all we’re saying is we have ordinances about fences
and you must follow those?
Kate Aanenson: That’s what we’re saying. Nobody’s requiring them to put up a fence. We
want to put that in as an option because if they were to do something that’s different than what’s
out there today they would need variances. Instead of coming back through a public hearing
through a variance we wanted to put everybody on notice now that that could be. Certainly it’s
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
not their first choice. We’ve heard from a lot of people on that. There’s no requirement to put
the fence up. It’s an option as a way. What we are concerned about as they are concerned about
is people that are walking up to the site and the traffic mingling. How do we manage that so it’s,
we’ll observe it. That’s part of the thing that we’ll be doing over the next few months and see
how it operations. We know that now that they’ve requested things not be put on the fence
there’s less walk up traffic and that’s what we’re just monitoring. Both parties are. We both
want to make it a good neighbor.
Councilman McDonald: Okay then in dealing with the fence the next question I have would go
to Mr. Oehme. As Ms. Aanenson said we’re going to monitor that. What are we looking for?
To see what impact there is on Highway 5 and what safety there is as far as 5 is concerned?
Paul Oehme: Correct. Not just Highway 5 Councilman McDonald but also Audubon Road as
well. If there’s any back up’s. Queuing issues along Highway, on Audubon. If there’s accidents
that potentially could take place, we’ll be monitoring all that information.
Councilman McDonald: Okay. And then concerning Highway 5, do you know what the
stacking capacity is of the turn lane on Highway 5?
Matt Pacyna: Mr. Mayor, council members. My name’s Matt Pacyna with SRF Consulting. I’m
the traffic engineer that worked on the report. The westbound left turn lane today is in the 300 to
350 foot range on Highway 5 today.
Mayor Laufenburger: So layman’s term, how many cars is that?
Matt Pacyna: We use a general rule of thumb about 20 feet per vehicle. 20 to 25 feet per vehicle
so you can do the math. 12 to 16 vehicles.
Mayor Laufenburger: You’re better at math than I am Matt.
Councilman McDonald: Well and on those vehicles what about a bus? What if we had all of the
transit to and from that would be buses, do we reach any kind of capacity at that point?
Matt Pacyna: Buses are typically a little bit longer. We usually use the rule of thumb of 2 buses,
or 2 passenger vehicles for 1 bus as an equivalent. We didn’t look specifically at if it was all
buses coming in but typically that’s less than the vehicles just from the amount of people that
you can have on a bus in relation to how many cars you need to service the same amount of
people. We do work with MnDOT on a regular basis and as Mr. Oehme mentioned MnDOT
does have access to remotely control the signal timing at this location and they have indicated
that they are willing to do that.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Councilman McDonald: Okay because I was going to ask you to elaborate on that if it’s a
variable timing or if there’s a way to change it based upon demand. Time of day and those
things so there is that capability then.
Matt Pacyna: Yes.
Councilman McDonald: Then I was asking about Highway 5 and you got into the surrounding
areas as far as traffic and such goes. In listening to the Planning Commission I understand that
as cars come in that you know they are going to be searched. The question I have is then based
upon that are we going to create a stacking problem then on Audubon and if so is the capacity
there going to be sufficient to handle that and do you know how much time per vehicle they’re
going to be spending because that could relate to the stack up.
Mayor Laufenburger: Before you answer that Mr. Pacyna, Mr. McDonald I think that the
procedure that happens on site is probably best answered by the applicant so let’s hear the
applicant’s description of what they’re going to do on site and then if that still prompts the
question of stacking on Audubon, you okay with that?
Councilman McDonald: Well I’m okay with that. I just want to know if he knows if it was part
of the study. If he doesn’t that’s all he’s got to say and then I’ll ask the applicant about that but I
am concerned about the stacking if he’s looked at that at all as to what impact that could have.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, okay. Mr. Pacyna.
Matt Pacyna: Mr. Mayor, council members. That’s a great question. In our conversations with
the management team they did indicate that those ingress and egress situations would happen
relatively quickly. That said we still wanted to be somewhat mindful of it and the striping
recommendations and utilizing that south access point along Audubon were part of those ways to
help protect against those queuing challenges that may occur if it takes longer than expected to
service those vehicles as they’re entering so having that restriping allows for those southbound
left turning vehicles that are wanting to go into Paisley Park, that allows vehicles that are on
Audubon to continue past them and not get blocked in that queue. We don’t expect there to be
any queuing issues but having that turn lane striped helps provide some of that buffer.
Councilman McDonald: Okay and then on the issue of not necessarily people into Paisley Park
but people just wanting to walk up to the fence or walk around the property, a lot of parking is
taking place on McGlynn Road. Was that factored into your study at all as to what kind of traffic
we might be looking at there?
Matt Pacyna: Mr. Mayor, council members. Our traffic study didn’t look specifically at all of
the pedestrian traffic from McGlynn to Paisley Park specifically just because we would expect
that would actually tend to decrease over time. As Ms. Aanenson had noted earlier with the
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
changes to the fence recently, the drop in pedestrian traffic has occurred to some extent and so
that’s something that we’d just continue to monitor.
Councilman McDonald: Okay. For right now Mr. Mayor I think that’s all the questions I had.
Mayor Laufenburger: Alright, thank you Mr. McDonald. Anybody else have any questions?
Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Good evening staff. Thank you for your report and I do have some
questions that’s for sure. I’m going to start with the very beginning and the Planning
Commission. Did the Planning Commission, when there’s a big development coming through
sometimes they’ll get a preview or they’ll get a review of what’s going to be coming up and they
have time to talk to the applicant and work out some kinks. Was that, did that ever happen with
any of these conversations ever?
Kate Aanenson: Well this is a really unique situation because typically administratively we
change building uses all the time. We have large businesses go in and out. For example the
Bernard Group who just moved what, 450-500 jobs. The only people that got involved with that
was the building inspections so they’ve been in there for a year now and so they’re just talking to
us now about potentially expanding the building site plan so sometimes those can be done
administratively if they’re less than 10 percent. So because this building wasn’t being changed
administratively then we’re looking at the building code issues and the fire marshal, those sort of
things. Really the issue on this was to change tripped us up in looking at traffic management just
because of the change in use so as a general rule because the building wasn’t changing, not as
big of building code or site plan review issues, if that makes sense.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: It makes sense. I want to go back even further. The Planning
Commission does a lot with the Comprehensive Plan and they do a lot with zoning and rezoning
is I think even a bigger issue than just changing buildings and sites like the Bernard Group did
and so with the Comprehensive Plan did they have time to review that and look at what the
impact could be with rezoning it and what that would mean to the areas around it?
Kate Aanenson: Yep so we included in there the underlying IOP district. That’s a pretty deep
industrial district. If you look at some of our larger employers, for example if you looked at
Emerson, they have, Emerson Rosemount have over 1,100 employees coming every day. I’m
trying to think of some other larger employers. IWCO Direct has about the same number of
employees every day so if you had an industrial user in there they could be at that level too so
it’s consistent with what’s around there in the IOP district again we left the underlying zoning
district because it is consistent with the Comprehensive Plan so in that regard it’s not out of
character in our mind and that’s how we presented it to the Planning Commission. That’s how
we’re presenting it to you.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Can we get an aerial view of yeah.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Kate Aanenson: I think my first slide.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: You were so close yep, and I was too slow to say stop.
Kate Aanenson: Okay.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Alright so we’re going to look at this area and we’re going to look at
the zoning, what things are zoned and the potential for what the impact could be for the museum
coming in and the impact of other parcels. So let’s take the parcel east of Paisley Park. What is
that zoned and?
Kate Aanenson: Office industrial park.
Mayor Laufenburger: That’s west.
Kate Aanenson: Excuse me, east? This is all zoned, whoops excuse me. That’s also zoned
industrial office park.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay and so now let’s go west. And that’s office industrial park
also?
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And who owns that property?
Kate Aanenson: That’s a part of Paisley, but it’s a different identity. Entity but yes.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay. And so if we go then further is it all office industrial?
Kate Aanenson: (Yes).
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And who owns that parcel?
Kate Aanenson: That is Liv Horneland’s group. Liv Horneland’s group. I can’t remember the
name of the development entity.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay. And then let’s go south of Paisley Park. Tell me about that
parcel.
Kate Aanenson: This is part of General Mills. I’m not sure this developable. I’m not sure it’s
all in preserve.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: Ms. Aanenson she said south of Paisley Park.
Kate Aanenson: Oh I’m sorry. Oh right here?
Mayor Laufenburger: Right there.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Either or because I was going to go to all of them.
Kate Aanenson: You can talk to Mr. Oehme about that, that’s the City public works building.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay, alright. And let’s see, yep let’s go where you before you were
corrected you were south. South of.
Mayor Laufenburger: So that would be west of the.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: West and south yep.
Kate Aanenson: That’s not buildable, this part right in here.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: That’s not buildable okay.
Todd Gerhardt: It’s the Bluff Creek corridor. It’s guided open space.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay. So let’s go back to Paisley Park and can we change that view
now so it’s where we were before. Was a close up of Paisley Park.
Kate Aanenson: Oh sure, sure. Like this one.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yep. I see there’s a pond on Paisley Park. Is that considered a
wetland or is that a pond?
Kate Aanenson: A storm water pond.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: I’ll let Paul answer that.
Paul Oehme: Yeah I believe that’s a storm water pond.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay so are there any wetlands in and around that parameter?
Kate Aanenson: What they’re doing today isn’t impacting any of that so when they come in for
their site plan they should meet all the setbacks and be able to accommodate. They will have to
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
accommodate additional storm water so they’ll have to come in with civil plans. Showing us
how they’re going to accommodate that and provide any additional civil plans. If I can just
circle back to all the industrial around, I’m not sure, I’m assuming what you’re looking at is
when we do our Comprehensive Plan we also do traffic analysis zones and we’ll be doing that in
the update. We just finished that right now so actually what we do is we look at, based on that
zoning and the projected land use we do all the modeling for if there’s deficits in road
infrastructure. Sewer and water capabilities. All that’s based on traffic analysis zone so this
isn’t out of the realm of the traffic analysis that you know that we looked at even how it was
before or into the future because it’s looked at as an office industrial zoning district and traffic
that would be generated by it in our Comprehensive Plan.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And this did obviously generate a traffic study but what, I guess what
I’m trying to wrap my head around is because this didn’t go through the Planning Commission or
they didn’t have a lot of time to really analyze the impact of what’s going on. When we do have
developments coming in where there’s a major traffic impact and also a possible impact to the
whole neighborhood and environment around it we will have them do an environment
assessment plan or something like that or an AUAR and why aren’t we requesting something
like that? Why are we settling just for a traffic study?
Kate Aanenson: Because they’re not really making any changes to the building. They’re just
making a change to the parking lot. When we do an AUAR you have to have a couple hundred
acres of improvement. There’s a threshold to that. For example you’d have to have for housing
over 600 new houses or for office industrial 200,000 or 300,000 square feet. I don’t remember
these numbers off the top of my head but somewhere in that park so that change, there isn’t that
kind of a change here. The scope is pretty minimal. The reason why we wanted the traffic
analysis done is because you know when you look at for example Rosemount or IWCO, our
larger employers they’re coming in all at the same time so this is a frequency and duration
throughout the day. It’s spread out throughout the day so we just want to manage, instead of
having everybody coming in at once and finding their spot, maybe going to lunch, this is traffic
throughout the day. We just want to make sure again because we have an access that’s non-
conforming to the north. We wanted to make sure that we’re providing safe ingress and egress.
It doesn’t meet the threshold for an AUAR or for an environmental study. It didn’t meet those
thresholds.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: When it comes to the traffic, Councilman McDonald started to talk
about it when it came to stacking. When you talk about 65 potential guests coming through or
being led through every 10 minutes and so that means there’s a lot of traffic coming through all
the time with buses and so it’s not like a typical industrial use where people do show up at 8:00
and they leave at 5:00. This is continual and what is the hours of operation? I thought, is it 9:00
to 9:00?
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Councilwoman Tjornhom: So that’s a long day for that road and that neighborhood to be
impacted by all that traffic so I am a little concerned that the traffic study really wasn’t given
enough time or thought or consideration when it came to the impact of the neighborhood so that I
guess is a question and a comment…and I don’t believe the stacking that it’s going to work.
When I went through for my look at Paisley Park I drove up at my designated time like I would
if I was a ticket holder. I was stopped at the gate and I realize that the road will be moved down
but still I was stopped at the gate and it took maybe 2 minutes, maybe more to look through my
car and then the gate was opened and I could drive in. Now if that’s going to happen to every car
that comes in, there’s a potential for we don’t know how long that stacking is going to sit there
because we don’t know how long every car is going to take to be checked or every ticket is going
to be you know taken and looked at. And then also there’s the potential of buses coming in and
how does that all flow also. I see the traffic has, the parking lot has been marked but is it marked
for buses being parked also? I think we had a good, we had a good look at what it’s going to
look like to have buses driving up and down Highway 5 with the Ryder Cup this weekend and
we saw the impact that had so is there any thought or maybe that’s the applicant’s.
Kate Aanenson: Yep I’ll let the applicant address that. Again I want to reiterate that we did put
in there that we’re studying and there’s escrow and security in place to go back if there seems to
be any conflict that we would go back and restudy that and see if there’s other improvements that
would need to be made. That they would have to make to mitigate those.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And now let’s talk about parking since I just ended with that and we
talk about pedestrian, or people walking to look at Paisley Park as they have been doing and they
have been using the Lake Ann parking lot to park there. Is that really something that we do as a
city that we allow businesses to use our park parking lots for activities?
Kate Aanenson: I’ll let the city manager maybe answer that.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And do we…plan for that to continue or what’s the plan with that?
Todd Gerhardt: No. As a part of their site plan they had to submit a parking analysis to
accommodate their number of patrons that are going to be using the facility including employees
and what you’re seeing on this slide in front of you is the ultimate buildout for parking to
accommodate their patrons and employees. They have one year under our agreement to build
out the parking lot as you’ve seen here. In the interim they’re going to have to bus patrons into
the site and they have arranged off site parking and have hired a bus service to bring individuals
that are going to go on the tours onto buses through Paisley Park.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And I’m sorry maybe I didn’t make myself clear. I understand all
that but what I’m talking about are those people that don’t have a ticket that just want to walk
around like they have been doing. They’ve been using Lake Ann Park. The parking lot now. Is
that going to continue?
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Todd Gerhardt: It’s a public park and we want people to use our trails and they’re more than
welcome to use Lake Ann parking lots for that.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay. Alright I’m going to move on. We’re still on the site and we
have in the Findings of Fact, and not to be funny because I usually try to lighten things up a little
bit but honestly.
Mayor Laufenburger: You can do that Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Well I don’t think anyone’s going to laugh. Honestly with the
Findings of Fact I found 3 things that I found factual and that was what it was zoned now, what it
was guided and the property description. I’m not going to go for time sake go through all the
rest of them why I could content that all these statements are misleading and probably not
accurate but for time sake there is one part where we are rezoning it and we talk about uses and
limitations and we are allowing a hotel and it’s the round building.
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: So we give them a PUD and part of that is that they can only have
this as a hotel so are we saying that’s chiseled in stone so they couldn’t come back in 2 years, 3
years say you know what golly gee this is just amazing and we would love to tear this building
down. Improve it and build a 20 story hotel. Can we then say no to them because it’s, the
language is written like this or are we then back where we are talking about this?
Kate Aanenson: I’ll let the City Attorney address that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Knutson.
Roger Knutson: Mayor, members of the council. If you adopt this PUD ordinance just like any
other provision in your zoning ordinance, can it be changed? Yes. Would that change have to
come back to you? Yes. And would you have to review that and determine whether you think
it’s an appropriate change? Yes. And if you decided it was not and assuming there was a factual
basis for that decision based on whatever reasons, traffic, whatever, then you could turn it down.
But anyone just to be clear anyone in the city who owns property could come in and make the
same request to put up a 20 story hotel on their residential lot if they wanted to.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: So really having this in the paperwork saying that we’re giving them
an allowance to have this right now it’s really a moot point because they could come back and
try to build whatever they want.
Kate Aanenson: No, what we asked them for is to give us a business plan that described the
ultimate use of the property because the goal is not to, as the City Attorney stated, to keep back
and renegotiating the PUD. It’s transparency for everybody. For the residents. For the council.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
For the applicant so they indicated that that might be a desirable use to come back and do a
boutique hotel. It was vague in the number of units. That was specified now. It was topped out
at 35 but they did have, they’ll have to come back and get a building permit. Show how they’re
going to park it. All that stuff will have to come back and if they need to get additional permits
from anybody else that has jurisdiction on it or look at that traffic, that will also be included in
any change in use on that.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay. Next question I have, I have 2 more left then I’ll turn it over
to the rest of the council members. I’m sorry.
Mayor Laufenburger: Take your time. Take your time.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: I’d like to talk about the letter of credit and $25,000. How did we
come to that dollar amount?
Kate Aanenson: I’ll let the City Engineer, it came through the engineering department.
Paul Oehme: So $25,000 is mainly for some of the site improvements necessary for basically
from day one. From opening at day one so it would include, the $25,000 would include the
access from the north parking lot to the south parking lot. Some of the striping. Some of the
other on site modifications. It doesn’t include the ultimate buildout of the parking lot or any of
those other improvements down the road. It does include some of the striping on site as well so
it’s just mainly a security to allow us to have the flexibility to make some of those improvements
if they weren’t forth coming.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And do we have a potential cost of what the future parking could
cost?
Paul Oehme: We have not calculated that.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay.
Mayor Laufenburger: Just on that could I, Mr. Oehme could you clarify something. The
$25,000 which is an escrow or letter of credit, that doesn’t replace the responsibility of the
applicant to do it, is that correct?
Paul Oehme: That’s correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay that’s just, that’s like leverage that we have please follow through
on your plan. If you don’t we’re going to do it and we’re going to use your money, is that
correct?
Paul Oehme: Exactly.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so it doesn’t relieve them of the responsibility to follow through on
those things. It just gives us leverage and is that pretty common practice for us to use that letter
of credit or escrow?
Paul Oehme: Very common with developments.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. I just needed to clarify that for the audience.
Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And then I’d like to talk about the tent. Pretty unique situation for
the City of Chanhassen to have a tent be in operation as part of a business plan. I know it’s
temporary but still something I’ve never seen that we’ve really allowed except for maybe a
sidewalk sale so and it’s a 20 percent, that’s the number you determined that 20 percent sales
would be allowed or product. Tell me how that, where that number came from and how we’re
going to decide what 20 percent looks like?
Kate Aanenson: Sure. So currently that’s in the city code. We do have commercial or industrial
buildings that manufacture on site that have retail operations that want to sell on site which we
do allow. So they can create 25 percent of their floor space can be used for retail sales so it’d be
their floor space.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay, 20 percent of their floor space.
Kate Aanenson: (Yes).
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And that’s the tent is 20 percent?
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Or.
Kate Aanenson: Or probably less than that yes.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay and the operation, the hours of operation for that too is the 9:00
to 9:00?
Kate Aanenson: Yes. And you know I guess they’ll have to see how that works as they get into
the colder months and you know so.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay. I have more but I’ll wait. Thank you.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: Alright, thank you Councilwoman Tjornhom. Any other questions?
Councilwoman Ryan.
Councilwoman Ryan: Thank you Mr. Mayor. Both of the council members addressed a lot of
the questions I had so I appreciate that. One that I still have a question about is in terms of the
site improvements as it relates to the traffic study. One of the biggest queuing and stacking
problems that was mentioned in the report and touched again on was the relocation of the
northern access 220 feet south. Why are, if as the applicant has stated his top 5 busiest
anticipated days are taking place within the next 30 days, why are we allowing a year before this
site improvement is made when we’re anticipating a huge volume of traffic within the first
month?
Paul Oehme: I think we should have the applicant address some of those issues from those peak
periods and to address how he’s going to handle those days from a traffic perspective.
Councilwoman Ryan: Is it, and I might just not be familiar with it but is it typical that we allow
a delay in site improvements before a business opens?
Kate Aanenson: Well I think what we need to understand is the operational part of how they’re
going to manage this. It’s a little unique so I think letting the operator talk about how they’re
going to internally manage that so their first goal is not to have people bussed but because they
don’t have all the improvements the mitigation for those improvements is busing people at those
peak time but they’ll be able to speak to what their ticket sales are right now and again this plan
shows ultimate use of the facility at maximum potential so I’ll let him talk to where they are as
far as maximizing the daily traffic and whether they’re or not and how they, again everybody
wants it to be successful. For them not to have it be successful, not get people on the property is
a problem as it is for us so we always have been both going for the same goal so I’ll let them talk
about the operation.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay but just as a question for precedent do we typically allow a delay in
site improvements before a business is opened?
Kate Aanenson: I think what the challenge is when you’re at this time of the year sometimes that
happens when we’ve not been able to get full improvements because we’ve got one coming up
right now in another project that moving into a building and may not get all their parking lot in
so we’re working through some of that right now to get on the watershed district so it happens
sometimes.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay.
Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, City Council.
Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Gerhardt.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Todd Gerhardt: To add to that I think the mitigation plan is to do the busing so you limit the
number of cars that are stacking internally so with the buses people will have to be bused out
there so you have less cars so less queuing at the exit and coming in. So having less vehicles
would limit that stacking so that’s the mitigation for the improvements.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay and how about the some of the striping? I know you said some of it
has it been done in the parking lot but how about on the road?
Kate Aanenson: That’s taking place if not today tomorrow. The parking lot has been striped.
And the connection between the north and south parking lot has been made also.
Councilwoman Ryan: And the pedestrian plan has been submitted? Safety plan.
Kate Aanenson: Yep we walked that today. Yeah.
Councilwoman Ryan: And will that be something that you cover then tonight? Will the
applicant.
Kate Aanenson: Well right now they’re doing some way finding of how they’re exiting the
building. There is a pedestrian sidewalk around the building so they’ll be doing some way
finding. Marking so people coming out know which, how to get to the front of the building and
the back of the building.
Councilwoman Ryan: But that’s nothing we can review tonight?
Kate Aanenson: Again that’s administrative. You know we’ve met with them just like building
code stuff. We haven’t shared with you the building code report either but we did walk the
sidewalk and talked about where the markings can be to direct people to get to the north and
south sidewalks. Between the buildings.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay it just that as part of the summary here you know as per the
Planning Commission they requested us, you know require a pedestrian safety plan put forth by
the Planning Commission so.
Kate Aanenson: You might be talking about external safety plan, yep and that’s one of the
things that they talked about and this goes back to some of the fencing. I think that’s one of the
things that we talked about. Some of the comments they came up with things on the fence
causing people to come up to the fence or blowing across the street, that was the safety. I think it
was more external than internal. If that was your comment.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay. And then just to clarify for myself, and I read it somewhere or
heard somewhere about, and I know Councilman McDonald addressed the fence and it’s up to
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
them. There’s been talk is it 6 foot? Is it 8 feet? I know code says it’s supposed to be 6-6 so
what, or that’s what’s online.
Kate Aanenson: Well typically we don’t put fences in a front yard. For some reason this was
given prior to my time with the City given permission to put up a security fence so it’s a legal
non-conforming fence. They obviously want a fence for security. We want that to be a secure
place too but we also want to make sure that we’re not creating an attractive nuisance where
there’s people congregating in areas and crossing in areas that aren’t safe. One of the things we
did put in the agreement, back to your point, there is an agreement in here where it talks about,
that they would have to accommodate pedestrian crossing potential. Flashing crossing and that
is in, I believe that’s in the improvement agreement. So if you look in the Site Improvement
Agreement, on page 2. E. 2E we added that in there and then if the level of service at any time
intersection fails or the study identifies pedestrian safety issues, again the goal is to go back and
monitor where we are with these issues. That the applicant would install and pay for the
recommended improvements such as a rapid flash crosswalk so you’d push a button to cross the
street so that was to address the Planning Commission’s concerns that were raised.
Councilwoman Ryan I think that’s what you were asking me.
Councilwoman Ryan: Well I was asking about the fence. Just the height of the fence.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah so the height of the fence, again it has to be permitted so what we’re
saying, in an industrial district it can go up to 8 feet. I don’t think anybody would want it that
high.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: Nobody definitely wants an opaque but we also want to make sure it’s safe for
people driving along Highway 5 and Audubon that are pulling over to look and interfering with
the other traffic that’s going about their way.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay and then my final question and this may be something that I need to
wait for the applicant is the hours of operation. Would that be best to wait for the applicant?
Kate Aanenson: Sure.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay. Thank you Mayor.
Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Councilwoman Ryan. Anybody else? Councilman Campion,
your questions please for staff.
Councilman Campion: Thank you Mr. Mayor. My fellow council members were very thorough
in their initial questions here but one that occurred to me up front is related to the PUD ordinance
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
and the definition of the private events versus the indoor concerts. I didn’t see a definition for
that and maybe I missed it but I was just curious about you know what is the, is it a?
Kate Aanenson: It could be a classroom. It could be a school. Could be a college. It could be a
corporate event so something like that. So that would be something instead of doing a larger tour
if they wanted to book out something, you know it’s all being driven by how much parking’s on
site so if they can accommodate it and they did, instead of selling tickets for a day or an
afternoon and they wanted to do a corporate event or an evening, that could be accommodated.
Councilman Campion: So it’s not a head count difference or timing?
Kate Aanenson: Right so there’s only so many people that can be in the building per the
building code and so the assembly occupancy so if that’s something that they choose to do as a
use, then that’s and accomplish it by either busing people and parking them on site, then that
would be permitted.
Councilman Campion: So would that be within the normal hours of operation or the extended
hours?
Kate Aanenson: There are, we didn’t put hours of operation on here. There’s tour hour
operations but the building, if someone was in there later that’s not limited so.
Todd Gerhardt: Kate wouldn’t they have to come in for a special permit for?
Kate Aanenson: The way we’re, the way we’ve addressed it is saying that they would, they
would just tell the City you know there’s certain rooms that would be able to have occupancy.
That they would give us, you know we’d have the occupancy identified and they would tell us
that they’re having a special event so we would know and as long as they say we’re meeting this
occupancy load then they would move forward which is, it wouldn’t be any different than, if you
look at the Dinner Theater. The Dinner Theater has multiple operations in there. So does the
Arboretum. Our building folks work well with that. I mean the Dinner Theater has movies. Or
plays going on. They have weddings going on. There’s a bar. There’s all kinds of things in
there. Multiple operations going on all the time that’s being driven by how much capacity you
have for parking. It’d be the same thing here. We certainly know how to manage that so if they
wanted a corporate event that went into later hours and they can park everybody there and make
it work, then we’re okay with that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Campion let me clarify something here just related to these events.
So Ms. Aanenson in the PUD you are stipulating 12 indoor concerts per calendar year. The
concert’s specific seating plan must be filed with the City. And then you’re also stipulating
private events and events specific seating plan must be filed. I think what you’re saying is that if
the operator wants to have 12 indoor concerts or private events they have permission to do so
and the only thing they do, they don’t have to apply for a permit and go through our permitting
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
process. Their responsibility is to provide a seating plan for those events that we are giving them
permission to do, is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. How is this different from when Prince was alive he would often
have concerts, impromptu you know. How did the City deal with those type of events?
Kate Aanenson: Those were special permits because at that time it was a different operational as
far as you know parking and the like so lots of times those would be bused in.
Mayor Laufenburger: He was using off site parking.
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: He would tell visitors to go there and we’ll bus you in with vans and stuff.
Kate Aanenson: Correct. And let us know and often we’d let the sheriff’s office know so they
could manage that if there was any issues.
Mayor Laufenburger: Was there any limit on how many of those we gave him a year?
Kate Aanenson: Well typically in a temporary ordinance we you know it’d be about the same
but I guess in this circumstance now that we’ve been through the building we want as another
benefit of the PUD we’re limiting those to 12 times. Same with the corporate events. We kind
of have a handle on how it’s being used so.
Mayor Laufenburger: When St. Hubert’s come to us do they apply for permits if they have big
events like their fall harvest and stuff like that?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct, yep.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so we would handle those permits on a one at a time basis.
Kate Aanenson: Typically those are typically 3 or 4 times a year yeah.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. So I think as I understand your question Mr. Campion, essentially
the ordinance is saying operator you can do these things and you don’t have to give us a permit
request as long as you follow the ordinance and just tell us your seating plan so we know that
you’re going to have, if it’s in the big concert, I’m going to call it the big concert room. What’s
the occupancy load in there Ms. Aanenson, do you know?
Kate Aanenson: The big room?
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: The big room.
Kate Aanenson: I’m not sure, we talked about it today. I don’t remember off the top of my
head.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so let’s assume it’s 300 people.
Kate Aanenson: Right, yep.
Mayor Laufenburger: So as long as they have an occupancy plan for 300 people coming in and
they’re going to use that big concert venue then it meets the assembly requirements and they
don’t have to apply for a permit.
Kate Aanenson: Right.
Mayor Laufenburger: But they do have to tell us how many people are going to be in there.
Kate Aanenson: Right and if I may compare it to the auto Motorplex. Because they do get
temporary permits. They get one a month at least or more and they don’t have all their parking
on the site. This one we’re saying parking has to be on the site or you’re busing them in.
Mayor Laufenburger: Accommodated.
Kate Aanenson: Accommodated correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. I didn’t mean to interrupt Mr. Campion but I think a
clarification is that we’re essentially pre-permitting events of this nature of this amount.
Councilman Campion: And Mr. Mayor, Ms. Aanenson if I could. So I was more looking at you
know there’s a frequency defined for the, or a maximum number of the indoor concerts define 12
per year and there’s essentially unlimited number of private events and I was just wondering
from an enforcement perspective you know how you delineate the difference between well this is
th
an indoor concert and this, you know 13 concert they’re having, well that’s not really a concert.
That’s a private event and how would you distinguish between the two?
Kate Aanenson: Well part of it they’re going to have to submit to us you know the plan that
they’re using so we, I guess if it’s over a certain capacity we can do it on that for a minute and
try to, and maybe the applicant has a response.
Councilman Campion: Okay yeah I was just in reading through it I thought a definition might be
helpful.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: Anything else Mr. Campion?
Councilman Campion: That’s it.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Councilman McDonald: Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Laufenburger: I’m going to give it to Councilwoman Tjornhom. Ladies first.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Councilman Campion actually triggered a good thought and that is
lighting. Lighting and signage. Do we have a plan for that? When it comes to you know special
events. Is the whole building going to be lit up so the neighborhood glows? You know I know
when the daycare center came in you know we were very particular about the lights on the
building and that because of during the event it could be a distraction to drivers. It is very close
to Highway 5 and Audubon, busy roads and because they do have hours of operation into the late
evenings, will the parking lots be lit and also will the building be lit up and what about signs?
Kate Aanenson: I would assume the parking lot lights would be on as they are on some of the
other businesses in town often for security reasons all the time. They haven’t talked to us about
signage so.
Mayor Laufenburger: Would signage be covered under administrative code enforcement?
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. And what about exterior lighting, would that be covered under
administrative code enforcement?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: So we don’t allow search lights as right now. Those aren’t permitted.
Mayor Laufenburger: So if somebody wants a search light they’ve got to come to us and ask?
Kate Aanenson: Correct. We do, I think you can get them maybe once a year or something like
that for, there’s criteria. Grand opening, something like that so.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: So like lighting the Paisley Park up the color, I’m sorry. The color of
green or you know events like that, I mean have we really gone through and decided what as a
community we want to have this light?
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Kate Aanenson: Well they’re following the city ordinances. City ordinances don’t allow that
now.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Does not?
Kate Aanenson: No. No, that’s…
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay…do that though in our.
Kate Aanenson: Well you can ask the City Attorney but everything we have in here is expressly
you’re following the other city ordinance except what is specified in the code. So they still have
to follow all city ordinances.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay.
Mayor Laufenburger: If following city ordinances, following city code, city statute, following
state statute, whatever it might be, that would be administrative code enforcement, is that correct
Ms. Aanenson?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Kate Aanenson: Which is the only area that we thought there might be some reason to give some
deference would be on the fencing. Otherwise they’re following city code and that would be the
only unique attribute because of the site and walk up traffic and people that want to hang things
on there. That was the only thing and we’re not requesting they, it’s just an opportunity.
Mayor Laufenburger: And to be specific the deference that you’re offering is simply the
possibility if the applicant chooses to build a fence in accordance with city code.
Kate Aanenson: Right it could be landscaping. It could be a lot of different things, yep.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And I just want to clarify that our city ordinance does state that we’re
not going to have search lights unless there’s a permit for it and it’s a special occasion so not
once a month we won’t have search lights in the sky and that the building cannot be lit up
different colors or you know whatever might be decorative lighting as far as they’re concerned.
Mayor Laufenburger: Councilman McDonald.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Councilman McDonald: Thank you Mr. Mayor. I just want to follow up on one thing and no
one else has kind of touched it but on the traffic study, and this is for Mr. Oehme. What is the
area of the traffic study? Did you look at the impact south on Audubon all the way down to
Lyman?
Paul Oehme: We did look at traffic volumes along Audubon all the way down to Lyman. Matt
do you want to? That’s right we did have a slide on that yeah. So you can talk.
Matt Pacyna: Yeah so as part of our operations analysis we looked at 3 key intersections but we
did identify traffic volumes going further to the south. We didn’t look specifically at the
intersection of Lyman and Audubon as far as a traffic operation. That was outside the scope of
our study but as you can see on this graphic you can kind of see traffic volumes we would expect
under that kind of that peak condition of a sold out show through every, basically sold out
throughout the day type of situation. We would expect about 600 vehicles to continue south
towards Lyman. Now that’s before any type of routing type changes that could be made. I know
during the Planning Commission we had talked a little bit about you know you can work with
Google to actually define your specific routes. If you type in an address that you actually define
them to actually use Highway 5 and so that’s something I think the applicant was considering.
And so that’s basically what we looked at from Audubon’s perspective.
Councilman McDonald: Okay so I guess what I’m trying to get at is what’s the impact because
that’s all residential neighborhood down there below Lake Drive and I guess what my question
is, what kind of impact would we have down there? I heard the thing about Google and those
things and I guess there’s things you can do there. I’m willing to kind of set that aside as that
being a shortcut for right now but up north as people are coming in, what I’m wondering is
what’s the impact to the residents? Are they going to see anything and was that within the scope
of your study?
Matt Pacyna: Mayor, council members. From a traffic study perspective we look at it from a
numbers game. We don’t define necessarily impacts to neighborhoods. Different things of that
nature. We look at it from a volume perspective and what 400 or 600 vehicles per day means to
that facility. If I look at the increase in traffic volumes on Audubon which is a 2 lane roadway
with some select turn lanes, the projected ADT’s is around 5,000 cars a day. Now that type of
facility can easily handle 10,000 cars a day from a roadway capacity perspective, neighborhood
impacts aside but the roadway has sufficient capacity to accommodate an increase in volume of
that nature.
Councilman McDonald: Okay and again that 5,000 cars you talk about, that’s all north of Lake
Drive West I believe. You’re not really seeing a lot of spillage coming down below that point
then? It would be local traffic if I understand what you’re saying is, that’s the 600 cars you
talked about should be a majority local traffic.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Matt Pacyna: Correct. In theory there would be local residents that would also utilize, you know
that’s just their most convenient route for them to get from their residence to the museum. There
is going to be some of that.
Councilman McDonald: Okay. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Mayor.
Mayor Laufenburger: Alright. I also have some questions that I want to ask. Matt while you’re
on that or Mr. Pacyna, this Google thing is rather intriguing to me. Do you have enough
expertise about how Google does their routing that you can speak to how we could change their
routing?
Matt Pacyna: As far as expertise I’ve never actually done it. I know some of our staff have. It is
a simple request that can be made to Google that says I would like traffic from my address routed
a certain direction.
Mayor Laufenburger: What about, you mean to my address? If we said 7801 Audubon Road we
could say send them this way?
Matt Pacyna: Correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Matt Pacyna: And so from that regard so if you would say if somebody was coming in off of…
Mayor Laufenburger: Say if they were coming from the Mall of America.
Matt Pacyna: Well Mall of America is one that they’ll direct you just because Highway 5, it’s
going to send you down Highway 5 because that’s the direct route. Now let’s say if you were
somewhere a little bit more southeast of there that would more likely you’d want to take
Highway 212 per se, that would be an opportunity where you could make that change with
Google to have them direct them up to Highway 5 and over. Taking like 101 per se.
Mayor Laufenburger: So when you say southeast of Bloomington?
Matt Pacyna: Well I’m just saying somewhere south of like, if you were like in southern.
Mayor Laufenburger: Burnsville?
Matt Pacyna: Eden Prairie.
Mayor Laufenburger: Oh Eden Prairie.
Matt Pacyna: Correct.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: So if you had closer proximity to 212 versus Highway 5 then it would
likely send you to 212.
Matt Pacyna: Correct, correct. Yeah we do some Google searches as part of our traffic
operations analysis and you do kind of look at some of those Burnsville areas and you type in the
address you know what we were seeing is that it would be directing those vehicles onto Highway
5. So it sent some of those.
Mayor Laufenburger: You did that in your research?
Matt Pacyna: Correct. That’s part of our process when we start to develop our directional
distribution for our traffic.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Who would have the responsibility to reach out to those traffic
influencers or those direction influences? Would that be your responsibility? The City? Or
would that be the operator or the property owner? What’s your experience with that Mr.
Pacyna?
Matt Pacyna: My understanding is that would typically be the property owner in that situation.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Alright. By the way I Goggled Bloomington to 7801 and it took
me down Highway 5. I also Googled Burnsville and it took me down Highway 5. Mr. Gerhardt
did you have a comment?
Todd Gerhardt: I would like to ask Matt if he could explain, council has reviewed traffic studies
in the past and increases in those and a previous traffic engineer used A, B, C, D and so with the
additional traffic coming off of Lyman onto Audubon, the 600 cars during a 12 hour period or 50
cars per hour on the average, what would that do to Audubon? What’s Audubon rated today? Is
it rated an A, a B and then with those additional 600 you know what would the rating be after
that do you think?
Matt Pacyna: Mayor, council members. From a level of service perspective we didn’t look
specifically at the Audubon and Lyman intersection so I can’t definitively said one way or the
other. However I would, based on my engineering judgment I’d say the increase is relatively
minimal and I would expect it to significant change the level of service at that location. Or along
Audubon in general.
Todd Gerhardt: At the Highway 5 and Audubon intersection would you say that too?
Matt Pacyna: So from our operations analysis we did look at that Highway 5 and Audubon
intersection specifically. Without any improvements at that location the level of service did
degrade to a level of service D which is a letter grade worst. However when working with some
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
of the, with MnDOT and the signal retiming and the optimization that can occur there as well as
the access changes and the restriping along Audubon that improvement actually gets back to a
level of service C which is, you know a level of service D is technically still considered an
acceptable level of service by industry standards but C is actually a very good letter grade.
Todd Gerhardt: Thank you.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay thank you Mr. Pacyna. Kate can you speak to this question? When
did we receive the application for this project? I thought you had it at the top of your head.
Kate Aanenson: Sorry.
nd
Todd Gerhardt: August 22.
Kate Aanenson: Thank you.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. And what are the statutory requirements that we have to respond to
or act on an application like this?
Kate Aanenson: 120 days.
Mayor Laufenburger: So we have to respond within 120 days.
Roger Knutson: That’s correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Let’s talk about this tent for just a second. In the plan it talks
about it will be kind of like a finishing point for the tour. Things can be sold and food might be
consumed in there, memorabilia and things like that. Do you have any indication of what
happens to the people after they leave the tent? Do they go back, what happens?
Kate Aanenson: Yes. Yep they can exit. There’s a sidewalk that can take them around to their
vehicles or the bus.
Mayor Laufenburger: And is that permitted on this, it’s okay for them to do that…?
Kate Aanenson: Yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Okay, is there any discussion about what happens to the
barriers on Audubon? These would be known as the Jersey barriers. Mr. Oehme? I know I
don’t think it was in there but they’re there.
Paul Oehme: Yeah they’re there for the safety perspective of pedestrians that are walking up
right now so we had talked about that specifically today. In order to get the striping in we will
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
need to move the Jersey barriers back to the back of the curb at this time but in the future we’re
anticipating maybe in a month or two we’d like to remove them altogether.
Mayor Laufenburger: So you’re going to move the Jersey barriers so right now, right now
there’s, let’s just call it a 3 foot path between the barriers and the curb so you’re going to move
them to the curb, is that correct?
Paul Oehme: That’s correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: So in other words you’re saying if you want to walk in front of the fence,
if you want to be a pedestrian you’ve got to be on the property as opposed to on the street.
Paul Oehme: Correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: And you said that’s to allow for full striping, is that what you’re saying?
Paul Oehme: Right so in order to put that left turn lane in there, the middle of Audubon we need
the additional width for the northbound through traffic because we are pushing the, that
northbound lane farther to the east.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Todd Gerhardt: Turn lanes map?
Paul Oehme: No.
Mayor Laufenburger: Is there anything, you know clearly those have been in place since about
th
April 25 if I’m not mistaken right? Since 4 days after Prince passed away.
Paul Oehme: Correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Have they been served, have they been used properly do you think based
on your observations based on the reports that you hear?
Paul Oehme: Yeah I think they were well placed and they did their work.
Mayor Laufenburger: Has there been any discussion with the applicant about the possibility of
replacing those barriers with something else on the property to keep pedestrians off the street?
Has there been any discussion about that Mr. Oehme?
Paul Oehme: We have not directly talked to the applicant about that specifically.
Mayor Laufenburger: Ms. Aanenson have you had anything, conversation with that?
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Kate Aanenson: Well I think we’ve talked about long term how they want to manage that and so
that’s something that as we talk about level of service going forward as they see how the
operations work that they would work that into future plans.
Mayor Laufenburger: Sure, okay. I just have one last question and then we’re going to bring the
applicant up. Kate you said the underlying zoning is IOP.
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: And that stands for?
Kate Aanenson: Industrial Office Park.
Mayor Laufenburger: Right, okay. And what about the zoning for industrial office park does
not satisfy the need for a museum? Is it only the museum?
Kate Aanenson: Correct. I think that would be right. The other things could probably go in the
industrial office park.
Mayor Laufenburger: For example the opportunity to sell things.
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: The retail.
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: That’s allowed in the IOP right?
Kate Aanenson: Correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: So is there a zoning that we have in the city that allows a museum?
Kate Aanenson: A office district but it’s inconsistent with the underlying guiding.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so the concession, using a term that was asked earlier. The
concession that we’re giving them really is adding a museum use to the IOP and calling it a
planned unit development.
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Is that in it’s simplest form?
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Kate Aanenson: Yes except that we also are limiting other uses that could go on there that might
not be as desirable.
Mayor Laufenburger: Ah, okay. So we’re saying we’re giving you this museum capability but
we’re going to take away some other capabilities?
Kate Aanenson: Yes we’ve contracted the other uses, correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Okay. And then you also identify in the executive
summary you talk about 5 things. Limitations on how the building, preserves existing limited
expansion, creates additional jobs, tourism generated, et cetera. There’s one thing that’s not
addressed and maybe this is something you cannot address and that is, is there any discussion
related to turning Paisley Park into a historic site? Have you had any discussion or any
responsibility in that?
Kate Aanenson: No.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright I’ll ask the applicant that. Okay, alright before I ask the
applicant any other questions of council? Okay. Alright is the applicant present tonight? And if
so would you like to address the council? State your name and address for the record please.
Pat Mazural: Mr. Mayor, council members. My name is Pat Mazural. My address is 9501
Virginia Avenue South in Bloomington and I’m a consultant with Bremer Trust who are the
applicant and the special administrator for the Estate of Prince Rogers Nelson.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay is that the same as PRN, what’s the PRN Music? Because that’s the
name that’s referenced on many of our materials.
Pat Mazural: Mr. Mayor, PRN does stand for Prince Rogers Nelson.
Mayor Laufenburger: Good.
Pat Mazural: And it’s one of the organizations that is represented.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, okay.
Pat Mazural: So thank you Mayor and council members for allowing us this time for this
hearing and certainly want to thank the staff of Chanhassen for a good amount of diligent work
and site work at Paisley Park and helping us to make this the best project that it can be. My
comments are really going to focus on a number of the soft issues. The reason why this use of
Paisley Park is proposed, the selection of the operator by Bremer Trust. How some community
and staff concerns that have been raised, how they are being addressed and the perceived
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
community impact by this project. Mr. Nelson was an extraordinary talent. He was a unique
musical artist. He sold over 100 million records. Received 7 Grammy awards, one Golden
st
Globe, one Academy Award and tragically on April 21 he passed away here in Chanhassen and
in fact at Paisley Park which is where he created and recorded. He often performed as you’ve
referenced and he welcomed renowned entertainment giants from all over the world. The
purpose of a museum at Paisley Park is to preserve the legacy of an international celebrity who
chose Chanhassen as his home and the people of Chanhassen as his neighbors. Paisley Park
itself is a unique facility within the music industry because it represents all the work of one of the
most recognized international artistic celebrities of our time. A museum at Paisley Park is the
only appropriate location to commemorate the work and the life of Prince. Chanhassen is where
he built his legacy. Chanhassen is surely where he would want it preserved. Preserving that
legacy means honoring not only his extraordinary work but also representing the neighbor that he
was within Chanhassen. To meet that goal requires the most experienced, creative, artistically
sensitive and community sensitive of operators for this museum and the property closest in
purpose and in operational logistics to Paisley Park is Graceland in Memphis which of course
commemorates Elvis Presley and which is operated by Graceland Holdings. The operator of a
Paisley Park museum will be PPark Management which is a wholly owned subsidiary of
Graceland Holdings. So this Paisley Park museum will be, if you should approve this rezoning,
a fully managed with the same experienced leadership that has been managing the Graceland
property. The due diligence of Bremer Trust of the operations of Graceland included both an on
site tour as it would be experienced by a visitor and behind the scenes open book type of
investigation into their operations. On the tour we saw a high level of traffic coordination. Use
of shuttles. Smooth and comfortable crowd flow. We saw guests who were welcomed cordially
and technology that made the tour experience pleasant, educational and emotionally moving. All
of these are matters that we anticipate would be of greatest important to the family of Prince and
to the pride of Chanhassen. Our behind the scenes investigation revealed a high level of
thoughtfulness, expertise and discipline in the coordination of operations. In the financial and
operational record keeping and oversight. Archiving of artifacts. Present and preserving the
artist’s brand and attention to impact on the surround community. We saw an attraction that is a
natural emotional demonstration of the artist life and that same artistic sensitivity and community
sensitivity will be demonstrated and replicated at Paisley Park. Your community development
staff has worked diligently to identify issues and to gather comments from your residents to
direct us in making the Paisley Park museum an attractive, safe and appreciated asset of
Chanhassen. Graceland has dealt well with all of the same issues so it’s long experienced in
forms and guides it’s solutions. Matters that have been accomplished since the Planning
Commission hearing include first the matter of traffic flow in and out of Paisley Park. The
connecting driveway between the north and south lots which has been referenced and was part of
the recommended plan is in place and that of course is part of the internal traffic flow which will
assist in keeping long queue lines from outside of the property. The striping of Audubon Avenue
for left hand turns is in process. That currently is scheduled to be done on Wednesday and some
of the work in removing current lines will begin in fact tomorrow. The striping of the parking lot
within Paisley Park in order to control vehicle limits has already been done as well. The second
matter that has been raised is pedestrian traffic around Paisley Park. Fence monitoring for
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
pedestrian safety began shortly after the Planning Commission hearing and that has produced
perhaps an unexpectedly pleasant result. The amount of foot traffic, the amount of pedestrian
traffic around Paisley Park has significantly reduced over the last several days as memorials to
Prince have been removed from the fence. At the same time those memorials are being honored
and preserved and in fact will be part of the museum tour. The third matter is security and crowd
control. PPark Management is pre-selling all tickets for the Paisley Park tour so there will not be
on site sales. There will not be traffic of people coming expecting to get a ticket and being able
to take the tour. All will be pre-sold which allows the operator to regulate inflow and out flow of
guests and of traffic and in fact also allows the operator to send messages if need be in terms of
changing to a shuttle type of travel if needed on a particular day or at a particular time. So all of
that will be, the timing will be regulated and it will be fully regulated access to Paisley Park. In
addition there has been coordination with local and county law enforcement and a security chief
has already been hired for the Paisley Park facility who will oversee all security and crowd
control. Chanhassen is a, as you all know a beautiful well planned community and it holds
attraction for many outside of the city currently. The city attracts those seeking entertainment
with the Chanhassen Dinner Theater. It attracts those seeking sports entertainment with the
adjacent Hazeltine Golf Course which as you know has hosted the Ryder Cup, the PGA
tournament and the US Open. It attracts those seeking enjoyment of nature and art with the
Arboretum. All has been planned well and brings people from far beyond the Twin Cities
metropolitan area to your community. The museum at Paisley Park proposes to be another well
planned and well managed attraction. A good neighbor providing jobs for residents and bringing
customers for your businesses. Over 600 local applicants attended a job fair that Paisley Park
Management hosted. Many of those are now employed and archiving and otherwise preparing
the facility to be a museum. Last week Paisley Park Management hired a general manager for
the museum. A permanent general manager. She is a resident of Chanhassen. She was raised in
Chanhassen. She’s worked and lived in other parts of the world but has chosen Chanhassen as
her city for raising her family and now she has just been pleased to be able to secure this
particular position for Paisley Park. The operator of Paisley Park has engaged local suppliers for
property improvement and will engage others for food, for transportation and for other necessary
services to run the museum. There have been requests to locate this museum and actually to
physically move the Paisley Park facility to other locations even outside of the United States
where Prince remains a celebrity. Chanhassen been Prince’s chosen home for 30 years and this
commemoration of his legacy we request that you let it remain his home so thank you for you
time and consideration. I have with me other individuals who have been a significant part of
developing this proposal and interacting with your staff. Todd Phelps here is an attorney with
Stinson Leonard Street in Minneapolis. He is a real estate and land use attorney and has worked
directly with your staff on this application. Deb Fossen is the lead officer for Bremer Trust and
the administration of the Prince Rogers Nelson estate. And Joel Weinshanker is the majority
owner of Graceland Holdings LLC which wholly owns Paisley Park Management LLC and Joel
has been here nearly daily since the time that we began this effort in order to oversee the
operations and assure it’s quality.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Mazural. Would you mind just standing for questions if
they arise?
Pat Mazural: Certainly.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, council members. Any questions for Mr. Mazural?
Councilman McDonald: I’ll go first.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, Councilman McDonald. And this is questions for he or for other
members that may be present.
Councilman McDonald: Right. Thank you for coming. Very good presentation. You know it
gives us a good idea of what the overview is and everything. I’ll be upfront, I mean I have a lot
of concerns about this area. A lot of it deals with traffic which is I think outside of your control
so we won’t get into that but I do have a lot of questions about pedestrian safety. I hear what
you’re saying about the fence. About taking down the memorials that you know there’s fewer
foot traffic but would you agree that the foot traffic is not going to go away. That it will always
be there and it may peak at certain times throughout the year.
Pat Mazural: I think we can anticipate that Councilmember McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: Okay. And let me just ask you a little bit about the fence. Because of
what’s happened recently with taking down the memorials do you all still feel the need to put up
a different fence? An opaque fence or are you satisfied that the current fence would provide you
the security you’re looking for?
Pat Mazural: That is no longer the go to plan. Actually the original thought on putting up an
opaque fence was to handle the safety issue so that it wouldn’t be an attraction for people coming
to see Paisley Park. I think with some of the actual citizen comments that were made at the
Planning Commission it became apparent that actually some of the citizens would just as soon
have that view available and other avenues were approached between the operator and city staff
and in fact what’s going on right now with the removal of the memorials is sort of a test so you
know the preference would be not to change it if it’s not necessary for pedestrian safety.
Councilman McDonald: Well I do appreciate you listening to those comments but yeah, it
wasn’t just the citizens of Chanhassen. I’ve gotten a lot of emails and I’m sure you have also
from people around the world that would like to just see the site in their own way to memorialize
Prince and I think that that would be an important part. But then that leads to the question of
their safety. What are your plans as far as having pedestrian access around the perimeter of the
site? Would you put in safety barriers? Sidewalks? Do you have any plans to handle
pedestrians as they walk around?
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Pat Mazural: Council member McDonald I think I will ask Joel Weinshanker to come up to the
microphone to answer that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Just identify yourself and your address if you wouldn’t mind.
Joel Weinshanker: Sure, Joel Weinshanker. I’m managing partner of both PPark Management
and Graceland Holdings, New York, New York. You know we issued a press release on
Monday and then very, very carefully our archivist actually took off each item that was on the
fence and we’ve kept it and we’ve actually photographed each item. Since then traffic has been
down conservatively 90 percent or 95 percent. Almost to that there is no traffic. We still have
third party security guards at the gate and it’s really just you know, we’ve asked the Prince fans
to please not congregate because that’s, we want to keep the fence. We’re trying to keep
everything the way that Prince had it. Anything that, any changes that we’re making are for
either public safety or just a requirement for what we’re doing so it’s our, you know it’s our
desire, our deep desire to keep the fence the way it is so we feel that any pedestrian, anything
that would promote pedestrians from coming by since they really haven’t in the last week would
actually be counter intuitive and counter productive.
Councilman McDonald: Well I hear you but also this is a cyclical in nature. I mean depending
upon the day of the month, the month there could be people that decide to come out there.
You’re getting ready to hold a concert later this month. As a result of that there could be people
that say you know let’s go see it one last time and decide to drive out. My concern comes down
that a lot of those people park on either McGlynn Road and have to cross Audubon or they’re
going to park down in the city park and walk under Highway 5 which I think is a safer way to do
it but the people walking up and down Audubon what’s the safety plan for them because at this
point that is right next to the road and one of the things that we’re trying to do is normalize our
get back to normal as much as possible traffic flow on that road. What do you intend to do there
as far as pedestrian safety?
Joel Weinshanker: So we are working with the City and there are some things that we have
talked to the City about in terms of the signals and if we would have to put a crosswalk or
anything of that nature but we really feel at the end of the day the best result, and we feel it’s
practical at this point. We were actually I think everyone has been very pleasantly surprised by
Prince fans really heeding the warning and I understand you know you’re talking about the, it
th
being cyclical but once October 6 comes along you know if you’re a local resident you’ve had
many, many opportunities to come by and take a look. If you’re coming from hundreds and
hundreds of miles away, or thousands of miles away which people are, we have very affordable
tickets so someone coming from Chicago and traveling 6 or 7 hours to get here, going to the
concert, doing other things, those are the people that are coming in they don’t need to walk
around and we’ve just really, so we’re going to continue working with the City. We’re going to
look at the study, not only from a year standpoint. From a day. From a week. From a month
and any time we get an indication that there’s a problem we’re going to work with the City like
we have. We, after the planning meeting and throughout the planning meeting we’ve actually
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
made a lot of pivots based upon the suggestions of the residents where there were some really
good suggestions from the residents. There really were from a couple of the planning members
as well. From the conversations that we’ve had with the mayor and with some of the council
people, it’s a work in progress and what we’ve done, just so everyone understands because
everyone’s talking about these huge numbers of traffic. Because of the conversations that we’ve
had we’ve really throttled the daily number of people that we’re allowing in so we’re not looking
at 600 people per hour. We’ve actually throttled it to less than 200 people an hour so we’re
looking at in the highest days which you can count on one hand right now, less than 40 cars per
hour and less than 6 buses per hour. So the bigger numbers are what is conceptually possible
based upon how many people can walk through at one time. Not the true amount of tickets that
we’re selling because until it happens we want to make sure that we’re just as good of neighbors
as Prince was so we’ve actually throttled back severely the amount of availability.
Councilman McDonald: Well I understand that and that all deals with the internal operations
and the impact that may have on traffic but I just, I’m not feeling I’m getting the answer I want
about pedestrian safety. I mean that was something that was brought up at the Planning
Commission and looking at this and having been out there I know that there will be people that
will just want to walk around it and I know that they will drive down Audubon. They’ll
probably park on McGlynn Road because it looks like that’s what it’s there for and then they’re
going to try to cross the road and I agree with the one resident that said as she was taking
pictures and watching people, they don’t pay attention. You know it’s as far as they’re
concerned it’s a parkway and they’re going to walk right across. What are we going to do about
those pedestrians? Even if it’s only one or two, what are we going to do about pedestrian safety?
That’s a question that I feel is lacking in all of this and it’s especially along Audubon Road.
You’ve got the sidewalk on the side facing 5 so I think everything’s fine there. I just haven’t
seen anything as to how we’re going to handle people crossing Audubon from McGlynn or from
any place down through there. That’s what I’m asking for.
Joel Weinshanker: So to the same extent we’re talking about the moving of the northern
entrance, we engaged the same consultants who did the traffic to do the study as it relates to us
adding blacktop and us adding sidewalk and that’s how we were able to add on the one lane road
that we’ve already added. We’re waiting for the consultant to come back to us next week to tell
us, to give us our plan of action to be able to add the additional which would include the ability
to add a sidewalk because once you go over a certain number of square feet the watershed
district comes into play so we’re waiting to get our answer back from that and once we’re able to
add the square footage we will.
Councilman McDonald: Okay so it is in your plan because we talked about moving the Jersey
barriers and I think that’s what you’re talking about. Moving those to the side at this point. Is
that correct Mr. Oehme?
Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, council members. I think what Councilmember McDonald is talking
about is a pedestrian access between McGlynn Drive and Highway 5 just to the south of your
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
most southerly access point and staff is indifferent about introducing a pedestrian crossing mid-
street. You know Paul I think would tell you that he would encourage people to go down to the
controlled intersection and use the crossing at Highway 5 and Audubon to cross over and when
you do it mid-street you don’t have a controlled intersection. The pedestrian is at the whim of
the car. Even we kind of see this at Instant Web Companies. We have pedestrian flashing there
but it is a constant battle between car and pedestrian at that intersection so staff is indifferent in,
to suggest having a crossing mid-street. Wouldn’t you say Paul?
Paul Oehme: Yes. And to your point Mr. Gerhardt a lot of those crossings there’s warrants that
have to be, thresholds to actually put those in as well so we just don’t want to put them in willy
nilly so we want you know, what the plan would be is to monitor exactly how much traffic or
pedestrian traffic initially would be going back and forth between McGlynn Road. As Joel
indicated that’s not the preference. We don’t want to have walk up pedestrian traffic along
Paisley Park especially on Audubon Road. That area between the back of the curb and the fence
is not, it’s kind of steep. It’s, there’s no sidewalk out there. It’s really not pedestrian conducive
for pedestrians to be out there so we want to discourage that type of pedestrian movement as
much as we can. That’s why we want to work with the applicant and see what we can do to try
to mitigate and discourage a lot of that traffic as much as we can.
Kate Aanenson: And can I just add one more thing. That is what we have in the performance
agreement. That we’re going to monitor the level of service, that’s what part of the escrow is to
manage that. That specific issue.
Councilman McDonald: Okay well it’s perfectly acceptable to tell me that we’re going to
discourage pedestrian traffic. That’s what I’m trying to get at is what’s your plan? It’s either we
will accommodate it and this is how we’re going to do it safely or we will say that it’s not
allowed and this is how we’re going to do it. People that come to this do not understand about
your plan with McGlynn Road or those things. I look for positive reinforcements to tell people
this is not a parking lot so you can walk across the street and view you know Paisley Park. If
we’re going to set this up for a museum all I’m asking for is how do we make sure that
pedestrians are safe and part of that could be you can’t walk across the road and you can’t walk
north/south up and down the fence. That’s a perfectly acceptable answer. I just need to hear it
from somebody that that’s what your plan is because otherwise you’ve left something open that
is ambiguous and every time you do that you know that someone is going to be crossing the road
and they’re going to expect well that’s what they want me to do. So that’s all I’m looking for is
how do we control that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Before you answer that Mr. McDonald if I may. Mr. Gerhardt and Mr.
th
Oehme and even Ms. Aanenson, what have we done to control pedestrian safety since April 30?
Todd Gerhardt: Install J barrier along the westerly property line curb of Audubon. From
Highway 5 up to their most southerly access.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Have we discouraged people from parking at Lake Ann?
Todd Gerhardt: No.
Mayor Laufenburger: Have we said anything about if you’re going to visit, if you’re going to
walk to Paisley Park don’t park at Lake Ann?
Todd Gerhardt: No.
Mayor Laufenburger: So do we know that there are people still parking at Lake Ann?
Todd Gerhardt: Yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: And is there anything to prevent them from parking at Lake Ann? Can we
prevent them from parking at Lake Ann?
Todd Gerhardt: No.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. So.
Councilman McDonald: Mr. Mayor Lake Ann’s not the problem.
Mayor Laufenburger: I understand, understand. How about McGlynn Drive, is there anything
that, is there anything we can do to prevent people from parking on a public road? McGlynn
Drive.
Todd Gerhardt: The City Council could designate it as no parking but it would have to take
council action.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Is that, that’s not part of your recommendation is it?
Todd Gerhardt: No.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright.
Councilman McDonald: Okay I guess with that I will yield.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, thank you Mr. McDonald. Any other questions of the applicant?
Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: I would like to address the stacking. I was addressing staff with that
earlier and staff asked me to address the applicant. When I came to visit Paisley Park I took
Highway 5. Got on Audubon and went to the entrance. Parked and someone else was behind me
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
coming to the same event and they couldn’t, they had to sit and wait for me to get processed.
Now even by moving the entrance south I’m still not convinced that there isn’t going to be a
huge stacking issue so if you could just, let’s say I’m here to see Prince and Paisley Park. I’ve
got my ticket and I’m up at the gate. Walk me through that’s going to happen.
Joel Weinshanker: Sure and I’ve had the same frustration that you have actually because I’ve
been treated up to now the same way when I’m coming in. So as people come in the southern
entrance, no one is going to, there’s no cars going to be checked. Not even ticketing is checked.
Every car that comes in will be let in and then have them make an immediate left to go down the
newly formed road. There’s going to be one parking attendant for every 4 cars so the people are
going to be able to go down the road. So we have 270 feet between the, when people come in
from the south to when people would get into the north parking lot so we have room for about a
dozen cars based upon his 23-24 foot average estimate. So no cars are going to be, no cars are
checked you know basically at all but they’re not, but they’re not going to be. But even with the
ticketing standpoint they come all the way in before they’re even checked for tickets.
Todd Gerhardt: Joel can you point on that drawing where the first check point is?
Joel Weinshanker: So a person comes in, the people are going to come in here. There’s now a
road here that obviously isn’t, well actually the road is here so it’s a one lane road this way.
People will come in and then they start to be checked in this area. So people with cars will come
in unchecked. Go through here and then they’ll start to be checked in this area. Obviously this
doesn’t exist yet. Any cars that are, the cars that are proper will then be able to make a right
hand turn. The cars that are not...
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay. Now they’re being checked.
Mayor Laufenburger: Just a moment. I appreciate that members of the audience have questions
about this but it’s important that you remain quiet so that we can have this dialogue between the
council and the applicant. Thank you. Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Mr. Mayor. The cars are, that are coming in that are stacked that are
being checked, looks like they’ll be parked along parking spaces so is there going to be ample,
are these parking spaces right?
Joel Weinshanker: They don’t exist yet.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: But will they be?
Joel Weinshanker: No. Not for opening.
Kate Aanenson: Yeah that’s long term.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Joel Weinshanker: That would be for spring. That would be part of what we’re obligated to do
in second phase so right now the only thing that exists is that a one lane road in that section.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay.
Joel Weinshanker: So they’ll be just basically ready to go one way or the other.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And will the cars be checked as they’re leaving?
Joel Weinshanker: No.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: So they’ll just get in their car and go and that’s it? Okay.
Mayor Laufenburger: As about inspection. You said that your car was inspected is that correct?
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yeah he said there wasn’t going to.
Mayor Laufenburger: No inspection. So the only thing that you’re checking is timing and do
you have a ticket.
Joel Weinshanker: Correct. The only time, the person will be checked upon entering, before
they enter Paisley Park. Right when you walk in if you remember where your bags were
checked.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yeah but not in your car.
Joel Weinshanker: But not in the car.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And then I just on a happier note I’ve never been to Graceland but
I’ve been doing some reading about it and it looks like you did put up a very lovely hotel right
close to Graceland or on the property.
Joel Weinshanker: Yes.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: And then it looks like you also got approval from the City to put up
an entertainment complex.
Joel Weinshanker: We did.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Is that right?
Joel Weinshanker: Neither of which is on the property. So you know the property as we see
here, as long as it’s my say we, you know I would never ever touch a building on this property. I
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
would never add a building on this property. I would never take away a building on this
property. This is the way that Prince built it and this is the way that you know the Mayor asked
about historical. Regardless of if and when the state and the country do rightfully issue a
historical preservation, we’re treating like that from day one. So we don’t even change, you
know if you came in and you remember the carpet. The carpet was the original carpet but if we
had just left it there it would have been decimated so what we did is we had a company
reproduce the carpet and we put that carpet on top of the original carpet because it was installed
in a commercial way and that was just glued so it would have been destroyed if we tried to pull it
up so even the carpeting we’re not moving. We had to put something on top of it to preserve it
but we’re not planning on doing anything. What was done at Graceland, and this is not
Graceland. I mean very frankly you know I’m the managing partner of Graceland. I’m the
managing partner of PPark Management. I’m a Prince fan and this is the way Prince wanted it
and this is the way it’s going to be kept. The hotel at Graceland is not on the mansion property.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Right.
Joel Weinshanker: It’s on a piece of property that was bought 20 years later a mile down. And
if we have, and if this is as successful as we hope it to be and several years from now the City
were to agree with us that we would want to see more of Prince, there are other properties in
town. There are properties in Eden Prairie. There are properties you know, there are many
places it could be but to add to this property just wouldn’t even feel right. It would feel
squished. It would feel like there’s too much.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yep no but I mean there, we did in the beginning of my questions to
staff we did go through Highway 5. Down Highway 5 and the potential open spaces for such
entities.
Joel Weinshanker: And that would be something that the City would have to want. You know
we’d want the City to come to us and say, we have such a wonderful experience what more can
we do for Prince so that would be the type of conversation we would want to have with the City.
We can’t buy a property and put anything on it without the great council and the mayor
approving it.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Well and I think the City of Memphis assisted you also with some
TIF and bonding.
Joel Weinshanker: They basically, so as we’re uplifting the community they’re giving us part of
the uplift back so basically they’re just, we’re filling their coffers and they’re giving us a little bit
of how we’re feeling it back.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: No and I think it looks like a wonderful thing but I think that’s all I
have for you right now.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Councilwoman Tjornhom. Anybody, any other questions for
the applicant?
Councilwoman Ryan: Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Laufenburger: Councilwoman Ryan.
Councilwoman Ryan: Could you address the hours of operation? You know it’s of concern of
me on the 9:00 to 9:00 timeframe.
Joel Weinshanker: And again we’ve heard the town so what we’ve done is some nights we’re
open 9:00 to 9:00. Mostly weekends but we’ve actually dialed back and actually refunded a few
tickets going in so we’ve only put on sale less than 3 months actually so right now the only thing
thst
that’s on sale is October 6 to December 31. What we wanted to do is we wanted to see what
the reaction was. We wanted to see what people wanted and then after hearing the City, both
from the Planning Commission before and after, we’ve actually dialed back many of the
weekdays to 7:00 p.m.
Councilwoman Ryan: So the latest your dialing it back to is 7:00.
Joel Weinshanker: So that would be yes, so right now and I actually believe there are a few days
even earlier.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay.
Joel Weinshanker: So we’re actually, what we’re trying to do is find that perfect mix of what is
appropriate for the City and what is appropriate for the fan.
Councilwoman Ryan: And did I read correctly somewhere that on some occasions it would be
open til midnight or was that?
Mayor Laufenburger: How about events?
Joel Weinshanker: So again a private event, you know because I think there was a question of
what a private event would look like. To me a private event would be, and it’s really you know
and we’ve had many conversations already with many local companies because we’ve had
questions so Lifetime Fitness. If they wanted to have a corporate event what we would do is we
would sell them 200 tickets an hour for their people to come in and then at the end of that but
during the hours they would then come in and we would get, you know we would get the
approval to have banquet space for 400 or 500 people in the sound stage and they would end
with a ceremony for I guess the best salesman of the year award or something similar. That’s
how we view private events but very frankly I really don’t anticipate being open til midnight
unless it’s very, you know it would be a very, very, very irregular occurrence and to answer a
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
question that you had before that wasn’t answered, we’re not promoting people coming without a
ticket. If you don’t have a ticket please do not come is what we’re telling people. It’s the
messaging that we’re giving everything so the concept of having a spotlight or any kind of bright
lights to attract people is not what we’re looking to do. We’re giving people ample opportunity
to come but come at a respectable time in a way that we can control. So we’re not looking for
people off, you know to come off, and we’re really looking to operate within a specific time set.
There may be an occurrence. There may be if it’s an anniversary of something that that’s
important but it would really be you know from a practical standpoint the exception rather than
the rule.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay because in the packet it said that Monday through Thursday was
going to be 9:00 to 9:00 and then the other days was going to be 9:00 to midnight. I mean it did
state that.
Pat Mazural: Yeah and Councilwoman Ryan I think that was the initial packet and the initial
business plan which we wanted to make sure it was as expansive as might be the case and
certainly was before any tickets went on sale and before as Mr. Weinshanker is saying we were
able to determine you know what is the need so that’s an old number that was intended to be
more expansive than what might be needed.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay and then just in terms of I know you say that you’re going to
manage it in terms of how the City feels but your ultimate goal is obviously to pay tribute to
Prince, I understand that but to run a successful business and museum so after the first 3 months,
I mean what are, how are you evaluating the expansion of hours? The increase of ticket sales so
then.
Joel Weinshanker: So we really don’t even, you know so Graceland is the number one
destination attraction in America and it’s only open 10 or 11 hours a day. We really, the capacity
that we would have to hit on a regular basis to have to expand hours is unrealistic for anyone so
you would be, whatever the number, you know it just, you know we feel that within these hours
we’re going to be able to service every single Prince guest every time they want to come so there
really doesn’t need, you know what we’re looking at from a throttle standpoint is, you know the
traffic study said with, when we brought in the road, which we have. When we’re coming in the
south instead of the north we came up with a per hour number. We’re 40 or 50 percent below
that. When we get above 40 an hour we’re bringing in buses. So although I think we were at 72
in the last part of the study, we’re not coming close to that. We’re not coming, what we want to
do in the first 3 months is be as far away from the line as possible and see what happens. If
everything is wonderful in those first 3 months, we’ll go from 40 to 50 to 60, still well below
what the study with what we’re doing allows but that’s the throttling we’re going to do. You
know there’s just, you know frankly everyone’s experience is that there’s no reason to really
need to be open more to be able to service. You know this building was designed for people to
tour. Prince had a strong desire. He set this building up as the council people who actually and
the mayor who actually walked through the building knew, you know all we’re doing is basically
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
following. You know we’ve got a book. We’ve got emails. We’ve got texts. We’ve got you
know messages from him on what he wanted to do here but he had his own tours so all we’re
doing is fulfilling that need but we never think that we need to go beyond what is the initial.
We’re actually dialing it back but when we’re talking about if everything goes well it’s just
coming closer to the limits that the City has already established as a safe limit.
Councilwoman Ryan: And so for as you had mentioned at the Planning Commission you
anticipate in the first month the 4 peak days you had mentioned.
Joel Weinshanker: 4 peak days.
Councilwoman Ryan: 4 peak days.
Joel Weinshanker: Yes.
Councilwoman Ryan: And so what is your transportation plan for those 4 peak days?
Joel Weinshanker: So we contracted with the Southwest Transit for our own parking spots for
those 4 days. We hired 2 full sized buses that will allow basically one, every 10 minutes will be
dropping off and every 10 minutes will be picking up. We’ve contracted with Carver County
sheriff department where on those days, and very frankly they’re having a little bit of trouble
getting from one time period right now because I guess the sheriffs are exhausted because of the
Ryder Cup but Saturday morning but they promise us they’ll have it done so the only time we
th
don’t have fully staffed is Saturday morning the 8 but they promised us in another day they will
and we’ve offered to pay a little bit more if we had to. And we have an abnormally large amount
of traffic people on the premises. Having 4 to 7 to 1 is 20 times what Disney does. Disney has 1
traffic person for almost 100 cars in the parking lot so we’re making sure in the first several
months is that we’re killing people with, we’re having too much of everything. We have too
many buses so the buses will be empty but we’re still only going to do. We’re only looking at 6
buses. We looked at the traffic looked at 72 cars per hour but we’re stopping at 40 so anything
over 40 triggers the buses. We’re only looking at 4 days in the first 90 so we’re comfortable and
obviously as we know as it gets colder and more into winter there’s less of a likelihood and
we’re seeing the build come up week to week. We’re pushing people away from opening day so
we basically maxed out on opening day but still on opening day no more than, you’re not going
to see more than 6 buses per hour and you’re not going to see more than 40 cars per hour. So
we’ve done everything that Prince would do. We’ve been a responsible citizen because we’ve
under estimated. We’ve gone well below what we think is realistic because we want it to
succeed.
Councilwoman Ryan: And just help me understand so when people buy the tickets they’re
directed at that point whether they’re going to be on a bus or be able to drive?
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Joel Weinshanker: So now people are. People were not in the beginning. We left it a little
ambiguous.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay.
Joel Weinshanker: We’ve actually had so again each person who bought a ticket had to provide
an email address. We’ve now emailed each of these people for those days. We have something,
as of a couple of hours ago we checked over 97 percent of the people had opened up their emails
and we’re going to call each person who hasn’t and instruct them but we’ve had great success.
Prince fans are amazing. They really are. The majority of Prince fans understand that they have
to be a good neighbor. That we have to be a good neighbor. Understand that Prince for 29 years
was a great neighbor and I’ve never heard anything to, you know anything that really undermines
that so once we explain to the fans, when we came out with that press release on Monday we
were really astounded. We thought the traffic would be down 50-60 percent on Audubon. It’s
down, it’s negligible. It’s a couple of people a day. We actually had a wonderful elderly lady
today who’s taking ribbons off the fence and the security person said what are you doing? She
goes I want to make sure all the fence is clear. Like she came there so that she could help just
get everything out of there so we really feel that we’ve got a good plan. We’re listening. You
know even with the planning as Pat really much more eloquently than I ever could state it, we’re
listening to the city. It’s important for us. The only way we’re going to succeed is if you feel
that we’ve succeeded.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay, thank you.
Mayor Laufenburger: Anything else? Councilman Campion, any questions or comments? Not
required.
Councilman Campion: Not at this time.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Let’s see. Mr. Weinshanker you can sit down if you’d like.
Mr. Mazural I have a couple questions that I really want you to answer for me. There’s been a
lot of emails, phone calls, social media referencing Prince would have never wanted this or
Prince wanted this or et cetera. Is there a will?
Pat Mazural: Mr. Mayor no there is not a will that’s been found to this point and that was part of
the appointment of the special administrator was to do that search.
Mayor Laufenburger: So who’s calling the shots on what can happen to, yeah maybe a better
way of saying is who gives you the authority? Who gives Bremer Trust the authority to do what
you’re doing? Can you just talk a little bit about that and help me understand. Me and the rest of
us here understand how do we know that this is what Prince wanted?
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Pat Mazural: Certainly Mr. Mayor and council members. Well first of all the authority is given
by the court. All that has been done in the estate has been with court order. Because there has
not been a will located and because there are potentially issues as to who the rightful heirs are,
Bremer Trust has engaged the family in conversations about this. They’ve gone to the court
seeking approval on virtually every move that’s been made which has included representation of
the purported heirs at this point and so it’s the court that gives the authority. From the beginning
the idea of Paisley Park being a museum and a commemoration to Prince has been there and
surfaced. From the time that we first engaged many more family members or purported family
members than there are at this point and that was a relatively common theme at that point is that
this is something he wanted to do. Since that time I can tell you that I’ve personally had this
discussion with Kirk Johnson who has been the property manager for Paisley Park as a long
time, 30 plus year friend of Prince. Basically his right hand person. His secretary. His property
manager. His do whatever needs to be done and probably knew him better than anyone else and
he’s personally told me that Prince had expressed this desire for Paisley Park years ago and in
fact Mr. Weinshanker that was new to me, perhaps something that’s occurred with all of the
continual searching that goes on in the archiving that in fact we now, which I didn’t know before
just a few minutes ago actually have texts and writings from Prince that express that desire. Mr.
Johnson, Kirk Johnson had indicated to me in fact that Prince had attempted something like some
tours back around 2000 and was beginning to try out the site for that purpose. So in terms of
who has the authority, the court gives Bremer Trust as the special administrator the authority. In
terms of the organization and the different entities that have been discussed here, a couple of
them are new and have been formed as business purposes to manage this and the court has given
authority to those organizations. But it all evolves from the estate of Prince Rogers Nelson.
Mayor Laufenburger: So the court has made Bremer Trust the special administrator, is that
correct?
Pat Mazural: That’s correct Mayor.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so Bremer Trust is really tasked with the fiduciary and management
responsibility to deal with Prince’s estate. Has, we’re dealing with one piece of property, 7801
Audubon Road. Has the judge allowed Bremer Trust and it’s associated companies recently
formed to address other pieces of property as well? For example I’m thinking of Councilwoman
Tjornhom’s question regarding the property that’s just west of Audubon. Is that owned by PRN
Music Corporation? Is it owned by another entity independent of that? Help us understand that.
Pat Mazural: Yeah and my understanding of that is there has been nothing specific with regard
to the other parcels at this point. Nothing that’s come before the court. However I’d like Todd
Phelps, the real estate attorney to address that directly. He would have personal knowledge of
that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Alright, thank you Mr. Mazural. Mr. Phelps would you state your name
and your address please for the record.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Todd Phelps: Todd Phelps, 150 South Fifth Street, Suite 2300, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Mayor Laufenburger: Welcome to Chanhassen Mr. Phelps.
Todd Phelps: Thank you Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, members of the council. With respect to the
two parcels located immediately to the west on the southwest corner of Audubon and Highway 5,
those two parcels are owned by a nonprofit corporation called Love For One Another
Incorporated. It’s a Minnesota nonprofit corporation.
Mayor Laufenburger: Is it part, do you know is that part of the, let’s just call it the Prince
empire? I don’t know if that’s the right word but.
Todd Phelps: It’s a nonprofit corporation and I’m trying to, I want to explain this in a way that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Don’t confuse us with the facts. We’re looking for simplicity.
Todd Phelps: The nonprofit Love For One Another Incorporated was formed by Mr. Nelson.
Having said that because of the nature of a nonprofit corporation the assets are actually held for
the benefit or the purpose of the nonprofit so those.
Mayor Laufenburger: I think what you’re telling me, or the question you’re answering for me is
that it’s not likely in the near future that that property would become available for development
without approval of the nonprofit right?
Todd Phelps: Mr. Mayor that’s correct. And technically at this point those parcels are not part
of the estate of Prince Rogers Nelson.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Thank you Mr. Phelps. Mr. Mazural. Any council
member have any questions related to that? Okay. So it sounds like one of the questions that the
council had here related to the fence has been answered and that is that the plan right now is to
leave the fence as it is and to do your best to protect it from being a display of art, is that correct?
Pat Mazural: That’s correct Mr. Mayor.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Mr. Mazural there’s a Site Improvement Performance
Agreement. Are you fully aware of all of the elements of that Site Improvement Performance
Agreement?
Pat Mazural: I have read it. I would need to reference it. I have it with me.
Mayor Laufenburger: But you have seen it and so it’s, you know that there are things in there
that are required from an administrative standpoint.
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Pat Mazural: Yes Mr. Mayor.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. This question, this is not for you but for Ms. Aanenson.
The hours of operation are not part of the PUD.
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: What are the hours of operation that are allowed in the underlying
business district?
Kate Aanenson: Typically they’re not restricted. For example General Mills runs 24 hours a day
so typically they’re not restricted.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. So there is no restriction other than to the effect that if the hours of
operation become a nuisance in any way then the City would, could step in is that correct?
Kate Aanenson: That’s correct and that’s how we would handle any other business in town that
would create a noise or any other nuisance.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. Mr. Mazural I reserve the right to recall you if I may but I
think what I would like to do at this time is take about a 5 minute recess and then we’re going to
come back for a public comment period, okay?
Pat Mazural: Thank you.
Mayor Laufenburger: So we’re going to recess. It’s now 9:17. Well let’s reconvene at 9:22.
Pat Mazural: Thank you Mr. Mayor.
Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you.
The City Council took a short recess at this point in the meeting.
Mayor Laufenburger: So at this time I will reconvene the City Council meeting and I want to
express my appreciation to all of you for being patient. This has been a deliberate process but
there’s a reason for that because the council is being asked to make an important decision tonight
and we want to make sure that we have all of our questions answered and that it appears that the
majority of them have been answered but we’ll deal with that in just a few minutes. As I said a
public hearing is normally part of the Planning Commission and there was a public hearing
conducted at that time and that became part of the public record and you heard reference to that
planning commission meeting earlier. So what I would like to do at this time is I’m interested in
hearing from members of the audience that are with us this evening and my plan is to allow
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
comments to continue about 30 minutes or so as long as the comments are respectful and in
accordance with the order of this council and this chamber and I’m going to ask that those, if
anybody is present that was at the Planning Commission and spoke I would just ask that we
already have your comments on record and I would ask that you allow somebody who was not
present at that Planning Commission to speak first so at this time I’m going to just ask, is there
any public comment? And if there is, I would like you to come forward and I will instruct you
on how I’d like you to proceed. Anybody? I would ask that you state your name, your address
for the record and then speak, or state whether or not you are supportive or you are in favor of
the development, not in favor of the development or in support of the development with some
concerns. Okay state your name please.
Teawanna Burton: Hi, thank you for having me. My name is Teawanna Burton and my address
rd
is 3425 53 Avenue North, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55429.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay and are you speaking in opposition to or in support of the plan or in
support of the plan with concerns?
Teawanna Burton: Yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: A, B or C?
Teawanna Burton: I’m going to have to say against.
Mayor Laufenburger: Against the rezoning for it to be a museum.
Teawanna Burton: Yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, state your reasons.
Teawanna Burton: At this time.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Teawanna Burton: I was a volunteer for Prince this past 2 ½ years. I’ve been a fan since ’76. I
moved here from St. Louis in ’92 because of him. Okay. To me this is too soon. I’m not
arguing the fact that he wouldn’t have want it to be a museum or historical monument but he
hasn’t been gone 6 months. He died inside of Paisley Park. He did not like to be looked upon as
some kind of replica or you know some put on a platform that you just stare at him or what not
so for me to say, having a museum at this time is to me too soon. It’s intrusive. I think a year
would have been suffice. People keep yelling but we need to make money for him for the taxes.
He has money. He has property. I don’t think doing this to pay the taxes is a reason. I think
people while the iron is hot want to grab it before somebody else grab Paisley Park and make it
what they want it to be or claim this what he would have wanted. It’s like, it’s not written in, on
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paper like you said. There’s no will so if somebody could say yeah, I’ve been with Prince for 20
years. I’ve worked for him. He’s my best bud. Yeah he would have wanted a museum. To
make a little bit light of the situation I learned from Judge Judy. If it ain’t in writing, anybody
can say, he could have told me 2 weeks before he passed, I was there the Saturday night, the last
Saturday night. He had a party. He could have told me hey, if anything ever happened to me
yeah you can go ahead and have my furniture. If I was to present that to you’all I’m quite sure
you’d say well do you have any documentation? Do you have a recording? Do you have
anything to prove that’s what he said? So to me that’s you know hearsay. Now as far as this
summer what we was going to do was he wanted to have a party every weekend. Okay. He was
doing the tours already these past 2 ½ years. He didn’t have to reconstruct his parking lot. He
didn’t have to rearrange or treat the carpet from disintegrating or whatever the case may be. We
have 40 people going at a time. The tours last 60 minutes because sometimes he will come down
to the studio. Talk with the guests or walk them this way or what have you. We had it in an
organized fashion. We, the parking situation, if he was having a big extravaganza, first of all we
always had to get permits for everything he wanted to do that consists of guests being over a
certain amount of money because of the fire zones and we had to have inspections and as far as
parking in the neighborhood he respected the neighborhood because the daycare as well as the
neighbors was like you’ve got cars blocking our driveway. There’s trash here and there and
there’s cars you know blocks away so he asked his fans, which respected and listened to him,
park your car at the park and ride. He paid for the shuttles to bring them to Paisley Park. That
worked for a while but like you say that intersection of Highway 5 and Audubon gets congested.
That turn lane, I have been in that turn lane all the time when I had to come. The light to turn is
short but the holding time is long so you have cars more than 5 cars proceeding out to the on
continuing traffic.
Mayor Laufenburger: Step to the microphone.
Teawanna Burton: I’m sorry.
Mayor Laufenburger: You’re being articulate with your hands, which is okay.
Teawanna Burton: Okay, I’m sorry.
Mayor Laufenburger: We have somebody who’s recording this. I want to make sure she hears
it.
Teawanna Burton: Okay, I’m sorry. But that’s a huge concern because you get your car sticking
out in the lane and the light hasn’t changed yet and then when you do make that left turn onto
Audubon Road you get cars at a stand still because they see that first driveway and we’re
directing them to go and come around and then there’s people running across the street and we
like go to the light but they don’t want to wait in line. I mean you’ve got some Prince fans that’s
hard headed. They don’t want to listen. They want to do it their way. They figure they out
number you so they’ll do what they want to do.
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Mayor Laufenburger: Pretty much like people all around the world is that right?
Teawanna Burton: And we do get people all around the world. They either don’t understand
English or they’re rude or whatever the case may be. Something that also touched me at the
meeting with Graceland Holdings, I’ve been on Facebook and I’ve even said it. Prince did not
want Paisley Park to be a prison. He wanted any and everybody to come as long as you respect
the neighborhood and his property and each other. Okay you can’t tell Prince fans don’t come
unless you have a ticket. You’ve got to keep or don’t park over there or you can’t leave flowers.
Some people haven’t had the opportunity to come and pay their respects so you gonna have
people coming you know all different times. The winter time they’re not coming. You know
you’all have to worry about that. They’re not coming but you have.
Mayor Laufenburger: Wise statement.
Teawanna Burton: You have anniversaries like his passing. His birthday. Summer break.
People take their vacations so you can’t really calculate the type of traffic, foot traffic and car
traffic unless you sit back and watch these people come for a whole year because they come in
spurts you know so you can’t say oh well you know 2 buses will take up a lane and this and that
and this and that. All those buses, even if you have 3, unless they’re green buses which he tried
to get further the concern of the neighborhood with pollution you know so you’ve got to take that
in consideration. I’ve seen people at 5:00. I was there the day he died. I’m directing traffic.
Cars. People getting off from work. You know school buses coming. That’s a lot of traffic on
that little two lane street and you’re going to add buses. You’re gonna have buses. Then you’re
going to have people like he said that park. Come in and park then get their ticket. No, no, no,
no, no. I’ve controlled traffic on that parking lot. I’ve had to back out people off of Paisley Park
parking lot because they didn’t have the proper credentials or they just wanted to drive up and
see what was going on and it’s like I can’t let you get on the property because they have stayed
there and it’s like if she don’t see me then she won’t put me off the lot.
Mayor Laufenburger: I don’t want to be disrespectful but can you wrap up your comments in
another minute or two?
Teawanna Burton: Okay so you have concerns about the traffic, that’s to be expected because
I’ve worked it okay. And then telling fans when they can and can’t come and when they can and
can’t lay down things to show respect for him. Now you’all was talking about that concrete
barrier thing. Yeah that’s been a life saver and I’ve even had to tell people don’t sit on it because
if you flip over you’re road kill and we’re not responsible so just an idea if you’all want to keep
pushing for this museum that he said he wanted, I would advise that green area that has turned
into mud and got mulched.
Mayor Laufenburger: Now mulched.
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Teawanna Burton: But a sidewalk there and let that continue all the way and connect to the front
of Paisley Park because there’s a sidewalk there that goes in that tunnel so why not have a
sidewalk to go all the way around. Not saying it’s going to stop your problem from people
running across the street but yeah, that driveway and where the daycare is, that’s going to be
your problem. And then you coming to the lights, telling people go to the light and come
around, that’s going to be a problem so just you know think about that but to me it’s being
rushed. It’s too soon. The questions you’all asked I’m so glad you asked them and it is very
important so.
Mayor Laufenburger: Well thank you for the work that you did with Prince when he was with us
and thank you for your comments.
Teawanna Burton: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Mayor Laufenburger: Is there anybody else who would like to speak at this time? Good
evening. Just state your name and your address please.
Kim Huston: Kim Huston.
Mayor Laufenburger: Do you want to pull that down a little bit?
Kim Huston: 18977 Twilight Trail, Eden Prairie but I say Chanhassen.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, welcome to Chanhassen. Ms. Huston is that right?
Kim Huston: Yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. So the question is are you speaking in opposition, in support or in
support with concerns?
Kim Huston: In support with concerns.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, thank you.
Kim Huston: Good evening Mayor and City Council members. I am here to represent the Prince
fans based on two issues regarding the plans for Paisley Park museum. First I am here to present
the petition against the wall that was proposed to be built at the previous meeting held on
th
September 20. I have brought a copy of the petition with me for your review. Our petition has
been signed not only by the Rainbow Children, which is a group on Facebook that I’m an admin
for but also fans all over the world. And they’re concerned about the fate of Paisley Park. The
bottom line is that we are the target market for the museum so our concerns should be crucial in
the business plan because if it isn’t addressed with everyone in mind it will affect the revenue
and the success of the museum. Several people have stated that if a wall goes up they will not
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
come. It is in the best interest of all involved in making of the museum to ensure that it becomes
a place that their target market will want to frequent again and again. During the previous
meeting there was concerns for safety as a reason for a new opaque wall to be built but the
current fence has never been an issue even when Price was home so there should be no safety
concerns with keeping it. In fact if a wall is built making it impossible to see the building we
believe that it will actually create a safety issue encouraging people to climb it in order to see the
building or take pictures. We also feel that if we are not allowed to leave gifts on a solid wall
construction and a solid wall construction is built people might tag it and deface it which will not
only become an eyesore to the community but it will cost the museum more money for constant
repainting which will affect their bottom line. As far as the gifts go that people are leaving
several local neighbors have stated that they find the fence and the gifts to be charming and they
even leave flowers and notes themselves. Others consider it a landmark of the city and enjoy
seeing it when they pass by to see everything that people are leaving for him. It is unfair, it is an
unfair expectation to state that people cannot come if they aren’t attending the tours and that only
paying customers have the right to leave gifts or even see the building. We need to come up with
an agreement for a place to leave gifts. If Highway, if the Highway 5 side is safer because of the
path then maybe that side can be designated for an area to still leave gifts. We are hoping that
the statement that Paisley Park management regarding the fence and that they no longer intend
on building an opaque wall or structure, whether it be solid construction or vegetation be written
and included in the agreements made with the City going forward. We would also like to
address the expansion of the parking lot on the north side of Paisley Park.
Mayor Laufenburger: Ms. Huston can I just stop you for a second? So you heard the applicant
say that they have changed their plan and they are not going to take down the fence, you have
heard that?
Kim Huston: Yes but their actual word is that they have no plan to do it at this time as long as
the fence cooperates so they’re not necessarily saying that they won’t ever do it which means
that at any time if one person leaves one flower they can say well you didn’t listen and the wall is
going up.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, your point well taken. Move to your, you said there’s a second
concern you have.
Kim Huston: Yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, keep going.
Kim Huston: So we’re concerned about the expansion of the parking lot on the north side of
Paisley Park so we are hoping that with the delay in the expansion of the parking lot that they
can consider possibly those 2 other properties that were brought up before that are currently
under Love For One Another charities to be a place where maybe parking off the main property
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could be put across there and then a crosswalk could be created to make it so people can get
across the street safely.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Kim Huston: Because it has been made aware to us that PPark Management will eventually need
not only additional parking but possible additional buildings that those properties could possibly
be for that as well. In the interim we are asking that PPark Management use the existing parking
on the grounds, street parking on the street across the way and then use the Chanhassen Transit
Station as Prince was doing before. There are concerns from, I think recent concerns from
Chanhassen citizens that that’s going to increase traffic downtown Chanhassen but if these
events are in the evenings it shouldn’t really, you know the later night ones it shouldn’t really
affect the business traffic.
Mayor Laufenburger: So just a second. Are you saying that people have expressed a concern
that there would be more traffic downtown than desired?
Kim Huston: I think there’s recent concerns with some of the citizens and some of the business
owners downtown in Chanhassen that possibly having a lot of shuttles going back and forth
could affect them and affect the traffic in that area and so I just, we’re thinking that if those are
mostly evening and later night events that a lot of those businesses would not be open and it
would also, the schools would be closed so it wouldn’t create a lot of traffic for.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay I just, just intuitively I’m thinking that it surprises me that
businesses downtown like retail establishments that they would want to deter people from
coming downtown. That doesn’t sound intuitive.
Kim Huston: I think they were more worried about traffic and people being held up getting to
and from one place to another.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright.
Kim Huston: And those were some online concerns that we noticed so.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
st
Kim Huston: Lastly I would just like to say that April 21 was less than 6 months ago. Fans
from all over the world are still grieving having not been able to properly pay their respects so
we created our own with fans bringing gifts and using their artistic abilities to share with Prince
the way they feel and you know leaving gifts for him. It is also important to note that Graceland
was built 5 years after Elvis passed away and those fans had several years and a lot more time to
mourn then way they wanted to and not be told that they can’t leave gifts in any certain area.
Prince built Paisley Park with the intent of having visitors and not having walls to keep us out.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
He made it a beautiful place for him to create his music and share it with us. He invited us to his
home and said it was our home as well and to take care of it and that’s why we’re here today.
Thank you.
Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Ms. Huston. Thank you very much. Is there anybody else
who would like to speak? You know the drill?
Linda Paul: My name is Linda Paul. I live at 8696 Stonefield Lane. I am in support with
concerns.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Linda Paul: What I’d like to know is some of the things have been brought up about the traffic.
You’ve discussed the fact that MnDOT can change the timing on that light. Do they do that on
the fly? Is it a permanent change? Is it?
Mayor Laufenburger: Ms. Paul, address your question here okay.
Linda Paul: Sorry. And if they can do that why haven’t we been doing that on the Saturday
mornings when that backs up for the Cars and Coffee for the Auto Motorplex?
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Linda Paul: Another question is we say we’re going to use the Google and such to direct people
to Highway 5.
Mayor Laufenburger: I don’t know that we said we were going to do it but the idea has been
discussed yeah.
Linda Paul: Well people have proposed that option to ensure. I also know when people are
sitting in traffic they grab their iPhone and go Siri give me an alternate route so I’m not how
effective that would be keeping people on Highway 5 because I live down on, just off of
Audubon down near Lyman. That’s where my personal concern comes in. I’m curious why this
security staff that are standing out on the far opposite sides of the gates haven’t been telling the
people who are crossing right at McGlynn to please walk down to the light and cross at a
controlled intersection because I have to drive up and down Audubon regularly when I’m going
to downtown to grocery shop. To go to Target. That kind of stuff and people just walk out in
front of you and it’s dangerous and they don’t care that you’re driving in a 45 miles per hour
speed limit. They’re there to see Prince and they don’t care that there’s traffic coming. A
question and concern for the applicant is, how do they guarantee that people will leave the
property within a 2 hour time limit because they say that’s how they’ve decided how much
parking they need is that they have so many tours and that kind of stuff and that people will leave
within 2 hours so then they’ve cleared out those spots for people coming in. In addition with the
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
hours of operation they say they’ve narrowed it down til 7:00 p.m. Does that mean that the last
tour starts at 7:00 p.m. and if that’s an hour tour does it go til 8:00 and then.
Mayor Laufenburger: Ms. Paul I think in that situation as I recall it was, they will vary the
ending time and I think in every case the ending time was assumed to be that’s when the last tour
will begin.
Linda Paul: Okay, thank you.
Mayor Laufenburger: That’s what I heard council. Is that what you heard council? Okay. But
good question.
Linda Paul: I have observed that they did put in the one lane to connect the south lot to the north
lot but come next spring when those permanent changes which are due within 12 months of
moving the north entrance to that 220 feet south of the intersection and adding the additional
parking. Right now they just have this one little narrow probably 8 foot swath of asphalt going
from the south lot to the north lot so people can queue up. Then they’ve got to stand there and
they say you can stay. You can go and point you back out there. Well at some point you’re
going to be tearing that all up. Moving that entrance south. Closing it. What’s going to happen
to the traffic in the timeframe when all that construction is going on? So I would like that
addressed and again the people in my neighborhood have to drive up and down Audubon to get
access to Highway 5. To get into downtown. Thank you very much.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, thank you very much Ms. Paul. Let’s just talk about a couple of
these things. Not sure who this goes to but Mr. Oehme or Ms. Aanenson or maybe even the
applicant. Is there any reason why the security people who are contracted by Paisley Park, do
they have a responsibility to police the pedestrian traffic on the public streets? Do they have that
responsibility?
Kate Aanenson: I’ll let the applicant address that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Mazural, what instructions do you give to the security people that are
inside the Paisley Park campus?
Pat Mazural: Well I think it’s helpful to understand that up until this point there has not been an
operator of the property. It’s a piece of real estate.
Mayor Laufenburger: Oh that’s right. That’s right.
Pat Mazural: That is in the estate and it’s been the responsibility of the special administrator to
assure security of the property. That it’s continued maintenance and that private security firm
there is really for security of the property within the fence.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so there’s really no instructions for them to do anything to police
outside of the property is that correct?
Pat Mazural: That’s correct.
Councilman McDonald: Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Laufenburger: Yes sir, Councilman McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: I think we could ask counsel but they don’t have any authority beyond
their property line so I could understand why they wouldn’t be doing it. I mean that would be up
to the county sheriff who has jurisdiction over that area. Your private security doesn’t have that
kind of jurisdiction. Would you agree with that?
Roger Knutson: I certainly would agree with that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Alright thank you for that clarification. Let’s see, maybe this is for the
operator Mr. Weinshanker. How do you intend to manage the departure of people after the
tours? The question was you know you’re assuming that people are going to be cooperative and
once they walk out of the tent and return to their vehicle they’re going to leave.
Joel Weinshanker: Yes which is a good question. So obviously the tour’s very structured to be
pushing people through.
Mayor Laufenburger: Sure yeah, while they’re inside the building.
Joel Weinshanker: While inside the building. Once they’re even through the tent, once they’re
there a specific amount of time they’re walking through and then once they walk through we
have parking people so once they come through they’re going to be, and again could 2 people
stay an extra 20 minutes and just by walking around? Possibly but there’s going to be nothing to
do and they’re going to be encouraged to go to their spots like we’ve done in other places.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Let’s see. This was an interesting question that Ms. Paul raised.
By the way I’ve done exactly what she has suggested that if I get in some traffic I, not while I’m
driving but my wife will say give me an alternate route so I know that that happens but I think,
well so let’s address this question about the light change. Mr. Oehme or Ms. Aanenson, do you
know anything about, does MnDOT do anything to control the traffic on that first Saturday when
Autoplex does their Cars and Coffee?
Paul Oehme: I’m not aware that they would or have.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Paul Oehme: So it’s the City has requested that MnDOT look at signal timing at specific times
during certain events but I’m not aware that on certain Saturday mornings that we’ve ever made
that request of MnDOT.
Mayor Laufenburger: Yeah. How many people, what is Cars and Coffee, how long is that? Mr.
Gerhardt do you know how long that lasts on that first Saturday?
Todd Gerhardt: Oh I believe it’s about 4 hours.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, do we have any estimate on how many people come during that 4
hours?
Todd Gerhardt: Oh, a lot. I would say definitely over 250.
Mayor Laufenburger: Cars or people?
Todd Gerhardt: Cars.
Mayor Laufenburger: And I don’t mean to make light of that but that is an exceptional situation
and you know we’ve learned and I say this to everybody here, Ms. Paul as well, we’ve learned
that there is special attention that’s required for that event and we have additional officers on
duty down there. We have people actually doing pedestrian crossing there so we’re very aware
of the impact of that time period and we’re also very aware that there are some people that abuse
it and I know from recent reports that we issued citations and thank heavens there are even
sometimes that the police stop the pursuit because pursuing a high speed vehicle whether it’s a
motorcycle or a super charged 1991 GTO also endangers lives so I understand the concern Ms.
Paul but I think that it would be very safe to say that we’re watching that very closely to ensure
that that event on top of the tours does not get out of hand. And we listen to citizens a lot saying,
say your address again?
Linda Paul: 8696 Stonefield Lane.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay so you’re down, you’re a little south of what we describe as the bird
neighborhood is that correct?
Linda Paul: I’m in the bird neighbor.
Mayor Laufenburger: My point is is that we’re very aware of the impact of that in our
community but at the same time these are people who are coming into our community and
they’re patronizing the shops and the businesses in Chanhassen and I have no interest in
deterring that by any means so I know you may have another comment but I appreciate the
comments that you made at the microphone.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Linda Paul: One.
Mayor Laufenburger: Oh, if you wouldn’t mind stepping up here. We have a lady who’s
recording this.
Linda Paul: I appreciate the fact that they do have a county officers right there at Park Road
allowing the crosswalk to happen there because as the pedestrian crosswalk from Lyman all the
way up to Highway 5 the sidewalk starts on the west side. Crosses to the east side. Comes up to
Park. Crosses back to the west side and takes you back all the way up to that so even if I just
wanted to ride my bike or walk the length of Audubon Road between Lyman and Highway 5.
Mayor Laufenburger: You’re required to cross.
Linda Paul: You are required to cross the road twice. That’s our concern as residents in that
area down south of Park Road.
Mayor Laufenburger: We have some great trails down in that area Ms. Paul. I’m thinking of
Bluff Creek and all of those trails that are far away from the road. I hope you’ve had a chance to
use some of those.
Linda Paul: Yes but sometimes you’re trying to get to downtown and I need to go up Audubon
to get there and I have to cross the road twice to do it.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Linda Paul: Thank you.
Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Mr. Paul. Is there anybody else that would like to make a
comment at this point? Councilwoman Ryan.
Councilwoman Ryan: There was another question that Ms. Paul had about the construction
plans.
Mayor Laufenburger: Oh yes, excuse me. Mr. Oehme. We often conduct construction on
buildings and properties that are already in place. Is a construction permit required for that?
Paul Oehme: There is permits that would have to be required yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, and do those permits also require how traffic is managed or how
construction materials are prevented from blowing off the property and stuff like that?
Paul Oehme: That’s correct and we also look at how the project would be staged too to
accommodate on site traffic or traffic that’s adjacent to the property as well.
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Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. And Mr. Weinshanker if there was, if it was necessary for, you can
step to the microphone. If it was necessary to stop activity on the site for a period say a week to
accommodate construction would you be willing to do that?
Joel Weinshanker: Absolutely. We’d be willing to do whatever’s necessary. We’ve talked with
two companies. One that actually did the work and they’re looking at 2 days. 2 ½ days. They
sort of laughed at us when we asked if there was enough time to complete it because the road
that they did, albeit small they knocked out in a couple of hours so none of what we’re talking
about doing with the parking lot expansion is taking any real time. And if we do it at a time in
low season we could actually close off the entire north parking lot and close off the entire road
and still allow 20 or 25 cars an hour to park. Or actually well yeah, to park in the south lot.
Mayor Laufenburger: Did that cover it?
Councilwoman Ryan: It did for now, yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: It did for now, okay thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to
offer public comment at this time?
Audience: I have one quick question.
Mayor Laufenburger: Yeah I appreciate you may have a question but I really would like to hear
from some others.
Audience: Okay.
Mayor Laufenburger: State your name and address and then if you’re in.
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Kristin Kokkila: My name is Kristin Kokkila. My address is 13875 85 Place North in Maple
Grove.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay and are you in opposition, in support, or in support with concerns?
Kristin Kokkila: Support with concerns.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, take a deep breath and begin.
Kristin Kokkila: Yeah. I have things here that were actually supposedly taken down from the
fence and put, and catalogued and taken photos of and such. My question is, I’m not sure why
these were laying in the mud. I have a whole. Oh I’m sorry, does that go? Okay.
Mayor Laufenburger: May I call you Kristin?
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Kristin Kokkila: Yeah.
Mayor Laufenburger: And you said that these were taken down and catalogued?
Kristin Kokkila: Well that’s what the newspaper has said and that’s what they said just now.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, how many of these items do you have? Do you have a lot? Okay,
alright. And what’s your question or concern Kristin?
Kristin Kokkila: My concern I guess is that if there’s not a place for people to put things and if
they do go and put something on the fence then we’re like told that then there’s going to be a
huge fence put up. I don’t, I think there needs to be a place that there can be mementos left even
if it’s I don’t know, maybe down by the creek where they didn’t take down the mementos, well
at least that I didn’t see last week when I went on Tuesday.
Mayor Laufenburger: So it sounds to me like what you’re saying is, you think or you would like
to see or you think that Prince fans would like to see a special area that is allowed for these type
of memorials. Is that what you’re saying?
Kristin Kokkila: Right. Yeah. I have, I mean there are things from people from around the
world in here. From Australia to Berlin to San Francisco to Texas. Everywhere. I’ve tried to
find the owners for them to either give them back. I don’t know what to do with them if they’re
not, you know I mean this one it clearly has clips on it. That just doesn’t fall off the fence in the
wind so I just, I don’t know what happened. I do know that when they came down and took the
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things off the fence for May 20.
Mayor Laufenburger: That was for, when they brought in a, what do they call it? A historical
preservation team.
Kristin Kokkila: Yes. Yes and I was there and I saw how they were taking down the things and
such and that they were in a nice manner and that it was orderly and every section of the fence
was done properly and pictures were taken. I know that because I was there and you know for
people then to see this and like you know, I mean they put their hearts into this. Really so and I
mean the trip here is not cheap and so I think to pay for maybe a section of fence for $500 for
people to put up things would just be kind of, I think just a nice thing for Prince fans to be able to
show their love and support.
Mayor Laufenburger: Just a couple things that I’d like to say. First of all your efforts to try to
find the owners of these things, I think that’s to be commended. I think that we have certainly
learned over the last 5 ½ months that Prince fans are indeed passionate. I don’t think there’s any,
there’s no such thing as a cool Prince fan. Everybody is a hot. Cool as in temperature because
all Prince fans are cool but Prince fans are hot in their passion for his legacy and so I understand
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how people would have this passion so I commend you for that. But I also want to say the
reality is the fence is private property and once something gets put on the fence it becomes
private property and that’s outside of the realm of what the City can address. It’s outside of the
realm of really what the whoever places it there can address. You understand that Kristin?
Kristin Kokkila: Yeah.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay alright. But thank you for coming down from Maple Grove and
thank you for demonstrating your love for the artist.
Kristin Kokkila: Yeah, thank you.
Mayor Laufenburger: I think you wanted to say something. Please state your name.
Letitia Nadine Dyer: My name’s Letitia Nadine Dyer and I live at 8280 Market Boulevard here
in Chanhassen.
Mayor Laufenburger: Could I ask you just to spell your last name?
Letitia Nadine Dyer: D-y-e-r.
Mayor Laufenburger: Dyer. Letitia. Welcome Letitia. Are you speaking in opposition, in
support or in support with concerns?
Letitia Nadine Dyer: In support with concerns.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, Letitia please.
Letitia Nadine Dyer: So I’m not opposed to Paisley Park studios becoming a museum if those
were indeed Prince’s wishes but I’m put off by this rush to get it done. Prince was a perfectionist
in every thing he did and the music and the concerts and every time he invited us into his home it
was about the experience of the people that came. When you went to his show he was concerned
about your experience in watching his show and so this rush to get everything planned and
executed, and if it’s going to have Prince’s name on it then it should be, it should live up to
Prince’s standards and what they’re doing does not. It feels like the sole objective is just to turn
a quick dollar and not to preserve his legacy and his legacy is about excellence. It’s about love.
It’s about openness. It’s about family and it’s not about money. Just some of the things that they
brought out during the supposed traffic studies, and I know going down Market Boulevard, or
I’m sorry going down Highway 5 on Saturday just trying to get to Lifetime to work out there’s
always a little back up right about there and it’s, this is going to increase it. There’s, I mean it’s
going to really impact people’s lives. You see people walking down Audubon Road not
necessarily to see Paisley Park but people who live there who want to walk over to Lake Ann. I
mean it’s a nice community. I’m from Dallas so you don’t get to walk everywhere in Dallas.
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Here I could walk, I would walk to work. I work in Chanhassen. I live in Chanhassen. I could
walk all the time. I mean I don’t but it’s a possibility and if they’re blocking Audubon Road
people are not going to be able to walk to Lake Ann or to the store or wherever they want to go
just because they happen to pass by Paisley Park doesn’t mean that that’s their goal. You know
that’s just part of the community. And I think it takes time to really understand how something
this big is going to impact the community and it’s important that we take the time to understand
that and do it the right way. And like Ms. Huston said it was several years before they opened
Graceland to the public and it gave people time to mourn. It gave them time to plan and it gave
them time to really think about the impact that that was going to have on the community and be
part of the legacy. That’s it, thank you.
Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you for your comments Ms. Dyer. I think we have time for just a
couple more comments if there’s anybody. Please. State your name and address please.
Anna Bader: Good evening. My name is Anna Bader, 18903 Hanus Road, Minnetonka.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Anna Bader: I live nearby. I’ve been. Oh sorry?
Mayor Laufenburger: Are you speaking in opposition, in support or in support with concerns?
Anna Bader: In support with concerns, thank you Mayor. I live nearby and I have been visiting
Paisley Park for a very long time. I’m a very big Prince fan and I know it is a concern with
safety and I appreciate all the work the team members here and the council members have done
to do research on those safety concerns. I just wanted to add to some of the comments
previously about the memorials that are being left for Prince. The reality is that people still want
to leave those and just like we talked about people are going to run across the street when they’re
at the Cars and Coffee or we’re still going to have that desire from fans so it’s more a comment
geared towards Bremer Trust and the Graceland enterprises to consider a way that fans can
continue to leave mementos and really give their love to Prince because they are so passionate
about him because of the legacy he leaves behind. Prince fans don’t want this to be about
money. They want this to be about him and they want to connect to him so my comment is just
to give fans that opportunity. I have people from all over the world who have asked me to put
things at the fence and I go and I do it and I film it for them and it’s very moving for them. It
helps them grieve so it’s just a request that you would consider that as Graceland and Bremer
Trust to give fans some method where they can put some portion of the fence, have that
dedicated for fans. Yeah we know it will eventually be taken down but I mean people really feel
a very spiritual connection to Paisley Park and to Prince and to have something like an artwork
that they created for Prince left there, even if it’s for one day is very special to them. Thank you
very much.
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Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you Ms. Bader. I think we have time for perhaps one more. Just a
moment, did you speak at the Planning Commission?
Denise Choiniere: I did briefly.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Just is there anybody who was not at the Planning Commission
who would like to speak?
Denise Choiniere: Hi, thank you. My name is Denise Choiniere. I live on 8481 Bittern Court in
Chanhassen. For point of reference I live on the very first cul-de-sac off of Heron which is the
very north most cul-de-sac in the neighborhood as you go south on Audubon. And my
comments are. I did speak.
Mayor Laufenburger: Are you speaking in opposition, in support or support with concerns?
Denise Choiniere: I’m sorry, support with concern.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Denise Choiniere: I think I’d echo most of what everyone else has said tonight. I think Prince
has only been gone not even 6 months so it does feel soon. My biggest concern is that even
before the museum opens when I go out of Heron and try to go south on Audubon to take my son
to high school for the multiple activities, I already have a challenge with getting out of the
intersection safely as I’m turning left with northbound traffic and I expect there will be more
northbound traffic.
Mayor Laufenburger: And you’re taking your, you said your son to high school is that correct?
Denise Choiniere: Yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: And so what time of day is that?
Denise Choiniere: Pardon?
Mayor Laufenburger: What time of day is that?
Denise Choiniere: Sometimes it’s in the morning. Right now he has marching band at 7:00 a.m.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Denise Choiniere: Sometimes it’s any time after school. Any time after 3:00 as late a 9:00.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Denise Choiniere: Especially with he’s in the pit orchestra so I expect it could even be as late as
10:00 so many of the same hours that the museum will be operating. And so as we do the traffic
study I know that they focused on the northern part of Audubon but I’d like to remind you that
that traffic if it is coming on Audubon will be coming all the way from Lyman north to get to
Paisley Park and Highway 5. And so I would encourage that the traffic study does consider how
this impacts our neighborhoods. We don’t have lights. We’re all sitting at a stop sign waiting
for traffic to clear. The other concern I have is we have a lot of high school students in those
neighborhoods who drive to school. I see the chances they take now with the current traffic. It’s
not pretty. There’s also been a lot of accidents down at Lyman and that short stretch going to
Chan High School so I think you need to consider that as we increase traffic during school years
that is going to be an impact. The traffic study was done the weekend before school started on
that Monday. I would encourage us to stretch a little further than just looking at average
numbers from the DOT and actually have some live experience much like some of you have
visited Paisley Park and experienced that traffic. Drive up and down during some of those times
and see what traffic really does look like. Come through my neighborhood and sit at that stop
sign or the one on Osprey where that hill is coming up so steep you can’t see the traffic coming.
Be the kid on the bicycle who’s trying to cross because they’re trying to get to school. Bluff
Creek’s not that far away either so I just want us to be conscious of you know, I’ve lived there
for over 25 years. Prince has been a great neighbor and I’d really be sad if something really sad
happened because we didn’t do a really thorough good job of looking at traffic. Thank you.
Mayor Laufenburger: Thank you. Mr. Pacyna can you just restate for us what was the date of
the traffic study, just to clarify?
Matt Pacyna: Mr. Mayor, just to clarify the date of the traffic study or the date the traffic data
was collected?
Mayor Laufenburger: Oh the date the traffic data was collected.
Matt Pacyna: Okay the day that we actually collected a couple different times. We collected on
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Thursday, August 25 and then we also collected a Saturday condition as well during that same
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timeframe which was on August 27 and then we did a follow up on the Autoplex Saturday of I
rd
believe it was September 3 and collected traffic volumes along Audubon during that period as
well.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Did I hear this correctly that you were estimating 600 additional
cars per day south on Lyman, is that correct?
Matt Pacyna: That would be under the sold out condition. A max.
Mayor Laufenburger: Oh a max.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Matt Pacyna: A max condition without any reductions. Basically sold out shows throughout the
entire day from the hours of operations from 9:00 to 9:00. We didn’t assume any reductions as
far as transit so that was trying to really represent a worst case condition.
Mayor Laufenburger: And you referenced an average daily traffic on Audubon, I think did you
say 5,000? You can check your…
Matt Pacyna: So typical volumes are right around that 4,400 today volume. They’re actually a
little bit lower further to the south in that 3,300 range the closer you get to Lyman so traffic
volumes are a little bit higher the northern part of Audubon than they are on the southern part
and you know south of the Paisley Park site we would expect that traffic volume to increase by
about 600 assuming about a 15 percent…
Mayor Laufenburger: So that’s the average daily traffic right now is as low as let’s say, use your
number. You said 4,400? So 600 additional cars and again that would be a max and that would
be assuming that they go all the way south to Lyman, so let’s assume that. That would be an
increase of about 14 percent.
Matt Pacyna: Ballpark yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: And how many cars did you say that that road is designed to handle?
Matt Pacyna: It’s a two lane facility so our planning level thresholds I mean easily typically in
the 8,000 to 10,000 for an urban facility without any turn lanes and then if you start to add some
turn lanes that can actually increase as well.
Mayor Laufenburger: So we’re looking at, we’re looking at quite possibly around 50 percent of
capacity even with the addition of those 600 cars?
Matt Pacyna: Correct.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Alrighty. Okay I think I’m going to close the public comment
period. Thank you very much to all of those of you that did comment and thank you for
respecting the chamber and the council with your comments and the manner in which you
presented them. I’m going to bring this back now to the council for any additional questions,
discussion or a motion. Kate would you please put the motion up just so we have it available for
reference if you wouldn’t mind. Okay, yes Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: I’m going to start out the way the public hearing started out where
people speak in favor, in support and against or with support with concerns and I am definitely a
person that would be on the side of in support with concerns.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Councilwoman Tjornhom: I have concerns and I have concerns from the very start of the
process. I think it’s very unprecedented that we’ve had this big of a change in our community, a
zoning change, potentially usage change and we never had one work session regarding it. I think
the Planning Commission didn’t have time to do it’s due diligence when it came to our
Comprehensive Plan and the rezoning of Paisley Park to a museum. I think that the
Comprehensive Plan that we really use as a road map to our future, and we’ve designed that plan
to fit our community the way it is now. We have not designed it or looked at it with the
implication or the impact of having a museum and a potential entertainment center or the future
and what that museum brings to our community. We haven’t looked at the impact of that with
our community. Right now we have a Comprehensive Plan that deals with the Met Council
projections for number of households and we also have our land and we have it zoned it with
potential of businesses coming in and neighborhoods being developed. Not necessarily being a
tourist attraction and because of that I think that we have one chance to get this right and for our
community being rushed into such a major decision I just don’t think we’re being good stewards
and good citizens. Good representation to our citizens. Mr. Weinshanker who’s been wonderful
talking about being a good neighbor and being very open with plans and working with the City I
think started his public comments out by saying it’s a work in progress and it really is a work in
progress and I believe that it’s not complete. We still have way more answers than we have
questions and I think that legally we have time to sit down as a council, as a Planning
Commission to really get those questions answered because once this opens up it’s not going to
close down and so then we’ll just be dealing with problems that we don’t have solutions for that
we could have figured out before it even started so I’m going to request that we table this and
bring it back to council after it’s been thoroughly looked at from the Planning Commission and
staff.
Mayor Laufenburger: We don’t normally act on requests. Is that what you’re leaving it at right
now?
Councilwoman Tjornhom: If we’re not sometimes during comments you’ll ask for a motion too
but I would make a motion that the City Council consider tabling this and bringing it back after
staff, Planning Commission and council have had time to analyze and assess the impacts that this
will have to our community.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay I think what I need Councilwoman Tjornhom is if you want to make
a motion make a motion. Just the action that you want. Not the supporting reasons why so.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Okay, Mr. Mayor I’d like to make a motion that the City Council
tables the rezoning of Paisley Park.
Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Knutson I have a question for you. Can you help me with something?
Roger Knutson: Certainly.
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Mayor Laufenburger: Does a motion to table require a time constraint or until a period of time?
Roger Knutson: It’s usually preferable to do it that way but not necessarily.
Mayor Laufenburger: Not required?
Roger Knutson: But I would just point out that if we take the full 120 days that would put you
rdrd
out til December 23 and if you hadn’t acted by December 23 it would be automatically
approved.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Do you want to leave your motion as it is Councilwoman
Tjornhom?
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. The motion is to table the rezoning of the, table the action to
rezone.
Councilman McDonald: Question on the motion.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay.
Councilman McDonald: The question I have on a motion you’ve put it forward so that at the
burden falls upon the City. Planning Commission, staff. Is that your real intent or is the intent
that the City would work with the applicant to come up with the proper planning? That’s what
I’m not sure about.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: I think that your wordage probably is better than mine was. Of
course I would direct staff to work with the applicant.
Councilman McDonald: Thank you.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Thank you Councilman McDonald.
Mayor Laufenburger: What I’m trying to determine is if I have a valid motion. Mr. Knutson do
I have a valid motion?
Roger Knutson: Yes.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, alright. I have a valid motion to table the rezoning. Is there a
second?
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
Councilwoman Ryan: Second.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay I have a motion and a second.
Councilwoman Ryan: Mr. Mayor may I ask?
Mayor Laufenburger: Just a moment.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay.
Mayor Laufenburger: Just a moment. Okay, now questions or discussion. Councilwoman
Ryan.
Councilwoman Ryan: My question and seconding that motion to Councilwoman Tjornhom’s
point, I think it’s imperative that the council is also involved in some of these conversations to
ask the applicant questions as well. In my review of this my biggest concern, like
Councilwoman Tjornhom’s was is that council never had an opportunity to have a work session
to discuss this application. This concept and so that concerned me. Secondly, well I’ll just leave
it at that. So is there an opportunity that council will also have time to discuss this with staff
and/or the applicant?
Mayor Laufenburger: Well we don’t know that yet because we don’t know whether or not this
motion will pass.
Councilwoman Ryan: Okay, okay.
Mayor Laufenburger: But any other questions or discussion? Mr. McDonald do you have any
comment?
Councilman McDonald: Well I’ve got comments. Always have comments. I guess the thing is,
I will speak to Ms. Tjornhom’s motion and I’ll speak to the other motion if we get to that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Only speak to the.
Councilman McDonald: I will only speak to her motion at this point.
Mayor Laufenburger: Please.
Councilman McDonald: My concern with tabling this motion at this point, I’m concerned about
the timeline and to Ms. Ryan’s point about council being involved I’m just not convinced that
120 days is sufficient time to do what I feel needs to be done on this entire motion that’s before
us so because of that I guess I cannot support your motion but I do want to at least put out there
why and the reason is I do not believe that there is sufficient time for council to be involved and
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
for everybody to do their due diligence that they need to do so I will be voting against the
motion.
Mayor Laufenburger: Any other question or comment? Mr. Campion did you want to make any
comment? Not required.
Councilman Campion: I would.
Mayor Laufenburger: Not required.
Councilman Campion: No I would count myself as a Prince fan as well and I would like to see
the museum go forward. I do though share the sentiments that it would be nice to have more
time to work through more of the details to ensure that you know as we go forward it is
something that we’re all proud of. I’ll leave my comments at that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Normally I would say what are the concerns that you have that
need to be addressed? Oh Ms. Aanenson, is there a minimum time that we must deliberate on an
application like this? Is there a minimum time required? You said the maximum is 120 days
right?
Kate Aanenson: I mean you can go through the Planning Commission once and the City Council
in one hearing. It can happen that way sure.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. What I’ve seen, first of all the fact that this is desired to be a
th
museum, this isn’t new news. I mean this didn’t occur on August, what was the date? 19?
nd
Councilman McDonald: I thought it was the 22.
nd
Mayor Laufenburger: The 22. This isn’t new news. From the day that Prince passed away
there was speculation and a conversations related to what was going to happen to Paisley Park so
I can’t agree with the notion that this is new news. Furthermore from my perspective in looking
at this the applicant, and I’m saying the applicant Bremer Trust in cooperation with Stinson
Leonard, the firm that is helping with the real estate and also the operator, they have been fully
responsive to the requests that the City has made including elements related to the traffic study.
Things like that. There is also a requirement on the part of the City, city staff to ensure that if
it’s rezoned a museum it is the city staff responsibility to ensure that the preparation of the site
meets city standards. It’s just unclear to me what additional time will give us. We know Mr.
Weinshanker has told us that he’s already throttled back the, throttled back from the maximum
tickets. He’s throttled back from parking only to incorporate buses. We already have a site
improvement plan that requires an additional traffic study. We already have a site improvement
plan that incorporates elements of the, elements of the property that will include parking
expansion. It will include moving the, moving the entrance. Excuse me the egress from the
current north entrance to 100 feet south of that so we have, while I recognize it’s less than 120
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Chanhassen City Council – October 3, 2016
days but we have a great deal of information related to what their plans are including they’re
changing their plans related to the fence which was a big issue and now they’re saying that
st
they’re going to leave the fence in place. I have concerns too. I had concerns on April 21,
would the City, would the citizens, would the city staff be prepared for the visitors that are going
to come to Chanhassen and clearly evidence shows that we as a city, citizens, city staff, et cetera
performed remarkably. There’s no question in my mind that the same guidance that the city staff
provided for all of the unexpected situations, that same guidance and experience that was in
place then remains in place today. So frankly I understand your desire to slow down but we’re
not running. I don’t believe that the operator intends to run. I believe the operator intends to
yes, the opening coincides with a family plan. Is it a family planned tribute concert is that
correct Mr. Mazural?
Pat Mazural? That’s correct Mr. Mayor.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay, so the family has planned a tribute concert and yes there will be
people coming from lots of places and yes they do want to pay tribute to Prince through a
participation and a tour of his, of his facility. If Prince were alive and there was a concert going
on those, pardon? If Prince were alive and there was a concert going on in town and he wanted
to invite people over to Paisley Park he would do that and we would allow that. So I’m, I have
yet to hear what I think is a real valid concern about what a delay will give us that moving
forward with the museum with the caveats that the city staff has put on the planned unit
development and the site improvement plan does not protect us so that’s a concern that I have.
Mr. Campion.
Councilman Campion: Mr. Mayor, so I guess if I could ask a clarifying question or you know in
the interest of potentially adding a date or you know to amend the motion. If there is a specific
issue to be resolved that would or you know set of issues to trigger it coming back to council.
Mayor Laufenburger: Well frankly I’d like to hear what issue is to be resolved if you’re offering
that Mr. Campion. What issue is to be resolved?
Councilman Campion: One issue I could consider or throw out there for discussion would be
maybe to define the throttling. To what level we would throttle the participation until the north
entrance is moved 220 feet south. You know something that’s more definite that would restrict
the traffic flow to a certain level until that infrastructure is put in place. That’s one potential.
Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. McDonald, you have a comment?
Councilman McDonald: Mr. Mayor I was going to save these for basically the motion. I have a
number of concerns and I just, you know as I said I do not believe that the current motion
addresses those. I do not think that we have any idea of what happens with the impact further
down on Audubon Road and that concerns me. I was on the council when we put in the
sidewalks and we improved roads and the neighbors came and told us about the problems that
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they were going to be having. Now we’re going to impact those more. I don’t know how much
and I haven’t heard how much. It may be nothing.
Mayor Laufenburger: Haven’t we heard?
Councilman McDonald: No. What we heard was selectively on a couple of days that I do not
think a representative of the normal flow on that road would be like and what I look at for a
normal flow is you take the time during the fall part of the year when school is in session and
you have everybody working down there, that’s going to be one number. You can take the
number in the summer which they took toward the tail end and that’s going to be another number
and that will be a lesser number just because you’ve thrown out some of the big impact that can
be had on that road so I’m not convinced we know what the impact is throughout those
neighborhoods and I think that needs to be looked at. The other thing I did not get a good
answer about the pedestrians. I really believe that the safety of how you’re going to treat those
and that falls mainly upon the applicant because it is on their property and as I said we have no
authority on their property just like they have no authority on our property which are the roads so
that needs to be addressed. You cannot just say we put out emails to the fans and they’re going
to behave. Fans do not behave as this one lady back here said. They’re going to do what they
want to do because whatever reason they put the blinders on and they’re convinced that they’re
right and they will go forward and do it. I know this because I work with people on a daily basis.
I am an attorney and I deal with people that put the blinders on and they get into a lot of trouble
so I am not convinced that you can just tell me they’re going to behave. I want to see a plan how
we’re going to do it. Then we bring up the issue as these ladies did about the fence. I had never
thought about this and I thank you for bringing it up but I think you do need to have something
for those fans that want to come up and mourn Prince’s passing. They have done that now by
putting up the signs. The artwork. Whatever. It’s individualized. That needs to be addressed. I
see nothing in the plan to address that. Granted it’s not part of anything the City would do but if
you want to be a good neighbor and Prince would have done this you would include it in your
plan. How are you going to accommodate all these people? I also believe it is way too soon
after Prince’s death to try to say we’re going to do this. This takes time and planning and I don’t
see that taking place here so that’s why I have a real problem with both the motion and the
motion that Councilwoman Tjornhom has brought up because I think people need to do their
homework. And I will say this, look I’ve been on the council for a number of years. I have been
trained as to how we do things. We take our time in doing things. I have turned down numerous
people because they wanted, trust me we’re going to do this. No. We’re not going to trust you.
We vote against it until you deliver a plan. I just spent last week telling people that came before
this council that we had done a plan and that I was convinced that plan was valid and it needed to
move forward. I feel.
Mayor Laufenburger: That was a different plan.
Councilman McDonald: That was a different plant. I’m talking about plans in general and the
way that the City handles these things. We tend to take our time and to look at things and to
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make sure it is alright. I can go back to a number of developments that have come into this town
that have failed because of lack of planning. I see no difference here except for the fact that yes,
it’s Prince. It’s Prince’s museum which I will state I am in favor of. I think that you should do
it. I just don’t think you’ve put enough thought into it yet so you’re looking for reasons why this
shouldn’t go forward. I think there are enough there to ask the question and get an answer. I’m
just not convinced you can do it in 120 days. I could be wrong and if that’s the case that’s fine
but as everyone has said council has not been involved in this and I think our tradition is council
needs to be involved. We’re the ones who ask those final questions. I agree with you mayor,
staff does a marvelous job. You know my hat’s always off to them. I’m always amazed but I do
not feel that this is a situation where we can just take what staff has given us and we go forward
with it without being able to correct it. I had asked if there were a way that we could you know
do this on a temporary basis just to find out the answers to these problems. I understand we can’t
do that so I am left with a choice of voting yes or no and you know based upon that I can’t
support these motions. Either Ms. Tjornhom’s or the one before the council but those are the
reasons why I think the rest of council is a little bit concerned about all this is the scope of this,
you’ve done a great job within the fences. No doubt about that but what about outside the
fences? I don’t think that that has been addressed the way it should and I think that’s what the
rest of council is trying to say. I could be wrong. I won’t speak for them. They can all chime in
but those are my reasons why I can’t support this.
Mayor Laufenburger: Any other comments? Councilwoman Tjornhom.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Going back to why we’re here, we’re here to rezone a property and
we are turning into a PUD and usually a PUD means that there’s give and take. The applicant
gets something unusual or something out of the ordinary and the City or the residents get
something back for that with change and I’m going to read you what supposedly the PUD, what
the residents from Chanhassen are getting in exchange for this rezoning to a museum which is a
major tourist attraction. Let’s see the PUD states provides for limitations on how the building
can be used including hours of operation, traffic flow and parking. I’m not sure that that
sentence is accurate because when it comes to hours of usage it’s kind of loosey goosey still.
You know we talked about how yeah they’re going to have hours of operation during the
weekdays and even that has been inconsistent with this hearing tonight and then we talked about
the concerts they’re going to have and the hours that that could be. How long they could be
going on. And quite frankly like you just said in General Mills they don’t even have hours
because it’s 24 hours a day so I’m not sure how limiting hours and the traffic flow obviously is
still a concern and parking is still a concern and so I just think this first statement, it doesn’t
really, it doesn’t count for a PUD for why it would be a good trade off. It preserves the existing
building. That too, that could be anything that, any business that comes into town that’s moving
into an existing building could say well great you get a PUD because of that. I don’t think that’s
a really good trade off either. It’s not necessarily something that the community, it’s going to
impact the community or make it a better place for them. Limited expansion preserves the
existing trees. Once again in our ordinances we already have rules that state how we preserve
existing trees and so once again that’s not necessarily a benefit to our residents. That’s a given.
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Creates additional jobs. 60 jobs? I mean we’ve turned down developments and applicants that
have had maybe 200 or 300 jobs coming into town because of traffic and the size of their
development coming in so once again I don’t think that is a benefit to our residents and tourism
generates and supports existing businesses. That’s something we need to talk about as a
community is do we want to be a tourist town? Yes we do have those people that are already in
Chanhassen. We have the Arboretum. They’re great neighbors. We have the Dinner Theater.
They’re great neighbors. Let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about the fact that we could be
bringing in additional 600,000 people into our town. What is that impact on our community? I
just think that all of these points for the PUD, it’s not enough. I think we need to go back as a
council, as a Planning Commission, as staff, as the applicant and work on these issues.
Mayor Laufenburger: Anybody else? We have a motion to table the rezoning.
Roger Knutson: Mayor just to be clear I assume that includes all the items on the recommended
motion. Tabling.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: Yes all those items also.
Roger Knutson: Site plan and everything else.
Mayor Laufenburger: Councilwoman Tjornhom I think we are a tourist destination already.
Councilwoman Tjornhom: I didn’t deny that.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Is there any further discussion?
Councilwoman Tjornhom moved, Councilwoman Ryan seconded that the City Council
table the rezoning of Lot 11, Block 1, Chanhassen Lakes Business Park from Industrial
Office Park (IOP) to Planned Unit Development (PUD), adoption of the attached PUD
Ordinance, and Site Improvement Performance Agreement and Findings of Fact.
Councilwoman Tjornhom, Councilwoman Ryan, and Councilman Campion voted in favor.
Councilman McDonald and Mayor Laufenburger voted in opposition. The motion carried
with a vote of 3 to 2.
Mayor Laufenburger: Mr. Knutson, does that require only a simple majority?
Roger Knutson: That’s correct Mayor.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Is there any further discussion? Mr. Knutson is there, is there any
further action that we need to take at this time?
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Roger Knutson: You can discuss how you want to proceed but it’s not necessary to do so. You
could discuss whether you want to have work sessions. Whether you want to give more
direction to staff to do certain things or set up meetings or.
Mayor Laufenburger: Well I’ll open it. Is there any further discussion that you’d like to have
regarding guidance for city staff? Mr. McDonald.
Councilman McDonald: Yes Mr. Mayor. Thank you. I would like to see a comprehensive plan.
I would like to know how you’re going to.
Mayor Laufenburger: Wait a second.
Councilman McDonald: I’m talking, okay I would like to see from the applicant a plan. A full
blown plan that addresses a lot of the issues you’ve heard today. The fence. Pedestrians. How
you’re going to handle Prince fans that you know want to come and just pay homage to the site
because I want to know what impact that’s going to have upon the City. We’ve talked about
Lake Ann. I’ve made my comments there. I’m concerned about Lake Ann during the summer
because that is the premiere spot for the City and recreation so do we need to worry about Lake
Ann as far as it’s capacity to park cars? And again I want to know what’s going to happen to the
neighborhoods to the south on Audubon. Do we need to look at something down there? Do we
need to look at lights? Stop signs. You know something down there if we’re going to impact the
residents more than what we currently do. So I think that’s the City’s part. The applicant’s part
is yeah, I’d like to know a little bit more about what you intend to do up on the site and how
you’re going to address those issues.
Mayor Laufenburger: Any other council members want to make a comment or suggestion?
Councilwoman Ryan: Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Laufenburger: Councilwoman Ryan.
Councilwoman Ryan: To echo what Councilman McDonald said, specifically I would like to see
an expansion of the traffic study area. I heard tonight reference of first phase and second phase
of the site improvements and I would like to see a plan where these site improvements can be
done prior to opening. I would like to see some of the civil plans because in some of the context,
a sidewalk couldn’t be done because we needed approval from the watershed so I’d like to have
a better understanding of what we need from the watershed to move, you know move these
specific plans that put forth today but as well as the expansion of parking lots, et cetera so I’d
like to have the civil plans to encompass more than just the sidewalk. And I think that’s it so
those are my, and then again back to the pedestrian safety plan. I’d like to see something very
specific around that. Thank you.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. Anybody else? Councilwoman Tjornhom.
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Councilwoman Tjornhom: I also would like to address, like you said the impact of having a
major tourist attraction in our town. Can our infrastructure handle it? We’ve talked about using
buses to come through and drive people back and forth. Where are those buses going to be
picking people up from? Do we have agreements with those people at the park and rides for that
type of arrangement? And also we’ve never really just discussed public safety because if you’re
going to bring that many people into town I am convinced that we will need more public safety
for our residents and that’s going to be an impact on our budget and that’s going to be an impact
on our residents and so this is not just about Paisley Park and a museum. It’s about our
community. It’s about Chanhassen and preparing for the future. I mean we always talk about
that that’s what we do. We live here today and we plan for the future and I just want to make
sure that when we are making those plans that we’re wise and we do it right the first time.
Mayor Laufenburger: Anybody else? Mr. Campion.
Councilman Campion: Mr. Mayor, so I’d second the comments from the other council members
and request that the plan that comes back you know as we look at traffic in more detail, that the
plan for installing the infrastructure you know that we have maybe a graduated plan for when the
doors open to you know what level of traffic you would have in there until the various other
milestones of the infrastructure such as moving the north entrance or adding sidewalks or you
know the lane modifications, you know just a phased plan for how it will be implemented rather
than yeah we’ll just see how it goes.
Mayor Laufenburger: Okay. You’ve, staff you’ve heard this? Okay. Is there a motion to
adjourn?
Councilman McDonald moved, Councilman Campion seconded to adjourn the meeting.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. The special
City Council meeting was adjourned at 10:45 p.m.
Submitted by Todd Gerhardt
City Manager
Prepared by Nann Opheim
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