Fox Hill Letter_10_27_22 October 28, 2022
To Members of the Chanhassen City Council,
My name is Maria Awes and my husband, Andy, and I are pleased to have our proposal for the development of
our property at 581 Fox Hill Drive before you for consideration. We first fell in love with this property a year and
a half ago and purchased it with the intention of building our dream home on the lake and offering up beautiful
spaces for other families to build their homes on as well.
The Fox Hill property is both wild, alluring and rare in an urban/suburban landscape. Representative of the “big
woods” that gave this area of Chanhassen it’s nickname, this piece of Fox Hill paradise is filled with beautiful
maple trees and other varied tree species and animals that also call this place home. They are our “neighbors” in
their own unique way.
It has always been our intention to balance our desires as homeowners to both develop the property and maintain
what is special about it. After working with the planning commission, the local watershed district and others, I
believe we have arrived at the best possible plan to do just that with our development partners, Denali Custom
Homes.
We can proudly announce that we are now able to both develop three home sites on this property and save
the majority of its trees – 58%, which is above the City’s requirement of 55% of tree canopy preservation for
residential development projects. And, we’ve dedicated a portion of land to a conservation easement.
We have come before the planning commission twice and worked extensively and effectively with the City’s team
to come up with the plan before you tonight, which we hope you approve. It has been a long road to get here –
and ironically, it was the original requirement for a road itself that was one of the biggest matters to consider.
Now, we are pleased to announce that thanks to the planning commission’s re-evaluation of that requirement
and hard work by our own dedicated team of engineers and our builder, the decision to forgo the road has allowed
us to drastically alter our original development plan in favor of saving more trees on the property than we would
have been able to save originally. We can now develop the land in the way we had always hoped; a way that both
fulfills our needs and preserves more of the beauty everyone in the neighborhood has grown to love and enjoy.
This project is recommended for approval by the City’s planning commission.
Our current plan will allow us to maintain an idyllic lot we ourselves intend to build a modest home on, and allow
two other wonderful families whom we’ve recently met to do the same. While we originally considered splitting
the lot into four parcels to make the lot split economically viable for our family, we no longer need to, and that is
no longer the plan. The original four-parcel divide was proposed due in part to the need to offset the expense of
building a road, which we are grateful is no longer a factor.
Now, as it stands, we are only asking for your gracious approval of a three lot split since the road is off the table.
This is wonderful news for us, for the City and for the neighbors, and we are eager to move forward to make new
memories in a community we’ve long been proud to call our own.
We hope you consider our proposal favorably and we look forward to your decision.
Thanks,
Maria Awes