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1992 02 05CHANHASSEN PLANNING COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING FEBRUARY 5, 1992 Chairman Emmings caiIed the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m.. MEMBERS PRESENT= Tim Erhart, Ladd Conrad, Matt Ledvina, Steve Emmings, Brian Batzii, Jeff Farmakes and Joan Ahrens STAFF PRESENT: Paui Krauss, Planning Director; 30 Ann Olsen, Senior Planner; Kate Aanenson, PIanner II; Sharmin Al-Jarl, PIanner I; and CharIe$ FoIch, City Engineer ORGANIZATIONAL ITEMS: ELECTION OF CHAIR AND VICE-CHAI.~ FOR 1992. Emmings: I'm going to make some nominations myself. Right-out of-the box I want to nominate Brian Batzli for Chair and I'.m going to nominate Joan Ahrens for Vice-Chair for the next year. Are there any other nominations for either position? How do we handle this? Do we need a second or just go ahead? Conrad: Not on a nomination. Emmings: Okay. Tim, I'm going to bring you up to speed real quick. Brian's been nominated for Chair for the coming year and Joan's been nominated for Vice Chair. The message came to us that you were not interested. Erhart: I've taken the Chairmanship of the Storm Water Utility. That's going to keep me real busy for the next year. Emmings: I think that's kind of a weak eXCUSe. Erhart: That's what Paul said too. So I would like to concentrate on that. I think it's great. Emmings: Okay, we'll close the nominations. If there are any more. Chairman Emmings nominated Brian Batzli as Chairman and Joan Ahrens as Vice-Chairman of the Planning Commission for 1992. All voted in favor'and the motion carried. PUBLIC HEARING: WETLAND ALTERATION PERMIT FOR THE REALIGNMENT OF MINNEWASHTA PARKWAY AND THE MITIGATION OF APPROXIMATELY ,76 ACRES OF WETLAND. CITY OF CHANHASSEN. ENGELHARDT AND ASSOCIATES. Public Present: NAME ADDRESS Barney Leach Jim Hoefer 3830 Red Cedar Point 7098 Red Cedar Cove Jo Ann Olsen presented the staff report on this item. Chairman Emmings-- called the public hearing to order. Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 2 Barney Leach: My name is Barney Leach. I'm at 3830 Red Cedar Point Drive. Or Road they tell me. I have a question. I had a question from Mr. Connor that lives on the corner of Red Cedar Point Road and Minnewashta Parkway. He is in Texas right now for-the winter and because of a heart operation he's in poor health but he's down there. He's called me twice. He's concerned about this holding pond that they're building across the road from his property and he says he's.paying taxes on that land and wondering if they're going to put a holding pond in there, is that on the access property or is it on his land? Olsen: Do you know which one it is Charles? It's not on the access property. Folch: Pond B is going to be awfully close to that original access... Barney Leach: If it goes in the northerly direction it's going to be in his property. His concern was if they're going to do that, he wants.it removed from the tax roll. That was all. Olsen: Yeah, we're acquiring easements. Folch: ...any areas which are constructing these facilities outside of our existing right-of-way... Barney Leach: Yeah, okay. We're going to be going down to see him and I wanted to give a report kind of to calm him down a bit because he's.kind of upset so. Folch: It'd be good for us to know an address on how to contact him. Barney Leach: Oh boy. He's in E1 Paso, Texas but I don't know. Emmings: Maybe you could ask him to contact the City for any details and if it is on his property, they may want to negotiate with him to get the easements. Barney Leach: If it's to the right as you're facing the lake, if it's to the right of that access, it's his land. Emmings: There aren't any lot lines out there that you can see so saying it's to the right probably isn't going to get us too far. Okay. Again this is a public hearing. Does anybody else have any comments on this proposal? I have a question about Pond C. Emmings: Would you come up and state your name please. Jim Hoefer: My name is Jim Hoefer, 7098 Red Cedar Cove. Where is that in relation to King's Road? Olsen: 3ust directly south. Probably about 100 feet south or so. Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 3 3im Hoefer: In that area is a, I'm not sure what it is. Some sort of electrical box. Phone connection or something. Olsen: A utility. Yeah, there's like a utility station there. 3im Hoefer: Will that have to be moved? \ Olsen: No, it will be south of that. Emmings: That's quite close to King's Road as I recall. 3im Hoefer: Thank you. Emmings: Any other public comments? Comments from neighbors? Is there a motion to close the public hearing? Batzli moved, Conrad seconded to close the public hearing. Ail voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed.' Emmings: Comments. Any comments up here? 3nan? Ahrens: I hate to go out of order here but I'd like to hear from our resident environmental guy... Emmings: Before you say anything? Ahrens: Right. Emmings: Because you might want to change what you're going to say? Ahrens: No. Because I'm interested to hear what he says... Ledvina: I did have a few questions for the staff on these wetlands. Wetland alteration. I was wondering first of all, 'when is .the construction proposed? Folch: We hope to let the contract for the pro3ect by late April-early May of this year and we'd like to complete... Try and.get all of the storm drainage improvements including the pond and the road surface, curb and gutter and the blacktop this year... It's a rather agressive construction schedule but that's what we're going to have to do. Ledvina: Will the ponds be constructed before the other areas are disturbed in terms of the road, the existing roadbed and such? How do the ponds fit into the construction schedule? Folch: The ponds will fit in and will be constructed at the same time as the storm sewer system is put in. So that once you have a collection point basically functioning... There is likely to be additional grading that will go on prior to storm sewer construction and we'll have to mitigate any potential erosion with erosion control at that point. Ledvina: This seems to be kind of a skeleton of a description of-the activities. I was wondering what the specific provisions were for the Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 4 maintenance and the cleaning of the ponds to maintain the removal efficiencies and such. Folch: At current status or current point in time we do not. have an established maintenance program or schedule if you will for maintaining the City's retention ponds. Typically what's happened in the past is once we've seen a pond or take notice that it's silted up or it's having some problems functioning properly, then we go in and we take care of that. The maintenance program is something, is one area that is going to be generated and derived out of this new surface water management program that we're currently undertaking. And that will involve not only maintaining the .. ponds on a regular basis but also frequent street sweeping and such also. Ledvina: So that's something to be developed in the future? Folch: That's correct. Ledvina: And it will be developed. Folch: Within the next 12 months. Ledvina: Okay. And then the drawings that I have didn't show erosion protection for the outlets. You do state that there's Type III erosion and I don't know specifically what that'is. Folch: There should be a detail in the, the standard detail sheets in the front of the project plans which basically shows the Type III erosion control which basically consists of your silt fence, a layer of the snow fence and then the hay bales behind that. Ledvina: Okay. And that will be used for the outlets as well? Folch: Initially until we can get the vegetation established. Ledvina: And there's no need for like a rip rap or erosion control based on the flows, etc.? Folch: Exactly. All of the outlet structures are being designed to release the water for the design storm at half a foot per second which is basically the minimum to try and prevent or mitigate any potential erosion. Ledvina: Okay, thank you. Emmings: Those are basically the questions you were-going to ask. Ahrens: That's right... I did have a couple questions on...Minnewashta Parkway storm water management project. Of the wetland alteration. What is the, that first paragraph.... Olsen: That's... Ahrens: You're going to excavate, okay. Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 5 Folch: That's actually going to be the area for the detention pond and that Pond C will be set up in such a way so that it will upon revegetating will take on wetland characteristics. Ahrens: The cattails will grow back? Folch: Exactly. $o basically what we're trying to show there is that we're encroaching on a pond about 1,400 I guess it is square feet of existing wetland but we'll be creating via the detention pond about 5,000 so there's actually a plus creation of wetland area. Ahrens: You don't have easements yet...? Folch: No, We are currently in ~he process of putting the easement documents together and I would expect cyst the next 2 to 3 weeks we would go through the process of trying to acquire the easements. Ahrens: What if you can't get them... Folch: We hope that the process will go smoothly but if it becomes difficult, we'll have to take those measures. Ahrens: You talked about doing landscaping around the pond... Folch: Basically in working with the planning department on this wetland alteration permit, they had made a rather good suggestion as to providing some sort of landscaping of vegetation plantings around these detention ponds so they don't look like these rough man made structures out here in a natural environment. And so we're going to work with them.' We don't officially have a landscape plan but we will work with them in putting in shrubs and other plantings that will help to disquise or camouflage the pond itself but we also will do it in such a way that we can maintain access to get in and clean out the pond. Ahrens: So the structures just mean the ponds? Olsen: The ponds and there are outlets but it's all going to look pretty much natural. Ahrens: I don't have anything else. Emmings: Okay, thanks Joan. Jeff. Farmakes: We had a gentleman come up here. Are there are any other property owners, the other two property owners or are there more than two that contacted you at all? Olsen: No. I had one other person who lives along the road that was just interested in what was going on but. Farmakes: Were they a property owner? I have no other questions. Batzli: Normally we do this in accordance with a staff report or plans or something. We obviously didn't get the full detail set of plans but are Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 6 there a set of plans that this will be done in accordance with? Folch: That's correct. The reason we didn't pass out a set of plans, there's about 45 sheets to the plan set but there is a copy that we have sitting out in the engineering department for anyone, residents or anyone who's interested in coming in and seeing the plans so feel free to come in' and take a look at them if you would like. Batzli: Are they dated stamped received like a normal set of plans would be? Folch: That's correct, they are. Batzli: What's the date on them? Folch: These actually, the copy that I have actually was a working copy. I gave my set out to my street superintendent to take a look at-so I don't actually have an official copy but this plan set here was prepared about 2 weeks after the first of the year. Olsen: We can get that date. Batzli: And when you say that this is going to hopefully'aggressively go through the whole year, obviously we'~e encroaching on wetlands and'where the part, the wetlands we're actually altering is fairly small but is there a particular time of year that it would be better to do some of this construction? Folch: Actually winter construction, this time of year would actually be probably the least disturbance to the wetlands. Unfortunately in'the project process here we're-not ready to let a contract at this point in time and it just wouldn't be feasible to start and do one this year. I~ also wouldn't be feasible to hold the project off or at.least that portion of the work until next winter either. 'It's something that we'll have to deal with. It's often done and as long as the work is accomplished, we're taking great care into maintaining erosion control and protection of these water bodies, it can be done. But winter time is typically the least disturbance time. Batzli: That's all I have. Emmings: Okay.. Do you have anything additional Matt? Ledvina: Yeah, I think as far as the conditions that are listed with the recommendations, I would also like to add a condition that the ponds be constructed as early as feasible in the overall scheme for the roadway' upgrading. I think if you have the ponds in place, they can function for sedimentation control as the construction is being carried out so I think that's important, if that can be phased as such. Emmings: Is that kind of a condition pose any problems? Folch: Well actually I guess I Can't say at this point in time. We are' sort of going to leave the issue open to the cpntractor to determine how he Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 7 best wants to stage and phase the construction of the project. As I mentioned before, we would construct the ponds in conjunction with the storm sewer. $o the storm sewer system would be set up and outletting directly into these water bodies without having the detention ponds in place. Having the ponds in without the storm sewer probably still isn't going, you're not going to have much benefit from that standpoint until you are able to get the boulevard and areas draining into the street into the curb and gutter and then collected by the storm sewer system into the pond. $o as soon as the storm sewer improvements are being conducted, the pond will be constructed at the same time. Ledvina: And that's the normal sequence of construction? Folch: With this type of project where basically there's no sewer and water improvements being done, the first utility work to be done is the storm sewer. Ledvina: Okay. $o that's the natural course of events anyway? Folch: But the contractor may do the road improvement in phases. He may split the whole entire road segment into two phases or three phases but as he's doing each phase the storm sewer part will be the first part of the improvement. Ahrens: May I ask one more question? Do you have a time line for getting the easements? Folch: Yeah, actually we'd like to nave the easements in place-before we let the contract. When do you think you'll get those out? Folch: Get the easements out? We should be out-over the next 2 weeks acquiring those easements. , Emmings: Ladd. Conrad: Charles, does all the water from the new street will drain into this system? Folch: That's correct. Conrad: 30 Ann, have we upheld all the guidelines and standards on this project that we'd apply to a private contractor? Olsen: Yeah, we've tried to do that. I mean we require them to do that. The areas, like Pond A and B don't have a real large area to get the creative wetland areas that we'd like to do when we have more room but they are meeting the standards of ponding prior to it entering the wetland and that's what we were really trying to achieve. Conrad: In wetland C, sometimes we uphold the DNR standards. They have 5. points in terms of. Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 8 Olsen: The Fish and Wildlife standards? Conrad: Yeah. Olsen: with it. We are doing that with that one and we do have more room to work- It has been designed for that. Conrad: It has been? Olsen: The other two, no. Conrad: Basically a net benefit to the lake. Olsen: Right. Conrad: That's all. Erhart: I don't have anything. Emmings: I don't have anything further. Batzli: I move the Planning Commission recommends approval of Wetland Alteration Permit #92-1 in accordance with the staff report dated 3anuary 29, 1992 and the plans dated received whenever they were received with the following conditions. 1, 2, and 3 as set forth in the staff report and a fourth condition to read the construction-of the ponds A thru D shall be completed as early in the construction process as is feasible to minimize erosion and shall be constructed to minimize impact on the adjacent wetland. Emmings: Is there a second? Conrad: I'll second that. Batzli moved, Conrad seconded that the Planning Commission recommend approval of Wetland Alteration permit' #92-1 in accordance with the staff report dated January 29, 1992 with the following conditions: 1. Type III erosion control shall be used around the construction area of Ponds A-D. 2. The City shall receive all permits required from the DNR and Wa%ershed District. 3. Plans be revised to incorporate landscaping around the ponds and structures. 4. The construction of the Ponds A-D shall be completed as early in the construction process as is feasible to minimize erosion and shall be constructed to minimize impact on the adjacent wetland. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously. Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 9 ZONING ORDINANCE AMENDMENT CONCERNING PUD RESIDENTIAL'STANDARDS. Emmings: This is old business. I don't know if anybody has come because they're interested in this item tonight. Is there anybody here that is interested in addressing themselves to this issue? Alright. Why don't you go ahead. Conrad: What'd you say? Emmings: Tim. Erhart: Okay. Page 2 here. Boy, I read'your Minutes. I was really glad I wasn't here last time. I'm still wondering how it was that 8rian and I were so important in this particular thing. 8atzli: I actually came at the start of the meeting and asked them to postpone it. Erhart: Oh, you did? Okay. Page 2. Is this Paul or Jo Ann? Paul. Page 2 there on item'number 4. It says the rear yard shall contain at least two over story trees. Is that consistent with our new landscape ordinance? Krauss: No, it's not. This has been going on for a good long time and things have changed in the interim but I think initially there was a decision that even though we retrenched from that position in the standard subdivisions, that it would be left this way in a PUD because the expectation was a PUD gave you higher standards of development anyway. Erhart: But to me it's, in the first place in the landscaping includes 2 front yard trees and 1 rear yard.' Is that what we ended up with? Krauss: We left it at. Olsen: 3 trees. Erhart: 3 trees. Well you know when the object here is to provide flexibility and then we come in here and detail what they've got to do, it seems to be contradictory to what we're trying to do. I just wouldn't go along with that. I also think some of the other, well. There's a few things like that where we get into a lot of detail where we're trying to. spell out exactly what's to be done and I'm not sure we're-in line with what our overall goal is. Do we have a definition statement that defines what a single family detached and a clustered, home is someplace in our ordinance book? Krauss: I don't recall off hand.- Erhart: You don't have to look it up now bug it's just a question. If we're going to put that in there, that ought to perhaps be defined. Again when we get down on page 3, I know we've talked about this one before but, that's r. ight I've got 5 minutes. There's a few things going o.n here bothering me about it. Okay, let me give you what I feel about the whole thing. I still think the residential PUD is a good idea but after reading all the Minutes and talking to some of the Council people and everything, I Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 10 think we ought to step back for a mi'nute and decide what our standard city lot size here in Chanhassen. And I see i~ your Minutes, your discussion of the Minutes Paul you make a statement that you feel that you state, that I can tell you from the metro area standpoint we've got one of the. largest lot sizes in the metro area. Did you mean our current ordinance of 15,000 square feet? Krauss: Correct, yes. Erhart: Do you really, you'll stand by what you said there? And Minnetonka is what, 20? Krauss: Minnetonka is 22. Erhart: Okay, what's Eden Prairie? Krauss: I'd have to go in and look. We gave you'a table on this about a year ago. I don't recall what it was... ' Erhart: Okay, given that you've got two things. One, it doesn't appear to me that you're going to get this through Council this way. And secondly is with the 5 years I've been on here I've heard us talk about is 15,000 the right size and I've heard a lot of people come in and say it's too small and quite frankly I've always kind of gone along with 15,000 because from a socioeconomic standpoint small seems good. But you know maybe we ought to, instead of trying to pounding on this thing, maybe we ought to go back and look at what our city lot size ought to be because I think it's time to have that discussion. Secondly, if you're going' to have a PUD that anybody's going to apply for, they're going to have to be incentivised and you're not going to get, I don't think you'~e going to get 10,000 square feet through the City Council. So I think if you're going to have a PUD, you're going to have to increase the average size of your lots to something like 18,000 or 20,000 square feet and then incentivise them with something like 12,000 to 15,000 square feet minimum. Otherwise it's not going to work... Emmings: I guess what you're doing now is sort of, this is the problem we've had all along. Both with the subdivision ordinance and with the PUD ordinance is almost every time we sit. down, someone comes up with a new idea and almost everybody changes their idea almost every time we sit down. 3ust like it's a thing that keeps slipping around on the table and we can't put a nail in it. And I don't disagree with you, it's just hard to know where to go. Erhart: Except political reality is, it'appears that the City doesn't want 10,000 square foot lots and the Planning Commission wants a PUD ordinance. The compromise is you increase the city lot size so you can still incentivise the developers. Emmings: We always get back to Brian's point. He made it kind of facetiously. In the subdivision ordinance make minimum lot size half an acre and then everybody will do a PUD. Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 11 Erhart: Now half acre is 22,000 so maybe it's 20,000 or -18,000 or something but. Emmings: Maybe you said an acre, I don't know. 8atzli: I said 20,000. Erhart: Oh, because this isn't going to fly I don't think. And yet I think it's a good idea. To make' it work we're going to have to increase the subdivision. Pardon? Ahrens: What did you think was a good idea? Erhart: A PUD. A residential PUD. I don't think we should be this specific but I think the concept's good and worthwhile. Krauss: Okay. So as far as what you think we should do as far as taking action on this so we don't just keep beating a dead horse here, what do you think needs to be done? Erhart: I think we should go back and review our subdivision ordinance and decide what the city wants. Only in terms of what our subdivision ordinance says our minimum lot size is. without that you're open. Emmings: It's not unreasonable, just scarey. Ladd. You don't want to go back to the subdivision ordinance do you? Conrad: Well I've been through this and maybe that's not fair'to say I should even reflect an opinion. Yeah, I don't want to do that and I've been to so many public hearings and maybe that's the problem but I've been to so many. We've hit lot sizes which I was always a proponent of larger lot sizes but it never flew. And at this point in time I'm-real comfortable with how Chanhassen is developing. I don't mind the 15,000. Industry says lot sizes are getting smaller. I just couldn't conceive of us going out and increasing lot sizes right now when I'm real comfortable with the 15,000. I'm real comfortable with most of the land that's being developed and I see an industry that says geez, and the public that says hey I don't know that I want larger lot sizes. .And again I say that, 'you should know that I started on the'Planning Commission one, because I Wanted to maintain some of the character that Chanhassen had and that was larger lot sizes. I like that. But I am convinced that lot sizes don't matter that much. It's zoning for the other things 'that you like. It's zoning for the trees and it's zoning for the wetlands and it's zoning for other things and it's not lot size. So I don't want to talk lot size at all in terms of going up. I think it is a dead horse and I don't want to be there. In terms of this ordinance, we're looking for flexibility in terms of a carrot. We're looking for a carrot to persuade some developer to put in a PUD and obviously the past carrots haven't worked. Therefore the best thing we can do is reduce our lot sizes. I'm not real comfortable with the way the current ordinance or the proposed ordinance is worded because it still could appear to a developer that they could come in and, well I'm still not sure I'm comfortable with the wording. I don't mind the 15,000 square foot standard. I don't mind going down to lO,O00-feet for a certain portion of the units but I don't know what that portion is. What I don't Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 12 want to do is give a developer the idea that really our standard could be 10 when it's really 15. I'm still looking for a larger-lot but I don't mind shifting in a subdivision. I don't mind shifting density to preserve something and so far I haven't seen the words yet to make me feel comfortable with that. I don't mind 10,000 but I don't want to see a development that has one large lot that has 500,000 square feet of space and then the other 99~ of 10,000 square foot, that's'not the character that we're building in Chanhassen. But I don't mind havin~ 10,000 square foot lots in a development. I'll go back to Lundgren and I've heard some negative things said about that. It still was a classy way that they put onto some small lots in a big development. It's a good, they did a good job. There were some reasons it looked good. It's still small. There's some people who will buy that and you can make lots look good and houses look good on small lots. End of sentence. End of thought I guess. I still like the concept. I don't like the wording. I'm still real concerned about the overall appearance of this PUD and I think what Paul could say is, hey. You still have control over it when it comes in and my only comment to that was yeah, but I want to paint a picture to the developer before they come in of what is acceptable to me. I don't want to send a picture off that acceptable is a whole bunch of lO,O00 and just a few of the large lots. Erhart: I have a quick question for Paul. Did we ever have, or anybody, did we ever have a minimum lot size for a subdivision of anything other than 15,000 in the city's history? Krauss: I couldn't verify it but I've heard that, in fact I think I've heard from the Mayor that at one time-it used to be something on the order of 20. I'm not sure when that was. Emmings: I don't remember that. Conrad: Ne tried a 40,000 square foot lot size. A zoning district and it just didn't fly. Emmings: Matt, I don't know if you're familiar. Ledvina: I'll pass. Emmings: This has been raging through here for literally' years. Okay. Batzli: My response to Ladd is that it's not our job to incentivise our ordinance so developers give us smaller lots to protect natural features that our ordinance should protect anyway. You can't fill in the wetlands anyway and if they can use the PUD to give us really inky dinky lots, then it's not being used correctly. If what we're going to do is have an ordinance to preserve natural features like trees and wetlands, then we should draft it that way and make sure we understand what we're getting into. That we're going to get small lots and they're going to be able to count the wetlands in the footage of their lots. And if we want 5,000 square foot lots with 6,000 feet Of wetlands, that's fine but then we should change our ordinance to show that that's what we expect and that's what we're going to get a.nd when you develop around a wetland, this is the ordinance you use. I'm not convinced, you know my original thought on PUD, Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 13 when I first came here and it still is that we're trying to get people to be creative and we don't get people who are creative. We're getting things that they should have had to give us anyway. $o we're allowing a reduced footage and I don't believe that the people moving into the community are benefitting at all and I don't believe the people who are in the community are benefitting at all because they have to preserve the wetlands and they should have to preserve the trees anyway. So I don't get it. I just don't get it. And like I said, if that's what we're going to get, then I think we should go back and revisit what the objectives are for this ordinance because what we heard from Lundgren and the other people were, this is how we're going to cluster homes and do this and keep open space. Well we're not getting any of that. We're getting wetlands. Well we-'ve got a wetlands ordinance that already protects it. What have we gotten? $o I don't buy it. You know I live in a PUD. The lot sizes are small and I think that the kinds of development that we're getting in the PUD'$ are not, you know Lundgren's come in and they've done some very nice 'ones. We've got some other PUD's in the community that aren't-as nice as the Lundgren's ones. And the people who are purchasing those on the smaller square foot lots are first time homeowners. They're not necessarily the people that are going to check with the City to see what they're getting into and I don't want to be too paternalistic but they're going in. They're buying a lot that the city has said can be undersized but we're going to keep the same setbacks and everything else and the question is, I can use my lot less than everybody else in. the city and what have I gotten? What has the city done for me? Well they protected a wetlahd that they had to protect anyway. Well that's great. It's caused problems for the city. The people moving in are unhappy .in a lot of instances. I don't think it's promoted either developments which are unique or clustered or anything. They're just smaller lots and if that's what we're going to do, then let's open our eyes and do it but let's not put in here an incentive for people, for the developers to come in and put stuff on smaller lots and we get nothing in return. And that's kind-of how I feel about this, and you already knew that. Really I'd like to see us look again and I know we've already done it but we at least need to decide as a group why we're doing this. If we're going to do it to protect natural features and allow the developers to do it that way, that's fine but let's all'acknowledge that that's why we're doing it. We're not going to ~et a cluster of 10 homes in the middle and open fields around. That's not going to happen apparently. I don't know why but we're not putting the right incentives in it to do that. If that's what we want, then we have to revisit why the Statute won't accomplish what our goal is. And so I see us as not having a focused goal of what we want. We've got real good language of intent at the start but maybe it's too broad. Maybe we want this ordinance to do everything and it can do one or two things. And then let's concentrate on those things that we really want it to do. Emmings: It will be kind of interesting when it comes to making a motion isn't it. Jeff. Farmakes: What more is there to say? I guess I'm a little surprised by this. As I read this and as it was explained to me because it is complicated. I didn't see this as a major development tool. I saw this as a development tool for a unique piece of property. A piece of property that would be difficult to develop otherwise. There seems to be some Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 14 confusion, and maybe it's from past history that I'm not familiar with.I That if you do have a developer that treats this unethically, I can see where you would deal with some of the problems that you have or some of the problems that you had in the past with undersized' lots. It would seem to me however that if we are going to do this, that there has to be a reason for the developer to do it and we're just wasting our time here. If you're going to make it 15,000 square feet and it's already 15,'000 square foot minimum, what's the reason for the developer to do it? There isn't any. If we don't want smaller lots and we don't want to compromise on the make it 12 or 13, again the comments I made before is where are these figures coming from? It's how much less than the minimum is 'now will they bite and if we can't live with 120 x 100 foot lot, well that's, we shouldn't be wasting our time with this. I feel it's unfortunate because I have seen in other parts of the country and I have seen publications and so on what I feel are interesting developments that take advantage of PUD. But as you said, there's no sense in doing it unless, we're getting something for it and the same holds true for the developer. And so what we have to figure out as you said, what are our goals here and I can't help but feel that there are going to be certain lots out there that we're going to lose out on. In particular the odd lot that's up there that we were talking about. But the undersized lots proportionately there were, I think were 3 or 4 out of the total so I don't really feel in that instance that the developer was being, trying-to put something by us.- I think that those were leftover lots that in developing they basically couldn't do anything else with and they had to try and put them in there to make their bottom line. But I still am uncomfortable with us wasting ou~ time with this thing until we have a consensus of what it is we're going to do with it. It seems the more time goes on it seems the more we are in disagreemen't on this thing. And getting the feedback from the Council and so on, there's going to have to be some discussion on this minimum lot size or otherwise I don't see any reason to continue with it. Ahrens: I don't have a lot more to say. I talked myself out at our last meeting on this but after listeoing-now to my fellow commissioners, I think the water is muddier now than it ever has been~ I still don't understand really what everybody wants, and I'm sure you don't at this point. It's getting worst than getting better. I have a problem, and I. think my position is getting muddier too...but I have a problem developing a PUD ordinance with a smaller lot size than our subdivision ordinance requires just to get people to, just to get developers to develop a PUD if what we get is not what we wanted. Not what we really wanted anyway and I agree with Brian when we developed the land in the northern part of ChanhasSen, we got some nice big ponds but that's not to the benefit of the development. That's to the benefit of the landowners who are lucky enough to own the larger lots around the pond. It wasn't'for the benefit of the smaller lots and people who live on smaller lots. I'm not sure what that gave the city and what that gave the whole development except for the people who happen to live around the pond. I don't particularly want to go back and change the minimum lot size on your subdivision ordinance. I agree that there is a problem having a 15,000 square' foot minimum in a PUD ordinance when that is the minimum lot size of our subdivision ordinance. And I realize that the trend is toward smaller lots also and I think in some instances that's good planning al~o. 8ut unless I can see that we really are going to get value in a PUD by having smaller lot sizes, I can't Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 15 go along with reducing. I'd have to go along with the alternative. You have stated here that the minimum lot size in PUD should be'15,O00 square feet which I don't think is a large lot to begin with. I don't think we're talking about huge lots here. Batzli: I think he just said the average has to be 15,000. I don't think your alternative was that it was 15',000. Krauss: Yeah. We gave you two alternatives but the third one is a 10,000 minimum. The other is a 10,000 with a 15,000 average. The third alternative, which is not spoken here is just don't do it. Don't have any residential PUD's. Except to the extent that we had one like Lundgren where the average lot size in that was 25,000 square feet and it was a rather unique circumstance. Ahrens: The Lake Lucy Road project? Emmings: Do you have any more? I think 3oan's right. It's getting muddier the longer we work on it. I agree with Ladd, I've become more and more convinced too that lot size is not, that:s not so terribly sacred to me as it once was the longer I'm here because if the project is done right, it isn't the size. of the lot. It's how the whole thing is conceived and executed and that's why I don't like this ordinance. I don't like writing down. If you're trying to maximize the potential for a developer to come in and be creative in the sense that he looks at a piece of property and says, the best way to do this piece of property is to preserve the natural topography. It's to preserve the trees. It's to preserve the wetlands and all that stuff, which they have to do anyway.it's true and then the houses should fit in this way. I' mean that's sort of, we've sort of got, at least I do, sort of got an idea that we'd like developers to do that. Sort of take the land as a given and figure out how it could be developed instead of just coming in and making it flat and starting over. And I don't know if that will ever happen but Brian might have a point there that he made tonight that if. Batzli: Might. Emmings: Well yeah. It's unlikely but it's possible. That if our-other ordinances were strong enough, and maybe some ordinances we don~t even have yet were put into place to regulate all the things we care about, maybe we don't need a PUD ordinance. Maybe that makes every subdivision a PUD. I don't know. That might be a whole other way of attacking the problem that I don't think we've ever talked about. Erhart: Excuse me but i heard you and Brian both say that there's an ordinance that protects trees and I don't think that's quite exactly accurate. Emmings: Yeah we've been talking about it. I don't know what's in place. Erhart: We have an ordinance that disallows 'clear cutting. We don't'have an ordinance that says you have a stand of mature trees and I can 'save a whole lot more by having large lots in those mature trees as compared to Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 16 just having a bunch of 15,000 square foot lots'in those mature trees. In fact I think Brian that's not entirely true that. Batzli: Our matur'e tree overlay map which will probably be out in the near future would help. Erhart: It would help but you can't project, you will never arbitrarily write an ordinance that says you can't cut down a tree where you're going to put a house and a street. Batzli: True. Erhart: You're not going to see that so when you 'have 15,000 square foot lots and streets to service them, you're going to lose x amount of trees where if you could raise the lot size in that area, you could save a significant amount of those trees. I still don't understand why if we are properly incentivized, why you can't take and maintain gross density and allow, incentivize the developer to give the public or the people in that subdivision, that public essentially a public ground and take the ground that he is going to use and make the average lot size smaller. I just don't understand why that won't work and essentially Brian you keep saying it won't work and I don't understand that. Emmings: Alright. We're going to get into a discussion that's going to go on for 7 hours again here tonight and that's not going to happen because this is my last act .as Chairman. I'm not going to let it happen. But I think, I don't care if the lots are small..but I care if there's a whole bunch of small lots or if they don't fit. Somehow it doesn't fit, whateve~ that means but I think the way you do that, instead of talking about lot size is you talk about what you're looking for and you tell them they're not going to be able to go under our traditional gross density. Whatever area you're in, so you set the density and then tell them, this' is the upper limit you've got. Show us what you want to do and I think that we've got enough power, because they have to replat the property, or because they have to rezone the property to PUD, I'm convinced in my own mind that we've, you know we're not in a situation where if they come in and meet our plan, we have to approve it. Because we have to-rezone, we can say no and feel like we're in pretty solid ground and that way I think we get to help the developer in a way. Tailor the property and if you set the maximum density at what we've traditionally done at 1.8 or whatever number we pick, or whatever number's in our comprehensive plan, if'they want to bring in small lots, big lots, clustered lots, whatever, but make sure that maybe we spend more time in the ordinance talking about the kinds of things we're interested in seeing them do in a general sense and not talk about lot . sizes at all. Lot sizes has gotten to be kind of a sacred cow and I don't know why it is. That's my view, and we're not going to .get any motion of here tonight. There's no way. We're all over the map. Batzli: I'd support you if you put a guideline minimum lot size in there. Ahrens: I think the reason it's become a sacred cow is people feel that's the way to preserve the things they want to see in a development. -That's why lot.sizes, trees and open space. Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 17 Emmings: But if you don't exceed the density that we've traditionally had, how can you? If the project doesn't exceed that maximum density,, how can you get in trouble? I think that's protects us. Erhart: Really you could take this whole PUD thing and make it one paragraph by saying, the City is open to. consider anything you've got. We'll look at it but keep in mind we don't have to give you a thing. Emmings: Huh? Erhart: The whole PUD could be put in one simple'sentence; We'll look at anything and we don't have to approve it. We encourage you to bring in and let us look at it really. Emmings: No. I think you can say a lot more than that Tim. I think you could say we're interested in preserving the topography. We're interested in roads that don't go straight and that follow the natural contour of the land. We're interested in wetlands and ponds and trees. There's a whole lot of things that I think you could say that would give them some direction. Erhart: But we certainly don't have to get into ali these details that- we've now got in there. Emmings: I think the fewer details you've got the better chance you have of somebody actually using it. Because this thing sounds just like our subdivision ordinance. Suet another version of the subdivision ordinance to me. Well, I don't even know. I think this should be turned over to the new Chairman. I have no idea where we should go with this but we clearly are all over. Krauss: You know, I'm not opposed. It gets a little frustrating trying to come up with ideas when you're not sure which way to go. I think there's enough merit in this that we can do something with it that I'm willing to keep working at it. One thing, in the interest of saving time tonight so we can get onto the other item, you may want to do. You may find it interesting. We've got one developer right now who's already prepared a couple different site plans for a piece of. land that you're familiar with. One is based on his ability to put some 10,000 square foot lots in an open soybean field but go with 20,000 and 25,000 square foot lots on a wooded hillside and I think it pretty clearly demonstrates some of the merits of being able to cluster. He's offered to come down here and show .you the stuff or I can show you the stuff if that will help put it into a context. Alternatively, or concurrently, if there's a coupl~ three that want to sit down one afternoon or whatever. One morning-and, knock something out, we'd be happy to do that too. Emmings: The trouble with, a small group isn't a bad idea. The 'trouble with a small group is, there's a lot of people up here with, everybody seems to have kind of a strong opinion about where they want to see this go and I don't see where the compromise is. Usually you can kind of see a path through the middle of the mess but I don't, know if I can see it here. Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 18 Batzli: Have we been given guidance by the City Council that they want a minimum square footage in there and we can use that? Krauss: Well and maybe you do want to send this up and get their opinion. I know that the Mayor and Councilman Wing have clearly spoken to me in my office indicating that they're both opposed to lowering, lot sizes. Emmings: Well I wonder if the Minutes, with the statements that we al-1 made tonight, at least everybody's kind of said what their position is, if maybe the City Council should take a look at that' and give us some direction. Conrad: We don't have any good rationale to send it up to them. Erhart: But they can give us some direction. Whether we should even pursue it. Maybe there's no interest in it. Ahrens: ...I think they should give us direction. Emmings: See one approach is minimum lot size it seems like. One approach is average lot size and one approach would be overall density. Farmakes: Doesn't it come down to whether the'merits of the PUD are valid. Whether or not they believe that they're valid. If they don't, where they're going to shift off the minimum square footage. Emmings: Well yeah. If you don't believe in PUD's, then you just 'stick with your subdivision ordinance. Farmakes: That seems to be the difference between the 15,000 and the 10,000. Somewhere within there lies the argument. Batzli: But as Tim said, if we can in fact save more trees and do some things that aren't in our subdivision, is it worth going.to the smaller square footage to incentivize the developers to do it that way? That's the issue. At what point. I mean it seems like we started this whole thing with lowering lot size to give a further incentive to the developer to do it this way. Apparently we crossed the threshhold of %oo much incentive and too small lots. Somewhere I suppose there's a compromise of somebody would actually look at it and want to do it but we don't think the lot size is too small. Conrad: Well our current ordinance allows.the-developer to go down to what, 127 Krauss: Well, you eliminated that ordinance last summer. Conrad: Is that gone? Emmings: Yeah, the 12 is gone. conrad: Did we ever look at other, you here we are looking at a PUD ordinance as if we're the first community that's thought of it. Did we look at others Paul? Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 19 Krauss: I can't recall if we brought it to you. We' have a bunch. I could certainly do that. Batzli: We looked at somebody's. We looked at at least one. Conrad: I guess I keep going back. We're struggling to find some standard, some direction and we don't have any. What Steve has said about gross density, I brought up several times but we:ye never gone down that road. For some reason we haven't gone down that road and I don't know why it is because that seems logical to me. We haven't explored it. We're sticking with hard numbers on lot sizes but maybe there's a couple things that we can do and I'll just suggest them. I still am interested in good PUD ordinances if somebody says they're-good. The other thing is I think, we probably should sit down and say, like somebody brought up .and maybe it's Brian, of what are our standards? What are we looking for. What are we trying to get out of this? Going back to Tim, we"re trying to preserve open spaces but when we get the open spaces, who's taking care of the open spaces? Yeah. Who gets them and'so philosophically we have 'some good ideas but we're not taking it anyplace. Maybe that's the case where we sit down. I'm still uncomfortable sending it up to the City Council because we don't have any direction. Emmings: The only thing there Ladd is, at .least 2 people here mentioned that they've been talking to City Council members and Paul did too and they obviously have some feelings about it already and maybe we ought to know what they are. I don't know if, you know it may or may not affect what we send up to them but maybe if there is a consensus of opinion there already, maybe we ought to at least take it into account· Ahrens: But maybe..· Conrad: See, that's my biggest fear. If you don't know what a good PUD looks like, you sure can kill it real easily. Ahrens: I don't think we can write an ordinance until we know what we're expecting... Conrad: Paul just wants the flexibility to negotiate. Emmings: No, I think that's what we owe him isn't it? Isn't it really. Conrad: Then you can take in particular situations. You can give the long vistas. You know, how do you Quantify long vistas and things like that. Batzli: If that is our goal, and I would subscribe to that goal, then your idea of net density is perfect. To do it that way. If all you want is flexibility. Ahrens: The project.·· Batzli: That's right. And then it's all up to these guys. Ahrens: Right. Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 20 Conrad: Chairman, what do you want to do? Emmings: I don't know where it should go. I really don't. Maybe the thing to do is at our next meeting just take it back down to ground zero and talk about whether we want a PUD ordinance and what the goals of it ought to be. And then talk about, once we get a list, if we can at least agree on that much, maybe between now and then think about the alternatives. Whether we want to go with that minimum lot s.ize,.average lot size or just density. And also talk a lot about the idea of just having sort of Brian's notion of having all of our other ordinances, be happy enough with all of our other ordinances so we don't really care. However they develop the property, they're, going 'to have to preserve those things which we're trying to encourage them to protect in this PUD ordinance because that seems to me to be the other approach and then just forget about a PUD. Or have it there as an alternative. Conrad: Then you get into standards. You get into stuff that, 2 trees', trees, 80 feet tall. Emmings: No. I think we've got to ask if we want to do that at all. I sure don't. I never like writing ordinances that way but I don't mind in the subdivision but I don't like it here. So.why don't we throw this one away and start over. Krauss: Fine with me. Batzli: Paul, in the meantime if somebody comes in with a RSF kind of a PUD, what do we do with it? Emmings: We approved one without having an ordinance already. Krauss: But that didn't involve minimum lot sizes which that is the issue. I've been telling developers-that they're welcome to come bring a concept before you but I didn't see a lot of hope in it. Emmings: Let them read the Minutes of this meeting and they'll just go away. Erhart: Have you would discarded the concept of forming a small subcommittee to work with staff on the new basis or do you just want to have them work on it? Emmings: Well what do people want? I think we ought to try and Idevelop a list of what we want here. Conrad: I'd like to see that and I'd also like to see Paul or Jo Ann talk to the American Planning Association or whatever and get what they' perceive to be model PUD ordinances. Krauss: We've got this in-house. Emmings: Or the University of Minnesota might have something to offer, now that they've heard the discussion. Planning Commission Meeting February 5, i992 - Page 2l APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Chairman Emmings noted the Minutes of the Planning Commission meeting dated January 15, 1992 as presented. CITY COUNCIL UPDATE: Emmings: We've got the report from the Director and let's hold onto that. Paul, is there anything in there that you want to talk to us about? Otherwise we'll just assume everybody's read it. Unless anybody has any questions. Krauss: No. I think it's all self explanatory. Ahrens: Is there a judgment yet on Moon Valley? Krauss: No. Emmings: What are you waiting for? Krauss: We spoke to Roger today and we understand the Judge' ceases to get a salary if he goes longer than 3 months on giving us a ruling. Emmings: There was a Judge down...who used to turn himself in because he frequently took more than 3 months to get it. He turned himself in and have his salary cut off until.he got it right. Quite a guy. . HIGHWAY 5 CORRIDOR STUDY UPDATE - DISCUSSION AND NEW DIREC!!ON, Krauss: Mr. Chairman, just to give a little bit o~ background and then I'll turn the meeting over to Bill Morrish. I think it's useful to go over how we got into this very briefly. This thing grew out of the Comprehensive Plan study and issues along TH 5 and TH 5 study area, specifically led to an agreement between yourselves and City Council that you'd do some sort of a study on that study area to define those land uses. We have representatives here tonight from the Mills Fleet Farm that's in that study area and I think most of you are familiar with that. As the summer progressed, largely at the instigation of a concerned Councilmember, we began to look at some of the bigger issues with TH 5 itself beyond that immediate study area. And wound up establishing a relationship with the University of Minnesota, Bill Morrish, Lance Neckar and their staff to bring a little bit of creativity to looking at what could be done. The scope of their work changed pretty dramatically from when we first brought them on but the Council established a, I don't know what you'd call it. Sort of working group. It's an unofficial working group that included a couple members of the Planning Commission, City Council and HRA to work and take a look at this thing. Now all this work is a conceptual study. There's never been any public hearings and there never was an intent to be at this point. This was sort of get our act.together. Get our minds working. See the possibility of'the thing and it's basically been brought to fruition to the point where you now need to decide if your desire to proceed with something more formalized or if you've got enough out of it or whatever you want to do. In my memo I point out a lot of things that we've done over the last few years. I think you've got a track record to be proud of. All of the things that have changed. Ali the programs that have been initiated. All the ordinances that have been changed...and the HRA's . Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 22 been active too working on TH 5 improvements. So there's a lot that's been happening. I think that there's a lot of merit to doing a formal corridor study. There's a lot to be gained out of it. One of the most important things is that you get a common vision of what you'd like to see out there. We've got a tremendous amount of development pressure out there. Last meeting I stuck a map in your packet indicating the properties that have either petitioned for utilities, have come in for development.applications or have talked to us and I haven't added it up but it's about 600 or 700 acres, mostly on the corridor. At this point I can tell people, developers that our expectations for what' happens in the corridor are higher than they were 6 months or a year ago but I can't really tell them exactly what they are. I have some idea but it's kind of tough to know exactly. $o hopefully when you listen to Bill tonight you'll get some feel for what's been done to date and through Sill's comments and from some of the' stuff in my memo, you'll get some feel for what could be accomplished. You know, it's really going to be a judgment call on your part, on the City Council's Dart as to whether or not there's a desire'to, devote the time and the resources to do it. And it's a considerable effort. Most o.f you have just come off doing a comprehensive plan. It's that sort of an effort. I mean it involves properties. It involves public hearings. It involves all the rest. We stand ready to do' that if there's guidance to do that. But again, I'd like you to review what Bill has and make your own judgments. And with that I'd like to pass the meeting over to Bill Morrish. Bill Morrish: Mr. Chairman and members of the Planning'Commission-. It's an honor to be here this evening in Chanhassen to present to you what we've been playing, around with for the last couple months with members of the Commission, members of the Council and Paul's staff. As Paul said, this has been a collaborative effort between the City of Chanhassen and the Urban Design Center at the University of Minnesota. In our interest to try to really get at the heart of principles for making a community-and discussions we've had about planning and development in reference also to this. What are the features that you hold important in your community that you want to carry through from one generation to the next and. by that continuity as things have changed, as cycled up and down.... ~4hat are those things, the continuity that somehow people' can count on. Our interest in the Urban Design Center is of course the physical environment. How can the physical environment work with the .economic development issues and the social agenda in a collaborative and equal way to make a framework for development. What we did, and it's very quickly up here in this overlay, is we didn't produce a project or master plan to be voted on but we held a class. A classroom course but it was hard to know who was the teacher and who was the student. The whole idea was to do a demonstration drive of the corridor before you figure out whether you'd like to even buy the car and it's much cheaper to do it on paper than do it in concrete; So we started out with certain suppositions to investigate this cdrridor area with some known facts. One, the comprehensive 'plan which we feel is fine. It's good structure to begin with. It organizes the basic land use but we need to begin to start looking at the physical structure itself and that is what you're now doing in your GIS. Your Graphic Information System where you're beginning to identify those areas of wetlands and topography and we're very interested in that because a lot of what's to be defined in there to help you define what you think will make good spaces. Not onlY' define where wetlands are but those sensitive things or the scientific part of the Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 23 community. But also the spacial or'ganization'as part of the community. GIS can be very helpful in providing that framework for providing'which wetlands you want as part of your civic space and which wetlands do you want as part of your private space. The other factors of course is this discussion about we have this rural character 'out here and we want to maintain it, which is always difficult as you grow. And what is that? How do you maintain that as you actually become more urbanized? You become less of an agricultural landscape and more of .an urbanized rural character. We've heard that word a lot. We're a rural community. We're a country town. Those words are nice and hopefully they mean more than just a sign as you enter into the city. The other one has to do of course with the upgrading of TH 5. Traveling in and out...sections you can see the sort of three versions of it. Way out of a rural road into a medium size rural road and then back here an urban finger extending out from the metropolitan area and making this way much more urbanized. What is the character of the road and what can, maybe that's a wrong analogy but it might be appropriate.., and how can you react to what is being constructed constructively. How can you mitigate the negatives in TH 5 and enhance the positive aspects of that road? $o what we did was, oh? And also development pressures. Not pressures but actually the issues of how to develop the land itself and what kind of uses, what kind of principles can we derive in looking at some of those parcels. How can we make better parcels out of these sites. How do you make better sites, excuse me, out of these parcels. By organizing specific landscape in order to make much -better private sector development. And the 1995 study area represents one of those opportunities and plus all the other open parcels along the way. What we did in the process was to begin to look at the physical landscape and technology is at it's best tonight so we-sent a student up in a helicopter to take photographs at about 800 feet which is about the angle of some of these photographs in here. To begin to see it's a really great height to see not only the geography of the open plain'of the community but some sense of the spaces that define the structure of your community. Those areas between the hedgerows, the large vegetational-stands, the wetlands and so forth. You can really begin to see what you're doing and what you're...and there's a great slide in there which shows downtown Chanhassen looking westward and there are things that you're doing. There's the older part of town and the greater.., and mature Stand of trees. Everybody says this is great. .We want more of this. You've had your downtown area and your main street which you've been working on the planting and it'just sort of says you know, if you just take that street and make main street going, you keep-making much more of the civic structure and community structure and there's a whole set of questions of how do you continue on what you've been doing correctly farther out into this landscape. Other aerials show that you really do change in almost geographic,...from one around the old part of town to sort of middle area and all the way out to Minnewashta. There are sort of 2 or 3 climatic zones if you want to begin to look at that. And what we did was to begin to characterize those things. One is to locate you in the metropolitan area as between two dynamic landscapes. The.lake and Minnesota River. From the north to the south. The metropolitan area on the east side and' the rural country lies out to the west and you're exactly.right there and you can see why developers are really interested in land in this way. You have TH 41 which is great for a backbone between the lake and Minnesota " River and you have the Bluff Creek and other creeks. You're the headlands Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 24 for several streams. Three or four watersheds which extend and'-radiate from that area up in and around where the red line which is TH 5. Very active, geomorphic area. The topography, water, roads, people. They're very sort of important center out in the southwest, western sector of an interchange between urbanism and natural systems. And of course it's the backbone for your community. A reason to live here. The corridor, we also said the corridor is more than just the right-of-way of the road as MnDot might see it. We brought to the task force other images of exaggerating the topography. That you really go from a highland here to a much more rolling landscape out into here with different forms of vegetational stands. The lake itself, Lake Ann. He also talked about on the bus ride that we took last Sune that some of these almost operated as landmarks. The Mayor pointed out the oak tree on the hill over here as kind of an orienting landmark and we talked about that some of these vegetational lines that you see in the distance are like skylines. They orient you and you say oh, I'm in the middle of Chanhassen because I'm enclosed by this stand of trees. As those things disappear, that sense 'of e~closure, that sense of community becomes a problem. $o we went through a whole series of' different physical elements from the natural to the built such-as the road systems and how important those things are and a whole discussion begins to talk about are these roads going to unify or are they going to cut you up. Are they going to divide you? Or are you going to upgrade all the roads to such a point where you become segmented into corridors or can you define the unifying element that's how you get the unification. It's the statement that came out of that first work session, how do you connect community across a road? Very important topic whether you're in the city or you're in the suburbs. Natural systems of course, Biuff Creek is a major player. The wetlands along it and a composite with the-park system is very important backbone structure. You know where it is.- You know what it is. Defining how you're going to use it as a community space and how much access you're going to give it to. Private. It's a very important piece when you start looking at your whole city and maybe have in it some of the answers offered in your PUD discussions that everybody seems'to be involved in tonight~ That's one way you may begin to look at the principie. Urban design principle for the community that...system as a primary system as paying very special attention to that and we get very concerned if you don't pay special attention to it. Another major accent of course is the Arboretum which is at one time a very distant and remote piece of the community. Of the metropolitan area. Now becoming part of a much more urbanized area. An almost central focus point to Chaska, Victoria, Chanhassen, Exceisio~ and how.does the concept of what's embodied in the Arboretum, kind of a collection and manifestation of the character of Minnesota and this side of the state. How some of the notions here mayb be carried out in a way in which Chanhassen would be common known for it's certain kind of Iandscape or certain kind of environment that comes with urbanization. That urbanization brings certain benefits which is an extension of this notion of iiving in the landscape. Not a loss of that character but in addition to that character. And cities across the United States have to solve this problem have turned very locally to what they have. A great example to this of course are the chain of lakes · in Minneapolis and the 1880's when'they're trying to figure out what to do with their subdivisions on the outer edge of'town. Imagine that. That was the third tier somewhere around Lake Calhoun. They began to talk about what they had here. They had a bog, a wetland. They had mosquitoes and a Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 25 drainage problem. And they began to work with that and say well gee, maybe we can get the water out of here. Get the mosquitoes out and also maybe make a backbone for development and you can see how successful that has been. And cities at that time, Boston, Kansas City, those kinds of cities made that decision at that point. And you are at that point with pieces like Bluff Creek. You're also at' that point with TH 5. And though a lot of it, although not all of it, has been engineered and for one time we begin to even look and question at that and should we be looking at other alignments and so forth and we evaluated pretty much that this right-of- way's in place and this right-of-way really isn't too far off where it should be actually. Experimenting sort of wildly with bending and so forth, it actually is in the right place... But as the result of that first workshop which we had where we talked a lot about this and talked about these photographs which the members of the committee took with box cameras. You can see everybody's view of the world here. But beginning to look at this environment that hasn't in some respects been in'the main view of the community. Main view of the community has been sort of in this area and now the focus of the community is starting to move westward. What is it going to see? What is it going to be? It's somewhat like this area but it is a little bit different. Different kinds of growth. Meeting different markets as we go into the future. So out of that came the notion that out of the discussion that there seemed to be in Chanhassen and the environment issue moved westward. These rooms left over from the agricultural working of the landscape and those remnents of the vegetational zones, that there's some idea of oh, you drive through a room. There's the room of Lake Ann. There's a room at the intersection of TH 5 and TH 41. You can almost feel that you"ye arrived somewhere coming from the west. And that there's also this connectivity question that we see in Bluff Creek as a drainageway kind of comes through up. Touches the road and then 3ust goes off. You can pass through it and you can kind of see why past Bluff Creek and now I'm going to go past Lake Ann.- $o the connection is made to the vegetation and occasionally you'll see a hardy citizen trying to make it across TH 5. $o there's community on one side and community on the other and in your land use plan you're also proposing to put schools on one side and new neighborhoods on-one Side. $o as'you begin to look further into your land uses by.the compre, hensive plan, you're starting to realize that there's a community that should be integrated around TH 5 and through TH 5 and not separating. You also have the issue of the highland and the lowland. The fact that there's hills up here and ability to see across the highway on the north side and on the south side, you have the land falling away and vistas looking out towards the Minnesota River. But very simply we've called it the Fridley effect but I've been working with Fridley to overcome the Fridley effect and that is a pretty typical drawi[]g of what happens when you put a right-of-way in.-An expanded road and everything follows suit. You get a frontage, road. You get front parking. The position of the building and then you mitigate, mitigate, mitigate until you get to the neighborhood. Usually a fence. And you may perceptually, the appearance of that road right-of-way much wider than it actually is. $o if you go through Fridle¥ and say boy, .that road is really, really wide. We took everybody out with these box cameras and said take pictures of the right-of-way. They took. it out of the front of their cars and I said, now measure the width, the actual road right-of- way and it's only this big. But the perceptual width of the right-of-way, the annoyance which comes with the confusion, the sense of what happens Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 26 when it'~ urbanized over a long period of time becomes 'ever, ever wider. More communities now are coming back and responding to this, especially as they move out of the lower price and first step development. Beginning to push back into this. Now one of the things that's unique about the western area is the fact of these rooms and I sort.of hinted at the fact that there's already in the structure, you don't have to go out and row it. A community of open parcels and wetlands and trees which are part of your land use plan so it's not like I have to go out and make these things up~. They exist. The possibility of keeping that, you can't change the road and you're not really changing the development as much but one important thing that you're doing, which we'll talk to you in this first drawing, is you don't make frontage roads; .You make city streets. And-that these road which carry traffic and service this area can be defined not.as a frontage road which is usually a very sort of non-descript kind of road. You actually plant it like you've been doing in your main street for several reasons. One to move water along off that road sideways into your water system. Move it away and begin to organize your detention ponding along the TH 5 which you're going to have some because you have all this upland water that has to get through the road somewhere. But' also begin'to work on your development. We just looked at a deveiopment parcel the other'day. What was the property? Krauss: It's the Ryan property. Bill Morrish: And the whole organization of development so that a person who builds a corporate headquarters has a premiere opening facade and you go by and you go ah ha, IBM. Ah ha, General Mills.- It's framed by the landscape. Positioned. Parking to the rear but actually to the front because this is a major street in the middle of the city. and 'you begin to create an aesthetic and a presence of the building and the developers within the landscape rather than just to confuse you no signs and parking lots and frontage roads that look like this. Well that's a very utopian dream. That is kind of principle to achieve and the question is how. close can you get to entering paradise. So what we did was to play the game and see if we could do that and what we did was to take the frontage road on the north side first and to take actually .a very severe and tight alignment t'o TH 5 and begin to start figuring out how to construct a road which is really extending main street which became, known in the group as Chanhassen Boulevard. So as you came down from a new neighborhood in here, you got on this road, you would know'that you're really part of downtown. Which is an important thing for downtown as the city begins to urbanize. A lot of cities as they urbanize sort of forget to connect the roads back to downtown and they keep wanting to know why people never' go to downtown. We're working with the city of Rosemount, Minnesota. We found out all the subdivisions roads don't lead to downtown. They all led to Apple Valley. So no one was keeping track of the subdivision roads because they were going to the county roads. Well, they were heading to that K-Mart. And it's difficult to keep track of ail of these so one of the ways to do it is to actually sort of make this drawing to sort of remind you and we were talking about again the Ryan property again the other day and just the principle of looking at this site and it's simpleness was able to come up with a discussion about how to look at that property. I-think actually as we began to work it, it became a better developable property because the building's have more of a presence to the street themselves and not being Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 27 cut off by TH 5 by a frontage road. Actually the frontage road serves the property better back in here then around in front. So we moved ourselves along this way and looked at one'alternative for the 1995 study area. We even played with the Fleet Farm, which we'll come back to in a minute but with the notion of the road being something. Here it is. 'It loops into the wetland. Here it comes along and connects into Lake Ann. We also looked at the other frontage road and began to look at how it becomes in talking with Peter Olin and the Arboretum, the possibility of even moving the entrance from here down to here and this frontage road now becomes Arboretum Blvd., which is actually the old name of State Highway 5. So what you have here is a great round for people in'the community to circulate in the community and not to be caught up into the State Highway. You actually, on Arboretum Blvd. you go somewhere. On Chanhassen Blvd. you go somewhere and if someone has a project here, you know 1555 Arboretum Blvd. and you know 1227 Chanhassen Blvd. puts you in the context of the community. You can sell it. You can market it. It gives you a presence. It also gives you a great race track if you want to have a bicycle race out here. And it can also form a backbone fo~ pedestrian network where people can begin to move laterally across your community this way picking up wetlands. We also looked at a couple other roads which might be developed as kind of parkways as a development along your wetlands and your drainage areas in here. There's a couple of other kinds of roads we begin to look at but that forms the backbone. It also can form the backbone for a park ride system that you have, proposed park ride system here but also the- possibility down in this area next to the school. The other park ride system which is sort of picking up this market area here and bringing it, it might be even a loop for people working here and living there. They can just take it down and come to the Rosemount Compa'ny. And'it's.very interesting the way you have organized your industry down here and the way people could actually not have to drive to work. Live here because they can work here, and I understand you do have a high population that do do that and here is a structure of a system that actually sets that system up. We then talked about the notion of'making roads which by using placement of buildings, site plan concepts, the preservation of stands of. vegetation which most of them exist in wetland right-of-ways and actual planting and landscape architecture of those detention.ponds, the shaping and sculpting is what their pond see, sort of shaping them to make it give an aesthetic. Taking those pieces and instruments, you can begin to start making spaces so as you're traveling along TH 5, development is sitting in sort of a room. Space that you feel or district that you're passing through. Then you go through a narrowing where Bluff Creek goes through, or underneath. And then you come into another place and you don't feel like you're just going through sort of one relentless flow of development.- And actually you've done a lot of them downtown. This just sort of shows you extending downtown and extending it out here. These buildings are already positioned and the whole idea of keeping this building back you're going to need a detention pond there anyway. And giving this as kind of a premiere corner, you can make a kind of gateway intersection here where coming out underneath the underpass here of the ~ailroad, one could see the stand of trees. This big detention pond which is also to be shared by housing. Once it begins to kind of make a giant environmental intersection. You already have the components down here with the Rosemount Industry. This pond. Their pond over here and I think with experimentation with horticulturists and other landscape architects and even artists now have become very Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 28 interested in the artistic merits of plant materials you can create in this detention pond structure. A very significant landmark that might come up every spring and fall that people would like to pass through. And we went all the way through to extending Lake Ann and then all the way up down to the intersection t~ere of Highway 5 and 41. So that gives you a notion that once you're passing through this space, just using in our sort of first pass over, the structure that you have already. What becomes very interesting is what the developer can add to that structure in the way they landscape. The way they do development. The way they. position the .. building to actually build upon that and make them much a stronger presence in the landscape than actually having a large sign. And in looking at the evolution of development in California, which I have over some 20 years, the sophistication of thinking about using the borrowing of the landscaping as they say because that you can't buy it all. It's so.expensive. How can you sort of leverage all this landscape that's be.hind you to be yours. Positioning of the building in contras~ to a background landscape is something to become very, very interesting and the building and the landscaping becomes the signature and it's less reliant upon the signs. Also people like to pay more sitting in the landscape' having coffee than sitting under signs. You've got to figure out someway to sell expensive coffee. The other backbone which we've been talking about is this wetlands culture which again is one of the major, is probably the major'building block of your community and how do you manage that. How do you develop that becomes a very major issue and not only in the .existing structure but even how it's done by development. How this water moved across the " development. How can it be seen in the structure of the development as it feeds into the fingers of Bluff Creek and actually one could sort of feel the structure of water moving across the landscape in all development as a way that unifies a city. And that one important connection in crossing of .course is Bluff Creek. It's one of the deepest ravines. It is one of the most mature ones. It is also perfectly located against the school. Next to the school with the residential area and the whole development of probably if you're going to make one underpass here that people might go under, this might be it because there's enough depth and height to not see all the way through and have the vegetation go through. We're not talking about height here. We're talking about something.that is more like this bridge down here which is on River Parkway. We are looking at a series of bridges. These are also some pedestrian bridges because one of the issues is, and I know you've talked about it here, is this pedest'rian bridge possibility up here so this neighborhood can get up to this open space and · schools and so forth. But these kinds of things and earmarking those now and identifying those now and developing these things tend, in the right place, you may only have to do one but done in the right.place such as Bluff Creek can make that community connection and the whole community can get underneath. Probably the best example in Minneapolis that I-can think of right now is Minnehaha, the way it goes underneath 35W. It's really the only major pedestrian break in the whole length of 35W and you slip underneath it without really worrying about crossing 35W- I'm not pushing public art. That's just a very successful pedestrian bridge. But the water system, the vegetation system, working with the roads and the rooms begins to sort of create this structure of this hypothetical land that is here before you in various different compounds. I've just gone very quickly over this and I thought what we could do is through questions begin to come back to more details because of the lateness of the evening. That's Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 29 what we've done. We will be packaging this up into a little small report in about 2 weeks and we.will get you some copies of it so you can see a lot of the more thought that we have in it. Several of the recommendations we made and begin to already talk to Don and Dave Hartley is this question of what kind of information and how you're going to deliver the information in your GIS to help you make decisions about site plans. .That's one thing that I think would be very, very interesting. On what kind of data you collect on that. The other one is' the discussion .of the'bridges at Bluff Creek. Who pays for it. I've just received actually this weekend the new Highway Surface Transportation Bill and I've had someone do some research back in Washington in Moyahan's office and I have some work on that but actually compounded of it is that 10~ off the top now in the. new Federal Highway Bill is for highway enhancement. No longer a mitigation question ' anymore and right at the top is pedestrianization. Right next to it is wetlands, environment and it's not just one of, you know we'll kind of stay away from environment. They're actually talking about something more like this and what's very interesting is that I think that communities, a very important piece of the legislation is that it's up to the language of the MPO, the Metropolitan Planning Organization to set tbs criteria for how this money is to be spent and I think what's important is that the communities in the metropolitan area I think can play a very active role in establishing how that money's to be spent and there are many, many other components in the Bill but one of them is bow to define enhancement. It could be a pedestrian bridge here. That could be a requirement. The pedestrian bridge underneath. How wetlands are taken care of and detention ponds are taken care of. The whole nature of' the right-of-way has been radically changed by this Bill and the intention of Moyaban in writing this, as this person told me, was to expand the nature and the notion that roads are part of the community. They're not something just sort of to pass through so I can give you all some excerpts from that Bill-that might help you also to see that there are some ways to fund some of these projects. That's a new bit of information. Emmings: Thank you very much. Your input into this process has been I think just outstanding. In every way. I've heard you deliver this 2 or 3 times and I get different things out of it every time. I don't think, in my work, I don't think like you think and this helps, is very stimulating. I r.eally like it'. But I don't know, there are other people here who haven't heard it before and I don't know if there are any questions from anybody. Let's just throw it open to anybody that wants to talk about anything should just feel free to do so. Conrad: It's hard to response. There are so many things. I guess what I'd like you to do is just work from one end to the other. Not in any detail but other than the frontage roads, tell me what other major, and I see on the east end we start with where there was a bridge. A pedestrian bridge but tell me other major things that occurred as you went west. Bill Morrish: I'll take you on another bus ride. I think the development of this park ride and of course I know there's beer a major argument and somehow would help reminding Eden Prairie the importance of this stand of trees here. Is an important landmark and gateway to your community. Not only from a visual sense but also a nice environment that was one to get out here on many days in Minnesota and leave here and the important station Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 30 to your community for many commuters. How that's designed and one notion had about this was that some of the possible upgrading and further enhancement of the some part of the Arboretum with more formal plantings, flowering fruit trees and so forth might repeat. So whatever's at that end would be at this end and it also might repeat in other places along the way. That there's this kind of civilized orchard theme that repeats through and oh that's a gateway. The formal tree represents gateway come seasons. Welcome to Chanhassen it's spring. The cherry blossoms. And then this whole intersection here which is interesting and that the fact, I love seeing up this because you can see the church steeple and that wonderful thing you see in the midwest, that sort of street that goes up there and you expect to find the County Seat. But at the top of the hill there's a church. That counts too. And keeping that and the possibility of developing another formal monument at the bottom and to sort of remind you that that's a point of orientation point of beginning of downtown. We even played in here the possibility if light rail ever began the future and this happens to be corridor, because of the grade change and the separation' and the high bluff and low, it's a great transit point. A person could come right in on a light rail and then the pedestrian bridge can take you straight out in the upper areas. Give them the high points of the land. You don't have to deal with the problems of a ramping of pedestrians which is always problematic and even Armegente and the Walker had a difficult time figuring out to get people gracefully up. Handicapped and so forth so that was a kind of transit...and a linear room with the possibility of shaping that earth so. What's nice is the way the land squeezes i~. You kind of leave Eden Prairie. You go through this bend in the road. It squeezes and then it comes, to Chanhassen and really come into your major service ~rea and entrance into C. hanhassen Dinner Theatre. The next move is this sort of composite wetland. The outlet is in progress out there at the base of your new development which sits up here on the hill. Market Street and the possibility of developing the first kind of wetland you see more of out here as you head out into that more crowded landscape. The other notion is to then continue downtown keeping buildings moved forward so you can keep a pedestrian zone in here. Very important component I believe to marketing and retailing in the future suburban area and I've seen it in many, many communities. The people on Saturday and what do you have to.do on Saturday which is everything and e'njoy yourself, is to have these areas where you can do a lot of those things and pick up a little.bit of enjoyment. Downtown Wayzata. 50th in Edina. 50th and France. Those kinds of things. You've got most of it. You can really finish it... possible City Hall Park and making this a very wonderful structure and then coming out into this area and beginning to work with this wetland coming down and the drainage. The next big room is Lake Ann and again this type of vegetation might then pick up what's here and there. A formal entrance. A new entrance to Lake Ann. Maybe picking up what we talked about in the Arboretum. Moving westward is actually playing with the catching of water off the roads and tree plantings. Instead of planting tree's in the middle of the road and we're trying to come up with the vocabulary of principles for laying out a road. You can put trees in the middle. You can put trees to the side. You can also put double rows to one side and pick up that old kind of farm wind row which exists in my home city in California and here. It's a kind of universally known agricultural symbol but also creates what I always remember as there's this county road and then the old county Toad and it's always between the, this old hedge row. They've actually, you PIanning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 31 might plant across this space. This hedge'row which-is the entrance to the residential development and then the residential development could have it's own thematic landscape. But this long space would be held together. Deveiopment of a parkway which services these communities with a siight drainage swale in there but as this becomes more developed, the possibility of moving water from this development and this deveiopment across here parallel to the road might save a lot of people some time, money and energy and also into the future create a new parkway out of something which is just a drainage swale now. Then there's Bluff creek. With actual.ly organizing the development in such a'way that it could become a small pedestrian node in the park and ride. Here's the park and ride parking area that you walk past the pond, pick up the bus and move'out. Pick up a cup of coffee. Some kind of small cleaners restaurant kind of-thing. This piece down here and then the schooi. The school I think is a reaIly good access at that point. Moving forward up into the intersection. Staying away from the lowlands so you can put your playfields out there. Keeping the road down roughly, I understand it's better here in this-area and so looking at the site in more detail. But creating a zone where somebody could actually walk across the intersection because it's concentrating the pedestrian activity in that area. People are more aware of drivers when there's peopIe around them and the expectation is I'm drivinglthrough a people area. So if you want People to be in the area and don't design the road that way, then drivers are going to sort of drive quickly the way the road goes. So by moving this development forward is more of a sense of it's concentrated around that pedestrian. You see People walking around the building. So there's a kind of important commercial note serving this area and as it kind of satellites to this. Then this office park here, the possibility of a corporate park focusing itself aFound this wetland. One of the reaily truly dynamic pieces of property here is this hii1 and'the · focus towards it and maybe sharing the entrance to the .A~boretum. Looking at residential, the organization of roads in and around here and we had this discussion of wetlands. How much private access. How much public access and here's one way of having private ownership aiong it and then also public access and houses and things organized around here so that people living around here would have access to this wetiand so this is Sort . of like a leg of the lOP but yet it doesn't have to go around. And then down here, we thought we'd even take the hard problem of trying to figure out how Fleet Farm would go in.there rather than avoid it and say oh what we need to put there is houses. We thought we'd just sort of take it on and see the interesting opportunities. One mature stand of trees gives you a landmark. It is a wetland area. Important wetland area. It's also a gateway symbol. ~e have another stand on the other side as a possibility of making a kind of hedge row to go through. The development of TH 41, very important issue. Right now it's a very beautiful road as it goes through the landscape but we know once it's re-engineered it's going to be wider and a lot of that vegetation is going to disappear. $o if some of it is going to disappear and be upgraded, what do we replace back into it. So is it possible to develop a vegetational corridor working with the parking lot of the Fleet Farm. Placing buildings in su6h a way that the back side of it with it's storage areas and it's truck loading behind the hedge The head of the building is to the front. Using the wetlands as formal planting and the parking lot to give it a thematic connection to this area and begin to start talking about the possibility of integrating this use in such a way that maybe apartments over here and here and smaller 'houses over Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 32 here. So we just took a quick look at that. And then down to this intersection and the rebuilding of the Arboretum's entrance through some very powerful landscaping. Rather than small signs you kind of have to hit real quick with your brakes to slide in there right. That's your favorite corner. And then actually here is this wonderful display of flora and fauna which could be done and presented to [he community a~d again the major gateway from the west into Chanhassen and'the middle point between the lake and the river. And I think those memorable pieces are the things that people are going to use to oriente themselves around, in this sprawled suburban area. Erhart: Where in the metropolitan area has this been applied so you can see the final outcome of something? Bill Morrish: I guess I would have to make you a composite. It hasn't bee done completely as a corridor here. I know other places ardund the country it's been done. And what they've done has, they've, done everything. I'll give you the sort of types of legislation that they've done'. One could take Camino Real, well I know actually, Palm Springs. They took a major boulevard and they zoned the thing from top to bottom with very stringent design guidelines. Setbacks. Placement of buildings. Materials. That whole thing. In fact the city of Santa Barbara did i't extensively fighting off California Transportation Department on a State Highway and it's even thematically Spanish which is, it's Spanish highway bridges which is rather odd but they held to it. At the other end, a lot of communities have described a basic physical features and then established performance standards to meet those so they can have some flexibility to adapt to new markets that come along and they're not' i~terested in being totally Spanish the whole length of it. And those have been somewhat more succesful in one end in the ability to adapt to market but they've had to be very stringent about those landmark elements like the wetlands or how you build right at those edges and site plan becomes very important and site plan review becomes very important. How the parking lot is built right next to the buffer filter strip to the wetland. Tim Keane: Tim Keane, Larkin Hoffman. I think ~he closest two examples I can think of readily are 80th Street in Bloomington which runs parallel to 494 and how to a growing extent 76 extension through Edina into Richfield paralleling 494. Those are sort of parallel collector corridors which take on different personalities. Themes through different land use patterns. Bill Morrish: 80 as it goes past Normandale and the Trammel Crow site and a lot of the things they're now talking about in redoing the land use along that area. I'd say, my memory's coming back now. Some of what they're trying to do in France Avenue, since Southdale's not complete yet. It's a very heavily traveled road but they're trying to do it there. The most closer example is what you do in resort areas along scenic highways through communities. Like what Stillwater's trying to do with it's entrance to the north. Coming in through downtown along with it's parks and down through downtown and out the other end. So there's segments.'here and there. Emmings: Anything else? Anybody? Planning Commission Meeting February 5, ~992 - Page 33 Councilman Wing: Bill, while you're speaking, that Highway 41 and 5 intersection is obviously going to be commercial. We can make that assumption and living out in that area. I guess I'm willing to accept traffic and accept people and accept the commercial development but there's two factors. Number one. You've got this commercial development. How is it going to affect downtown development and is it going to in fact anniliate downtown commercial business? That'd be the first part of my question. Secondly, is real heavy retail commercial appropriate land use butting up against the Arboretum and Lake Minnewashta and parks. All our natural environmental amenities are sitting right there and suddenly we bring in a very intense commercial/retail area. And then as I sit over on Lake Minnewashta, basically we still have our night sky. If you build a strong retail commercial on that intersection with all it's inherent lighting, is that the end of our night sky in that area? Are we now in an urban area and will we lose that particular amenity for the campers in the park and the Arboretum? Bill Morrish: If all those factors are important and the city feels that light quality is important, that the predominant value to the community is the dominant presence of the Arboretum. All those factors,'then one those need to be stated very clearly and described and then within that context one begins to first make a decision. I think the business one is o'ne that requires a market study and a clear sense about what it.is that you want to do with downtown. I mean I have'seen something like this kill downtown and I've seen it work. It depends on what it is and how it's done. And the relationship between those merchants. Is there a solid relationship or are they out to sort of cut each other's throats. A lot of this stuff-fails because the merchants fail to come to some common agreement. Within the problem of how you do it, I've seen some very interesting answers. Squaw Pink Parkway which is a very large project in Phoenix going to Scottsdale had a problem with lighting. It was- the neighborhood and a problem with the astronomers on the mountains worried about all that light coming off the road, they wouldn't be able to see the planets-anymore. So believe or not the Arizona Department of Transportation and the Federal government came up with a different lighting scheme that throws the light down and it's fabulous lighting and they're so excited they're going to do it all over the state. By taking those parameters they came up with actaully better lighting for the highway. It's a hooded cobra head that drapes the light right across it and you don't have this sort of big burst of light as you go down it. And so it solved both the problems but it took a while. And I think within that context one looks creatively at each one of those questions and begins to work back. But I.think for' you and Probably why there haven't been many of these roads in this area is You're just approaching the question that has to look at this problem. You've been pretty much an area that hasn't had these large things come in and now you are looking at them. I think what you need to do is describe'those factors which means you need to have general principles for the community but then you need to start looking at districts. Seographic districts and say, as I call this district out here, the Arboretum district. It has certain performance criteria that we feel .is important to the investment the community has made in here and continues to rely upon in their investment that they have made in committing to build here and live here and pay taxes here. And then you go across to the various different kinds of districts. And so that adds an overlays upon the zoning and they work together and Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 34 those become your performance criteria'to then look at specific design problems. Does that answer? Okay. Ahrens: I have a similar question for the intersection of CR 117 and TH 5 where you envision the coffee shop...area. Is that the northwest corner? Bill Morrish: Well this whole area here? Ahrens: The whole area. Right. That's where the driving range is? Bill Morrish: Yeah. That great little stone wall' and everything. Ahrens: Right. Is that considered a commercial area? Is that considered a better land use or is that just kind of a clever way of using the corner or what's wrong, is there something wrong with leaving it the way it is? Bill Morrish: All these things have different time lines. One of the problems that you'll have is when the road is engineered up to it's new standards, the position in which the frontage roads will take will be anywhere from 150 to 200 feet back I believe from the intersection so some of the geometry is going to push itself in. If and when the road, Chanhassen Blvd. or aka the frontage road comes through, you'll be going through that piece of property. Someway up or down. $o what we decided to do is at some, you know we all love this. All the students love this place because anyplace that's strange architects love. Landscape architects love and we'd probably all fight for that stone wall. It's just a great stone wall. A lot of stone. Very-busy person. I think i-f you put him to work on your roads he might just them all .for you. Maybe it's just a lot of energy in the wrong place. .There are a'lot of towns built by mad stone masons who just sort of started making things. All of Europe in fact. They became known as free masons. They organized into political organizations. Well it's where the pyramid comes in on your dollar bill. Jefferson was a free mason and the theme carries on. So I'm not going to make this person Jefferson and the dollar bill but I think what we began to in looking at many scenarios at that intersection. One we found it's a very difficult intersection. It's a big decision to decide where to put that road coming from the east going to the west as it impacts-the bluff. Bluff Creek piece because it's a very mature stand of trees. It's a dynamic piece and there's a lot of debate. Gee, do'we put it low, do we put it high? In this case we pulled it high in that we found that by taking that piece up high, that Bluff Creek defined a kind of space and a room appeared. Gee if we take Bluff Creek and kind of say, the vegetation of this site and bring up the vegetation on the other side'and work it, it became this very interesting site. Now there are all kinds of. things that can go into it. We began to look at that area in thinking about basic convenience level service to that area as your town almost doubles in size probably by the time you get out to here. Where would those things ~ normally occur? 5o we decided to take the hardest problem and put it in this space here. Also the school drove it a little bit. This whole problem of how schools are not only educating but there's latch key programs. There's all these other social services that schools are going to provide so what happens to the structure into the evening?- Somebody's coming home from work on the shuttle or the tram or transit. Their kid can be picked up. Can they do that Convenient pick-up the cleaners and then go Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 35 back. $o is there a possibility. $o we lumped all of that in there to see what we could do even with the park ride and went say who knows, it's probably 15 years away but one of the interesting things right now that you have to decide and think about is where does that road go. That frontage road go because where it goes will affect what you can do with that parcel. If it goes low through Bluff Creek and comes into the intersection, that site's a gas station. Very easily a gas station. Ahrens: Another question. It seems like a lot of this planning is aimed at hiding a lot of the development along TH 5. Bill Morrish: Some of it. Not all of it. Most of the stuff that's hidden is residential which is buffered on the up side. The lower side tends to look into, a variety of things actually. Some hide. Years ago the room notion. Here actually it's open. The notion of this commercial industrial area actually being part of the park open space. These here. 'This is open here though this is more of a screened kind of vegetation. The residential is screened through that. That's one way to look at it. The development of that road. What you really have is a full vocabulary of the different kinds of rooms and you can change the pieces to create different effects. I think if you went back and had more information about the kind of development'a developer would do here, then you could begin to start orchestrating how to create screening where you need it to create some sense of connection across these large open parcels where the highway .goes by and some opening. And actually I just thought of a very interesting case study. I've been working with the Mayor of Rochester and we ~ot into, he made a presentation about his city and how great downtown was and he said, we don't have any problems in our city. And everybody raises their hands, but Mayor we can't find downtown from the freeway. $o he organized a public/private sector organization of landowners and they've actually organized to get together to make a corridor plan and it's all the businesses along the way. They realized that everybody that goes through Rochester thinks they're trash because it's so disorganized and there's this big beautiful-sort of Oz of the Mayo Clinic down there all organized so everybody things they're trash and don't stop. $o actually the business community and it would be very interesting to actually work the land owners on this to start talking about the multiplicity of types of developments- they may be thinking about in organizing the best place for that frontage road. Ahrens: Should that be going on now? Bill Morrish: I think so. I think discussions could begin. I mean there's many examples of public/private partnerships where you're not sitting down to hammer out a plan but you're talking about what's possible because there's certain things that you as a city have to.do as part of your infrastructure that if you lay in now will be.cheaper to them and cheaper to you. And if you put it in the right sort of Way, I mean developments come in certain parcels and-if you do housing, there are certain kinds of parcels that you'll be looking for. If you do gas stations, you're looking for something surrounded by frontage roads and lots of access. Those kinds of things. Any other questions? Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 36 Peter Olin: In speaking for the Arboretum, we're very excited about the planning Bill's been doing and I'd like to know what sort of things you are envisioning. Not let this just-drop into the waste basket after the great presentation but to carry forward with the plan. We're very interested in being part of that. Emmings: Thank you. I don't have an answer to your question. I think that's the issue here tonight. Are there other questions for Bill? Okay. Address yourself to that Paul. Where are we and what are we going to do next? .- Krauss: Well I. think you've got to realize that what Bill's done to date is a series of concepts that are thought provoking and involve some techniques but this is not a document which he or I would ask you to adopt .as a part of the comprehensive plan. I think if you want to move forward with this, the clear answer is, undertake a formal corridor study. Set a relatively short time ideally because things are happening quickly but it means devoting the time and the resources to do it. Emmings: And to do a corridor study would mean doing what? What are the steps? Krauss: Well I tried to lay out in my memo about 10 things, about 10 items that I think need to be touched on in a corridor study. Some of the .stuff Bill has scratched the surface on with a formalized inventory of natural features but coordination with land use plans, development patterns,, zoning patterns, that sort of thing. We've never officially defined the corridor. You need to do that. Traffic.is a real major element that would have to be looked at. Regulatory controls. I mean you get this, how do you bring it about? I mean it's something to have a plan. It's another to make sure it's enacted. You need to develop a land use component for the study area because we've never gotten one. Whether or not you bring it into the MUSA in 1995, year 2000 Or tomorrow, we were committed to filling in that blank and that's one of our tasks.- The process.of working with TH 5 design' with MnDot is a very potent element here. I think you're going to see some really nifty stuff happening this summer with the construction of TH 5 through downtown and that's because there's been a partnership between the city and MnDot to do something different. Tomorrow afternoon Charles Folch, Don and myself are going to meet with MnDot to kick off some discussions about doing something comparable on the rest of TH 5. But the HRA spent quite a bit of time and effort and dollars for getting Barton- Aschmann to develop plans of how to work those intersections in downtown so I mean there's a clear city role in that. The image analysis is real important. One of the most important implementation tools is the capital improvement plan.. The city is very heavily involved in what's happening on TH 5 through downtown. It's also tremendously expensive. You need to know that there's an element that the city can participate in beyond that we're able to. Beyond that you really want to develop public/private partnerships. Ways of working with developers so hopefully they'get what they need out of the project and we get what we need. The long and. the short of it is, if there's a desire to proceed with this, I thiDk a recommendation has to go up to City Council accordingly. As for what this will cost and exactly how much time is involved, I honestly don't know. You know other communities have done corridor studies. Minnetonka did one Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 37 completed after I left the city. Burnsville has done them. There's a number of them out here so there's a number of expertise to draw on. But again I'm not sure what it costs. But it clearly would involve some cost on the part of the city because We frankly don't have the time, availability or the expertise to do it all in house. There are'elements that we need to get expertise on and we'd like to keep Bill's folks involved in some of the design elements as well. So-I guess if you-'re interested in proceeding, the best way of doing that at this point is asking the City Council to evaluate undertaking the program. Emmings: Alright, so what do We need? I don't know how other people feel about this thing but it's such an opportunity. I think what'Bill said about the fact that we're, I think we're kind of fortunate here in being able to plan this whole strip before there's much in place that we have to work around. And I keep thinking too about Dick Wing's comments. We don't want to wind up with the west side of the city looking like the east side in some ways.. But I think I can't imagine that we wouldn't want to'go forward with this but is there anybody, is there any opposition to this thing going forward? Conrad: Well we haven't really, it's my understanding that there's going to be some detail plans that we can look at. Are we going to receive that or are we just sort of saying it kind of looks nice? Krauss: Well no. This is not a document you're being asked to say yea or nay on. It just wasn't developed with that goal in mind. I think when the City Council first established this, it was designated as a pre-task task force kind of a thing. To get a handle on what's the possibilities. What are the major issues. Set some guidance as to where you go from there. Emmings: The way I look at this Ladd, and I don't know if I'm off on thin but this shows us what we can do. It gives us just a rough, well it's not even that rough to me. I'd vote for this tonight but it feels like you're making such a big step in the right direction where we haven't done a damn thing before. And so it feels real good to me but still, it's. just a starting point and obviously we have a lot of work to do and I thi-nk what people are doing is asking the 'City Council if they want to, if the City wants to get behind taking this kind of an approach to the whole corridor or not. Whether we're willing to devote the time and resources to it that it's going to take to do it, whatever that might be. Conrad: Makes sense to me. Farmakes: The working packet basically covers what he did today. Emmings: What? Farmakes: The working packet that we worked with on the subcommittee basically covers what he talked about tonight and details each individual room and also some of the subject .matter that he touched on. The wetlands and transportation corridors. Things of that nature. Emmings: I remember the first time he mentioned driving through the rooms, remember thinking what the hell is he talking about'you know and'it's Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 38 taken me some time to get the idea. But when you start thinking about it that way and then you drive up and down that road and when you drive through Bluff Creek, you feel the vegetation, come'in on you and then you go out into other spaces, they're real powerful images once you catch onto them. Or once you start thinking about them I should say. Farmakes: And it's a good way to assimulate the information. When you look at it in it's entirety, it becomes very vague and this way it becomes very assimable. Somebody without really being good at looking at those plans can understand what they're trying to do with'the overall plan. Batzli: I think it would be an opportunity lost if we don'[ pursue it. I think this is an excellent start in order to control development of that area in a way that we like. So I think we should continue on this route. Erhart: Who determines to what depth you're going to do this study? · ...all the various things that we could do. I mean formalize inventory of natural features. You can get, I mean you can get real detailed or you could get by as much as almost essentially generalize this is'what we're looking for and this is the kinds of things we're ~oing to require. Frontage roads removed from TH 5 and then just a general guideline. Or you can get very specific obviously and the question is going to be-how much money you want to spend on this? Who's going to d~termine how detailed you want to get? Do you have a range of dollars ranging from just broad guide lines to det'ailed? Every quarter mile by quarter mile plan. Krauss: I'd really be shooting from the hip to give you numbers. I mean what we've done recently on contracts is to lay out what the goals are. Get those to qualified firms and say okay, here's the palate of what we're looking for. Sire us your best shot of how you're going to respond to it and then in a competitive bid let us know what it's going to cost. Erhart: But it depends on so much what your goals are. What are you, do you envision actually going through here and actually laying out'all the details that you've listed here in the study? Or what do you think is the best investment for this study to actually get some kind of a corridor plan. Krauss: That's a hard one for me to answer Tim. I would prefer to have the knowledge of pretty much exactly what you folks.and the ·City Council believe is an optimal development package out there. That you've been able to go through a process that you can intellectually and intelligently make some decisions in greater detail than we did with the Comp Plan which was the city in it's entirety. That when we show a road on the map, that the road is reasonably placed and does the job and that traffic is being routed the right way. I mean some of this stuff we're developing. When Bill talks about the water features, you know from your work with the swamp committee that we're going to have very detailed information on most of that stuff there. Now you can take it a little bit further and do some design work on it. As far as TH 5 itself goes, I see a need if you really want to work it, we need to do what we've already been doing on TH 5 which is have a professional design staff working with us. Working with MnDot to make that highway look like something different. Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 39 Erhart: Okay, in the first place, I think we're' all saying yeah we'd really like to do a unified plan all the way out. The question is, how far do you have to go with that to get what-appears to be a real sensible idea and the question is if you start detailing out roads, on the north side of Bluff Creek over there at the intersection of CR 117 and TH 5 and then the developer comes in and says, well no this is my plan and it's all different. Are you going to say you have to follow that plan or are we getting too far ahead if we detail it? Krauss: I don't know. I can only give you my own reaction to that sort of a thing and a road is a major city system and we have every opportunity and ability to decide exactly where it's going to go and the developer has to take it. Now if they can come up wit'h a better idea, I think we've always been willing to listen to a better idea. Erhart: Yeah I think we would but what's the likely outcome? We're going to follow our own design or is it likely when we get all done 20 years from now it will actually turn out different than what we invested all the planning money. Emmings: But right here is where, at least the major features like the frontage roads, especially if you've got an'opportunity to connect one of them into the Arboretum or something like that. It seems to me you've got to grab that stuff and say that's what we're going to do because that's part of the big vision. I think you can tinker with the details later on but if you don't nail down that big vision now, the analogy is the lakes in Minneapolis. If they haven't done that, it never would have. You know if they hadn't done that in the 1880'8, it never would have happened'and this is, I don't know if this is really analogous. That's so dramatic and I don't know if this is that dramatic but still there are features there that I'm sure we'd all agree on would be, ought to be saved and protected and used in certain ways and those major features you know have got to be nailed down now. Not later on. Peter Olin: I know it's not my place to make a suggestion but to tell you what you might do. On the other hand, Bill's giving you a whole set of concepts and some idea of what it might look .like if you sort of develop in a certain way but the important things are the concepts of the rooms, and creating the city streets and so on. Perhaps the Planning Commission may want to take a strong stand and say we support those concepts and send it right back to...right onto City Council to move ahead'with this. Now again I think Paul's right. It's going to be awfully hard to say how far you can go on some of these things until you essentially get some of those concepts and say we want to try and work with those concepts. That's the ideal and how far can you go with you need to do some work on it so I think it may be limited in terms of you're setting a budget of x dollars. But you could conceptually move the whole thing forward by taking a strong stand on that in the conceptual term... Emmings: Thanks. Krauss: Maybe if I could touch on one thing. 30 Ann raised a point and I think it's a valid one. We had, I mean this task force serves a ~ood purpose in terms of bringing the HRA, the Council and the Planning Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 40 Commissioners together to get to this point. But this was not a process that was designed for public consumption that was going to result in a document that is going to have a significant bearing on people that own property and want to buy in the future. If this is proceeded with, it would be my recommendation that it be handled in a manner that the Comp Plan was which is that the Planning Commission become the active body in this and you've got the expertise and the ability to interact with the public to accept input and make recommendations. You did that very well with the Comp Plan and ultimately make a recommendation to the City Council. $o I think it would be my recommendation that that be how that's formatted. " Emmings: So I think what we've got to do or what we should do here is, there are a lot of members of the City Council on'the task force and there are some here now. I guess endorsing the concepts and then, or.not, and setting up some kind of program to get it moving or keep it moving. :. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it should be held by the Planning Commission... Erhart: If you're proposing that we endorse' the concept and Suggest we get moving, I don't think anybody's against it. Let's just proceed. Emmings: No, it's hard to imagine. Do you want a motion? Brad Johnson: Can I say one thing? Emmings: Yeah Brad. Brad Johnson: To piggy back on what, oh Brad Johnson. I think there are a number of design concepts or elements in this particular plan that all of us wrap into and then if some of us want to see it detailed all the way out, it would appear to me that you could take another meeting and go through these and kind of say, hey these things are and you could explain it right Bill. I like the north/south pedestrian. To me that's a big deal because I know that's what could divide this town and the bridge...ride my bike down or my kid could walk and the entrance to the Arboretum. IWhatever they are. There are even some elements that I'm a little concerned about and...how you'd handle the CR 17 and TH 5 corner, that's all green. That's a major decision. You'd have to say that's not only a concept. We would like to support and we'd better get to work on so we have to get control of that...another gas station in there. I'm just s'aying, there are some elements that are going to be developed very quickly okay and there are some that are just concepts. And so there are things on this end of town, I think all of us developers, that's a nice piece of land. The whole idea is just great. It's going to affect everybody on the corner. Who owns the corner. I don't happen to own it...and I think you can take an element like pedestrian crossing is here. Those things, we endorse that. We endorse this road system out here and you can pass that onto the Council and then you've got to figure out how you get that under control in your Comp Plan. Because s6meplace you get control of that, someplace down the line. My concern because I'm in the downtown, I think we have a primary retail opportunity here. I think all those roads do lead downtown. They don't actually lead to TH 41 and TH 7...that our primary road concerns in addition to what...lO1, Powers Blvd., 101 South and how they all fit into Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 41 our community because our population's on the east side and our community runs another 2 or 3 miles that direction as far as the viability. If you see we're going to have sort of a downtown. We're not'going to have'5Oth and France because 50th and France today would never be built. It'd be one big Target. I'm not kidding. People aren't building small buildings anymore because there aren't any small retailers to build them but there are Targets and there are Gateways and people are coming with big buildings. We have to figure out how that ail fits in because I hear on one side the image is small buildings. The chances over the next 5 years of building a lot of small buildings 'in Chanhassen is not very good... But I'm just saying there are some things that are going to happen to the downtown area that will protect that you should probably act on and say these are important... I'm okay with it because I'don't have to own it and I think that might be a nice idea. All the gas stations will be over here. But those are elements you should probably get at. Emmings: I think your comments point up the fact that we need to ge't input from people like you and that's part of the whole process that we went through in the Comp Plan and everything else. · Brad 3ohnson: What you see there is good. And then you've got F'leet Farm worrying about certain things and me worrying about certain things. But as a community person, I live there, that's great. What you're trying to do but I think there are elements you guys are grabbing onto that you can say, hey. Of these things we believe the following and you could leave a statement. Do these things. Pass them onto the Council and Paul. can figure out how to get them into a real thing. Emmings: But I think the first step here is getting it up to the Council to see if this is where they want us to spend time. Do they want us to be the primary body that's going to do it? Do they want to devote city resources and time to this in other ways? You know that isn't a decision for us to make. I guess the staff is asking us to tell the council that that's what we think should be done. That's our recommendation but we've got to get them to tell us. Brad Johnson: I was trying to... Emmings: Well, of course. We sure can't do that tonight until everybody's had more time to digest this and I think getting your report is going to be a big step in that direction. Bill Morrish: Yeah in about 2 weeks. It's somewhere in the computer right now... Emmings: Okay. Do we need a formal motion on this or anything? Krauss: I don't know. If you've got, there seems to be a consensus of the Planning Commission. That's probably sufficient. Emmings: Does anybody have anything to say that sounds different than what we've already said several times? Okay. Uh, I have-to go. If you want to continue I'll turn it over to either the next Chairman or the present Vice Chairman. Okay, is there anything else? Planning Commission Meeting February 5, 1992 - Page 42 Krauss: Batzli: Conrad: Emmings: No. Do we want to approve the By-laws and that stuff? Let's do that next session. We've got to do (b), (c), and (d) on this. Informational things. Is there a motion to adjourn the meeting? Conrad moved, Ledvina seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The meeting was adjourned at 10=15 p.m.. Submitted by Paul Krauss Planning Director Prepared by Nann Opheim