Loading...
PC 2007 11 20 CHANHASSEN PLANNING COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING NOVEMBER 20, 2007 Chairman McDonald called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. MEMBERS PRESENT: Jerry McDonald, Kevin Dillon, Kathleen Thomas, Debbie Larson, Mark Undestad and Dan Keefe MEMBERS ABSENT: Kurt Papke STAFF PRESENT: Kate Aanenson, Community Development Director; Bob Generous, Senior Planner; and Angie Auseth, Planner I PUBLIC HEARING: HART VARIANCE: REQUEST FOR A VARIANCE TO EXCEED THE MAXIMUM DETACHED ACCESSORY STRUCTURE SIZE TO CONSTRUCT AN ADDITION TO AN EXISTING DETACHED GARAGE ON PROPERTY ZONED RURAL RESIDENTIAL (RR) LOCATED AT 951 HOMESTEAD LANE. APPLICANT: JDA DESIGN ARCHITECTS, OWNERS, JOHN & CINDY HART, PLANNING CASE 07-28. Public Present: Name Address John & Cindy Hart 951 Homestead Lane John Meyering 1050 Homestead Lane Angie Auseth presented the staff report on this item. McDonald: Okay, Mark. Do you have any questions? Undestad: Just a, they built the home, it says that they built the detached garage with the intent to add on in the future. Did their initial, original plans show a larger structure at that time? Auseth: Not that I am aware. Undestad: Okay. And when did they bring in the permit? Auseth: The permit was brought in on the last deadline date. Or the variance was brought in at the last date. Undestad: The variance was. Auseth: Correct. Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Undestad: Did they bring in a plat or permit earlier for the structure itself? Auseth: No. Undestad: Okay. McDonald: Debbie. Larson: I know I read it and I know you just said it. When did the rule change? Auseth: In May of 2007. Larson: Okay. And were, was there any way that people would have known this? I mean was it in the newspaper or how did they know? Auseth: We advertise that there are zoning, or code amendments being done. They're not specific to the changes. We do publish them however in the newspaper. Larson: In the newspaper. In the Chan Villager? Okay. Dillon: So when the ultimate plans that you suggested here were proposed to the homeowner, what was the response? Auseth: Their response was, they would like to have their addition that they are requesting. Dillon: Okay. And was there any, was there seem to be a willingness to negotiate at all or is it this way or no way? Auseth: From what I can tell that this is what they requested and this is what they would like to do. Dillon: Okay. That's the only question I had. McDonald: Okay. Dan. Keefe: No questions. McDonald: Kathleen. Thomas: No. Thank you. McDonald: I have no questions of staff either at this time. Would the applicant like to come forward and present their side to this case? John Hart: Yes. Thank you. I'm John Hart. The homeowner and thank you for having us in this evening. We have in fact been planning this for a long time. The original drawings done in 2 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 1987 do not show anything other than what you have just seen here. With, let's see I guess, oh there we are. With the existing garage as it is. The addition is intended as a wood working shop for me as I approach retirement. That's the purpose of this. I understood that part of the reason for the May, 2007 restriction or change in restrictions was to preclude what had become apparently habitual and people using such large structures on their property for business purposes. There's no such intention in this case. It's strictly a hobby for my retirement. The reason that we changed down to, from 20 feet down 8 feet to 12 is not very attractive to us, is that what I'd like to do there is build boats and one needs a shop at least as large as the boat one wishes to build to make it practical. If we could only do 12 feet long, frankly I wouldn't bother with it. I don't know what we'd do, but we wouldn't do it. The idea of connecting the existing garage to the house thereby rendering it attached and freeing us from all restrictions, we could make it any size after that, is certainly to say the least impractical. Can I have one of those pictures to stick up here? I'm not sure how this all works so please excuse me for my inexperience. This is a shot between the, from the driveway between the house on the left and the garage on the right. To extend the garage south to meet the house in any way would make the project outlandishly expensive. The roof of the garage would have to be completely trussed because there's no way to make it match the roofline of the house in any practical way. The beginning of the steep slope to the south would require extensive grading and as you can see there's a deck down there which would be rendered inaccessible by having a garage right up against it. So although in theory that sounds like a reasonable idea, in fact it wouldn't work in any practical sense at all for us. Further, all of the utilities hit the house at that corner, although you can't see them. They're right around the corner to the left. That would all have to be moved. You can see the wellhead there. That would have to get moved as well, requiring a new well to be dug. Again the project would be unreasonable and could not even be approached from a financial aspect. It was mentioned that there are a great many residences near us that have large, in some cases very large external structures. Had we 20 years ago, almost 21 years ago now decided to in fact have an attached garage, this of course would be moot because we could expand it to any reasonable size or any unreasonable size for that matter. As far as we can make out. We chose to have a detached garage those many years ago for, well a variety of reasons, not least of which was certain health concerns about the presence of automobile exhaust, chemicals, gasoline and so forth starting the garage. It was vapors we didn't want transferred into the house. We thought it was a health issue. It is of course unfortunate that we're the first ones apparently applying for a variance in this respect. The hardship issue is dwelt on considerably in the report from city staff and it's difficult to quantify except in the sense that any other approach to producing this size, very modest shop I might add compared to other wood shops, wood working shops or boat building shops, any other approach would be wildly more expensive using the existing structure and extending it in a direction that is almost invisible to neighbor's drive by and anybody else. Is the only realistic way that we can think of to approach the issue. Extending it to the south as I mentioned would be completely prohibitive and cost, really is quite impractical. It will be noticed, I think you distributed responses that we got from all the, all but one of the neighbors within 500 feet. They all apparently need to be polled to get their feelings about this. All were positive about it. The only one that wasn't, and I think it's a matter of corporate bureaucracy is Bluff Creek Golf Course across Pioneer Trail who were unwilling to respond in any way. Positive or negative. Everybody else was positive, as you can see. The photographs that I believe we distributed as well, or renderings from our architect show that the visual impact of this structure is negligible. It's underneath a berm. It matches the current 3 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 structure. The only person who can even see it is our next door neighbor and all they see is the same appearance that they see now, except 20 feet closer to them. And it's still a considerable distance from their residence. The east side of which has no windows. So they have to go out of their way to even see it, much less care about it. I've gone over the hardship issue with respect to the alternative approach to building a structure and as I say…not even consider. Of course had we attached the garage, none of this would have come up. But as I say, we did. There's nothing we can do about that now. There is no intent to do business, as I said there. I have no interest in that, but as I get near my retirement the one thing I don't want to do is more business. I've done that for 40 years now. That's quite enough. I guess, I think that's the end of my statement. Unless there's something you wanted to add? Cindy Hart: Yes… John Hart: Oh, yeah. The other interesting issue is of course that the City's, as the analysis indicates, nobody else has a detached garage. Nobody makes detached garages any longer. There are none in any reasonable distance from us. Nobody else could in any practical way ask for a similar variance because they all have attached garages. They can do whatever they want with them. We are the only ones, as far as we know, certainly within a very large radius around our house that has a detached garage and therefore falls into this crack. And the intentions of the restrictions. Any questions I can answer from anyone? McDonald: Does anyone have any questions for the applicant? I have a question, you say what you want to do is build boats. Is this going to be your new hobby is boat building? John Hart: I hope so, yeah. Assuming I turn out to be good at it. McDonald: Would the intent be to give these away as gifts or would you sell them? John Hart: To my children and I hope to grandchildren as they begin to arrive. McDonald: Okay. I have no further questions. I guess at this point. John Hart: Thanks again for your time. McDonald: At this time we will take comments from anyone that wishes to come up and address the commissioners. Come on up. John Meyering: Hello. I'm John Meyering. One of the neighbors of Hart's. 500 feet close to them and I just want to say that in all appearance for his sake, you can't hardly see where he wants to put it. It's behind a berm and whatever, and but I can't…see because I live close and I'll be in that situation too because a year ago I added on to my existing garage. Just put a lean to on the one end. Added on, because I'm getting a retirement motorhome in about a year, year and a half, and I didn't know what size in this so I just put a smaller one because I have a motorhome now I want to put inside. So when the rules changed, just last May, I don't think anybody in Chanhassen even seen it in the paper, because I read the paper every week. I'd like to put my thing in because all, all the people that moved out there 14 years ago or later or sooner, we took 4 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 the chance that when we bought that land, that the zoning was, we could put up any outside buildings up to so much square footage on the land that we, we have all 2 1/2 acre lots. We're not sitting in town with a half acre or quarter acre lots. So if you saw the landscape, we're all really nice out there. We have all nice properties. We all landscape our yards really nice so, and in Hart's case, they did a very, very good job of putting it down. Trying to landscape it right in there and I can see their point why they'd just like to put it on the one end and that would be about the only spot that you could. So that was about the only comment I had is, they did a very good job of doing that and I think it's, it should be where we should all get notices on when the land, the rules change because that hurts everybody that's out there that as of 10, 14 years ago or when I went out there 14 years ago, I wanted to retire and I'm kind of retired now, and it looks like I'm not going to get my retirement home, motorhome unless I want to leave it outside and that's kind of how…where I'm not staying in town and, but our kids same thing about his, wants to make boats. That's kind of denying his retirement. What he wants to do and that's all the comments I have. I don't want to take too much of your time but I agree he did a very good job of doing his part and I think he should get it. Thank you. McDonald: Thank you. Does anyone else wish to come forward? Well seeing no one else wanting to come forward, close the public meeting and we'll bring the issue back before the commissioners for discussion and Kathleen, we'll start down with you. Thomas: Okay. It's, I find it a little hard as you can tell just because I understand where he's coming from and the aspect of you've got a large property. You've got ample amount of square footage. It's the only detached garage in the neighborhood. If it was attached to the house he would be able to punch in another, you could have it as any size you want to. I struggle with the fact that we have the, our rules that are changes for the rules to say how big a size a lot, garage or things of that can be on a lot so I'm still trying to mull this over. McDonald: Dan. Keefe: Yeah you know, I guess where I'm struggling is you know, you know to get a variance you've got to prove a hardship and the question is whether you know hardship is here you know. The only thing that kind of enters into my mind is just the possibility that because it's the only detached garage in the area, everything else is attached. Whether that may elevate itself in that area of hardship. I don't know the answer to that but that's kind of what I'm thinking. McDonald: Okay. Kevin. Dillon: I know every time we get faced with one of these we always get like the consistency question and then we challenge ourselves, now are we being, applying all these things consistently or not, and it's hard because everything, there's always the subtle differences to each situation. In this case, I mean I saw the pictures that came around in the packaging. The guy that made them was a master of photo shopping things or, but it just doesn't look like there's going to be any real detriment to, I mean like an eyesore of any sort. It's you know, the rules, the zoning things changed recently. I'm inclined to you know approve the variance because I just think that we, just kind of the timing and the confluence of factors here, this one you know should be one that we would be okay with. 5 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 McDonald: Okay. Debbie. Larson: Well I was kind of with Kevin on that one too. I'm looking at the neighbors and they've all got their auxiliary structures and you know they've al said it's not a problem. I don't see where it's going to look any different. I think it's odd that we have 1,000 foot ordinance on properties of this size. I'm inclined to go with the variance approving as well. McDonald: Okay. Mark. Undestad: Yeah, I guess I'm with Kevin and Deb here that you know again, I mean I kind of understand when they bought these lots years ago they bought these size of lots with the understanding that we can put our sheds, our shops or equipment you know. I mean they can do that with these size lots. I know at times as these come out in the newspaper and people don't always see what they are but to find out the hard way, you know again I think that the motorhome parking in there. I mean he's going to come up here and want a place to park his motorhome and I think when he bought the land back there, it was probably his intention that some day I'm going to have my stuff on here and keep it tucked in and sheltered. You know if they were smaller lots and we were pushing the envelope on hard surfaces and all that, I might look at it a little different but I think I understand why they bought the lots they bought out there and looking at the utilities and the water, the well and you know there's really just no other way to put that on for them so, I guess I'd be inclined to approve it also. McDonald: Okay. I guess the first thing, just because of my legal background, any time you start talking about something where you know the city didn't do something, I feel as though I should correct you. The city followed law in the fact that all that they're required to do is put a notice in the paper to tell everyone that the law is changed. It's your responsibility to keep up with the law. Having said that though, there's a part in here on the thing about hardship that I'm really struggling with because of past variances I know that we've passed. It says the intent of this provision is not to allow a proliferation of variances but to recognize that there are pre- existing standards in the neighborhood. That gets us back to, as I go back to this chart and I begin to look at the detached structures that are there and I'm hoping to find that there is a parallelity of structures over 1,000 feet, and of course it's 4-4. But as I said I do recall having gone through this in some older neighborhoods where things have changed and we have tried to accommodate kind of neighborhood standards. So that's what I'm kind of wrestling with because at this point, and again with the petitions that have been put in here, and everybody signing it and looking at the drawings as to what it is, I have a hard time saying no also but I guess that's kind of where I'm at on all this is that I think maybe they've got a case under the hardship to say that there are pre-existing standards and again to go back with the history of all this and what everybody's been doing. And again, not saying anything about when the ordinance changed, you know that was an opportunity for people to come in and speak against it but I understand how things are and again this is what this paragraph does. It allows you an opportunity, kind of a second chance I think. So having said that, I'll throw it open to any commissioners that want to put forth a motion. Larson: A question…or do I have to read it this way? 6 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 McDonald: Well you should read it the way it is and then if you want to look at making changes, or you can propose a different motion. Larson: I can? Aanenson: Yes, you can modify the motion and I would certainly recommend that you modify your findings to match your motion. Larson: Modify findings? Right, okay. First of all I will make a motion that the Planning Commission approve Planning Case 07-28 for a 177 square foot variance from the maximum 1,000 square foot detached accessory structure for an addition to the detached garage on Lot 2, Block 3, Pioneer Hills Addition based on the findings of fact in the staff report. And then also amend the finding in Part A where it says literal enforcement of the ordinance does create a hardship of the useable, of their reasonable use of the property in that he would incur a very large amount of expenses in order to do it the way the city wants. Is that okay? McDonald: I think if you're going to do that, go back up to the paragraph that I read and said that based upon where we're at with the, right here. What it is, that there are pre-existing conditions in the neighborhood. Larson: This one? McDonald: Yeah, if you're going to amend the findings, what we need to say is that there are pre-existing conditions within the. Dillon: Findings are findings. Let's just deal with the… Aanenson: You are approving, recommending Findings of Fact. The Findings of Fact should support your motion. Whether you want to go back and say the fact that this is the only detached garage, which is a reasonable finding because you can have other applications that you want to tie it back to. So that would be one. And then certainly in their recommendation that Commissioner McDonald had would be another appropriate finding because you need to match your motion. McDonald: Right, you need to match the motions up and she's changed the recommendation and the next thing I'll do is ask if anybody wants to do the recommendation that staff did and we'll vote on it from there. Larson: Okay. So do I have to do any more? McDonald: Okay, have we read in the record what we want as far as the finding would be that because that there are pre-existing standards within the neighborhood, this home would be. Larson: Okay, we want it amended to show that the findings, amend the findings to show that there are pre-existing standards in this neighborhood. 7 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 McDonald: Of the detached structure which exceeds 1,000 square feet. Larson: Which exceed 1,000 square feet. Okay. With that a second, okay. McDonald: Now, does anyone else wish to make a recommendation? Does anyone wish to push forward the city's recommendation? Staff's recommendation. Okay, then we will vote on Debbie's recommendation. Larson moved, Undestad seconded that the Planning Commission approve Planning Case 07-28 for a 177 square foot variance from the maximum 1,000 square foot detached accessory structure for an addition to a detached garage on Lot 2, Block 3, Pioneer Hills Addition, based on the amended findings of fact stating there are pre-existing standards in the neighborhood of detached structures which exceed 1,000 square feet. All voted in favor, except Keefe who opposed, and the motion carried with a vote of 5 to 1. McDonald: Okay, so it passes 5-1. Okay, and I take it that this will probably go up before City Council. Aanenson: No it won't unless somebody appeals it. Generous: Unless it's appealed within 4 days. McDonald: Okay. If you guys want to appeal. So the motion is approved. The variance is granted. John Hart: Thank you. PUBLIC HEARING: ROSEMOUNT: REQUEST FOR INTERIM USE PERMIT TO ALLOW A TEMPORARY ANTENNA ON TOP OF A BUILDING LOCATED AT 8200 MARKET BOULEVARD. APPLICANT: ROSEMOUNT, INC., PLANNING CASE 07-25. Angie Auseth presented the staff report on this item. McDonald: Kathleen? Thomas: I don't have any questions, thanks. Keefe: What happens at the end of 6 months… Do they apply for another… Auseth: They can formally request to expand. Keefe: Expand it, or require them to take it down or how does that. 8 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Aanenson: That's correct. It has a termination date and then if they can request an extension, of you can deny the extension and they'd have to take it down. Keefe: So in either case, if they… Aanenson: Correct. Correct. McDonald: Kevin. Dillon: You know the only question I had is answered by the letter from the distinguished technologist. McDonald: Okay. Debbie? Larson: I think it's covered everything. McDonald: Mark? Undestad: No. Good. McDonald: Okay. I have just one question. I'm not sure if you answered it or not. I don't think I saw it in the report. After what we went through with the cell phone tower, has anybody looked to see if there are any federal requirements that are going to have to be gone through in this? Auseth: We have done that. We've contacted the Minnesota State Historical Society. At this point there aren't any historical impacts. McDonald: Not so much historical. Do we get in with like the FCC or anybody else that governs transmissions within the air? Auseth: That was addressed with the email that was passed around and the applicant can answer more to that. McDonald: I apologize for not reading my emails. Thank you. I have no further questions. Is there an applicant here to present the case before us? Kelly Orth: Hello. My name is Kelly Orth. I work for Rosemount, Incorporated. I'm the one that fills out the application and setting up this test network. This is a product line that we've developed and we're trying to create a wireless sensor network. The sensors are a variety of sensors. Pressure, temperature, level or slow, and the idea with the wireless network is that they can form a mesh network so that all these battery powered sensors, if they can't communicate to a base station in a typical system, a point to point system, or base station off to each device. So if they can't communicate to the base station, they can communicate to their neighbors. Form a mesh network and the messages can hop from unit to unit to get back to where it needs to do. So we've introduced these products and the systems in the marketplace and they have limited range 9 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 right now. 300 to 500 feet so what we're in the process of adding some higher beam antennas and elevating the antennas at the 25 foot point, as we mentioned, just to extend their range. Possible applications are in oil and gas exploration where wells are located around on different sites. City wide water and waste systems as Chanhassen might have where you might want to monitor your pumping stations and your lift stations. And by using wireless systems like this, the costs are much lower because there's no electrical hook-up. There's no internet hook-up. It's all done wireless. So we're in the process of doing the testing, as Angie mentioned. She's been very helpful in formulating the proposal and by the way I'd like to take time to thank the City of Chanhassen and the various people within the city for allowing us to allow some of the city's facilities. Specifically Todd Hoffman, the city Park and Rec Director and most recently Paul Oehme, the Public Works so we can spread out. Obviously we don't own property within a mile radius of our plant. We have to rely on our good neighbors to allow us to use their facilities. And we intend, we intended all along just to make this temporary. It's not meant to be a permanent system. It's just for test purposes. Whenever you tell us to take it down, you know we'll take it down. It's not a big deal. We've done some preliminary testing with the 72 hour clause so we put our antenna on the roof up for 72 hours and take it down later and then come up with a different scheme to figure out how this stuff really works because it's kind of black magic and test some more. So we're learning but what we really want to do is put it up and get some long term reliability capability of the test network. We were up last night during the fog and we learned that it works just fine in .1 mile visibility so that's the kind of thing that we want to be up for right now. Change of season. Different weather conditions and different circumstances so again, it's just a temporary facility. We have no intention in making it permanent. McDonald: Okay, questions? Mark? Undestad: Yeah, just a couple. On the frequency's you're using on there are the same used in like WiFi, things like that? Kelly Orth: Yeah. Undestad: What kind of range is your antenna going to have on there? Kelly Orth: The frequency we use is a 2.4 gigahertz band which is a public set aside band for WiFi and Blue Tube and these Zigby networks. Maybe you've heard of Zigby and so we use the same radios as Zigby radio network would use. They're regulated by the FCC. It has to meet all the pretty significant requirements. All the power transmission level requirements. But the nice thing about the ISM band, the 2.4 gigahertz band, that it does not require a site license. If you have the license, every particular site, everybody that has a WiFi internet system in their home would have to get an FCC license and it would make it pretty hard to do. Undestad: Is there any chance of any interferences with neighbors or WiFi? Kelly Orth: The extent of co-existent testing and interference testing, we use a different radio technology even though it's in the same frequency band. It actually does frequency hopping so it shifts around and uses different parts of the band at different times. 10 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Undestad: So you don't program in your frequency and it picks up or interferes with. Kelly Orth: No, we've tested it where a WiFi internet system and our Zigby type radio network system are within you know half a meter apart and there's no interference. Undestad: And the antenna you had out in the yard out there for a while, what was that one? That was just another test deal out there? Kelly Orth: I've got some samples if I could. McDonald: Okay, yes. Kelly Orth: This is our normal unit with an integral antenna and this is a temperature transmitter that will help to do the display and cover goes on this side. The battery goes in this side, so it's all battery powered. It doesn't hook up to electricity or anything and this is a high V antenna for the V antenna. And what we're going with our wireless testing, this is putting a remote connection on the device and then we're using a high beam remote antenna with a coax cable between them and as you know on radio waves, if you get it up in the air you get better reception. So basically this is what we're trying to test in conjunction. With our standard units sprinkled around to form these devices… So the application is to be able to put one of these antennas on a 25 foot pole. 25 foot to the tip as Angie had pointed out, and we would leave it up. So I think we promised to get it down by Memorial Day so that we get all this stuff out before the school's out. Undestad: And this is going to go on the south side of your building somewhere? Kelly Orth: Yeah. It goes up on the roof because it's higher there. You know we're kind of low over by the lake there so to get up over the other buildings around us and some of the neighboring elevations. Undestad: How big is your building there again? Kelly Orth: Well we own about 54 acres. The building, we're putting it on the two story office building. I don't even know how big that is. Aanenson: That alone is 60,000 so. Undestad: So your 20 foot antenna is going to be just back there somewhere? Kelly Orth: Yeah. It's kind of hard to see unless you really know where to look for it. Larson: So the intention is really just to have this on your property and nowhere else? Kelly Orth: No. These units are already installed in some of the parks. If you noticed there's one of these units right on City Center Park Field 1. 11 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Larson: I'm getting that Big Brother feel. Kelly Orth: No, no. It's just, they talk in 4 millisecond bursts and they send a little data packet over the air to the other device. It's just a little data packet which tells what the name of the unit is to test that… Larson: It's…data you're collecting. I'm looking for these units all over the place. Kelly Orth: Just how reliable… How many data packets are sent and how many are received so we're just testing the wireless capability. So we can monitor over the air, we can monitor the path stability of each point. The ones right here talks to the roof top unit when we put our antenna up. Larson: What's the major purpose of the whole idea… Kelly Orth: When you mesh networks in these sensors? Larson: Yeah. Kelly Orth: Just to lower the install cost to be able to monitor pumps and motors and valves and be able to do data acquisition of these extensive infrastructure systems. You know there's a lot of money invested in all this equipment and if it starts to break down, bad stuff can happen. Larson: So are you talking this with this company or are you talking city wide? I mean like, just to pull some weird, obscure example out. We read meters on houses for gas. Kelly Orth: Yeah, there could be devices. We don't make meter reader, gas meter readers but Zigby type devices are out there that you can put in a mesh network and read meters once a month. Larson: …basically that's all I have. McDonald: Kevin, any questions? Dillon: No questions. Kelly Orth: I want to thank you for your time and I hope you approve and I really want to thank the City of Chanhassen. McDonald: Before you go, just a second. Kathleen, you have any questions? Thomas: I don't have any questions. I actually find it very interesting…thank you. McDonald: The City is recommending only a 6 month window. Is that going to work? 12 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Kelly Orth: Yeah, that will work fine. Yeah. I wanted to be out there in the change of seasons and we've been able to gather enough data now with our 72 hour windows here and there that we feel that this is a viable way to do it and over the course of a few months here we want to gather a lot of reliability that the devices are going to stay online no matter what because reliability is paramount in our industry. McDonald: Okay. I have no further questions then. Thank you for addressing us. At this point I will you know throw the meeting open to the public. Anyone wishing to make comment, please come up to the podium and address the commissioners. Seeing no one come forward, we'll close the public meeting and we'll bring it back up before the commission for comments and Kathleen. Thomas: I don't have any issue at all. I think it's a great idea and it's a very good thing so I'm for it. Keefe: No issues. McDonald: Kevin. Dillon: No issues. McDonald: Kathleen. Larson: Me? McDonald: Debbie. Kathleen's down there. Debbie. Larson: She was here last time. McDonald: That's why you keep changing people on me and I'm sure they're doing that on purpose. Larson: Yeah… McDonald: I have no problems either. At that point we'll open it up to the commissioners for someone to put a recommendation forward. Keefe: I'll make a motion the Planning Commission recommends approval of Planning Case 07- 25 for an Interim Use Permit to install a 25 foot mast antenna on top of a two story office nd building in Rosemount located on Lot 1, Block 1, Chanhassen Lake Susan Park 2 Addition as shown on plans dated received November 2, 2007, based on the Findings of Fact in the staff report and subject to conditions 1 through 3. McDonald: Can I have a second? Dillon: Second. 13 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Keefe moved, Dillon seconded that the Planning Commission recommends approval of Planning Case 07-25 for an Interim Use Permit to install a 25 foot mast/antenna atop the two story office building at Rosemount, Inc., located on Lot 1, Block 1, Chanhassen Lakes nd Business Park 2 Addition, as shown in plans dated received November 2, 2007, based on the Findings of Fact in the staff report and subject to the following conditions: 1. A building permit must be approved prior to installation of the mast/antenna. 2. The interim use permit is valid for a period of six (6) months from the date of building permit approval. Should the interim use permit need to be extended, the applicant will need to request a formal extension 60 days prior to the expiration date of the permit. 3. Approval of this application is contingent upon City Council approval of the zoning ordinance amendment to Section 20-1515, Antennas mounted on roofs, walls, and existing towers requiring an Interim Use Permit (IUP) for antennas in excess of 15 feet in height. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 6 to 0. PUBLIC HEARING: ORDINANCE AMENDMENT: CHAPTER 20, ZONING. Angie Auseth presented the staff report on this item. McDonald: Kathleen, questions for staff. Thomas: I don't think I have any at this moment. Keefe: Quick question just in regards to you know your second point it just says, you know must be constructed of material or color which matches the exterior of the building or structure. Is that recommended as opposed to say the natural sky color or surrounding landscape or something along those lines? Auseth: Yes, and that's currently in the city code. So that it blends in with the site and isn't an eyesore. Keefe: I almost prefer that language than what's in here. That it sort of blends in with the surroundings versus sort of matches the exterior color of the building because perhaps it's up against a bunch of pine trees and it's just painted green. McDonald: Kevin. Dillon: So we talk about the height. Is there anything in here that addresses the diameter of the antenna or the guide wires or anything like that that need to hold it in place? I mean is that, should that be included? Do we care? 14 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Auseth: Okay. Section 20-1509, towers and antennas design. It says the towers, antennas including supporting cables and structures shall be designed to blend into the surrounding environment through the use of color of camouflaging and architectural treatments. Dillon: Okay. McDonald: Does that address the concern? Dillon: Yes, that's fine. McDonald: Any more questions? Dillon: No questions. McDonald: No? No? I have no questions either. At this point I guess this is open for public. Aanenson: That's correct. McDonald: Public comment so anyone wishing to come up and comment on this matter, please come to the podium. State your name and address and address your comments to the commission. Seeing no one come forward, I'll close the public meeting and I'll bring it back up before the commissioners for discussion. Any comments? No? Okay then we'll open up the floor for a recommendation for a motion. Dillon: The Chanhassen Planning Commission recommends that the City Council adopt the attached ordinance amending Chapter 20 of the Chanhassen City Code. McDonald: Second? Okay. Keefe: Can I make a friendly amendment? Just to scratch the, in number 2 in the material or color which matches blah, blah, blah. It really to make it sync up with what is in the I think Article 30 of Chapter 20. Article 30, Chapter 20. McDonald: Kevin, you made the amendment. Would you accept the friendly? Dillon: Yeah, and to use the language that's consistent that we just heard to blend in with the surrounding environment. McDonald: And that's what you would like. Keefe: Yes. McDonald: Okay. Dillon: So we recommend to do that with that proviso. 15 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 McDonald: If you accept the friendly amendment and that's what the recommendation now becomes. Okay? Okay. Okay, any other amendments? Dillon moved, Larson seconded that the Planning Commission recommends that the City Council adopt the attached ordinance amending Chapter 20 of the Chanhassen City Code, with a change to the language in item (2) under Sec. 20-1515 to say that the material or color matches the surrounding environment. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 6 to 0. PUBLIC HEARING: COMPREHENSIVE PLAN: CHAPTER 2, LAND USE ELEMENT. Public Present: Name Address Mike Wardle 12601 W. Explorer Drive #200 Boise, ID 83713 Scott Raeber 12601 W. Explorer Drive, #200 Boise, ID 83713 Ben Gowan 6440 Hazeltine Boulevard Tom Workman 181 South Shore Court Don Halla 6601 Mohawk Trail, Edina Mary Jane White 670 Creekwood Rick Dorsey 1551 Lyman Boulevard Jeff Fox 5270 Howards Point Road Vernelle Clayton 422 Santa Fe Circle Dave Patchin 17370 Lookout Drive th Sean Cullen 19800 28 Avenue No, Plymouth Jim Boyum 8805 Sunset Trail th Wayne Peterson 7444 64 Street West Dale Hance 6480 Oriole Avenue Bill Ziegler 6441 Oriole Avenue th Michelle M. Curtis 2446 West 64 Street McDonald: The next item up is we will now get into a discussion on the comprehensive plan. This is Chapter 2. We're going to be looking at land use, the land use element which is going to be zoning and how we're going to look at our land in the future. With that I'll turn it over to th Kate, but before I do, I do want to reiterate that on the 4 of December we will continue discussion on this issue so if we do not get to everyone's comments, or if anyone feels after th listening to this they want to come back, on December the 4 we will re-adjourn and the meeting will continue to be open and we will discuss this issue so everyone will be heard. With that, Kate. 16 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Aanenson: Thank you Chair, members of the Planning Commission. The comprehensive plan land use element is the culmination of all the other elements that we discussed over the last couple months. We didn't have this many people to hear the sewer and water element so obviously all of those elements that we talked about, whether it's housing, park and rec, all relate into the land use and you can see how that ties together. So with that, I want to give an overview briefly kind of where we've been. We've really been working on this, we started this in work session with the Planning Commission almost a year and a half ago. I'd like to quickly give a summary of what we've done to date and how we ended up here and again outline for the rest of the group here tonight, and those watching at home, where we intend to go with this process. We started out in the comprehensive plan is we actually looked at an opportunity that was made, people looking at the opportunities with the new 212, kind of the impetus of the infrastructure and re-evaluating our land uses and at that time the city, in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce actually worked with Jim McCombs to do a commercial study and I'll spend a little bit more time going through what their recommendations were, but that was done in 2006. We have the information from the McCombs study and all it was was information and so we decided what are we going to do with that information. How are we going to implement that or translate that into our comprehensive plan so we worked with the SRF Group and again I'll spend a little bit more time on that but that was another impetus to give us some information of the direction we're going with the comprehensive plan. We had a series of open houses in June that were well attended. Two nights and I know several of the planning commissioners were able to attend some of those meetings. The draft of the comprehensive plan, it has been available on the city's web site so that's a nice opportunity for our residents to get on line and read whatever elements they're interested in. They would need to contact staff. We've also provided numerous articles in the Maple Leaf and the Chan Connection last year. That it's coming. Open house opportunities. Ways to provide information to be informed. There's been a lot of communication on that. Back in October first we actually put the comprehensive plan out for jurisdictional review. What that means is all of our neighboring cities and the other governmental agencies that has an impact on it, has an opportunity to review that, and that st comment period actually goes til April 1, but that is out and we have received some feedback from other agencies already. Based on the input that we had from the sewer and water, there was some concern about the MUSA. The urban service area and phasing that. We did hold another th neighborhood meeting in November, on the 6 and actually about 250 notices were sent out on that and we did look at kind of the Bluff Creek area and the potential for the regional mall area because we did change up the MUSA, other urban service areas and I'll talk a little bit about that in more detail. And then also we really went above and beyond what's required by law and noticed both areas that we're providing some additional zoning to. Things that were re-visited or up-guiding and those are some of the people here tonight that we did notice. Again we went beyond the legal requirement and wanted to give people an opportunity. Then I want to talk about tonight is to go through those land uses specifically our residential, commercial land. While we're focusing a lot on commercial here tonight, the comprehensive plan includes all land uses and it's relation to the city and our goal is to provide a well planned city. The responsibility to the city…as a well planned community, so I'll spend some time talking about that. As I mentioned, one of the other components is how we provide for the growth of the city through urban services providing municipal sewer and water, which is certainly of interest of people in the southern area of the city. Then we're going to spend some time going through the recommendations for the land use plan and Bob Generous on our staff will be going through 17 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 those. I just want to remind you that we've got a lot of land use changes. Some of them are city initiated. Some of them are not, and you're going to have applicants requesting. What we're trying to do tonight is to break those in kind of a sequential manner. Some of those have been noticed for this meeting tonight, and then some will be scheduled in 2 weeks from tonight so we tried to break it up so people have plenty of opportunity to comment. Some of the land use recommendations that we haven't supported, you'll have residents that are, or applicants that want to talk about that too so we want to provide that opportunity. Commissioners, I'd just ask that you know we try to follow the order that…and let those people speak first tonight and then at the end when we have time, to let other people present and make their presentations because we've noticed certain ones tonight and we certainly want to give those people first opportunity, and you'll see where the natural break comes when we get to that section. Again I just want to st remind everybody that the comment period's open til April 1 and the goal here is, when we th come back in January, on the 15, we'll give you a summary of what you've given us to date. We're also looking for direction from the Planning Commission tonight. If you want us to come back with additional information of any issues that have risen tonight. We've also been compiling your comments regarding historic preservation and some of the issues that we discussed, we'll be formulating those so you can give your recommendation on the comprehensive plan at your January meeting to the City Council. Again then hold some additional work sessions and formalize a recommendations to the Met Council which will be st done after the April 1 closing. Any questions before the process? McDonald: I believe not. Carry on. Aanenson: Okay. Then we'll go straight ahead here. This chart here shows a comparison between where we were in 2030 and where we are today. Again as I identified earlier, the goal of the city is to really create a mixture of land uses that provides the high quality of life and a reliable tax base so we look at the office, commercial and the residential spread in this area. The goal here also is to provide, as we work with the Metropolitan Council and multiple land uses, our goal here is to also provide those areas that aren't developable, so we've gotten more sophisticated in our…so we've got better information on that. So…point of our total acreage, the 14,760, that's our base knowledge. From that we try to back out what's undevelopable. So you can see from 2020 to 2030 we've actually increased that number based on the 12 lakes we have in the city, the 356 wetlands. Backing out some of the flood plain areas, the creeks, so that gives us a true number of where those are because the numbers that we have for the office industrial and residential, works for the Met Council what we provide. They work with us to provide the job projections, employment base, households and population base, so it's important that we get those numbers as true as possible. So looking at the land use comparisons you can see, based on the recommendations, and we'll show you where we're going with that, we've increased the amount of commercial acreage by 2% from where we were. And we'll talk a little bit more detail on the commercial study in a minute but that's the biggest change. We've reduced the office industrial and increased the more pure office. The rest of you can see we're actually decreasing the percentage, and a lot of that's just getting better information of what's buildable and what's not buildable. Any questions on that? This chart is on your comprehensive plan too. A lot of what I'm taking here is out of the comprehensive plan. What I've been trying to do is spend a little bit more time explaining what we have in there. So now I'll segway into the McComb's Group where we hired them back, and actually we started that project, we completed it in June 18 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 but it started in the first of the year, and again with the 212 we recognize there's some opportunities there in developing along the corridor to reassess what was happening there and what the McComb's study found was that we have a very successful downtown and there's some additional opportunity for retail based on our high income, and the growth of residential. Obviously there's linkage between household growth, trade area and the access along that so what the study pointed out is that there's an opportunity to provide a larger trade area. In the comprehensive plan our goal there is to say we will provide shopping for, or be a convenience commercial, neighborhood commercial. We never intended to be a regional draw so this is a big paradigm shift. So it's been very appropriate for us as we look through the opportunity to consider the zoning, and not do it in just a zoning application but we ask that, because we do have parties that are interested in this, is that we ask that we wait and study it as part of the entire comprehensive plan and not look at this in a vacuum with one application and looking at specific because really it's a community process and so we looked at where the trade area would be so if you look at the smallest ring in there, that would be kind of what we consider our convenience trade, and historically that's how we viewed ourselves. We never wanted to be a regional draw, if you look at the goals in the comprehensive plan. That's what that states. So if you look at kind of what the downtown trade area, that's kind of that next circle, and that's pretty much built out. The downtown trade area, if you look at the acreage that we have available now. And the larger circle then would be if the city was to develop a lifestyle or regional mall type concept, what would that trade area be in bringing the people into downtown. So that, the city did start thinking about what would be the opportunities with that. So one of the other things that's very important for you to keep in mind, if you go back to that slide I showed before on the retail acreage, what it shows is that there's actually a 116, what we recommended is 116 acres of additional retail and if you look at what the McComb's study did is looking at retail demand, they recommended 112 acres of additional to 144. We're recommending in this current comprehensive plan 116 so that's on the low end if you look at what the demand would be. Again that's tying back the bigger trade area, but also the household projection within that trade area. So what we're recommending is on the conservative of the lower end of that. So now we've got the recommendation from the McComb Group. We've spent some time working with SRF and I know that they met with the Planning Commission and the City Council and you folks were involved in that. But what they did is looked at the study and into the future what does that mean. What were the strengths and weaknesses. Certainly one of the biggest issues that was discussed as far as the regional center, what would that do to downtown because that's really been the jewel that the city has is that we've had a downtown. A walkable downtown that's very convenient and we wanted to make sure that in doing, adding additional commercial zoning wouldn't deter from that, so that was part of the focus groups that was, that they talked to. SRF, and then working with the Planning Commission and the City Council, developed a new opportunity for commercial and the categories, which I'll go through. Keefe: Did we get a sort of a conclusion from them? Aanenson: Yes, this is, it's a map format, right. So I'll go through that in detail here, and I've gone over the definitions in here. They're also in the comprehensive plan and while they're wordy on this slide, I just wanted to be able to go through those briefly. But the central business district, which is showing up on the map as the A area, within that we're recommending the two zoning districts. The central business district and the highway business. We have a number of 19 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 zoning districts that are, they overlap and we're going to try to make that more concise under the, one of our big projects then after the first of the year would be then to re-write the comprehensive plan looking at the appropriate zoning. We still want to keep some business highway in the core of downtown which provides some of those auto related type uses, and also the commercial. I also want to state that there isn't a lot of vacant, there's limited vacant commercial land in the downtown core which is one of the reasons that we ended up with this model. So what is the downtown core. The downtown core is where you have the groceries. This is really our true convenience area. We've got the grocery stores. We've got the post office. We've got the library. These are the areas where we do a lot of that daily activity that you would maybe bump into your neighbors, that sort of thing so we've, we have again limited potential. When we did Villages on the Pond that was controversial at the time because we went across the highway. It was very controversial but really now thinking back it's kind of this continued linkage of the downtown core providing that vertical, horizontal mix which at the time we were out there kind of the first ones to pursue that, well over 10 years ago so, and that was considered part of the downtown but that again provides that additional opportunity for some of that, kind of that neighborhood convenience. So with that we looked at the next zoning district which would be the regional center, and what would be the difference between the regional center and the downtown core. Would they be competing with each other, and we spent a lot of time in the focus groups talking about what would be the difference, and the major differences would be comparison shopping. There wouldn't be the grocery store things. Yes, there'd be some entertainment and some housing which you also have in the downtown. The downtown core has housing. It has shopping. It has some other convenience stuff. Some of that would be in the regional center. Some entertainment. Some restaurants which you also have downtown, but the biggest difference is the compare shopping which you don’t have as much of in the downtown core, and when I say comparison shopping that's an opportunity if you're looking for a suit to go to 2 or 3 different places to try to find that, so it's a bigger trade area. Doesn't have the same convenience as the grocery stores, the library, those sort of things so it's kind of a public, what we call the neighborhood uses that you want to congregate in so that would be the difference between the two. Keefe: Is it part of the recommendation to limit the uses in the regional mall? Aanenson: Correct. Keefe: So that they wouldn't necessarily cannibalize the downtown. Aanenson: Correct, yeah. Thank you for pointing that out. One of the things there as I mentioned earlier that will be coming back to you with the zoning district. We haven't developed that yet. We're waiting to see where you're going with this but that would be the recommendation is to actually develop that zoning district as we would with all the commercial zoning districts, to re-write those so they wouldn't be similar. Keefe: Just one follow-up question. Aanenson: Sure. 20 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Keefe: On your map here there's, the purple area. I think it's purple. When you show the purple to the west of downtown you've got the black highlighted areas. Is that two magenta, or what is the color to the west that goes over Powers and. Aanenson: Yeah. Those are neighborhood, I'll talk about those in a second. Yeah. So we talked about the two biggest ones would be the downtown core and then the regional mall. Then the other ones would be community commercial, and that's to see, and we did spend some time talking about you know what do we do to make sure that we've got kind of an equal playing field in the downtown. We've got limited acreage left in the core of downtown, so what would we do to kind of create that synergy to keep people that want to do some of that convenience in downtown. So one of the discussions was actually look at some of the buildings that are currently in that area. There's some vacant parcels. There's some office industrial that we would convert that to kind of a big box, and again we've given some broad definitions to what that would be. That that would be further articulated when we actually update the comprehensive, I mean the zoning ordinance, so we'll look at that in more detail. Again, those are the type of uses that want that visibility on the highway. And to take an opportunity of that, and again that would add to, because we have limited in the downtown core, commercial to drive some other opportunities to keep those trips in the downtown core. Then the last commercial use that we have would be the neighborhood, and some of those are already in place. The kind of, that tend to meet the daily needs, which would be for the most part gas. Kind of what you see, currently out on Century Boulevard or at Galpin. Those kind of convenience gas stations. Coffee, those sort of things. We did provide, as you pointed out in your meetings that we really have nothing on Lyman, excuse me, Pioneer Trail between Eden Prairie so we talked about the potential for another site there. And then also we talked about at the bottom of the Y, 101 and old 212. If we did some light rail or in the future that we would look at that as an opportunity so we're just noting those in the comprehensive plan as an opportunity to provide additional commercial zoning, depending on how things develop in those areas and what the demand may be. So with that, those are our commercial recommendations, and I do have a lot of detail on those specific ones and those are in your comprehensive plan and anybody that wants those, I just wanted to point out. I didn't want to have, need to go through all those but again hotels are downtown. Could hotels be in the lifestyle center? Potentially so those are the things we look at as we develop that mall zoning district. So with that we end up with our recommendation for the ultimate development of the city. The comprehensive plan. This ties back to the acreage and obviously you can't see all this so I'm going to break it down by zoning type, and you don’t have this in your plan. You're looking at in your comprehensive plan with, this large map. So I'd just like to take a few minutes and go through those. Again pointed out on here is the potential fire station. Again this is all these maps, all the…were part of that commercial map I just showed were all part of the open houses that we spent a lot of time talking to people about to get their feedback. So this is a recommendation and this is what exists for parks and open space. 9% of the city. 9.4% of the city is park and open space. I think it's easier when we look at these by specific land use to get a better understanding graphically of how that works out. Large lot, 6.6 acres. Again this is existing large lots. As we provide sewer and water, there are some, these are the ones that more than likely will stay as we talked about in the sewer comprehensive plan element. We are, we did model an opportunity to provide sewer to these over time in the next 15, 20 years. If there is a demand or desire that could be hooked on, we do have some systems that, or yeah, some septic systems that are failing that would make that opportunity, and we'll 21 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 talk about that with the MUSA phasing. Low density residential, this is our largest percentage of land use with almost 5,000 acres. 31%. Medium and high density. 2.7. High density 1.5. We talked about the bottom, some of the planning commissioners looked at the bottom of the Moon Valley site. That would be one site that's still, hasn't developed. Otherwise for the most part, except for on the north side of Highway 5, most of our high density has been developed. So with that kind of looking at all the residential, 43% of the city is in residential. The agricultural zone's a little bit different application as we looked at how to provide or designate that area that's in the flood plain. City Engineer, Public Works Director Paul Oehme mentioned when we looked at the sewer model, we did provide an opportunity. If there's something upland on the south side of 212, originally we never intended to provide sewer to that area but we have modeled that also so we put that in agricultural. That would be RSS Golf. If that use wanted to change in the future. We have some other uses on the other side of the Y. Car dealership, those sort of things that we want to get higher and better uses on. While they're in the currently the back side of those lots in the flood plain, they do have upland that could be serviced so it's hard when you have some of those existing houses probably can't be further subdivided so it's a small percentage of the land use but we did put those in an agricultural, which would also include some of those areas around 212 that are in the flood plain so to try to take that out of the mix. Again the goal is to get more accurately what's developable as we move into the future. So with that I'll segway to the commercial. So the commercial right now what we're recommending is the 3.28. We see on the, Powers and 212. That area right there is also dual guided, and we'll talk about that in a second. We are recommending some dual guiding and when Bob Generous goes through his recommendations for changes, you'll see that. So this is office so if you look back at this, and Kate you showed that as red before. We're also showing it as potential for office. It could be either zoning district. So again we're moving away from some of the office industrial and some of the sites that we're indicating pure office and that would include some other pieces for example we're recommending some of these and Bob will go through these again up on Highway 41 and then on Highway 5. Some other opportunities to provide some office. Office industrial, 6%. Public, semi public. This is schools. The Arboretum. A majority of these, parks. Campfire Girls park. And then mixed use, and that's the area where Villages on the Pond is and that would also be the, where the park and ride, Southwest Transit and then the other commercial piece at the intersection of Lyman Boulevard and the new 101. So if you put all that together, that's 19% of the land uses in the commercial, office, mixed use type. So with the MUSA phasing line as we indicated, you know in the past we kind of a 5 year increment…2005, 2010, 15, 20. In looking at it and what we will be bringing in in the 2010 area in kind of this light green here, there might not be enough developable acreage in that to accelerate or last for 5 years, so we're looking at expanding that and that was what we had the neighborhood meeting on th the 6 and we invited again about 250 people to that. To that neighborhood and as well it was a good turnout on that. We had good information on questions about sewer availability, especially those people that one, are having access issues. Getting out onto 101 as the traffic continues to get worst down there, and sort of the implications for you is the Bluff Creek. In the past we've kind of worked our way around Bluff Creek. This takes off of Bluff Creek Golf Course and allows it to go into the MUSA sooner than it was recommended. But just to be clear, in order for this to develop there needs to be adequate transportation. Adequate infrastructure so if a piece of property wants to be developed, they still provide a way to get in and out adequately and so there's some other things that need to happen. We know that on the next lift station, we've already acquired that property. You've seen it. We did a wetland impact. It will be right next to 22 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Powers Boulevard. That lift station is, has been, property has been acquired. Is in the capital improvement plan. The other lift station as the city engineer indicated would be at the bottom of the Y and that would service the southern area of the city. And again, just because you're in the MUSA, it's all development driven. We got a lot of questions of when are you going to be there? We're not going to be there. It's going to take a development to drive that desire to bring the sewer and water to somebody, so it's all development driven. Keefe: In your needing to expand, generally where does the line go to? Aanenson: What we noticed? Keefe: No. I mean you're saying that you had a meeting and to maybe expand what's on here. Is that right? Aanenson: No, no, no, no. This is what, because we changed it. You know actually what we did from the last, from the 2020 we changed the model and we added one more year of growth. In looking at the, when the sewer and water plan came back and we recognized at providing within what we would call the majority of that property is just north of Homestead Lane, your earlier application, and the Erhart property, which we've walked with Mr. Erhart looking at how he wants to develop that property. The largest landholder in there. Probably not enough to carry us for 5 years. So we looked at expanding that. Again looking at the golf course. There needs to be adequate access in and out of there which may require some additional property acquisition by the developer. The City's not going to go forward with that but just to allow that as an opportunity. That was one question that we got asked. The other question is, that there are people with some failing systems. It's always an economic decision as to whether or not you do any septic and well, or you wait til there's municipal services and those people want to know kind of for their own economic financial decisions what the timing is on that so, again it was well received and people are concerned about being able to get in and out on 101, which certainly is a high priority as you know that we're working on. This table right here is something that's required for us to submit to the Met Council, and really what it shows is our growth incrementally, what we expect for absorption with our different land uses. And really it ties back to what you saw in the transportation element when we put together the traffic analysis. We looked at household projections. It all ties back to that households…trips, those sort of things so it's absorption and it all ties back. So with that, we're going to move to land use recommendations which I believe a lot of the residents are here on. So one of the big changes from what we did in 2020 to 2030, besides just make two urban growth areas. We looked at trying to clarify, eliminating those areas that were unbuildable so we get a more accurate understanding of what our current land uses are. We're not making a lot of recommendations regarding the residential, but certainly the biggest change is going to be in the commercial application, and the other one is just to do some clean-up. In this map right here you can see the most…as we're trying to get through tonight, in the November meeting. What's in blue is what we've noticed for the December meeting. Can someone speak here tonight? Yes. But what we'd like to do, and we've asked the commission to try to stay on task and we've broken out for you, we've given you a handout of kind of those items so we're going to try to take them in groups so people can speak on their specific issue. That's kind of by neighborhood and you'll see how that goes in a minute. I did also want to inform the commission that we did receive some letters and 23 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 you have those in front of you. One is a petition supporting a regional mall from a number of residents. The other is a letter from Mr. Dorsey and then another letter is from Mr. Fox and on behalf of Jeff and Terri Fox regarding the regional mall so. I also wanted to remind you that when we go to that January meeting, anything that we received, we put that in the compilation of all the documents that have been supported. Also on the notices that were sent out, every property owner was given notice. We sent out 80 some letters to individual property owners on this. Some of them are here tonight. We've met with them. A lot of them did send us emails and said they support what we're doing. Understand it and so I would say we've spoken to pretty much every property owner that is up for a land use change. So with that, we want to go through the land use changes. So I've got, are you ready to kind of move through those? McDonald: I'm ready. Aanenson: So we're going to break these down. The first section we're going to go through, you can see is highlighted in red and these are the re-guidings to parks and open space. Generous: As you notice on the map for the land use amendments, or proposed changes, we tried to break the city up and it's mostly geographical. North of Lyman Boulevard, we're going to try to address tonight and then south of Lyman would be in the December meeting. The first group of things that we wanted to discuss were properties that are either publicly owned or there's some type of city control on it. Either through conservation easement or through ownership. And these are, there's 17 parcels. They're shown on the map identified as parcels 1, 4(b), 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 15, 17, 23, 26, 27, 30 and 39. And these parcels are all guided for multiple things, either residential but what we're recommending as part of the comp plan update is that they all be guided for parks and open space because that's what they will be. They're either wetlands. They're storm water ponds. They're areas that will not develop and so again we're trying to be more accurate with the land uses in our community so we're making, recommending those changes to those parcels. Aanenson: Can I just give one example? Are you going to go through them all? Generous: I wasn't going to go through them… Aanenson: To give an example on the Town & Country, Liberty at Bluff Creek. Generous: Item number 39 on the map. These are areas that the city, was dedicated as part of the subdivision for parks and open space. We're going to preserve the trees in this area. They're also contributory areas to the Bluff Creek corridor, so we're going to, now that the city has control of it, we're going to show it on our map that it is parks and open space. We believe under the existing comp plan there's a lot of area that was shown as parks and open space that the city did not own or control and we were giving people a false impression that we actually had the ultimate control of that property and so we're started waiting until we actually get it in. We will have the Bluff Creek overlay primary zone shown on our comp plan map so people area aware that there will be potential restrictions on development, but not until it actually develops will we make that, those sort of changes. 24 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Aanenson: Yeah, let me just add one other. This ties back also when you look at the park comprehensive plan they've identified certain goals of properties to acquire. Certainly the city attorney's advice is that that's the appropriate place to show where you intend to do extractions. Not on the land use. You can always, as the project moves forward, it may or may not happen and again we're trying to give our residents the best information that will there be a park or not be a park. Showing it on the land use map meets the impression that we have control over the property which is in our case is true, so the best place to find out what the city's intention if we wanted to acquire parks is to go to the parks section so that has been clearly stated in our goals and policies and you saw that. That they intend to acquire, so we had some trails, or identified some trails and some properties that we certainly don't have control of or and it's identified as a goal when they come in to try to get those. Generous: Okay, so I don't know if there's any questions. Aanenson: Are there any questions or do you want some other examples of? McDonald: Are you guys okay? I think continue on. Generous: Okay, the next is. Aanenson: Do you want to take comments on that or if there's anybody that, any of the residents have comments, we can take those now? McDonald: Well if you think this is a good place to stop and take comments just on what's been presented thus far. Okay. Actually, do commissioners have any comments or should we just go to public? You want to wait til we get to the end? At this point then we'll open this up as a public meeting for comments. Anyone wishing to come up and make any comments on the matters that have been discussed thus far, please do so and we'll take those comments and if there's anything that we can address, we will. Okay. Seeing no one, then why don't we continue. Ben Gowan: You said thus far. Aanenson: Just the ones we just talked about. Ben Gowan: The whole comprehensive plan? McDonald: No. Just what's been brought out thus far. Aanenson: Yeah. Generous: Okay, the next mini group that we're proposing to address are properties that were recommended be guided to public, semi-public land uses. These are properties, there's 4 of them. One is the new, the west water treatment plant site in the Lake Harrison development. It's item number 7 on the plan. 18 is the, there's a 10 acre parcel in the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum that we made this recommendation. The Landscape Arboretum contacted us and said they concur with that, and more accurately reflects that area because it won't remain a large lot, 25 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 single family development forever. 27 is the area near the water treatment plant. We're going to change that from right now it's parks and open space and commercial and show it as a public, semi public facility. Then finally number 29 which is on Lyman Boulevard, it's the Chanhassen High School site and the Chaska electric sub-station site and those will all be shown as public, semi-public. Keefe: Let me just ask a question. On 27, that's what, the land that's out in front that goes out to the corner on 5, is that? Generous: It's only the portion that is the water treatment plant site. We have another amendment for the AOM and that's in the next group. Keefe: Okay. Thank you. Aanenson: As you recall the school site was actually guided, dual guided because the school chose not, or the referendum didn't pass, we wanted to go back to office industrial so now we're just eliminating the other option. Good place to break, if you have any questions or public comments on those. Generous: So that's it. Now we go to page 4 of the handout I gave you. McDonald: Why don't we go ahead and continue because, until we get to a point where I guess we really start to get into the heart of this where we'll take a break probably just before we start discussing the regional mall area in detail. Generous: The next grouping is, we call it other amendments. We believe these are clean-up amendments. And to correct the land uses on the map. They include 13 parcels and their numbers are shown on the map as 2, 3, 8, 10, 11, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 27, and 28 and these are, we'll go through individually. Item 2 is property that is a single family home site. It's zoned RSF. It's guided for public, semi-public use. That was we believe a mistake. It's right next to the city fire station #2 up there, but it's beyond the fire station site. There's no intention of expanding that site as a public use and so we want to more accurately reflect that it's residential, low density. There's also some wetland right behind it but. Item number 3 is Holy Cross Lutheran Church site. It's zoned single family residential on Highway 7. It's guided for public, semi-public and really it should be guided for residential, low density. That would be consistent with the land use...come in under residential low density zoning and be potentially subdivided. Item number 8 is, there are 3 houses on Highway 41 that are shown as part of the Minnewashta Regional Park that are not included in the park so we want to accurately reflect that these are residential, large lot sites. There are some issues of access in serving them with urban services but as home sites they are valid properties and so we want to accurately reflect that. Number 10 is, this is where the Metropolitan Council sewer and water, sewer line goes through some properties and it was guided in the existing comp plan for parks and open space but really as Kate mentioned under the parks and open space element, there's discussion about providing a trail through there and actually acquiring different land on those sites in the future if they're ever to develop and so we want to, we're recommending that the park and open space land use come out and that they be guided residential low density, which is the balance of the property on either 26 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 sides of them. So that would make them consistent. Item number 11 is on Dogwood, on the southeast corner of Lake Minnewashta. These properties are zoned RSF which is single family residential. They're guided for large lot, residential large lot but none of them comply with the large lot designation. We had tried to bring these forward before but there's concern that we didn't have the sewer or water service answered. How they'd be served and now with the city extension of sewer and water to that area, we're bringing in land, recommending that the land use and zoning become consistent. Item number 15 is the Kwik Trip and CVS site. They're guided for parks and open space over the commercial portion of the property and we're recommending that that go away and that only the outlots and the land that the city owns in that area be guided for parks and open space so we're just cleaning it up. Kwik Trip did contact us and they concur with this amendment. Recommend that it go forward. Item number 19 is the Family of Christ Lutheran Church site. South of Highway 5 at Stone Creek Boulevard and this area is guided for parks and open space and office industrial but the parks and open space is only the outlot where the Bluff Creek flows through the property and so we're recommending that that be changed to show that just the office industrial over the rest of their lot. Item number 20, again this is an area that is shown as parks and open space in the comprehensive plan but they're office industrial sites. It's part of the east branch of Bluff Creek. As part of any development we will review it and preserve the creek corridor pursuant to city ordinance and the watershed district requirements. However, it's not permanent open space, the entire site so we want to correct that and show that it is office industrial land. Item 21 is a neighboring property. This is shown as part of Prince's property and it's guided for parks and open space but really it's office industrial land and so we want to accurately reflect that. Item 22, there is some area adjacent to Bluff Creek., It's all shown as parks and open space in our current comprehensive plan but it should really be office industrial. Until we have control of the property there are some areas that the city does have control of and we're showing that in our land use map for parks and open space. But for that property it should be shown as office industrial. Item 25 is on Lake Drive. It's south of, it's just south of Highway 5 and Market Boulevard. The property's guided for parks and open space. It should be office industrial. The western half of the site is a wetland but it's really zoned IOP and so we're making a land use and zoning consistent. Our wetland protection ordinance will protect the wetland on the property as part of any development of this site, so we want to again accurately reflect that. Number 27, by the balance of the properties at Dakota, 101 and Highway 5. On the north side there's one lot that the city owns that's really adjacent to 101. It's currently guided for parks and open space and commercial. It's really a commercial site so we're getting rid of the parks and open space. On the south side there's a landing for the pedestrian bridge that's shown as commercial. That should really be parks and open space because the city owns it and we're going to keep that. That's a clean-up. And then the Sinclair site and the property around that are guided for parks and open space and commercial. The city owns the one site but it's really all a commercial site and so we're going to take some park and open space land use out of it and show it all as commercial. And then finally parcel 28 is on the east end of town, off of Dell Road and Lake Drive East. This property is guided for both office industrial uses and medium density residential. The site is developed as an office industrial park and so the medium density does not accurately reflect the potential or existing use of the property and so we're deleting that. And so those are the clean-up, 15 clean-up items that we're proposing as part of the comp plan update and re-guiding those properties. 27 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 McDonald: Let me ask you a question because you skipped over a couple that are in our handout. Is that 4(a), 24. Generous: 4(a)'s in my next presentation. McDonald: Okay. Keefe: I've got a question for you. Aside from the parcels on Sinclair, are there other areas, any other city owned, or are they all, they're all sort of owned privately owned? Aanenson: Well the others ones I think were the ones we addressed at the changing to open space, that we took as an extraction for part of the development. Keefe: No, but any of these that have parks and open space, this other use, were they all privately owned? Generous: Well the two at 101 and 5 were city owned. Keefe: Yeah, those are city owned ones. The rest were privately owned? Aanenson: Pretty much. Keefe: Yeah, okay. So really the change would then allow them to potentially develop… Aanenson: Exactly. Exactly. Generous: And they're already zoned commercial, at least in that area. It's the zoning of land use. Aanenson: I think the biggest change you go back to why some of those are in place. Before we did the overlay district we had a lot of property identified as parks and open space and once we developed the overlay district and used the application of a density transfer, that really became the tool and the other became obsolete so really it's cleaning up and providing that opportunity for people to develop those. And also I think we've learned that there's an expectation…if it's guided that, then they think that that's going to be preserved in perpetuity where we've got another tool so it really is a clean-up. We did speak to a lot of people on this issue. I think we've clarified what most people thought. I would like to offer, if the Chair would like, to let speak on any of these topics before we get into the other big ones. McDonald: At this point then we will open up the podium again to anyone wishes to come forward and address the issues that staff has gone over up to this point, if there's any comments or any questions or any clarification you would like of anything, please come up to the podium and address your comments to the commissioners. Well seeing no one come forward, I'll close the public at this point and take it back to city staff to continue. 28 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Generous: And finally there are five areas that we, as part of this discussion that we believe are substantive in nature. All of them are up guiding their property. The first one is item 4(a). It's on Highway 41, just south of the Seven Forty One Center. We, there's two parcels. We're recommending that both parcels receive a guiding of residential medium density. This area acts as a transition from the highway into the residential and the commercial to the north. Additionally the northerly parcel we're recommending that it have a second guiding on it of office use, and this would allow someone to come in there and develop a project that would again transition into the retail development directly to the north. As part of any development of this site we're keenly aware of the residential neighborhood behind it, as well as a limitation on access to Highway 41 so as part of any development review, that would be something that we would look closely at. The second area is identified as area 24. These are the community commercial areas just to the southeast of the existing downtown area. They're currently guided for office industrial uses. We're recommending that they also be dual guided to permit a commercial use in this for the property as part of any redevelopment of the area. This land use change would not require that any of the existing uses leave, but it does provide another opportunity for the development or redevelopment of these parcels. Aanenson: Let me just add on that. We talked, I know you raised this question before but that would be new zoning that we'd have to develop and you'd help us with that as we develop that ordinance for what we would call community commercial. We don't have that zoning in place. Keefe: So just reiterate the location of this please. Aanenson: This would be just east of Powers. We talked about those buildings, kind of up to just about to, before the creek. Stops short of the creek. Generous: Yeah, it's Park Road east to the railroad tracks and Highway 5. It's that triangle. It's approximately 50 acres in total. There's a big wetland complex in the center of it and that's part of the reason we think that that preserves the visibility. You can't develop there but you would be able to see the back lots from Highway 5. A lot of the parcels on Park Road are either open space or parking lots so they're really under utilized. There's a vacant building out there now so but. Keefe: And this is, is it on both sides of Powers or just east of Powers? Aanenson: Actually it's on both sides. I apologize. Generous: It's limited by the railroad tracks… And it is really a good extension of the downtown area but they are larger parcels so you would be able to get a slightly bigger user. Aanenson: Just for the record too, one of the caveats that we did put in there, is there needs to be some determination, if it does go retail, to look at the traffic configuration, and I believe we have that in our discussion with the council and one of our work sessions to talk about, if circulation needs to be improved on the Powers and 5 intersection and then also the frontage road at that location too so that would be a condition of rezoning that we'd look at the traffic analysis. 29 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 McDonald: Can you speak a little bit about what is this community zoning. Aanenson: Well that was one of the new zoning. That would be, if you go back to the side we have on that. We talked about that as kind of a big box area. Again when we don't have additional square footage in the downtown core, what will we do to add some more commercial to the downtown core. There is a pent up demand for some of that big box retail and we identified that as home furnishings, potential building materials, building supplies, sporting goods, and that would have the visibility on Highway 5 which is desirable of those type of users, so again it'd be to get to the downtown. McDonald: Okay, but I'm confused about then is why wouldn't a retail zoning work for that? Why do we have to invent a new zoning category? Aanenson: Well I guess because we're going to redo all our zoning so we felt like that would be a separate type of a category that we may not want a big box in the central core, or into a neighborhood district so as it evolves we may change that a little bit but we're recommending right now that it be commercial and we can decide on the exact intent of the zoning as we move through that part of the process. McDonald: Gives you a little bit better control over areas as far as. Aanenson: Well it's the same rationale, we have different hierarchy now where you have a neighborhood business. There's certain limitation of uses that would go on there as opposed to the downtown core. McDonald: Okay. Generous: And then finally the last 3 are identified as 33, 34, and 36. These properties are identified in our retail market study as a potential area for the regional mall. They're currently guided residential low and medium density. We're recommending that that go away and that we guide them for commercial and office users. Again development of this area would be contingent on the city developing the appropriate zoning category and a developer coming in with a project that meets our criteria that's identified in the comprehensive plan. Otherwise an office, corporate office complex would also work in this area too. High visibility. High access from the new Highway 312 coming through that. There is potential if light rail comes in that a stop could be provided at Powers and 212 so there's a lot going for this site. And so we're recommending that we make that change to facilitate that if it's going to happen. And those are all the amendments that we're looking at reviewing tonight. McDonald: Can I ask a question about 4(a) because you kind of brushed over something that seems kind of critical about access onto 41. One of the problems we've had before, any time you get onto a county or state road you have access issues about where you can do things. Is this property already got an access so we don't have that problem or is this something that we've got to look at as far as this development? 30 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Aanenson: We have looked at that and that's why we brought, that's really what precipitated the recommendation for change. There was an old, I know the applicant's here, or the owner's here, but there was a retail type use on that site. Right now in order to get to it, MnDot doesn't want to give access directly to that because it conflicts with the reconfiguration of 41 as you access into the middle school site, so really it needs to get access from the south, which the developer to the south, the owner of the south is not ready to proceed, or to the north which is the commercial site, which is why we recommended the Seven and Forty One Center, shopping center, that's why we're recommending that either have an office use or a multi-family use. We think for single family residential when you can't get to it, topographically it's isolated and the road extension's not there. It'd be a difficult parcel to develop so that's why we thought it's kind of, if it was an office use that provides that buffer between the commercial and new residents that are there, and for noise attenuation and the like as you're adjacent to a state highway. McDonald: Okay, so there are limited options as far as access and everything and that's what kind of guides this forward. Aanenson: Correct. It's a little bit problematic. You have to kind of work with the property to the north or wait until the property owner to the south is ready to develop, and again that would all be dependent on those two parties to work together to make that happen. McDonald: Okay. Does anyone else have any questions about any of these issues? Kathleen? Thomas: No. Keefe: No. Dillon: No. McDonald: Okay. Well, one of the things that I will probably want to do is call a break at 9:00. We're probably at a point now where we ought to open up the floor to discuss these issues and I know that this is probably going to be what everyone is here for but if we don't break at 9:00, I'm not sure we ever will. So having said that, I will probably stop this after the first one or two people but we will come back and we will resume all of this. So having said that, we'll now open it up for a public forum and anyone wishing to come forward, please come up to the podium. State your name and address and address your comments to the commissioners. Ben Gowan: My name is Ben Gowan. I'm on the 6440 parcel here and we've been on that property since 1939 and of course we don't like change. Change does come. But I've been advised that this change is not all bad. With that I stand amended. Aanenson: Yep. I just want to point out, Mr. Gowan did have a couple of questions which we've tried to explain to him is re-guiding the property does not mean development's going to happen. We are recommending a little bit higher residential. Again it's, you know it's a transition area. You're surrounded by parks. That doesn't mean you have to do anything today. He will still stay zoned. He's zoned residential single family. We have no intention to rezone him. Just to change the land use, if he chooses to use it. If he doesn't, when I first met with Mr. 31 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Gowan when he said 2030, I may not be here. I may not be here either in 2030 so, the plan goes that long. So we certainly the intent is to give some other zoning options there on that property again next to a state highway surrounded by parks, and access to commercial. We felt that might be another land use change. We're not recommending that many, if you saw on the land use the amount of medium and high density, we don't have that much. We thought this might be an appropriate area and we certainly it's up to Mr. Gowan when he's ready to develop his property so. McDonald: Could you clarify which items that he's talking about. Aanenson: Sure it's 4. McDonald: 4(a). Aanenson: Yeah. McDonald: Okay. Aanenson: He's the most southerly piece. The next piece on the north end is the next piece. McDonald: Thank you sir. Next. Terry Palmer: My name's Terry Palmer. Ben's my father. I thought I heard you say something about accessibility from either the south or the north. Aanenson: Right. Terry Palmer: And that was real quick. Aanenson: Sure, sure. And I. Terry Palmer: What does that mean? Aanenson: Yeah, I spoke to your father about this too. We're not forcing that. That's up to a developer. Terry Palmer: No, I just, this is the first time I've heard of it, I'm sorry. Aanenson: No I'm saying that really the, in meeting with the State, that would be their preference is to try to get access either from the north or the south. Terry Palmer: Okay, the north being. Aanenson: The shopping center. Terry Palmer: The strip mall? 32 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Aanenson: Correct. Correct. Terry Palmer: Okay, but then it wouldn't, so possibly if a person that develops comes that way, it wouldn't affect his piece of property with the access onto 41 and stuff like that. Aanenson: That's correct. That's correct. Terry Palmer: Okay. That's what I wanted to find out. Thank you. McDonald: Okay, thank you. Gary Reed: I'm Gary Reed and we're just north of Ben. We have 2.21 acres there and we're ready for something. We've been renting out. They've trashed the house. My folks old house. We've been there since 19, I think my folks bought that property in '35. So we've been there and we had Reed's Drive-In for many years which if you're old enough you'd probably remember it. And so it was, you know the commercial. Aanenson: Kind of quasi commercial, yeah. Gary Reed: Yeah, but right now the house is destroyed by the renters. We need to do something with it so we've got some developers working on it and we live there so, you know in back of it so we're interested in what might go in there too, you know just like all of our neighbors. And when we worked with the Highway 41 Crossing, I came to many meetings and we decided a cul- de-sac…and eliminate that access so they could have their access, and one of the things I asked for in that was a easement into that shopping center. And what I got was a 9 foot easement for a trail and it wasn't my intent because my intent was to isolate the neighborhood by cutting off th West 64 Street and then possibly doing something on the frontage so that was kind of my plans and…interested in getting somebody in there so I would talk to him about that. He's got somebody interested…so that's kind of our story. Keefe: Can you, how these properties stack just from, yeah. Aanenson: Sure. If you look at the southern of 41, you look at there's a Super America and the strip center's right behind that. There's a driveway that goes around the back of it so it topographically this is sitting up a little bit higher. It's kind of problematic to connect it to, but that's, you'll be seeing a project on the 7 and 41. We're hoping that we can work with them to provide access to this parcel. Typically when you see projects that we do, we try not to landlock somebody to provide access. Obviously you recorded that, or protected that but. Gary Reed: Well we do have 40 feet on the...the school and they probably won't put one in until somebody gets killed there. The kids stand there and try to race across there and there's traffic coming from both ways and merging and we're going to lose one of the students at that position. Keefe: So our access, just to comment, I mean is there access capability, wouldn't the access capability at the southern end. 33 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Aanenson: No, their recommendation is to T it more directly across from the driveway going into the middle school. It actually ends up on Mr. Gowan's property, so if he's not ready to develop, then we just pursue another alternative. Correct, to the north. Correct. And we did drive it with MnDot last fall so we've got their input on that and you're right. The signal's far removed and so. McDonald: Thank you sir. Michael Sedley: Can I ask for one point of clarification. I'm working with Mr. Reed on it. As I understand it the, there's conversation about redeveloping the northern piece, the 7 and 41 site. That would be ideal and we could get some access there, but in the event that that didn't happen and Mr. Gowan didn't decide to develop, would we still be provided that right-in/right-out if we had our office use or would we go, would we have to work with the north. Aanenson: Well I think at that point we'd have to look at what the trip generation is. What the use would be. That may dictate what you can do with the property because certainly we don't want to create an unsafe area so. Michael Sedley: But you, of course even if he didn't want to develop, allow some type of easement agreement… Ben Gowan: I can't hear what you're saying sir. Michael Sedley: Sorry about that. All I asked was if, if one of the property owners north or south weren't going to develop but were amenable to an easement access, if that would be okay with the city. Aanenson: It's my understanding that if you have a piece of property, you have the right to have access to it, and they may limit that to right-in/right-out. Unfortunately at that location, it's hard to restrict some of those turn movements, right-in/right-out so that's why we would look at the use and expect to get some traffic modeling on that. Michael Sedley: Yep, as we would provide. McDonald: Excuse me sir, before you leave, could you state your name and address for the record. Michael Sedley: Michael Sedley, Sedley Development Partners. 2460 Emerald Trail in Minnetonka. McDonald: Okay, thank you. Anyone else wish to come up? Phil Boss: My name's Phil Boss. I own Body, Mind, Spirit Retail across the street from Market Square. I'm not sure if this is even the appropriate time or place to address this. Have we looked at the economic impact of the other retail businesses in Chanhassen if this property goes 34 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 forward? And the concern is, I've seen a lot of businesses kind of come and go over the last couple years as we built new retail space that they could struggle if there's another center so close you know that's drawing the customers. McDonald: I guess at this point, since we haven't gotten into the details of the regional mall and what we're looking at there, maybe the whole economic impact should wait. Aanenson: Well I guess I'd like to take a stab at answering that. I think the McComb's study is on the city's web site and certainly if you look at what they recommended, which we show in the plan that we did recommend up to 112 acres of commercial retail and you can look at the two trade areas and differential between the two and that's what we're trying to create by adding some more downtown to keep the trips based on our household projections, that it's their recommendation that the two could support each other. I guess we'll go back to the same discussion we had when we did Villages on the Pond. There were a lot of people that were totally opposed to going across on Highway 5. That we couldn't support that. There was a lot of controversial after we built Festival Food, whether or not we should even do Byerly's, so I think we always tried to take that into consideration. Certainly the downtown is near and dear to my heart. I built my career on keeping that as viable so I don't think, and as the City Council and the Planning Commission has spent a lot of time discussing that but certainly…we intend to do. Phil Boss: I just want to make sure everybody's keeping that in mind. I don't know. Aanenson: Absolutely. Keefe: Well and you know just in terms of zoning when you're looking at you know potential guiding and stuff. There isn't much competition for complimentary I think than directly affected. Phil Boss: Okay. McDonald: Well at this point why don't we take. th Mel Brooks: My name's Mel Brooks, 2448 West 64. We're the property directly behind this small one. My concern is, aside from the additional traffic that will be generated in that intersection, the, there's two residential properties on there now and it's zoned residential. We would like to see it stay that way. And really that's all I have to say. Aanenson: So that's the, just to be clear, it's the Reed Orchard's piece you're talking about? Mel Brooks: Yes. th Michelle Curtis: My name is Michelle Curtis and I'm right next door to him. 2446 West 64 Street. I guess my big concern is the affect if we change what it is now to the neighborhood that's directly behind it, it would be to the west of it. The Reed's, the same place that he was. I don't know all this stuff that you guys are talking about. I don't understand it all completely, but it is zoned residential right now, is that correct? 35 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Aanenson: That's correct. Michelle Curtis: If someone was to build a single family dwelling on it, would they still have the same driveway access? Would that be allowable? Aanenson: Correct. Correct. Michelle Curtis: That would not change? If it was made into a park of sorts and there was no dwelling, would there need to be an access on it? Aanenson: I don't know who would, I don't believe the city would buy it for a park. Michelle Curtis: I'm not thinking the city. I'm thinking like a personal, private. If someone bought, okay. If I bought it, could I just leave it as it is and have no access on it? Aanenson: Absolutely. Michelle Curtis: Okay. I think that's all for now. Thank you. McDonald: Thank you very much for coming up. Does anyone else wish to come up and speak on these issues thus far? Okay, then at that point I'll close the public meeting and we will take a 10 minute break. We'll reconvene at 9:10. The Planning Commission took a short recess at this point in the discussion. McDonald: Kate, if you want to go ahead and continue with our next items. Aanenson: Sure. I think we're still just kind of opening, there's people that want to address the 34, 35, 36 issue, which we didn't have yet so we'll let those speak. If you want to open the public hearing on that portion. McDonald: Yep. Thank you. Vernelle Clayton: My name is Vernelle Clayton. I live at 422 Santa Fe Circle. However as proud as I am of being able to come and talk to you about the city as a resident, I am here tonight as a part of my business which is working with bringing folks to Chanhassen over a long period of time. Since actually since about 1992 when we did Market Square. So in a variety of ways I feel that I'm responsible for a lot of these folks that are doing business in downtown Chanhassen. Currently I manage Colonial Square, Market Square, the Village on the Ponds project and coordinating the development there and in that project I manage the, some of it's retail. The final one building. This is the building with Starbucks and the Lakewinds building. So as I said I feel a little bit responsible and so I feel that I must address a few things that are kind of a composite of what I think and what some folks have been talking to me about. In fact one of the folks that I talked to, and haven't talked to, because I haven't had much time really, you know many months is certainly a lot of time but as it happens of course I wait for the last minute. I haven't had a whole lot of time to talk to people but I did talk with a managing member of the Market Square 36 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Partnership to see if he had anything that he wanted me to pass on to you tonight, and his comment, his thoughts were that gee, the regional mall and downtown are diametrically opposed but Vernelle just tell them not to forget downtown. So for purposes of my discussion tonight I'm going to assume that downtown also includes the area recently labeled as south downtown. We don't want to forget that area either because in that area we have a need for filling in the future and hopefully relatively near future an additional approximately 60,000 square feet of retail and that would be of the upscale lifestyle type tenants that we want to help in attracting to that development. That's probably more vulnerable than all of the other areas of downtown with the possible exception of the Market Street Station which would be terribly vulnerable to a lifestyle type development elsewhere. The taxpayers and the private sector have spent literally millions of dollars creating the downtown which now thousands of Chanhassen residents are enjoying. During the period of time that downtown was being developed, the mantra around here was Chanhassen will never be a regional draw. Kate alluded to that mantra earlier. Those who created the downtown and invested here are, they're relied on there being no regional draw, and relied on the ongoing viability of downtown. The 1998 update of the city's comp plan, we had… And of course I didn't bring my copy. Well let me just, it's probably not going to work that way so let me just read it. I'll read it quickly. This is from the 1998 update of the comp plan and it restates what had been a part of this, including the prior comp plan. The city, and this is the lead in to the commercial section. The city has maintained a long standing policy of directing commercial development into the central business district. Chanhassen is rather unique amongst suburban communities in that it has historically had and maintains an active downtown business community. In recent years there has been substantial public and private investment in furthering development in this area and there's no desire on the part of the city to see that effort diminished with construction of commercial centers oriented to highways outside the business district. It goes on to list just what some of them are, and then goes on to say the city continues to promote the extension of the CBD as a full service retail node for our residents. It has been the long term goal of the city to have the majority of the commercial development occur in the downtown core. There will be additional commercial development in the next 20 years but it will be developed as a support base, support use to a PUD or mixed use development. It will be developed as highway or general business district elsewhere in the city, but rather a compliment to a mixed use or PUD development. That's what the folks invested in Chanhassen relied on, and to deviate from that stated plan now means a dramatic change not only for the businesses but also the residents. In many ways Chanhassen will no longer be the city Family Circle described. And yes we knew when that plan was put in place that there would someday be a 312 corridor through the city. Now however there is a lot of wishful thinking going on. We wish we could have such a convenient access to so many shops, and we wished that downtown would have stayed as viable as it is now. We wish we could have ignored the fact that if cities are to have a successful downtown, they can't have two focal points. We wish we could ignore the fact that not all existing downtown businesses can be protected by listing certain uses as being prohibited in the new area. We wish it didn't matter that we are making decisions before we know what the impact of 312 will be on the traffic which downtown Chanhassen currently captures. We wish the folks…312 will then drive downtown. The prospect of a large regional center looms very large and it's hard to stay focused on the real question. It's hard to stay focused on the little downtown canary when there's a 900 pound gorilla at the door. I don't believe there's anyone involved in the decision making process who would approve any project in, project knowing that it would detract from downtown. In one of the recent new…suggesting that the question to be 37 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 answered is, what would be the conflict of being a regional draw. That is the real question and it hasn't really been fully answered. So where are we? We've done the McComb's study. Had some things I was going to say about that but I'll skip it because I don't want to take up so much of your time. And in addition to that, the McComb's study then, as it was evolving, it began talking about a lifestyle center along Highway 312. And many of us concluded that as you read through it, assumed a lifestyle center. But then it morphed into a lifestyle or regional shopping center study. Then the Minneapolis paper published an article in which a regional covered mall was discussed. These are all distinctly different creatures and they would each have a distinctly different impact on downtown. To make sense of the various alternatives SRF provided some input which included the impact on down to some degree. We talked earlier, it wasn't an impact economically necessarily. Well it would have some, some degree of discussion of that but, and so now we have the comp plan before us. And so I'm thinking to give the city and downtown business and these residents a little more time in which to answer, get some of the answers ferreted out, the concept of dual zoning if included in a proposed comp plan and truthfully I'm not familiar with exactly how much leeway the concept affords us. To be more caution then to be absolutely sure that the stakeholders have sufficient time in which to study the advantages and the disadvantages of regional retail component. My hope still is that you'll do exactly what was done with the land on which Village on the Ponds is developing. The zoning did not permit the amount of retail that was approved. And a part of the approval process included rezoning the property. That gave the city and everyone a chance to truly focus on what was needed. You know what's popular and profitable in retail change is relatively prickly. At a seminar recently I heard that the…is fading from the lifestyle boom. Covered malls which were considered absolutely dead just a few years ago may actually come back into vogue. We may see a proposal for this property sometime next year or circumstances could change so there is no proposal for a few years. Thus the commitments the current council might feel towards the proposal and towards downtown might be totally different from the goals of a different council. In that case we also need to answer the question, are we really confident that future councils will be of like minds to those approving the new comp plan and the dual zoning option. At this point most businesses and land owners in downtown Chan are unaware of the proposed change in the comp plan and certainly are unaware of the impact on downtown, and it was because I called a few. They don't live here and there simply is no, not…there just simply is no good way of communicating with them because they don't live here. They don't even read, they don't even get the Villager so unlike all the rest of us who only infrequently read it to see what's going on, they don't even get it. So in talking with them I explained where we were. I was a little hard pressed to create any kind of urgency. I won't convey to you everything that they said but they felt it was an important issue but they weren't quite sure where the city was going right now so they weren't quite sure what to respond to. So what I'm leading up to…going from a regional area would not, I want to give these landowners a chance to focus…rather than potential several types of users, but it also gives stakeholders a chance to measure the impact of the proposal against what other proposed changes to land uses are adopted as a part of the comp plan. And I'm just saying we have so much, it's kind of hard to focus on what exactly it will be impacting because the idea that we're going to be able to expand south of 5 for Instant Web on those folks are, a big plus for downtown. That will help downtown. People are going there. They go across the street and so if that's in place, and then we do a regional mall, that's one thing. But if that's not in place and we do a regional, entirely different thing…regional mall, yes there might be dress shops and all that sort of thing out there that don't exist in downtown that people want, because of course we 38 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 want everything here in Chan. Perfect place you want to go. It's all the other little stores that will go along with it that will be competing with the stores that are here in downtown. Downtown is a shopping center. And we call it the central business district but it's a shopping center and it meets all the things that other shopping centers need, which is a little bit entertainment. Little bit food. Places to pick up what you really need and some places to look at…and across the street we've got a Molly G's. We've got Knit Whits and they're fun places to look. And we have fun places in the Market Street Station. That complex. But those are all the same kind of fun things that will definitely be going into, whether it's a lifestyle center or a regional center or… So that's the competition that will take away the fun from downtown and what are we going to fill all the space with? So with all of that, that does kind of conclude my questions and comments and recommendations but I do want to be sure that you understand my, that my purpose here is not just to eliminate fair competition. Rather seek to avoid having the action of a governmental entity create an unfair competitive situation for our downtown businesses. Unfair labor to changing the level of the playing field after the game has begun. Given a fair shake, businesses can be very creative, and when the new barber shop opened up across the street from an existing barber shop, and the new guy hung up a sign that said haircut, $7.00. So I'm seeing a sign on the existing shop, hung out a sign that said we fix $7.00 haircuts. In our case none of the customers from the new shop would even see his offer to fix the new haircuts. So now if someone, if somehow the proposed regional mall concept could be accomplished with traffic from downtown, not a problem. That's great. We're not anti development. We're really anti downtown destruction. Thank you. McDonald: Thank you very much. Does anyone else wish to come up. Aanenson: Mr. Chair, can I just clarify one issues regarding the dual zoning, just to make sure the commission understands what we're doing on the dual zoning. McDonald: Okay. Aanenson: Clearly we've stated we have to, we're going to come back to you with new designations of our commercial districts. So that's one issue, so have we decided exactly how that's going to look? No. But the control we have is we're recommending two land use designations. Either office industrial or commercial. If we can't get concurrence on the direction we want to go with that, and we haven't identified exactly what that's going to be. That's what we're going to do as a group and so if it can't get to where the city, us collectively as a group decides that we want it to be then we've got the fall back position, which is legal to have the office industrial. We can pick and choose that. Certainly a lot of time was spent, and we communicated that in all the public meetings that we are moving from, as the McComb study said, from a convenience commercial, which is what we are today, to something different. Clearly that was the goal in 1990, and I don't want to diminish that. But this, while we really felt comfortable and the developer had waited for us to go back and we've really taken a lot of time over the last year to open this up to a broader group. And it's my understanding the Chamber of Commerce did endorse some of the concept of the regional commercial, so I'm not sure there is concurrence within the business community. I mean we certainly can go back and touch on some of that too, but I just want to make sure we do have the dual guiding, and it's our intent to come up with a commercial zoning that works to the best of both advantages. The downtown, 39 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 embellishing that, a convenience trade that it is. And then the regional mall to meet the fair market, which is a larger trade area. McDonald: Okay, thank you for that clarification Kate. Does anyone else wish to come up and make comments? Okay, at that point I'll close the public meeting for this section of it and come back. Aanenson: I think there are some people here that want to make some other comments on some other uses. On commercial. McDonald: Then we'll just throw it open for public comment, for anyone that wants to come up and comment on anything thus far. Mike Wardle: Mr. Chairman, commission members. My name is Mike Wardle. I'm with Brighton Corporation in Boise, Idaho. I just want to plant a seed this evening on a site that technically I think would, or the area that would be reviewed at your next meeting, and we will be here for your next meeting to discuss this as well. I gave Kate a power point presentation but I have hard copies that I'd like to present to you as well. Very good, thank you. As I said, I just want to plant a seed this evening concerning a proposal that we will make by formal application in probably the early part of next year for the land use designation change at the southwest corner of Lyman Boulevard and Highway 101. If you could go to the second, could I handle that? Aanenson: Yep. Mike Wardle: Okay. Very good, thank you. The site specifically as I noted is at the intersection of 101, which is to the right of this site, Lyman to the north. That newly improved intersection which I guess will help serve the new freeway when that opens soon. More specifically the location is just south of an already approved neighborhood commercial area. Southwest, and of course this is an older aerial. Does not show the highway improvements but 101 is now fully improved between the commercial area and the park and ride. To the east of 101, which is now a 6 lane highway is Springfield subdivision, which is buffered by the berms. Then there are 3 single family homes just to the west of the site before you get to a new Highway 212. To the south is the bluff overlay wetlands. Bluff Creek overlay wetlands that clearly has an impact on the site. A slightly different aerial perspective, the site in the center and you can see on the slides above and below that the parcel kind of overlaps. In both cases it identifies then those uses adjacent to it. If you look at the center slide, the area directly north of where it says Lyman Boulevard is the approved neighborhood commercial location. And so we're making a proposal, or will make a formal proposal but figured that it would be good to get this in the record for your consideration as you go through this process with that property be designated mixed use in the 2030 comprehensive plan update. The next slide shows a comparison between the 2020 land use plan, which is the small excerpt in the lower left. The site in the draft document that came off your web site. You can clearly see the mixed use designation of the land to the north which is, has an underlying zone I believe of neighborhood commercial which would be a neighborhood business, BN. Interestingly enough the 2020 land use plan shows that the Bluff Creek Overlay boundaries, which the 2030 draft at this point does not. The next slide which comes from the 40 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 current draft and you saw this earlier in an overall city map that Kate presented, it shows this parcel and even though conceptually it's probably a little exaggerated, it almost identifies the subject that we're talking about and would make an application for as an orphan. Essentially it's really confined and constrained by the Bluff Creek Overlay to the south and the other uses to the east and west. So by applying the mixed use designation it would allow consideration of a neighborhood business zone consistent with that that has already been approved north of Lyman and has a face to face relationship with them. But it also recognizes the site's use limitations caused by the overlay which really means that it does not relate to any of the other east, west or southerly directions. Now the current zoning map obviously shows this parcel currently as agricultural estates. Slightly larger excerpts on the next slide that clearly shows the influence of the overlay district and the relationship with the business area to the north which is actually zoned PUD and that was the basis upon which that approval was granted. The Bluff Creek Overlay again simply reinforces how that parcel has limited relationship and opportunities with other areas. And then finally just some current or recent photographs as they were completing the improvements in this particular case on Lyman. These pictures were taken from the fully improved intersection which aligns with the old Highway 101, where it T'd into Lyman. And this is a full access that's provided. The utilities are already stubbed to this site. A close up picture looking easterly towards the new intersection with 101. Springfield subdivision behind with the berms. And then looking southerly, southeasterly you can see how the property tails off into the wetlands complex to the south and of course the berm area on the other side of the 6 lane highway that has now been improved at 101. And then finally just to re-state the proposal that we will make in a formal recommendation, or a formal application soon is that the site be designated mixed use. Be changed from the current residential low density mixed use for consistency with the neighborhood business property to the north and also with acknowledges the site's isolation from the other uses who are in the vicinity, which specifically Springfield subdivision to the east which is across the 6 lane highway and buffered by substantial berms. From the 3 single family dwellings to the west which would be to the right in that photograph. Which by topography they fall down away from this site and of course the Bluff Creek wetlands overlay which constrains it from the south. So again Mr. Chairman I appreciate the opportunity th to plant the seed. We will be here on the 4 of December, if there's additional opportunity for discussion and clarification at that point and would be happy to answer questions if you have them at this point. McDonald: Okay, I guess at this point because this is something that really wasn't on the agenda, and as I understand notice has not gone out to anyone around the area, what I'd like to do th is table any discussion on this until the 4 to give us time to put out notice of this proposal and th that anyone wishing to make comment can come to us on the 4 or contact city staff inbetween th time and we will then address this issue on the 4. Aanenson: Can I get clarification on that Mr. Chairman. We're not supporting this change. We have met with Brighton Corporation and we certainly understand they want to get it on the record that they don't agree. We're not in concurrence on that, which is appropriate. We'll put our response back but they're pursuing a zoning application outside of the land use. They just want to get on the record to say that they disagree. McDonald: I understand that. 41 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Aanenson: So, we're not going to have time to get notice out to that neighborhood, so he's setting up a meeting. He's working through that process separately which is appropriate. But he just wants to get on the record that they disagree with our recommendation. But if someone did want to appear next, in 2 weeks, certainly you can hear that comment. Mike Wardle: Mr. Chairman our objective, knowing that you are in the process of looking at all of the land uses in the community, we felt that it would be an appropriate consideration that you should at least review. As Kate noted, we won't make an application until after the first of the year, but we are in the process and been trying somewhat unsuccessfully thus far to get a neighborhood meeting established so that we can meet with them and we will be meeting with staff in a pre-application in December and then filing formal applications for comp plan amendment if necessary and a rezone and so forth after the first of the year. So we'd just appreciate the opportunity to at least make you aware of the interest. McDonald: Okay, and I guess, well I guess part of my comments is that hopefully over television this goes out and again if you cannot get out any notice, at least residents of the area, if th you do not have a public meeting, may come forward on the 4 and then at that point we will be th able to address this in greater detail. So that's why I would like to table all this until the 4 to give us a chance to assimilate what you've done and also to give the residents of the area a chance to become aware of this, either through word of mouth or at least over the television that th this is going out on the 4 to discuss it. Mike Wardle: We appreciate that. Keefe: Could I ask just a quick question? McDonald: Okay. Keefe: Could we get a, just as the nature of your development business. Give us some ideas of what that is. Mike Wardle: Of the type of development activities? Keefe: Yeah. Mike Wardle: Well anything that would go on this particular site would be neighborhood oriented. We're talking about service type uses and Brighton Corporation in, well we do commercial, we have other projects going on in Minnesota. In the Denver, Colorado area and our headquarters in Boise is where we have, we do a lot of residential development as well as probably one of the largest office parks in that region and so we just have kind of wide ranging interest and projects going on in Minnesota. Keefe: So neighborhood service is what you're lining up for this particular site, is that a fair statement? 42 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Mike Wardle: Of what they could be? Keefe: Well, what's your intentions there for that? Mike Wardle: Well I guess because we have not yet filed an application, I have not met with th staff to really discuss this, which we will do I believe on the 5 of December, I would simply like to state at this point that they would be neighborhood oriented. Not anything of a regional sense or highway commercial per se. Keefe: Yeah. Mike Wardle: Thank you. Aanenson: And just for the record then, Chair, members of the commission, we'll put just a short response back to this application and what we believe is an appropriate process and you can th comment back to that on the 4. McDonald: Okay. And I guess with that, with your agenda for Chapter 2, have we gotten as far as you wanted to get? Aanenson: Yes. Unless there's anybody else that wants to speak on any other issue, that's pretty much what we want to cover tonight. We'll have the rest of the group. We did put the regional mall on both meetings. Not, understanding how many people may or may not show up. More people may show up… Keefe: I have an additional question. Just in terms of notification of downtown businesses. It probably did make some sense…and all these different places but. Aanenson: We've made presentations at the Chamber and stuff so, I think we'll give you that information back to you at the next meeting. Kind of what we've done to date. More specifically…and we'll provide that to you next time. th McDonald: Than at this point then on December the 4 we will, all of these items that we've discussed today will be opened for any comments. If there's anyone who hasn't made any, that we will continue to move forward with the land use and the zoning and do discussions at that time to try to wrap up Chapter 2. With that we will move onto our next agenda item which is the approval of the minutes. APPROVAL OF MINUTES:Dillon moved, Thomas seconded to approve the verbatim and summary minutes of the Planning Commission meeting dated November 6, 2007 as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 6 to 0. COMMISSION PRESENTATIONS: None. Chairman McDonald adjourned the Planning Commission meeting at 9:40 p.m. 43 Planning Commission Meeting - November 20, 2007 Submitted by Kate Aanenson Community Development Director Prepared by Nann Opheim 44