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1990 02 07CHANHASSEN PLANNING COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING FEBRUARY 7, 1990 Chairman Conrad called the meeting to order at 7:35 p.m.. MEMBERS PRESENT: Ladd Conrad, Steve E~-m~ings, Jim Wildermuth and Joan Ahrens MEMBERS ABSENT: Tim Erhart, Brian Batzli and Annette Ellson STAFF PRESENT: Paul Krauss, Director of Planning; Jo Ann Olsen, Senior Planner; and Steve Kirchman, Building Inspector PUBLIC HEARING: MIKE SORENSON, COLD STORAGE WAREHOUSE FACILITY LOCATED ON HWY. 212 JUST NORTHEAST OF HWY. 169: A. CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT AMENDMENT FOR THE EXPANSION OF THE FACILITY. B. SITE PLAN REVIEW FOR THE EXPANSION OF THE SITE. Public Present: Name Address Mike Sorenson ob Smith erry Beauchane Applicant Ron Krueger and Associates 240 Flying Cloud Drive Jo Ann Olsen presented the staff report on this item. Conrad: Just a point from my knowledge. When there are conditions with a p~oject, what's the City's process to make sure that they go about being met. Olsen: Well we do annual reviews now as permits are coming in. If he's getting grading permits and whatever, we try to make sure and to building permits, that everything is being met. It's kind of an ongoing process. Conrad: There's nothing that really triggers at the end of a project? Krauss: There is. When a certificate of occupancy is requested, we go out and inspect the site and make sure all the conditions are complied with. In this case, the building was occupied and has been used and still does not have a certificate of occupancy so there was nothing to trip that review. Conrad: Huh, interesting. And this particular case, there are so many areas where the applicant has not met what we require. It's really hard to review it and I'm curious. I don't want to waste their time because it's hard for me to be serious about the expansion. What's our duty as a ,lanning Commission in ~eviewing the site? What are we obligated to do right now? I guess I'm looking for, you've already, it's been. brought to us tonight to look at expansion. I think, and I haven't talked to the Planning Co~'~Lission Meeting Febr_uary 7, 1990 - Page 2 Planning Commissioners but we're going to dwell on performance that hasn't been accomplished and therefore not really focus on new issues. Even though new issues might guide the applicant into should he pursue this and a whole lot of things. Is it appropriate we go through the entire site plan review? Are we obligated to go through tonight? Krauss: Mr. Chairman, I think you should take action on the request one way or the other. If it's your desire to deny it, do that. If it's your desire to continue it until conditions are met, do that. I should also add that this was a very tough call for us and we reco~m, ended approval after a lot of deliberation and somewhat reluctantly because we thought it was, there's so much that happened here was the only way to wipe the slate clean and get everything done that we wanted to see done there but I wanted to assure you that if this proposal is denied tonight, we have every intent of pursuing satisfaction of the conditions of the original approval. Conrad: Okay. Are you Mr. Sorenson? Bob Smith: No I'm not. I'm Mr. Smith from Ron Krueger and Associates. Good evening Mr. Chairman. Conrad: Good evening. You heard my comments and normally I just open it up for public co~m~ent right now and I want the applicant or are you representing the applicant? Smith: Yes. Conrad: To go first. Obviously I'm real concerned about how we haven't met what we asked for and it's real though for me to look at additional expansion when so many, so many major things are not up to what we asked for in the past. So it's tough to review new things and that's why I was talking here, before old things have been taken care of. So in that light, I'll let you, we'll give you the floor so you can talk about where you want to go but honestly, we've got to hear why things haven't been done. The bottom line is, things have to be done before any expansion's going to take place. I'm speaking only for myself right now but I have a pretty high comfort level that other co~issioners and City Council will join' in. It's just, we've missed the boat in many cases here so with that, I wanted to give you a sense or a feeling where we're at and I think you should try to read some of our comments. It's going to distort the future a little bit because of the lack of performance in the past. If that makes any sense. Bob Smith: I am Bob Smith from Ron Krueger and Associates. I'm Mr. Sorenson's planner. Mr. Mike Sorenson. I'd like to go through a couple of the, some of the issues that we've touched on here this evening. Unfortunately I haven't had a great deal of time to review the staff recommendations. I've just beem 45 minutes ago from vacation in Texas so if I'm a little bit behind here. Mike Sorenson: Might I say something first? ~.onr ad: Sure. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 3 Mike Sorenson: First of all, staff seems to want to dwell on all of the things that weren't done on this site and they don't want to dwell on the reasons why and the problems that I've gone through with this site. The reasons they want to make Mike Sorenson out to be one of these kind of guys that just goes and does what he wants to do for no reason at all. That is not the case at all over here. I have good sound reasons for why this project came off the way it did. I sat down in good faith with the City to try and straighten this project out to expand it and to meet all the conditions and all the things that went wrong with this project. Nobody knows. All you guys things is, he just went up there and did what he wanted to do. He tore out all the trees. He didn't build fences. He didn't do this without once taking into consideration why this wasn't done and this is a little bit... Conrad: Did you come back to the City when you knew you couldn't do those things? Mike Sorenson: Absolutely. Conrad: And what did they tell you to do? Mike Sorenson: Nothing. They were, I didn't get any, there was nothing done about it. I wrote... onrad: Mr. Sorenson, I've been here, I don't want to use age and maybe ge is sort of something that I should say. Maybe I shouldn't be here but... Mike Sorenson: It sounds to me like we're beaten before we've even started. Conrad: I wanted to co~mtunicate the fact that in the 10 years that I've been on this Commission I haven't seen a case like this with so many lack of performances. Ever. So yeah, maybe you were misled and maybe you had problems but I'm telling you, in 10 years I haven't seen as many lack of performances based on conditions that we asked for and you're coming in right now and saying you had causes so I just want to give you that feeling that you're very unique. Therefore, to look at future. To believe you. Mike Sorenson: Why don't you listen to what I've got to say. Conrad: That's what we're going to do. Mike Sorenson: Thank you. Now look, all I've got to say is, I know there's a lot of conditions that haven't been met. I've been talking about this for 3 months working with the city. I know there's a lot of things that we've done wrong. I know there was a lot of mistakes made. On the City's part and on my part and I know there was a lot of conditions on this site that needed special attention which arose after I got into the oject. That's the reason for all of this. Not because I do not, am not good developer and do not build a nice road or put a nice project together. Now I came in now and I sat down with the City, finally you got somebody here that's going to keep the job for a while and not be gone Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Pag 4 like, I started the project with Barb Dacy. I came in and tried to talk with Steve Hanson and he didn't stay here that long and I finally got an opportunity to come in and talk to somebody about the project and I've been working with Paul on it. Now, we're finally at the point where we can correct all of the things. Instead of dwelling on all of the things that weren't done and we're going to refuse the project before it even gets off the ground or before you hear anything about it, why don't we just take an open mind and figure out what we're trying to do. We've got a very unique site here. We've got a lot of problems on it and I'm trying to put together something decent so we can build buildings and put tax structure and have something that the City will be proud of like my other building here in town. Where the auto parts store is. I own that building there too and all I'm getting is negative, negative, negative since I walked in the door here. Like I'm shot down before I even start. That's all I wanted to say. Conrad: And we'll listen to you tonight. I wanted to co~m~unicate, when you come in and don't perform in the past, it's hard to look at the future. That's what I said to start this little scenario off. You haven't performed. It's very tough to not consider the lack of performance in how we review a new project. If I were you and I was coming in, I would live up to what I said I was going to do. Then I'd come in and then... Mike Sorenson: That's what I'm going to do right here. )nrad: Well why haven't you in the past? Why don't you bring it up to speed and we're going to be far more positive. Mike Sorenson: Did you read...? Conrad: Yes I did. Mike Sorenson: Did you read my letter at the back of the report? Conrad: Yes I did. Mike Sorenson: Did you see all of the problems and things... Conrad: You had a lot of problems. Maybe this should not have been built there. Mike Sorenson: Absolutely. I agree with you 200%. But it is nevertheless there and I have to deal with it. Conrad: Right, and we're dealing with you. Mike Sorenson: That's why I'm in here. I'm just trying to deal with it. Conrad: Absolutely and we're going to have to deal with that too. So go oahead with your presentation. Bob Smith: Good evening Mr. Chairman. Planning Co~'m, ission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 5 Conrad: Mr. Smith. Welcome back. Bob Smith: Let me take a couple steps back here. This has been a pretty long involved process. Some years ago this project was submitted to build one building at the time. The plans that were proposed were rather incomplete, to say the best at the time. A proper grading plan had not been submitted and several othe~ things. What Mike has done, he came to us about 3-4 months ago wanting to build some more buildings on the thing. I've had some past dealings with Paul. We've work with each other quite a lot here with Paul and we had an opportunity to sit down and talk about what has and hasn't been completed on this site. We realize that the grading is not been completed to the point of the original stipulations. Part of this proposal as we see here this evening will complete before anything happens with the structure on this site. The grading will be completed. As I said, the previous plans that were submitted were rather incomplete and it has spot elevations rather than a complete grading plan and a complete landscape plan which was not necessary at that time. What I show on this particular plan and can be seen much more clearly on the grading plan on the screen, is that we've provided for a back slope. Provided for a back slope on this side up in here. We're proposing 3 additional buildings. We are providing for a berm along both front areas so that it can be screened from TH 169. This was important to show this so that Mike can complete the requirements and the stipulations from the first approval that was made. There's a couple points in the reco~m~endations ~hat I'd like to touch on but first I'd like to also take another step ,ack. This has been a complicated proposal, site from the very beginning. It was a multiple number of small lots that he is incorporated into one addition at this time. The original vegetation was succession growth, small undergrowth, sumac and what I'll call cover brush. Prickly ash. Buckthorn and the box elder. That was cleared off in preparation for the first site. That was constructed. What he wants to do now is come back in at this time, do all the correct grading. Do all the landscaping that is necessary and then get a building permit for the first building. The first building Mr. Sorenson proposes would be on the front in this location. But before this building would come in, all the grading on this site would be in place. The grading on the back slope here so that we wouldn't have a cliff here. There's basically a cliff right now that comes in along the back in here. That would all be graded out. The grading along the sides. All the pads would be brought up to construction grade as well as the berms along the front. All site and tree vegetation in the form of hydosprings or seeding, the steeper slopes, anything over a 3:1 would have an Excelsior mat pegged in place. In addition, as you can see on the colored up plan, pine trees would be planted along the berm and along the side to form screening so that this wouldn't have an impact from TH 169 down here. Some of the conditions, we've had the opportunity since it's been such a process through the staff level, that we tried to work out many of these problems. We've had the opportunity to get a reco~,endation from the Minnesota Valley Watershed District. The plan that you see before you this evening has been approved by the Lower Minnesota Watershed District. Usually that doesn't come in until after the City Council but since there's been, since we've ~n our time and very carefully worked things out with the staff and as Paul said, this is a very difficult site. We've taken in the reco~m~endations from the Watershed District. The reco~endations are that Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 6 ~he swales were to be put in place. The swale then holding a holding pond were to be put in place along the top. Swales coming down enlarging the holding pond around the bottom and a swale and a small holding pond along the side. Not to put in a piping system. Not to put the piping system in for the basic reason that it would concentrate the flow into this location which would increase a surge at this location which would cause a quicker runoff into the watershed district. What this does is by providing a pond in here, we're breaking the site into several different areas. The watershed that would come off of this upper area all the way back to the railroad tracks would come into a pond located in here. The small pipe would be installed at this location. This would then act as a surge basin. The water would be slowed down before it hits the bottom. It would be discharged slowly through a smaller pipe to a secondary pond which would then hold the water. Discharge through a pipe and if in fact the water were up above the pipe, if it overflowed, there's been a reco~endation by the watershed district and he was very emphatic about it. That the water would overflow on the top side so that it would not cause erosion. Back down across along the street and then down through a MnDot ditch. The same with this site too. You have a smaller watershed district in here. That this water would then be brought into a surge basin very similar to this. Through a piping system down into a ditch system then across the natural vegetation that's in this area down into the ditch that MnDot has provided. A second reason why from the developer's standpoing, the addition of the storm pipes would add a cost that would be prohibitive to the site. The urge basin is the primary reason. The cost factor is not as important as ,hat would happen to the entire watershed district all the way down here. If you recall back a couple years ago when we had the torrential rain. The Moon Valley had a washout. It had a concentration of water that forced a landslide out onto TH 169. By doing this, in slowing the water down in various levels throughout here, it's eliminating that erosion. Mr. Larry, his name slips my mind now. The gentleman that directs the Watershed District. The engineer. Has had many, many years of working in this area and this recommendation comes directly from him. We already have approval from the Watershed District so I'll have to take and question the use of a catch basin piping system in this particular instance. In other instances, it may work very well but in this particular instance, Mr. Samstad, the engineer from the Watershed District, had made specific recommendations for this site. To use the holding ponds. The second issue that is of extreme interest to Mr. Sorenson is reco~m, endation 3 on the sprinkling systems. This particular type of building, being a metal framed and metal building, although the Code I believe calls for anything over 2,000 square feet needs sprinkling, this particular building is strictly a cold storage building for no human habitation. The ordinances, if I recall, one of the stipulations is human habitation. That's one of the things that Mr. Sorenson does have a problem with. Second is the B-612 curb and gutter for the entire project. Once again, the two reasons for curb and gutter. One, to protect the edging of the bituminous all the way around the property. A second in this particular case is to direct storm water runoff. What we're intending to do is allow the edge of the blacktop area to form as the basin of this particular area. We aren't reco~ending or saying that we would in bituminous rolled curbed edging along the outside of the driveway down in this location so that water will not go over the edge nor will the cars drive over that edge. The water will be diverted back across the Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 7 street into this particular holding pond. But from the construction standpoint, the small areas of bituminous...all the edges will all be concentrated along a curbed area. The concentration of water is the primary concern in this project. As I have said, the part of the proposal that Mr. Sorenson is giving this evening is that he will perform all grading, all site revegetation and bring all their construction pads up to construction grade before, and he realizes, before the issuance of any building permits as part of the reco~endation this evening. When Mr. Sorenson came in, that was one of the very first things that we had talked with Mr. Krauss that this site had to be brought up to standards of the previous recommendations and that's the first step of this project that we see this evening. First off the construction, berming and vegetation. Second would be the application for the building permit on the first building which would now be building two and then when the market demand allows, then the other two buildings on the west half of the site would be constructed. Along with the original construction of building 2, the bituminous roadway would be put in along all the way to the back of the site and the eastern half of the site will have the bituminous on it. The western half of the site will be vegetated in a temporary seed. If we put bituminous on the higher site, what will happen is that will all break up or we'll have a problem with it later on when the other two buildings are constructed so the bituminous will be constructed on the east half and the driveway along with the rolled bituminous curb on the lower driveway. At such time as the market demand allows, at that point building 3 and ~uilding 4 would be constructed and the bituminous would be put in at that ime. All the ponding will be constructed now as well as brought up to finish grade. There has to be some grading on these two pads to bring them to the correct elevation also. Other than that I don't think there's any other real problems that Mr. Sorenson sees here. As has been said, we've worked the last 3 or 4 months in trying to get these issues resolved. The really difficult issues we understand that. Mr. Sorenson is willing to do all the grading first that should have been done a couple years ago. It was done in part. What he wants to do now in order to finish the project, get the grading done now... If you have any questions, I would certainly like to answer them. Conrad: Good. We may have some later on. Other public comments? Terry Beauchane: My name is Terry Beauchane. I live at 240 Flying Cloud Drive which is TH 169/212 just down the road from this proposed site. I guess my co~m~ents are as much directed toward you folks on the Planning Commission and the City Council as they are against this particular project in general. It seems to me that the last number of months, everything that seems to be happening down there on TH 169 and 212, that little itty bitty stretch of Chanhassen that everybody seems to have forgotten for many, many years, seems to be going on piecemeal. Everytime I come to a meeting, whether it's this meeting or City Council meeting, I always hear the word grandfather come up. Grandfather this and grandfather that and this meeting is reminiscence of the City Council meeting that Moon Valley was discussed at the last couple of meetings because of a grandfathering. Now don't know who this grandfather is but grandfather keeps coming up and grandfather seems to allow a lot of things to happen down there without much restriction. So I guess my basic question is, as the city planning Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 8 commission, has anyone sat down and looked at that whole area? That little piece of strip of Chanhassen sitting on TH 169 and considered what should be done with it overall and what might be proposed as far as not just projects like this but the overall concept of what's going to happen with that piece of highway down there. Now I don't know if you folks realize how many homes and residences are down there along with this kind of commercial property and so on but it seems to me that people go in down there and if they own a piece of land, they either just arbitrarily do whatever they damn well please with it or they come up and get a permit and then they do whatever they damn well please with it and nobody's controlling anything down there. I'm just wondering where does this control come from. Moon Valley was the instance, the last time. Their grandfather, whoever he is, told them that they could go ahead and dig another hole someplace else. Now grandfather's coming in tonight and saying that well, I've got one shut up so I can build 3 more. Irregardless of what the Planning Co~m~ission has decided or the City decides or anything else. Where is the control in all of this? I don't see it and I don't hear anybody responding to it either. In this particular situation it was admitted that certain requirements were not met and so on and so forth. I just have this feeling this if this was my home and I had a permit to do something and they came out and inspect it and I was cited for not following the rules, that I would at the very least be back in front of hte Planning Commission and the City Council trying to explain my way out of it or at the worse sitting in front of a judge getting fined for not doing any if this stuff. I don't know, there seems to be absolutely no control as to ,hat's going on down there. I have to ask where is the control. Where is it suppose to come from? Conrad: Well the zoning district is called business fringe and we put that in several years ago because it had a lot of non-conforming uses and the idea was to legalize those uses so that there was going to be greater control on what was being used. Terry Beauchane: There still seems to be no control. Conrad: The idea was to not intensify use. The area is a problem area for a variety of reasons. Being on a major highway. Being across from a very natural area. Having some slopes that are unique. Not being appropriate for typical co~m~ercial uses which a highway would lead you to believe could be there and so you're right. The City and we have struggled with it's use but it is zoned. Terry Beauchane: What is it zoned? Conrad: It is zoned business fringe. Terry Beauchane: What does that mean? Conrad: There are some requirements. I can't list them to you right now but it's low intensity use was a concept that we felt comfortable with many ,ears ago. Currently we're reviewing zoning again: There's a member ~hat's not here tonight that is real interested in how we zone this particular parcel or this particular business fringe area. He has Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 9 requested that we rezone it agricultural and there's a question whether we should zone it residential. The fact of the matter is, there are commercial uses down there and incorporating those uses. If they would be grandfathered in. The grandfather strikes again. Terry Beauchane: I get the feeling... Conrad: And it is a problem and I think we as a Planning Co~-~ission, you know, recognize that and we have to come to grips with the long term use of that property. Tonight the applicant has to persuade us that what he wants to do is legally acceptable according to our zoning conditions. So he can't go beyond unless we provide a conditional or a variance but he certainly has the right to do what that zone permits him to do. Whether those guidelines are accurate, whether the zone is accurate, is something that we can't really debate tonight. The zone and the guidelines are what they are. Terry Beauchane: Well I understand that but it just seems that grandfather is running that whole area down there. In other words, by the time anything is done as far as the Planning Commission and the City Council are concerned with that area of land down there, as far as the zoning and what is permitted and what's not permitted and what restrictions and so on are put on it, it's going to be too late. So while we're all sitting here debating it, this should have-been decided probably 10-15-20 years ago. ~ut at any rate, that was my first co~ent. Two, the subject of this .articular development itself, I have a very personal concern and I would like to raise this for consideration for the Planning Co~ission. It was brought up earlier about the possible traffic problems down there but I think it was grossly understated about the traffic problems in that area. I don't konw if any of you folks drive that stretch of highway during the day but if you don't, I would invite you to do it and you might understand what's going on down there. Now, my concern with that whole project, more than anything else, is the traffic and the problems that that traffic creates. I have to turn into my driveway from TH 169 and it is a death trap. Now a lot of the vehicles that go into this particular site are coming from either the Chanhassen or Shakopee area. They are also making left hand turns across that highway into that site. Now I guess I would ask whether the Planning Commission or the City Council or the Planning Department has ever bothered to get any statistics from the State of Minnesota or MnDot or whichever department accumulates these statistics as to the number of accidents that have happened on that highway between Super America and Lion's Tap in the last 5 yea~s. Even more importantly, how many people have been killed on that stretch of highway. And now we are talking about aggravating the situation even more. Conrad: Is it your belief that there are quite a few? Terry Beauchane: Oh, it's not my belief. I've seen them. My daughter has been in an accident on TH 169. My neighbor has been in an accident on TH 169. I saw somebody pushed through the windshield right in front of Super erica. Now I've lived down there 11 years and the traffic problem down there has probably quadrupled in those 11 years and I know a big part of that problem is because of all the congestion coming out here to the rural Planning Co~m~ission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 10 areas and I understand that TH 212 someday may help alleviate part of that problem. TH 169 by-pass someday may help alleviate it. TH 5 someday may help but these are all things that are going to happen 5-10-15 years down the road. None of those highways are going to be done tomorrow. By creating more traffic problems by these types of projects is just going to create more death. Plain and simple. More people are going to get killed. Last year we watched a cement block truck roll over the top of my mailman when he was sitting on TH 169. Now you people probably don't hear about these things but I live down there. We see them. They are real and it is dangerous. I think somebody ought to finally stop it. I have complained to the highway department. Both the highway patrol. The MnDot and anybody else that would listen about at least doing some minimal things down there like reducing the speed limit. Putting in no passing lines along that stretch of highway and so on and so forth. They won't do anything. I guess it comes back to the grass roots, the lowest level and that's you folks. If you're going to allow this kind of development to continue, then all you're doing is signing a death warrant for more people. And I don't know if anybody has ever done any research on any of the traffic problems down there and what they really are like but I think that ought to be done before anything else. That's all I have to say. Conrad: Thanks for your comments. Are there other comments? Anything else? ~ob Smith: Can I make a brief co~m~ent? Conrad: Sure. Bob Smith: Pursuant to the last approval, Mr. Sorenson did have approval from the MnDot to have an access at that location. It's part of the approval of this, MnDot is looking at specific conditions that would apply to this project. Mainly turn in/turn out lanes but Mr. Sorenson does have an access approval from MnDot for this project. A couple things I'd like to address that I didn't initially. The variance to the ordinance and to the conditional use permit. Grandfather and this is the continuation of a previously approved project in this one. The conditional use permit on the storage is for, as you know, the fringe business. The metal storage would be a conditional use for this. Previously this project was approved also for metal construction and this is a continuation of the previously approved project. Since the project was started once, 1986 I believe is when it was done. Just recently there was an amendment to the building code or to the metal storage, metal building portion of the code prior to the approval of this project. What I'm asking for also is that a variance be approved for this project since it is a project that is already in the works. ~mings: Let me ask you a question. You're saying there was a project approved previously and this is a continuation of the same project? Bob Smith: That is correct. ings: And my understanding is that a single metal building was previously approved on this site and that's all. One metal building. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 11 Bob Smith: That is correct. Emmings: You're not suggesting that we're somehow, that somehow there are any grandfather rights here to build more metal buildings are you? Bob Smith: What I'm saying is, this is a continuation of the previously approved plan. Emmings: I heard you say that. Is it your position that you have a right to build more metal buildings because you have a metal building out there. Is that what you're saying? Bob Smith: Yes it is. Emmings: And you think that's a defensible position to take as a grandfather issue? Do you think that that's defensible? Bob Smith: I'm not an attorney... From a lay position here, the intent was to have one building approved initially. Mr. Sorenson had an engineer that did not correctly incorporate all four buildings in the original submission. Mr. Sorenson's initial intent was to have all four buildings approved as they were to be constructed. What we're doing now is rather than having each one done in a piecemeal fashion, that all buildings are ~pproved and then a building permit would come through on each individual ,uilding so it wouldn't have to come back for everybody's approval. It would be approved under an umbrella. Mr. Sorenson's original intent was to have the project approved. His engineer incorrectly presented it as the grading plan was incorrect. Emmings: And you know that that's not a basis for grandfathering anything is it? Bob Smith: I'm not an attorney so I can't comment. E~,ings: Okay. What's your opinion on that? Bob Smith: What's my opinion? E~-~ings: Yeah. Is that a sound basis for grandfathering something? Bob Smith: In this particular case I believe it is. The intent was to continue the project. Was not approved or submitted on the initial submission but it was the intent that it would eventually come to a complete... E~m, ings: Thanks. Conrad: Any other comments? Is there a motion to close the hearing? ngs moved, Wildermuth seconded to close the public hearing. Ail voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed. Planning CoFm~ission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 12 Conrad: Joan, we'll start down at your end for comments. Questions. Ahrens: Thanks. This is a mess as far as I'm concerned. We have several unresolved issues that I think we need to deal with. One is the zoning and one is the metal building issue. I think I know where Steve was going with the grandfathering in of the metal building and I don't see how we can do that. I don't think that is defensible. The existing project is in such substantial non-compliance with the original permit that I just can't see moving ahead with a new project at this point. I think we should either continue it and have Mr. Sorenson work with the City to comply with the original permit. That's the most generous I could be. Wildermuth: Do we have any plans for requiring that the offices be taken out of the existing building? Because in fact we have a contractor's yard and not a cold storage building. Krauss: That's one of the, I mean there are so many confusing aspects about this and how these things came to exist. I was brought into this in early September and at that time I walked through the building and there was one office with no bathroom that had been, the City staff at the time that was built knew about it and authorized it because there was supposed to be a watchman. If there's going to be a watchman, there has to be a bathroom. One follows the other. Then there had to be heating and of ~ourse they put in a septic system. The thing mushroomed. It wasn't ~ntrolled very well frankly and that's what's there. I can't verify this because I haven't seen it myself but possibly Mr. Kirchman our building inspector is here tonight can. I've heard that a recent inspection indicates that there's more offices being framed in in other bays of the building. We would certainly want those removed. I mean the premise that allowed the first one to go in we can accept seeing the City staff apparently knew about it but that certainly doesn't allow for repetition of it. The contracting yard aspect is one that's a little confusing. The ordinance didn't allow for contractor's yards at the time the original approval was given by the City. However, it was acknowledged by the City that there would be contractor yard functions down there. It had been mentioned I believe you know in earlier staff reports and was inherently, we believed, allowed because it was known about. A lot of this is who knew what about what at what time frame. We contacted former city staff members to find out what they knew about it and there was a lot that happened there that they were informed about or came to know about after the fact and there was a lot of attempts to work things out. None of which appeared to be terribly successful to date. Leaving us with what we have today. Wildermuth: Somehow it seems hard to believe that we're going to see full compliance here when the contractor doesn't want to sprinkler the buildings as the fire marshall has requested. Doesn't want to put in concrete curbs. We've got the issue of offices... Our engineer has reco~ended a storm sewer system and one larger pond as being a more efficient way to handle the runoff water. I don't know where the runoff water to the east and west f this property is going to go except onto adjoining properties which I ~ssume the contractor doesn't own so that will probably create some other problems there. I think you know, there's probably a mistake made at the Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 13 3inning and I think we've got an opportunity now to try to cut our losses and I think we should take advantage of it. If this whole project were brought up to speed, up to compliance in a 6 month period, I personally would be inclinced to look favorably at another building down there. Maybe the adjacent building in the back but as the condition exists or as conditions exist now, I think the project has to be brought into compliance. I understand that the contractor experienced a lot of unanticipated things but I guess that's, it's not the City's fault that there are artesian wells and there are springs and that grading the site really aggravated that problem. Conrad: In the future if they brought this back after compliance Jim, and the staff report had a lot of conditions in it. In su~,ary, do you feel comfortable with most of those conditions? Wildermuth: Yes. I think the conditions that were imposed, I guess I would add one and that would be that the site should have a storm sewer installed and larger retention pond as our City Engineer is recoF~ending. It seems like it would be a more efficient way to go. Conrad: Joan, what do you think about that? If it did come back in a couple months once compliance is met. Would you hold to the staff report reco~m~endations? tens: I think that there are some issues that aren't adequately ~dressed in here. Number one is the traffic. I think this gentleman is right. There are traffic problems and I can't imagine why adding 3 buildings and if there's going to be trucks going in and out, or whatever they do out of these buildings I'm not quite sure, it is going to add traffic to that intersection and there are no turn offs there are there? Or anything. I think that has to be studied. I'm not convinced that that isn't going to be a problem adding 3 more cold storage buildings. I also have a problem with the metal buildings. I don't think they should be grandfathered in. I don't see a justification for that. I don't think this is a continuing project. I think the original project was an approval of one building. There may have been an intent in the future to develop this site with 3 more buildings but that, I don't think that's how it was presented to the City at the time. So I couldn't go along with that. Conrad: Okay. Steve? Emmings: I don't know where to start and how much to do but obviously there is some, the City maybe didn't give them some direction at some times when they could have headed off some of the problems. Just looking at one item on the original approval that stated that existing vegetation from the front lot line to the 750 contour shall not be disturbed other than the driveway and now I'm hearing tonight that all of the vegetation was removed from there. I doubt that anybody in the City approved that. In his letter, Mr. Sorenson's letter, it says that the trees, the existing trees and vegetation. It was determined after inspection that they should be emoved because they were growing in unsuitable soil which would make it mpossible to do soil correction. Also, the trees were very large and unstable creating a hazard to structures or any road that would be built. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 14 For all I know ~hat's true but we put a condition on and what you did was contrary to that condition for whatever reason and there's a credibility problem here. We sit here kind in the abstract and try to do a reasonable job of putting conditions on things and if people won't comply with them, that creates some real serious problems. I'm frankly kind of unwilling to look at a bunch of conditions on a new project because I don't know what will happen to them. So I don't have much enthusiasm for doing...new project. I tried to distance myself like Mr. Sorenson asked us to do and I can see his point for doing it. I don't think you're a bad man or anything like that. I think you've got some real problems down there and I tried to distance myself a little bit and say, well if this project was coming in now all new and also looking at it as a mess that's got to have a solution, what would I think of it then and I still don't think I'd like it very much. But I have a real problem getting that kind of distance because of the history. I don't understand. If having offices in the existing building makes it a contractor's yard rather than cold storage, how we can allow that. We don't allow contractor's yards and this wasn't approved as a contractor's yard. It was approved as cold storage and if somebody at the City said well, if you want to have a night watchman down there that's fine and you can put in sewer facilities. That fine. Then it ought to be used by the night watchman and not by anybody from an office. There shouldn't be any offices in there. We don't allow, we just got done with several years of debate over whether we were going to have contractor's yards or not and God, we fuddled with that ordinance for years here and led several different things and finally decided just the hell with it. 're not going to have them in this town and now we've got one under a different name. You shouldn't be able to do indirectly what you can't do directly and it seems to me that's what's happened here. There is absolutely no ground, I don't understand how anyone can say there's a ground for a variance for metal buildings. There is no doubt in my mind that nothing has been grandfathered in here except the one building that was approved. There was never any approval for additional buildings and certainly and obviously never any guarantee that he'd be able to build more buildings or that they'd be metal if he was allowed to build any and a variance requires a hardship and there isn't any hardship. There are specific standards for granting variances. We don't allow metal buildings anymore. Your application came in after we disallowed them. There's no hardship there whatsoever. An economic hardship is not a hardship under the ordinance. Hardships you impose on yourself are not hardships under the ordinance and that's all you've got here so I can't see how we can grant a variance. Our standards won't allow us to do it. I'm not clear on a lot of things. I don't know about sprinklering the buildings. If our fire inspector says they should be and he's got a rationale, which is a code, then they ought to be sprinklered. Not only should those 3 be sprinklered. The new ones, but he wants to build more, I think we should at least look and see if we can require the other one to be sprinklered as a condition of an approval if he should get more building there. I would want to look at that. The road issue, as far as the traffic hazard, there's no doubt in my mind that any additional traffic trying to start out from a dead stop at 169 is going to add a danger to danger. I drive [hrough there once in a while and I always feel like I'm taking my life in ~y hands in that a~ea. I know that traditionally there have been lots of accidents there. I guess I'm willing to rely on MnDot to some extent Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 15 ~ecause, well I think it's in their jurisdiction for one thing and I don_'t think we have a hell of a lot to say about it. But I think there should be a turn in land there and a lane out and I don't think any traffic ought to be allowed to come out of there and go east. Kind of right-in/right-out situation almost but those are technical issues and I'm not an engineer so I don't know. On the storm sewer and how the water is handled and what kind of curb there is or if there ought to be sheet flow, those are engineering issues again and if our engineer says they need them, then I support our engineer and if your engineer can talk him out of that stuff, then that's fine with me too. I won't take a position on them except that I'll support our engineer if I have to vote and if he says you need it, then I say you need it too. I think another thing we ought to look at on this, since it is a conditional use, would be hours of operation now that it's gotten 4 times. Now we're going to have 4 times greater use of the site and there are residences right next door to this thing. I think that hours of operation is something we might want to look at for~ an additional condition if we're going to approve it. My own feeling is that the way this should probably be handled, the way I'd feel best about it is if Mr. Sorenson would establish his credibility with the City by fixing the drainage. Building the berms. Doing the landscaping. Get the traffic and driveway, the traffic resolved. Get the driveway, get a bituminous driveway in there. Get rid of the offices out of the other building and then we'll talk about the rest. I certainly support, I'm going to vote against this now if I have to vote tonight and getting letters of credit .--rom this applicant I think is important and appropriate for all the rovements. Conrad: Thank you. You don't want to hear what I have to say? Bob Smith: Sure. Conrad: Then I'll let you talk and I'm not going to add much. I think the previous co~m~ents kind of put our hands around this thing. I think we're trying to let owners down there have a reasonable economic use of their land and yet somehow maintain the character of that area and the low intensive use that we wanted in that area. It seems to me that what has happened to change that a little bit. With the trees down, that really is going against a lot of the things that we struggle for in Chanhassen. Especially in that particular area because it is, whether the trees were quality trees or not, it was still added to some of the buffering and some of the charm of the river valley. I'm a little bit concerned with increasing intensity of use. Whether be it this parcel or other parcels which we've tried to maintain and not expand. This was slanted. Had no use and we did feel that a passive use, which meant no people on site, made sense. It seems to me that it was gone away from that. I see two other things that we've got to do internally. One is that the Planning Commission, City Council really have to, as we've been prodded to by our neighbors down there, make sure you take a good look at this area and be sure that it's zoned properly, and I think we should. It may stay fringe business or business fringe but I think we really have to take another good .ook at it because everytime we do something down there, it seems to get a ittle bit messier. So I would hope that we could review the zoning relatively quickly. I'm sure Mr. Erhart who's not here tonight would like Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 16 .o believe we could. Another thing I'd like Paul or Jo Ann, if you could do, which I'd like you to do. I would like a staff report to the City Council on how the City has kind of led us in, has participated in some of these problems. Because it looks like we had a hand in it. It's not for the sake of punishment or reprimand. It's for the sake of understanding what we did and how we lead a developer on and maybe in a passive way but just so the City Council and maybe the Planning Co~,ission can understand some of these things as to how we would allow a restroom down there and furnance when we said no. I'd like staff to prepare a short report on that that would go to the City Council. In terms of this particular application, as you probably could guess from my opening comments, what has been done really slants my opinion for the future. I can't really give the future an open mind because some of the things that are dear to me have sort of been negated or not done at all. I believe that before I could consider this I would have to see the site brought up to the standards that we believe it should have been in the first place. What I also tried to get out of the Planning CoF~ission members tonight is their openness for the future so that would give Mr. Sorenson and Mr. Smith some idea of where the Planning Commission sits so that we don't have you spinning your wheels and that you have an understanding of, if you came back, where we might be. I think you've heard individual co~m~ents. I don't know that there's a subrogation I can give you. You've got to take their comments as their individual co~m~ents. I think in terms of drainage and some of the runoff issues, we are very concerned about that but will trust that you could ~lve that. Whether it be somebody's engineer. I think we're very nterested in the water issue but I think you could resolve those. That issue. My particular feeling is that most of the staff's reco~-~endations I would get behind unless there was a good argument against. The sprinkling I would probably get behind and say I agree unless the City's code is simply arbitrary in that matter. But if it's specific and has ~ood rationale, I'd stand behind that. Anything that prevents some of the erosion, I would stand behind. Anything that takes the site appearance back up to the standard that I thought we had, which meant some greenery in front. We were not trying to create that highway as an intense business use visually or traffic wise. We wanted to somehow keep the character down there and it seems that we haven't and I want that character rebuilt. And if that's probably what we're talking about is trees and berm and I think that can be solved but I think just as a comment, I felt most of the reco~'m~endations by staff I would stand behind if this came back just for your information. You could persuade us on a couple. As I listened to co~,ents here. Mr. Smith, do you want to make some co~,ents? Bob Smith: Yeah, just a couple comments Mr. Commissioner. First off, I have a question on the land alteration and grading permit. As originally submitted, it really wasn't a grading plan. I don't recall who the engineer was. A small outfit as I recall. It wasn't a grading plan. It had two spot elevations and very insufficient. Part of the approval this evening is to get the grading permit or land alteration permit. If I can direction either from yourself or from the staff on whether we have to go through this whole process. The Planning Co~,ission/City Council for ~pproval or denial, to get a land alteration permit to complete the first se. The first portion of this. The grading and the revegetation of the site. That's basically one of the reasons we're here this evening so we Planning Co~-~ission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 17 ~an bring the site up to standards. The second comment I have is a comment made, your engineer isn't here to defend himself but I have to question his contradiction to the Lower Minnesota Valley Watershed District. Mr. Samstad has 35 years with the district. I think he's done a real good job at it and we follow his recommendations to the T, to the letter on this project. For your engineer to come back, and I'll call this sandbagging at this point. To sandbag Mr. Samstad and the Watershed District on this. To create the water concentration which would in my opinion and my engineer's opinion, create an erosion control or erosion that would far exceed what we have proposed. Thirdly, the 850 contour originally was about in this location. Part of when this project was originally brought in, the grading worked out some of the different areas. There was a spring that was opened up down here. It was a very small spring initially and once things got moved around a little bit and they put a road in, you can't grade just a road. You have to have shoulders and side slopes. It opened up a spring down here. Caused some additional grading. That's one of the reasons for grading below the 750 contour. There was a site specific problem that was encountered. For the fourth co~.ent applies to the variance of the metal buildings. We came in as Mr. Krauss had said, he had reviewed this project beginning back in September. This might not be the place to pick a bone with but we had much discussion, good faith discussion with the staff for about 4-5 months now. We could have brought this thing and submitted it and signed our application for the fee i~,ediately. We had good faith discussions with the staff 3 or 4 months ago. What happened is that in the ocess of this discussion to try and work out all the problems that this ite has, an ordinance was brought in. We were sandbagged. We feel as though we were stalled in the process of good faith discussions to try and bring this site up to a good point. If in fact we would have brought our plans in the day that we talked to Mr. Krauss, the Planning Co~ission, the Planning Department, the Engineering Department, we would have been, we would have come in prior to the change of the ordinance. E~m~ings: And may or may not have received approval. Bob Smith: That's correct but nonetheless, we would have not had the problems of being in after the ordinance. We feel, Mr. Sorenson feels that there has been a stall. That this project came in after the ordinance has been done and I apologize to the staff if I'm picking a bone at this point. In su~m~ation, we think this is a reasonable use of this site. It's been zoned as fringe. If we would have had a timely submission. If we would have not had good faith discussions, we would have had a timely discussion. We would have been in prior to the change of the ordinance. We would have had a compliance with the metal buildings although we would have had to have a conditional use permit for the mini-storage in this zoning area. E~m~ings: And you understand that this is not a permitted use in this area. Bob Smith: That's correct. Emmings: It's a conditional use. So there's nothing magic about the ~pplication date. Whether it comes before or after. Bob Smith: Metal buildings, it was. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 18 Emmings: You may or may not have received approval because it's a conditional use and not a permitted use. Bob Smith: Once again, your intentions for a passive use, to quote you, a passive use. No people on the site. Fringe business does not, you have to have people on the site for fringe business %ype zoning. This is a compatible type of use for fringe business in the location that it's in. E~m~ings: As a conditional use. Bob Smith: As a conditional use, that is correct. E~m~ings: Not permitted. Bob Smith: At this point I could ask for a continuance. I'm really not sure which way to approach this from the land alteration permit standpoint. We want to take and bring this into compliance. We want to be able to get the grading done so we can satisfy the Planning Co~,ission and the City Council. We would rather not get a negative recommendation at this point. If I could get some reco~mtendation from either the Planning Co~m, ission or from staff on land alteration permit to conform to the grading permit. I think we've had some, much discussion with staff and brought it to the level that it would be an acceptable project. ildermuth: Is there a land alteration permit they're showing? Olsen: If they don't go ahead with the conditional use permit, if that's denied, they would have to receive a grading permit and they would still have to receive the Watershed District approval. MnDot approval. Bob Smith: We've got Watershed District approval already. Olsen: Well we would discuss with what our City Engineer feels is a better way to handle the runoff. They would still go through the grading permit. Krauss: I'd just like to reiterate too that we have a commitment from a developer to complete a project in accordance with what was agreed to 2 years ago. Obviously that has not been fulfilled. The premise under which I discuss things from the outset with this developer. My predecessor based on his correspondence discussed with him, was that hey look. You got a problem here. You created it. You're going to have to fix it and you're going to have to demonstrate good faith or nobody's going to buy into this. I mean it was a premise that, you can read the letters for yourself. They're in the packet. Mine is nearly 6 months old and Steve Hanson's is over a year old. It's a problem that we've been trying to remedy. We fully intend, as I said earlier, to pursue satisfaction of those conditions irregardless of what happens tonight. They have a co~,itment to perform and we fully intend to see that commitment carried out. ings: But I hear him saying though is if we want to do the berming and landscaping and fix the drainage problems and maybe get the driveway up to snuff and get all that stuff taken care of to show the City that we're Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 19 ood neighbors, axe we going to be able to get the permits and the cooperation from the City that we need to go ahead and do that work? Is that kind of what you're saying? Bob Smith: That's exactly right. Krauss: To bring the site into compliance, certainly. E~ings: I don't need your input right now. Krauss: In fact, Jo Ann and I would need to talk about it but I wouldn't even feel that we'd need to give him another grading permit. Well, we probably ought to rectify what's been done. Wildermuth: Any work that has to be done should be done under the old agreement. Krauss: Yeah, kind of degrade what... Emmings: So the answer to him is they won't have any problems. Krauss: Oh no. Emmings: The only thing that I would say, I think that's what you ought to ~o and it sounds to me like you'd just as soon have it tabled while you do lhat stuff and then come back later and I think that's a good idea. But I think you ought to work very closely with the City so they know, with the staff so they know what you're doing as you do it. So there's no surprises at the end. That's the only thing I'd say. Bob Smith: What you are reco~m, ending is that we be in strict compliance with the original plan that was submitted I believe in 19867 Krauss: That's a problem that we've had from day one with this is that it's impossible to be in strict compliance because all the trees are gone. Emmings: I think what you want to do is solve the drainage problem, and this is your personal choice but solve the drainage problem in a way that will accommodate what you ultimately want to do with the property. Bob Smith: To which the original "grading plan", spot elevation plan had. Emmings: Well that's fine but look, here's the problem. Once there were trees out there and now it looks like the moon so we don't really have to talk about what really was there before. That's a little, it's a little silly at this time. Bob Smith: I understand that. What I am asking is, do you wish to have conformance or compliance with the approved so called grading plan or compliance with the altered grading plans that we have? ngs: You have to do something that's sensible and if you work with the staff. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990- Page 20 )b Smith: That's what we've been doing for the last 6 months. Emmings: Well yeah. That's not a way to win their friendship or mine is to take shots at them like that. That's not working with them. That's taking shots at them. What I'm saying is, if you say look, here's what we've got. Here's where we've got to get to. Let's get togethe~ and get the engineers together and get a reasonable plan to get to that spot. I have no doubt that they'll work with you on that. Well, now that's what I call a smirk and that doesn't win you any of my loyalty or friendship again. I'm saying we've got to cooperate here. There's been problems. I don't think it's anything that can't be overcome. If you just decide to get it done, it will get done. If you decide to be unfriendly to each other, it won't get done. It will just be unpleasant. Bob Smith: I said we worked in good faith for nearly 6 months. It's just since we've r~esubmitted on this review that we got this from the City Engineer. No)~mally the whole process is gone through. The City Council approve it before it even gets to the Watershed. We've had so much time on this thorough the staff level, the Watershed District has already approved this project. Emmings: I think you and our engineer and the Watershed's engineer should sit down and go over it but don't ask us to second guess our City Engineer. Smith: Mr. Samstad has had sufficient discussion with the City ineer prior to this time. That's why he's approved it. E~m~ings: Yeah, but what I'm saying is, if our City Engineer wants A and Mr. Samstad wants B, don't ask us to support Mr. Samstad if our City Engineer believes what he's doing is right. That's what we've got him here for. What you're doing is asking us to tell him we think he's incompetent and we aren't going to do that. Bob Smith: That's fine. Emmings: You ~]nderstand? Bob Smith: I do. The original plan showed a lack of any storm water runoff of the entire project. My question is, do you want us to take and grade to show the berms, the storm water runoff which is contrary to the original plan. On the original plan was put a couple flat pads in here and a couple flat pads in here and grade it down. Krauss: If I could by way of guidance. We initially got into this arrangement to rectify the problems that were out there. The grading plan that you see illustrated on this proposal rectifies the problems that were created. Irregardless of whether 3 additional buildings are built, it fixes what we found to be the problems on the site. Now if no more development is to take place on this site, there's not going to be as much runoff because there's not going to be as much hard surface coverage. omething less than the system we proposed may suffice if nothing else is one. But in terms of screening and how the access is being worked out and Planning Commission Meeting Feb~ua~y 7, 1990 - Page 21 drainage concept, yes. We think this grading plan, that landscaping plan does the job. Emmings: Well and it's hard because, if we tell them to grade to accommodate the 3 more buildings, you know that would put ourselves in a real. Krauss: That's not going to be an issue because it's already graded flat anyway. Emmings: Okay. We certainly don't want to guarantee anything because if we're going to table it, we're not going to look at the proposal until later on and we sure don't want to hear that you've been sandbagged. We've heard enough of that word here tonight and I don't want you to think that we're sandbagging you. Conrad: I reall think, Steve to jump in. I really think we shouldn't table it. I think it should go to City Council. I think you've got to hear what they think. E~m~ings: That probably is a good idea. Conrad: You may be spending some money. Bottom line to me is you've got to pull the whole site into conformance without even contemplating 3 new ldings. That's where I'm at and staff and the engineers can figure that ~ut. Flat out. At that point in time, then I would consider taking a look at 3 new buildings. But at the same time, I want to take a look, we'd be taking a look at that whole zoning area down there. I think we just owe it to the neighbors to take one more final look. More than likely you'd be grandfathered in but intensity of use typically is not grandfathered in. Is that right? But that's where I'm at but I really do believe that you should take this, regardless of positive or negative. I think tabling's not going to give you the information you want right now. Bob Smith: What I might suggest is that you continue it for another meeting so that the engineering department has an opportunity to discuss some particular points with either Watershed District, Mr. Sorenson that possibly continue for what, say 30 days so that can be worked out and you can be informed of what's happening. Conrad: I think those issues could be worked out between now and when you got it to City Council without bringing it back. You don't want to listen to us anymore. You know. You really don't. Krauss: Mr. Chairman, if I could also explain something about the Watershed District. The watershed districts have different standards and we have several watershed districts and some of them are more strict than others. Irregardless, when a watershed district makes a recommendation it's a minimum reco~m, endation. It's what they need to satisfy themselves. It no way binds the City or indicates what will satisfy the City. Bob Smith: That's correct. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 22 Conrad: So anyway, if you buy what, I would listen to you. If you'd like to table it, you know I'll lobby to table it. I think it's to your benefit to take this up to City Council. Hear what they have to say. You're going to get their cards. You're going to know where they're at. I think you're going to get some better long term direction. Bob Smith: At this point I would reco~,end a continuation from Mr. Sorenson's standpoint. That he does have an opportunity to work a little more closely with the staff and bring it back to you for one final before it is passed onto City Council if that would be possible. Conrad: Let's see if someone makes that motion. Is there a motion? Is there anymore discussion? Emmings: I g~]ess if he wants it tabled, then I think we ought to table it. Conrad: Me too. ~m~ings: It doesn't seem unreasonable. Conrad: It's their problem because they have to talk to us again. E~'m'~ings: And we're going to say exactly the same stuff next time. Conrad: No, no, no. Emmings: Well I am. I'm going to read it out of the Minutes. Conrad: Is there a motion? Emmings: I'll move that we table the conditional use permit. Oh, site plan review? Conrad: It's two things. Emmings: And site plan review for the cold storage units as proposed by Mike Sorenson. Ahrens: I'll second it. Emmings moved, Ahrens seconded to table action on the Conditional Use Permit Amendment and site plan review for expansion of a site for Mike Sorenson, cold storage warehouse facility located on Hwy. 212 just northeast of Hwy. 169. All voted in favor and the motion carried. REVISED SITE PLAN REVIEW FOR THE COUNTRY HOSPITALITY SUITES HOTEL, LOCATED ON WEST 78TH STREET AND MARKET BOULEVARD, HUTT CONSULTANTS, INC. Paul Krauss presented the staff report on this item. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 23 Conrad: Do we have a cedar standard? A cedar shake standard for a rooftos in Chanhassen? Krauss: Well there was an issue that, you know there's a downtown image and people can argue rightly or wrongly that it's a good image or a bad image but it's an image. There has been a desire on the part of the people in the City and the HRA to develop some consistency Chat you know you're in downtown Chanhassen. To the extent that you don't take prototypical architecture that may fit in well and interchange in Nebraska and plant it in the downtown, yeah it becomes an issue. The cedar shake roofing takes off from the fact that the Frontier Building and the Dinner Theater has cedar shake mansured. Other buildings have tried to emulate that but some of the newer buildings are using those Timberline shingles and from a distance they give the same appearance which was why the Council was willing to accept that. There's also a question of whether or not you could do a cedar shake roof with the new roof design. That it would be too heavy and fire proofing would be very difficult. Conrad: So we do have a standard? Who's enforcing that? Is that Fred Hoisington? How is Fred getting involved in some of these architectural goals that we have? Is he still used to consult? Krauss: Mr. Chairman, he is and frankly that's something that needs some discussion. Conrad: It's a real intriguing thing and not that I don't, I like cedar look and I like Timberline shingles and that's all fine with me. Yet, sameness is not necessarily a goal that I personally have in downtown Chan. I don't know. I guess I'm kind of intrigued by... Krauss: This building will be physically linked to the Dinner Theater at some point in the future. The concept calls for... Conrad: Okay. End of presentation? Show us this courtyard. Clayton Johnson: I don't have any drawings of the courtyard. Conrad: No drawings? That's the only thing I'm interested in. Clayton Johnson: I think everybody has some drawings except me. Krauss: There's a detailed provided here. Clayton Johnson: A couple things. I'm Clayton Johnson representing the Bloomberg Companies. I think it's very important that you understand that there are two different parties here. I represent Bloomberg Company. Dave Hemminger is here from D.W. Hutt Consultants. Dave represents the partnership. We are only one of four-partners in the hotel project so you're talking ~here to two different owners and I think everybody's had a difficult time dealing with that. I just wanted to take just Paul, one small exception to your staff report. I just got a chance to read it today and that is, when you originally considered the hotel, the large gabled roof building was in place and you approved it on the basis of that old Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 24 building being there. Okay? At the time that you approved this way back when, the gabled roof building was intending to stay. Subsequent to that approval the City condemned the gabled roof building and we reached an agreement to tear it down. So the original submission showed a 25 foot courtyard Paul. Not 30 and that's not a big deal but it's 25. 20 feet from the edge of the old building to the property line of the replatted property and a 5 foot setback from the building. From the hotel. Can I go over here to the board just a minute? Conrad: Please. I thought you were going to have picture to show us. Clayton Johnson: Gabled roof building. Okay, the big one with all the wood shingles on it. The flat roof building which houses Hooked on Classics. This was proposed to come down right? And the hotel, here's the property line of the replatted property. This is a 20 foot dimension and the hotel which will be 5 feet from that property line or a 25 foot green area. Okay? Subsequent to, and this is what you approved. What happened now is that the City has condemned this building and this will all come down. We will be coming to you with a plan for a new building. Alright which you have not seen yet. In Paul's staff report, he is asking to maintain a 30 foot courtyard or a green area and I don't know where the 30 feet came from. We say it's 25 and we are certainly agreeable to the 25 foot courtyard. This building will be 17 feet. If the new plan is approved, it will be 17 feet from the property line to the edge of the hotel so therefore, in order to maintain 25 feet we'd need an 8 foot easement from the Bloomberg Companies. Now we're more than willing to give that. That's not a problem. When we come in with our plan for our new building we will at least maintain that and it will probably be greater but we're willing to give the easement to assure the original courtyard area. The only other thing is that in the staff reco~endation there's one thing that's been ignored. It was discussed at the meeting that was held between the attorneys of both parties as well as the staff but there will be a connection connecting the hotel to this new project. When we come in for the approval of the new building, there will also be a proposal to connect the hotel so the easement that we grant here, we're more than willing to grant. The only thing is, we've got to provide for the provision that the connection will be permitted on that easement. E~m, ings: Is the connection enclosed? Clayton Johnson: Yes, it's enclosed. I think that's, so really the only exception Paul we would take to the staff report is we would agree with the conditions with the exception that it be 25 feet. We would grant you an easement that would assure a 25 foot courtyard and we'll come back with our plans and our plans are to have a generous courtyard out there because we think it's going to enhance our building also that we will be building on the site. Emmings: The new building will be what compass direction from the hotel? Clayton Johnson: It will be east. So is the existing building that houses Animal Fair with the fireplace and the bricks, that will stay. But the wood building inbetween, which I call the gabled roof building and the only Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 25 reason it isn't down already is that we've been leaving the building in place to keep the frost from going into the ground until we get back through Planning Co~m, ission and Council to see if they'll approve this change. That's the only reason the building is still there is to prevent frost from going down to the 4 1/2 feet it was on the other area. Okay? Conrad: Good. Wildermuth: Why was it condemned Clayton? Clayton Johnson: Well this is an issue that gets back to, the canopy. I described and I don't know if you read the Council Minutes. I described the canopy as Pinnochio's nose. How it continued to grow. From the time that you approved the hotel, BRW in studying the traffic stacking in this whole area concluded that we're going to have a heck of a problem on that intersection and what they wanted to do is get the building back considerably from the road to allow them to redesign the entryway and to redesign the stacking at that intersection. So that meant that a good share of the front of the building would have to go. The engineer's looked at it and concluded that really if you took 30 feet off the front of the building, it'd be more economical to take the whole thing because there wouldn't be enough of the structure left. So what happened, so then the next thing. So that's an agreeable recoF~tendation. We finally got together and agreed on that but now what happened, in the process of designing the restacking, when BRW did it, they now provided for a bus access through there. We want because of the bus traffic into the theatre, there's going to be a lot of bus traffic at the hotel so they redesigned the road in front of the hotel. Now the canopy, instead of being a canopy over a 15 or 20 foot driveway now is a canopy over a 30 foot driveway so when it got down to the final bidding process the only thing, of all the changes, the only one that really dealt with economics was this issue of the canopy. The canopy ended up 44 feet long by 36 feet wide and without any center support when the bids came in, it cost more to build the canopy than I think it did to put the pool in so that's why we find ourselves back here today with these two changes. Wildermuth: So the problem was resolved by putting the center island in? Clayton Johnson: Yeah. So now what we've got is basically a wood structure. Timbers like what Herb built on the Dinner Theatre instead of a steel superstructure that would have had to have been covered up. So I think we ended up with a more attractive design. E~-~,ings: How long is it? Clayton Johnson: 44 feet. It's the same length. It goes all the way out but it's anchored in the middle. And you'll get a better feel for, you'll be able to see that from Main Street when that big gabled roof building comes down. You'll get a little better feel that it's really going to enhance I think all of Main Street. Dave Hemminger: I might add that we had BRW look at how, if a bus could get in and around that area and they... Planning Co~-~,ission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 26 Clayton Johnson: We'll still have the bus traffic flowing through and underneath the canopy and it will all work. Wildermuth: What's your feeling on the canopy area? Are you happy with it? Do you think that it enhances the appearance? Clayton Johnson: Yeah. Herb likes it. Herb's the one that's really worked it through. He's placed the canopy as we ended up with it is aesthetically very... Wildermuth: I thought we were going to lose something when we lost the canopy. Clayton Johnson: Well we're also trying to please Country Hospitality and of course they're growing very rapidly. They've got a few buildings up now. Actually the idea of shrinking the pool area came back from them. The pool area, if it's not attended 24 hours a day by a lifeguard, which it is not, they've found that they want it very secure and they don't want the pool are real large. They want the pool. People want the pool. They want whirlpool. The exercise area but they don't want it be a large area that's unsupervised so that's kind of where the 12 foot coming off the building came from. It's not 12 feet off the whole building. It's 12 feet off the whole pool/lobby area. Conrad: Okay. Steve, any other questions or comments? E~m, ings: I have no objection to anything, the changes that have been proposed. I think that we should add into condition 1 that they've got to p~ovide the easement to protect the courtyard and I'd just add onto that something like, and for a future enclosed connection to a building to be built east of the hotel. As far as the courtyard dimension is concerned, I don't care if it's 20 or 30 or 25 frankly but since they proposed 25, I'd go with their number. Wildermuth: What's your feeling on that Paul? Krauss: Well, you know I got to the point where you're looking at a project with a fine tooth comb. I had looked at an earlier plan that I thought I scaled off at 30 feet. I just looked through, to be honest though, I just looked through the file here. They gave us subsets of there are a lot of plans that have developed but one of the plans they gave us in this packet that we delivered to you shows a 25 foot dimension. 25 foot is what we need to satisfy building code so that's a critical number. We can't go below that. If you're comfortable with that, we're fine with that. Ahrens: I go along with the staff recommendation on this. Conrad: I have nothing to add. 25 feet, I don't think 25 or 30 or whatever is magic. I think they'll do, as long as we meet code. Planning Co~-m~ission Meeting Februa~y 7, 1990 - Page 27 Wildermuth: I'd like to move the Planning Commission approve the site plan 89-2 for the Country Hospitality Suites as proposed subject to the following conditions. Number one, and number one would be changed to read and providing for an enclosed corridor between the hotel and a new proposed building. Does that meet your requirements Steve? E~,ings: Sounds good %o me. Wildermuth: And number two, the 30 feet would be changed to 25 feet. Conrad: Is there a second? Ahrens: I'll second it. Conrad: Discussion? How did this motion affect the 12 foot? City Council was not sure what to do when they reviewed it. Our motion. Krauss: Your motion would accept the plans as they are which deletes the 12 feet. Conrad: Which deletes the 12 feet, okay. So we didn't need to highlight that because the plans are the plans and they deleted the 12 feet. Krauss: Essentially the plans that you're adopting today supercede the ones... Wildermuth moved, Ahrens seconded that the Planning Commission reco~m~end approval of Site Plan #89-2 for Country Hospitality Suites with the following conditions: 1. Provision of a satisfactory easement protecting courtyard areas located at the east and southeast sides of the building providing for an enclosed corridor between the hotel and a new proposed building to the east. 2. The minimum courtyard dimension located east of the hotel shall be 25 feet. Ail voted in favor and the motion carried. PUBLIC HEARING: ZONING ORDINANCE AMENDMENT TO CREATE AN R-16 HIGH DENSITY RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT. Paul Krauss presented the staff report on this item. Conrad: What does R-16 look like? Do we have any pictures of an R-167 Krauss: What a development in the R-16 might look like? Planning Co~-~,ission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 28 Conrad: Yeah. Are we talking apartments or are we talking condos? What is it? And why is it different than R-127 I guess I have to go back to the fundamental question. I'm not sure why the R-16. I don't know where to put it. I would put it where the R-12 is because I don't know, it sounds to me like we're solving a parking problem that just occurred because of the new parking standard. I don't buy that. I have to buy the rationale for the need of the zone which is high density and then I have to buy the need to have two which are fairly close. Do we need an R-20 or an R-247 Do we need four high density zones because there's a reason for that? The only reason I see for this one right now is for one car parking stalls underneath. Explain more to me so I can have a better grasp of a rationale for two high density zones. They're still not real high but higher. Krauss: No. Realistically when you look at the R-12 district you cannot, I'm not saying it's impossible but it would be very difficult to ecomomically build an apartment or condominium project such as you might see in Eden Prairie or Minnetonka or Bloomington. Ones that I personally relate to that fall into that density range would be something like Chasewood Gates which is in Minnetonka on Crosstown Highway. I don't recall the exact density in there but I think it was between 16 and 17 units an acre on that project. If you like we can give you a list of projects and their densities. Conrad: But do we need the two? Krauss: In my own judgment, no. I think the problem here is the R-12 district didn't do or doesn't do what it was intended to do. It was intended to be our high density district. Where it fails in on two points. It doesn't allow enough density to build the kind of buildings that most developers build at a higher density range because you've got to build a higher density than that and it also hinders them because when you build a building of that size, when you knock out your parking and your drive aisles and your paved sidewalks and whatever else you do, plus the building, you're beyond 35%. Emmings: But would it be right to think that any developer coming in attempting to do a denser type project, they're all going to look for the R-16 and none of them are going to be interested in the R-12 it sounds like. Krauss: Arguably the R-12 district becomes redundant. E~ings: Yeah. It just won't be used. Conrad: So the process is we'll get rid of the R-12. Put in the R-16 and go back to the old parking requirements that we used to have. Emmings: That we just got rid of. Wildermuth: Then you get better quality of construction in the R-16 versus the R-12. What you see in the R-12 is not very impressive. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 29 Krauss: When you'~e squeezing a development every which way, which to an extent we're entitled to do and it's warranted. You're going to model or you'~e going to produce a certain kind of development. Quality of development is another issue. I mean you can have people that build quality or not in any density range. You don't want to point fingers at any one project but the R-12 type of density produces or seems to produce here anyway, somewha~ sprawly barracky's looking buildings %hat are as compact as possible to make that 35% requirement and are completely uncreative in terms of design. Now does the R-16 district mean that inherently you will get a better design? I don't think so. It would allow more developers to take a shot at it. Wildermuth: Wouldn't we be better off maintaining the R-12 and increasing that to 45 or 50% coverage to allow for more creativity in design? Krauss: Well you'd certainly give some flexibility doing that. The critical factor being that they can't, developers are paying x number of dollars per acre. Now we don't normally get into the economics of these things but they're going to pay the same dollars per acre whether they're getting 12 units an acre or 16. When you do to the expense and with the R-16 district we're insisting that the parking be underground which is an expensive proposition and some of the cities do that. Minnetonka does it. Edina does it but there's not a whole lot of third ring suburbs that do it. We're proposing that we do it and I think you've backed us up on that and the Council has as well so we're demanding a high grade building in that district. Wildermuth: How is it a high grade building? Give us some comfort as to the quality of building that you get in an A-16 with underground parking versus what you'd get in an R-12. Krauss: I think it's a matter of how much money it takes to build a building that would fit into an R-16 district. Wildermuth: I can see where the R-16 on an acre of land is going to be a lot more productive in terms of revenue for a developer. Krauss: To meet the right of passage here is that you have to build a building that will probably be 3 stories high and must have underground parking. Underground parking requires masonry construction at least to the lower level. You know you look at the buildings we're been getting in the R-12 and they'~e framed. It requires fully sprinklered buildings which in the R-12 district has not been the case. There's ways of getting around building codes in those districts. Those are fairly major expenses and to recoup those expenses the developer is then probably going to have to build a building that's going to attract the kind of rents or purchase price that's going to do that. Ahrens: So by developing R-16 housing we're not necessarily expanding any affordable housing base for Chanhassen? We could be building more expensive housing? I mean, for some reason I had in the back of my mind that the ~eason the R-16 was being developed was so that there could be higher density housing and maybe more affordable housing for all kinds of Planning Co~m~ission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 30 people. I mean did that have anything to do with it or was that something that I imagined? Krauss: No. I think it did. It was certainly a concern that the Planning Co~,ission had and the City Council echoed some of the same feelings. The fact of the matter is that we, people are telling us we have a need in this town for higher density housing. We don't have higher density housing. Something hasn't happened out here that has stopped it. Now I personally think a lot of that is the dynamics of the multi-family housing market. Chanhassen was not in the mode to accept that kind of housing or needed it at the time the tax laws were structured that every developer was building. Wildermuth: ...construction. Krauss: What we're getting is you will not find developers economically building the types of apartment units that you find in other co~unities. I can't tell you that modern, that the apartment buildings that have been built in the last 7 years in that boom times for apartments are cheap. They're not. They're considerably more expensive most of them than are the older buildings. It does provide a style of housing that we don't offer. That has the potential for offering some differences in rents and for some lower rent depending on what programs they use and this is not directly in our control. If it's in a tax increment district you can require that a percentage of them be made available for lower cost housing. Right now we're not getting those kinds of product in the tax increment districts. They're not being proposed. Nothing that would generate enough revenue that you can float tax increment to offset anything. Ahrens: I think because of the restrictions that the City has also on development. Krauss: I don't know that. That would be speculation. I sort of think that's true but I couldn't prove it. E~m~ings: I'd like to ask. Let's say that we create an R-16 district. Where is it? Krauss: It's nowhere to start with. In fact I had this discussion with Mr. Dean Johnson the morning after. Emmings: That's my next question as a matter of fact. Krauss: No, our premise is that I mean we have an A-1 district that doesn't exist anyplace. What we would do if this district passes. We would put it on the map. It would stay in the ordinance and somebody would have to bring forth a project that we find acceptable with a concurrent request to rezone it R-16. Emming s: Okay. Wildermuth: Well wouldn't we just automatically look at the R-12 areas? Conrad: That's your first thought. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 31 Ahrens: There was something in the Minutes, the City Council Minutes. E~m, ings: That's where you'd look but... Wildermuth: But if the R-12 would be redundant...R-16. Krauss: The R-12 and the R-16 district are keyed into the high density designation on the Comprehensive Plan. Theoretically they can be used interchangeably. Realistically there is some latitude on the part of the City as to whether or not they'll accept a rezoning and it's contingent in my opinion on somebody bringing... Wildermuth: Approval would have to be done on a case by case or an area by area. ~mings: And that's not spot zoning? We don't have to worry about being accused of? Krauss: I don't think so Commissioner Emmings because it's based on our Comprehensive Plan. Emmings: One of the questions I had is, when you think about that property, I'm sure that Dean Johnson was very interested in our having an R-16 and sees it as a way to get the project he's wanted to do done in some ways. Maybe he does. Maybe he hasn't but when I think of buildings 50 tall on top of that hill up there, it's going to dominant our skyline forever. Wildermuth: It's going to be the Acropolis. E~tings: Yeah, it's going to look like the Acropolis. You're right. Wildermuth: So maybe that R-12 doesn't become R-16. E~,ings: Well not automatically. And the other thing is, why does a 3 story building have to be 50 feet tall? Krauss: They're not usually. A 3 story building is usually about 40 some odd feet tall. If you wanted to. I mean the way ordinance is structured right now is it opens up, it gives latitude for a 5 story building to occur. If that's something that you wanted to preclude, the way to do that is to go back and say that the maximum building height is whatever we have in the R-12 district which I think is 40 feet. 40 feet is sufficient for a 3 story building. Emmings: It's one of those things, it's real hard because I can see that you might want to build a 5 story building someplace but you might not want to build it on top of that hill. I don't know how you'd get at that. Ahrens: What hill are you talking about? Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 32 Emmings: You know when you're right on the end of West 78th Street here just before it hits Powers Blvd.. It's all graded now kind of flat. Ahrens: By the townhouse on Kerber's? Olsen: Just to the west of those. Ahrens: Okay. I know where that is. E~m~ings: Yeah, if you just go down West 78th Street to where it hits Powers Blvd. and then you look, if you're driving this way and Powers Blvd. is in front of you. Off to your right that's all graded in there and it's up on top of that hill where we've had a lot of proposals from a developer who wants to put multi-family housing up on top of that hill. It's real visible. Wildermuth: We don't have very much R-12 at the moment. Probably if 212 materializes we'll have opportunities for more. Ahrens: Paul you had said, I'm sorry were you finished? Wildermuth: Yes. Ahrens: Paul, you had said that you had worked on the Minnetonka ordinance and you had a maximum hard surface coverage of 70%. How did you come up with number in Minnetonka and in Chanhassen the recommendation is for 50%? Krauss: Don't take this as a cop out but I'm afraid it's lost in the mist of time. I don't recall. We had a standard of 80% coverage for commercial areas. For industrial areas it was 85%. 70% as near as I can remember seemed to be a reasonably good number. Nobody argued with it at the time and it became part of the ordinance. Now having worked with that ordinance for probably 5 years after the date of adoption, I sincerely believe it's far beyond what's needed. As I say, we didn't have a project that approached that and some of those projects were fairly dense. Wildermuth: What were they? Were they on the order of 50%? Krauss: Yeah. 45%-50%. Emmings: But if someone had come.in at 70% you wouldn't have been able to say no. Krauss: In that instance no and that's why, having done that, that's why we reco~m~ended 50 over 70 because experience showed that that's a number that worked. Conrad: Worked for what? Worked for all residential? Krauss: It worked for residential occuring in that density range, yeah. Conrad: In which density range? The high density? Planning Co~Lission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 33 Krauss: The higher density range. Conrad: What's the downfall of that? As you bring in higher density and what you're saying is these people need less space. We're going to build smaller units. Stack them and they need less space to recreate outside. They don't really need. Is that what we say? I'm not playing a game. I'm trying to rationalize a different standard or does it say that high density, because they need less space, we have to make sure that parks go up next to them or they're located close to a place to recreate. That one I really have a problem with. I guess I can't say that 35% versus 50% is going to be make a great deal of difference but on the other hand, it seems like a contradiction. The more we stack on top of each other, the less space we need for those people to be outside and I don't know. That bothers me. Emmings: It's not unlike, you know we put double homes and multi-family homes on highways so the less desireable a place is to live, the more people you put there. Conrad: Yeah. Krauss: One other way of thinking of that though is, first of all we're preserving 50% of the site. You buy your 15,000 square foot lot and I don't know if the analogy is so good but that says you can't touch half of it and then you can build on the rest. You also have to ask why would an apartment or condominium dwellers in Chanhassen require more open space than do the same people living in most other suburban communities. Conrad: No, no. We don't have to ask that. Not at all. I don't feel we have to. That presumes they're right and we are leaders in a lot of different cases so yeah. Looking back, it's like going back to Richfield and looking at Richfield and Bloomington to see their mistakes and say, well they lived through this and let's duplicate them. No, I can't accept that. Rule that argument out. Start with a logical one. Not somebody else did it. Maybe the 15% difference doesn't make any difference. It might not in a high density. I'm more concerned right now that we make affordable building well built. I think that's where we started here. It appears that our R-12 simply doesn't give us a good product yet it was our feeble attempt to have some affordable housing in there but we're not doing it. It's sort of an artificial. It seems like we're ending up with a bad zone based on. Wildermuth: Or'it's useless. Conrad: Yeah. Wildermuth: Based on a lot of the projects that have gone in. Ahrens: But the zoning doesn't sound like the problem. It's just the quality of the project that went in. Krauss: There's some truth to that. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 34 Wildermuth: Yeah, but the price of the land is the same. Krauss: The developer that we had built, he took that district and he maxed it out. The product that you saw is what happens when a developer does that. Now it could be any developer doing that in any district. Sooner or later a developer's going to try it anywhere. As I said earlier, I can't guarantee that you're going to get better quality in an R-16 district. I know that it's going to cost the developer more to build in that district on a per unit basis than it does in that R-12 district because Cenvesco's whole premise of single car garage on slab doesn't fly in the R-16 district. The open space questions are valid. I'm very comfortable with 50% of the site is a huge amount of land but one thing that we have done with the Comprehensive Plan is yes. Higher density sites are typically located near some of our parks. That was one of the intentional off shoots of what the plan did. There's a number of higher density sites around the park just, on the Eck site and then we're proposing it west of that property. That was intentional. Emmings: In addition I suppose that if someone's coming in with something in the R-16, Park and Rec looks at the plan and says you're putting a lot of people on this land. We're going to require a 5 acre park, or a 3 acre park or whatever. Now you take that park away and then you've got a 50% requirement. So if Park and Rec is doing their job on making sure that there's something on site for people and recreation, it's still only 50% that they can cover not counting the park. So maybe that's protection there. Conrad: Might be. If we put R-16 in, Dean Johnson could put his project in exactly the way he presented it? Krauss: Yeah, it wouldn't change. Well. Conrad: So we'd have the same, we'd have his configuration on that site. Now he wouldn't need, but now he's got driveways. He's got the impervious surface ratio taken care of. Krauss: No, no. Dean Johnson could not put that project in an R-16 district. He can't even put it in the R-12 district anymore. Emmings: He can't have, the R-16 isn't going to allow buildings on slab? Krauss: He~s required to have 1 1/2 garage stalls per. E~-~,ings: It isn't going to allow these single car garages? The parking's got to be underneath? Krauss: Well yeah. Let's talk about the R-12 district. A lot of things have changed in that district from the date you reviewed that project. Conrad: You're really flying through a lot of these things. I'm still trying to catch up to what Steve said. What would keep him from... Krauss: From building in the R-127 Planning Co~,ission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 35 Conrad: From that district. Why would he not be able to build exactly what he's got or he proposed in his current site if we zoned it R-167 Emmings: First he's got to get it rezoned to R-16. Conrad: Okay, but let's say we go along with that. E~m~ings: Then second, now he's got to put the garages underneath. He can't build on a slab any~tore. He's got to build over a garage. Wildermuth: He's got to have a superstructure then. Conrad: So the R-16 in all cases, you've got to have a garage tucked under because we're assuming it an apartment building? Krauss: Let's focus for a second on the R-12 district because that's what he's been operating in. He can't bring you the product that he was proposing before. Olsen: He doesn't meet the new parking. Krauss: It needs 1 1/2 enclosed stalls per dwelling. All his parking has to be contained off street. His drive aisles have to be wider. He needs fire department turn arounds. He has to have visitor parking at a rate of a quarter stalls per unit. His drive aisles can't be as long as they are. Conrad: But we've probably got space now. Now that we've gone from 35 to 50. Krauss: That district hasn't changed. The R-12. Conrad: But I've rezoned it because that's the logical thing to do. Olsen: Well I think what he wants to do is build in the R-12. The R-16 would be... Conrad: Really the game I'm playing is, I'm trying to figure out the quality of development that we get someplace. If we simply rezone what we have there to the 16, we're still stuck with the same quality and that says I'm not sure I like the R-16 if that's the case and that's not contrary to Mr. Johnson at all. I'm just trying to understand what we get at an R-16. Emmings: I just read the ordinance looking for the garage underneath and I don't see it. Krauss: The garage underneath? It's parking. E~-~ings: I saw it discussed in the City Council Minutes but I don't see it here in the ordinance itself. Olsen: It's in the parking ordinance. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 36 Krauss: There was another part of this. E~m~ings: See because it allows garages as an accessory use which I guess. Krauss: There's an issue here. The way the parking ordinance was structured was that if your building included 20 units or less, you could have free standing attached, free standing outside garages. Emmings: Yeah, and? What gets us to a garage underneath the building? Krauss: More than 20 units. EFm~ings: Okay, and that's in the... Krauss: Well, there's an accompanying ordinance that for some reason didn't get printed with this one that just changed that one, well it just provided an R-16 standard. E~m, ings: And what did it say roughly? Krauss: It said you'll have 1 enclosed in a garage. One outside and 1/4 visitor. Emmings: And when it says 1 enclosed in a garage, does that garage have to be under the building or can it be? Krauss: Well the ordinance that was approved, the parking ordinance that was approved said if you have more than 20 units in a building it had to be underground. If you want to make sure and your question is a valid one. Could Dean Johnson do this in an R-16 district. I think theoretically he could unless we changed that to say that any building in an R-16 district must have underground parking. E~m~ings: Why wouldn't any building in an R-16 zone have to comply with R-16 standards? Krauss: It would. Conrad: We're making up the standards, whatever they are. Olsen: And require them to only have underground. Say even if you have less than 20 units. Emmings: Oh I see. If you're in R-16 and you're less than 20 units. Krauss: The way to get to that is to tell us to write the ordinance so that any building built in the R-16 district must have underground parking. Conrad: So what are we constructing? Is this a zone for apartment buildings? Krauss: Yes. For condo buildings. Planning Co~'mLission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 37 Emmings: ...zoned for underground garages. For underground parking. I'm curious about something else. I don't know if I'm stepping on the wrong subject here but it says minimum lot depth is 155 feet and with 50 foot setbacks, front and rear. I don't understand that. Krauss: Well your minimum lot width in an RSF district is 90 feet and if you multiple your width by your depth you don't come up with 15,000. Emmings: That's okay. The minimum depth, I don't even know why you'd want a number down there because you couldn't build, your building would have, you'd have 5 feet of buildable space that seems kind of, you're building a hallway. Krauss: Yeah. All the districts have a standard for minimum lot depth. I carried forward the R-12 standard. Is it a relevant standard? No, it probably isn't. Emmings: Minimum lot depth has to be 100 feet plus .the depth of the building. It doesn't say anything really. Conrad: I have no problem with this ordinance if we want to put it in as long as there's underground parking. If that's what we want for a zone. Ahrens: How do you have underground parking under a townhouse? Krauss: You're not and that's not supposed to be in this district. Ahrens: On the second page of the ordinance it says the following minimum requirements shall be observed in an R-16 district subject to the... Number one, minimum lot area for a townhouse or multi-family. E~,ings: That's another carry over. Krauss: Oh. Yeah. I would cross out everything up to the. E~,ings: Just say townhouse or... Krauss: No. Just minimum lot area is 2,700 square feet per dwelling unit. E~ings: Oh. Oh sure. Conrad: My only other comment on page 1 that is accessory uses in number 6 says home occupations in an apartment buildings so what are we talking about? Krauss: The accountant who brings books home. I mean it's nominal. Olsen: We have a list of home occupations. Emmings: You do but it isn't the accountant who brings books home. It includes, I could have, as an attorney I can have an office in my home where I see clients in a residential district. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 38 Ahrens: Who'd want that? Emmings: Oh God. In fact I knew an attorney out in the country who bought a farmsite and he turned the machine shed into a law office and people drove up on his farm site. Conrad: They're very compatible uses. Emmings: I thought it was great but no, home occupations is something more intense than that. Conrad: Yeah, to me home occupation is more intensive but if that's, by definition if it's an attorney or an accountant, I guess. Emmings: They can have a place of business there and have clients in and everything else. Olsen: I think it specifies that you can't really be bringing any traffic. Conrad: Like 3 or 4 visitors a day or something like that. E~-~,ings: I read it for my own situation, just as a matter of curiousity and thought I wouldn't have any problem at all. Olsen: It's on page 1238. Clearly incidental to residential use. No more than 25% of floor area. No garage or accessory buildings are used. It states professional services such as architect, engineers or attorneys, dress making, painting...services. Emmings: You can have one non-resident employee. Olsen: Yeah. You can have one sign too. Ahrens: Is that an exclusive list? Olsen: It just says the following home occupations not permitted. Krauss: Such as. Such as architects which presumably if something was similar to that. ~m~ings: You have to have adequate off street parking. Olsen: No more than 3 parking spaces. Yeah, that's right. Then you get into parking and it's already short on parking. Krauss: I've had a lot of discussions with Planning Co~m~issions over that topic for some reason over the years and there's a couple sides to it one of which is, why should you treat these people any differently than you do anybody else? The obvious reason is you're living in a more intense development than anybody else. Home occupations by nature should be unobtrusive. If you have 2 or 3 cars for a short period of time or 1 car, whatever it is, in a parking lot that has 200 cars in it because there's 100 apartments, you're not going to notice the difference. The outside Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 39 employee. Some of this stuff was adopted from the Minnetonka ordinance before I came here so I didn't do all these things but the Minnetonka ordinance p~ohibits the one outside employee in the multi-family district so that didn't get carried over for some reason. It also prohibits that signage but we've also found over the years that it's a self contained situation. If you're in an apartment building, the management takes care of, typically, it takes care of problems. Nobody's going to set up a woodworking shop in their apartment and get away with it. If it's a condominium building, the association takes care of it. Ahrens: Plus we're talking about 1 or 2 bedroom units and they're small to begin with. I mean what could you, you're limited to what you could do in an area that size. Conrad: I guess my only thought was on parking space. If you did have traffic and there are some interior decoraters that have things set up and maybe that doesn't fit in an apartment. That probably is not practical but there are some uses where you could have 2 or 3 parking stalls taken at a time and how that impacted parking. But maybe this is not taking us anyplace. I guess my preference is not even to see it get there but maybe it's okay to say it's permitted. I didn't want to flip hom occupations to the non-permitted but, anybody's direction on that? Ahrens: I don't have any problem with it. Conrad: Okay. So we're probably getting close to comfortable on this thing. What we had done is created an apartment building zone which is better than the R-12. Do we still have problems with the R-12 district? Is that a district we should review because it seems like it was our attempt at higher density and maybe it's standards there. Maybe we're not getting out of it what we'd like. I don't know. Anybody want to review that thing in the future? The R-12 district. No takers? E~m~ings: Well we can. I think it was interesting to somebody. Then we might as well. Ahrens: Well R-12 still serves a purpose of townhouses and lower density building right? Krauss: It does. Ahrens: Because R-16 won't address that issue. Wildermuth: What we've gotten to date though has not been very impressive. Ahrens: No but again it's a different type of housing. E~-~,ings: You know there are issues there. For example, if we had R-12, if we looked at it and would think about it in terms of maybe saying they have to have basements. Is that going to kill them? No, because we've seen them with basements here. We had one project came in with basements. They've got to have maybe a certain amount of storage area either associated with a garage or not. But there might be things there that we Planning Co~m. ission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 40 couid do to ~eally make R-12 a whole lot more palatable. Conrad: And at the same time, Jim probably won't jump on this bandwagon. We could increase the impervious surface to maybe make it economically worthwhile. I don't know where I'm at on that but it seems to me the R-12 construction is not too great. We have a lot of problems with it and maybe we're forcing, maybe we're forcing those problems and not really helping but I don't know. It's probably worthwhile to look at. Wildermuth: I don't know, in R-12, would we be better off in increasing the impervious surface? Krauss: Argueably our impervious surface is difficult in all those districts. Wildermuth: Making it 50% in the R-12 and just leave it alone and not go to an R-16. Krauss: When you're looking at districts, I would encourage you to not look at these things individually but look at the fact that we have how many residential districts. If you want to start out with rural residential, we've got rural residential. Single family, 4, 8, 12 and now 16. It's like all these motel chains segmenting the market. Do you really need so many segments? It's my belief that we've probably overdone it a bit. Maybe an R-10 would have taken care of that range. I don't know what the answer is but it seems to me that we're really compartmentalized the thing beyond what the market is doing because they haven't filled these niches. Wildermuth: The thing that bothers me is, I look at for example in Edina. I look at the four plexes. I look at larger, higher density apartment complexes. The quality of construction is just so much better than what we're seeing down here. Er,mings: Of course you've got a desire among more people to live in that area do you think so it supports a higher? Ahrens: Well it has the highest rents too I think of any community in the State. Emmings: People want to live there so bad they're willing to pay it? That must be it. Ahrens: I think it's the location. Centrally located. Wildermuth: But also some of the lowest taxes in the metro area. Ahrens: Yeah, but that doesn't affect renters. You can't find an apartment there for less. Krauss: Edina also very actively subsidizes housing to get medium income and lower medium income people in. Plann~.ng Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 41 Ahrens: Well in one area. Krauss: Yes. Ahrens: One development. Krauss: Well no. Ahrens: There are some buildings on the other side of France Avenue that are all clustered together that are subsidized. Then there's the new Edenborough that's subsidized but only some of those are subsidized. Krauss: Then there's Centennial Lakes as well. Ahrens: Yeah, but I mean if you look at the kind of people who are actualy in there, they're subsidized for yuppies a lot of them. I mean they are. Unfort~]nately that's what's happened with some of the them. I mean Edenborough is a lot like that. Krauss: Unfortunatley we live in a world these days where yuppies qualify for income subsidies. Emmings: You know this list of communities and their maximum hard surface coverage. That was just surprising to me because how were they dealing with these? I don't understand how they're dealing with this issue. We bring it up again and again. I know it always comes up in the business park and it always comes up strongly in the R-12 and you've got a whole bunch of communities with no standard at all and they're getting along fine. How are they handling it? Krauss: Some communities get projects you probably wouldn't want out of that too. Emmings: But does that mean that they simply let them cover as much of the ground with hard surface... Krauss: Well realistically no because they have greater setback requirements than we formerly had around here. They also protect their wetlands as well and they may have. When I was city planner of Oakdale we wrote an ordinance that said you had multi-family dwellings, you had to have a percentage. You had a public park dedication responsibility but you also had a private recreational responsibility that was going to equal 10% of the vacant area so you had to actively develop it for recreational purposes. E~m',ings: And in the paragraph ahead of that you say, in reviewing the standards it must be recognized that according to current ordinances, lot coverage requirements is calculated on the land left after designated wetlands and park dedications are excluded from the total site. I thought it was based on net density which also took out roads. Krauss: That's true. Public roads would be taken out. It's worse than I led you to believe. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 42 Conrad: Do we have a zone that we can create affordable housing in? don't think we just created affordable housing. Krauss: Zoning does not create affordable housing. It can create expensive housing. Conrad: It can contribute. Krauss: But I think you have an easier, zoning has an easier time working in the opposite direction. There were a lot of movements were fought in the 60's and 70's against exclusionary zoning. The Metro Council for many years was on Eden Prairie's back because Eden Prairie required 3 car garages. That's exclusionary. Who can afford a 3 car garage? Now everybody has a 3 car garage. Well not everybody. A lot of people do and standards have changed but there are court cases and I'll defer to the attorneys in this because my planning law was, I hated that class but you know Barrington, Illinois was sued over having exclusionary zoning which they got at by having very expensive building requirements. You just couldn't meet it unless you threw a lot of money into it. We would never encourage you to go that route. On the other hand, there are standards beyond what you wouldn't want to drop and possibly receive projects that have pushed that limit. Wildermuth: PUD's and higher density projects... Krauss: Our PUD ordinance, these things unravel. Our PUD ordinance is another matter that we'd probably like to talk to you about at some point in the future. Our PUD ordinance just says you've got a PUD and it doesn't say what you do with it after that and that everything is thrown out the window. We're a little concerned about that. Conrad: How'd that happen? Didn't we just, that hasn't been that long ago that we looked at the PUD. Emmings: I think you're being a little quip aren't you because I don't think that's what it does. Krauss: Not if you would talk to some of the commercial developers. Olsen: It's real strict for single family. When you're looking at multiple family and co~m~ercial, we have nothing... Emmings: Oh, okay. Conrad: Okay, moving right along. These are fun issues because we create zones and we create standards and we don't really know what those standards did to the zone. Do we want to move R-16 along or do we want to send, table it and have Paul and Jo Ann kind of look at the R-12 in conjunction with it? And send it as a little package to the City Council. They'll probably be very supportive of the R-16 but is there any. Emmings: It's their idea. Planning Co~m, ission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 43 Conrad: Is there a preference? Do we care? Wildermuth: Why are we doing this R-167 Why are we looking at it? If you don't tend to influence quality construction or create or influence affordability, why are we even looking at it? Krauss: What we've got right now is a situation that artificially p~ecludes a type of housing. Whether or not that housing is built in an affordable range or not, you can't build it here now. What the City Council was saying is, let's at least give the opportunity for it and then we wanted to get some reasonably, something developed to a reasonable standard. Councilman Boyt even indicated some recepitivity to the idea that if you built in this density and brought us a project which the City wanted and found encouraging, found acceptable, and it was built in a tax increment district, that we should look at partially subsidizing that to get the kind of housing that we wanted in the price range that we wanted. Wildermuth: We've got these multi-family projects don't pay their own way from a tax standpoint anyway and then we're going to subsidize them? Krauss: No, multi-family does. Multi-family generates a tremendous amount of income. Wildermuth: Income but not tax. Krauss: No tax. A 2 bedroom apartment. Wildermuth: Just before you came though the City Manager put together a study that. Krauss: It should say that because the multi-family housing...screaming at the State legislature every year. Conrad: It'd be interesting. I'd like to check that because what we did see was single. It may have said single family. Emmings: That's what I remember. Conrad: Single family under $70,000.00 but it didn't, I'm not sure. Wildermuth: It didn't talk about multi? Emmings: I don't we've got enough experience. We don't have any so how do we know? Wildermuth: Nobody does anymore. Krauss: The property tax on a 2 bedroom unit, the 2 bedroom units in Eden Prairie that I'm aware of generate $2,800.00 a year in property tax which seems ludicrous since it didn't cost $200,000.00. It's taxed at about 3 times the rate of a single family house. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 44 Emmings: $2,800.007 So you've got $200.00 you've got to charge for the apartment. Krauss: Just to make. Emmings: You don't even quite make it. So the owner's got to charge at least $200.00 for that unit just to get the tax out. That's before he gets anything else out. So these are not going to be cheap. Those aren't cheap. Conrad: Okay, any preference for how we want to deal with the issue tonight? E~m~ings: I feel real funny about this because in some ways I think it's a good idea to have this available. It seems to be but I don't really think I know what it is. Probably because I've never dealt with it before so I'm kind of uncomfortable with it at the same time. You said at the beginning could we see a picture of a project that's built along these lines. Krauss: We can certainly do that. ~mings: I think some examples showing us, showing us some examples of what it is that we're approving here would be a big help to me. How hot is the City Council to get this done? We don't have anything zoned for it anyway. We don't have a zone for it so what's the difference? There are no plans on the table. Krauss: Well we've got Dean Johnson chomping at the bit but I don't know that... Emmings: But has he redrawn his plan to fit this? Krauss: Theoretically, they have a draft copy of the ordinance and theoretically they're planning something. We haven't seen it. That's irrelevant. That shouldn't make you feel one way or the other about it. Emmings: I could go either way. In some ways I'd like to look at it again and it might be nice to have input from Brian and Annette and Tim too since it's kind of new thing. Conrad: I don't think it hurts but as Paul said, it's another zone. It's another district out there. ~-m, ings: But it isn't out there until we put it out there. Conrad: And I don't know that the old ones are right yet but I don't see any harm in what we've got. It does permit something so, okay. Is it a feeling that we should table it until we see a picture of what this is? Or do we not care? What does it look like? Emmings: I care. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 45 Wildermuth: I care but I don't know that I could look at enough pictures to get a good feel for what we're looking at. I don't see where it's going to do a lot of good but I guess on the other hand, how much harm is it going to do? Conrad: It's going to put a garage underneath the building which is not bad. Wildermuth: That might be an interesting change. Conrad: It allows a real positive thing in my mind. I just don't know that it deserves a special zone to tell you the truth. It's zoned to allow a garage. Wildermuth: I can't recall a good example of a quality R-12 project. Maybe it would be worthwhile trying this. Conrad: Joan, what do you think? Ahrens: I don't think I need to see any pictures really. I have some idea what a 3 story apartment with an underground parking looks like. I think that there's a danger in looking at pictures too because sometimes you buy off on the picture of a specific development rather than what it could look like. I mean it could look a lot worse than that. E~m~ings: So I make myself clear. I wasn't thinking about looking at pictures of buildings. I don't think that will tell me anything. I'd like to see a development that's done to this kind of intensity where you've got more than one building. Get a feel for what's building and what's space and what's around and stuff like that. Maybe you should tell me where there is one and I can just go look. Ahrens: Do you think York Plaza? Do you know where that is? York Plaza right by Southdale. Do you know where that is Paul? Krauss: I think I know which building that is. Ahrens: That's on York. York Avenue. Krauss: Down by the senior buildings. Ahrens: Fairly close and there's a lot of buildings and it's right behind Byerly's. All the buildings, they're white and they all have underground parking and I think that's probably real close to what we're talking about. Wildermuth: Where the library is? Ahrens: Yeah, it across from the library. Krauss: How many story buildings? There's a couple of while ones that are high rises in there. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 46 Ahrens: These aren't high rises. These are the maximum 3 story. They all have little balconies. They're made out of... Emming s: Papiermache. Ahrens: Yeah. No, they're white concrete or you know. There's maybe 7 or 8 buildings in a cluster in there. Krauss: I think you'll find that that density is probably higher. If you want to look at a project that I think is in this density range, I'm pretty sure it's close, if you're driving by on TH 169 you can sort of see the project called the Park in Eden Prairie. It's right, you know where the Cathedral just went in? It's right in there. Ahrens: Oh, behind that little shopping area in there? Krauss: Yes. Ahrens: Okay. Krauss: In fact I worked with that developer. They did another project in Minnetonka. Emmings: These guys really get around. I don't know any of these places. Conrad: Yeah, you're all out in farm country. Emmings: Yeah, I suppose that's it. Densities out there are 1 unit per 160 acres. Ahrens: That would be a good example. Emmings: I'm kind of bothered by the 50 foot height. That sti.ll makes me kind of queezy and I don't know if it's a problem. Wildermuth: That's urban sprawl coming there. Krauss: I think that's a valid consideration. Frankly the only type of building that I think would ever be a high rise out in Chanhassen that you might want to consider is a senior building and we don't have any senior buildings being proposed. Emmings: The new apartment down there was how many floors? Just 2? Krauss: 3. Emmings: What that 3? Krauss: 3 with underground parking. Emmings: So that's an example of. Planning Co~mLission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 47 Krauss: Not it's not because that building, somebody somehow pushed it up in the air so the parking lot is not, it's sort of at grade. It's not as below as it's supposed to be. E~,ings: You mean the garage is really first floor? Krauss: What they did is they pushed the building up %o use an old sewer line that they weren't supposed to use. Conrad: Which one are we talking about? Emmings: The new one. Conrad: Heritage? Krauss: That's one of the reasons why it looks so big. It's higher than it was supposed to be. Emmings: How high is that? Krauss: 40 feet. E~m~ings: 40 feet? Olsen: ...6 feet higher...It's not at grade. It's 6 feet above. Wildermuth: Where are our building inspectors? How do they get away with something like that? Emmings: Ladd did it one night when none of the rest of us were here. K~auss: It's one of those things that makes staff look totally inept and I keep telling you that we've changed a lot of things and I hope nobody proves us wrong. So am I hearing you that we should fix the ordinance so any building that's built there must have underground parking and that we should go with a straight 40 foot building height. Those are the changes that you're looking for? Conrad: I think so. Krauss: And change the lot to either eliminate the lot depth or come up with a size that's co~,ensurate with that type of building. Emmings: I don't even know if you need to put that in there at all. That's going to be governed by the setbacks. Krauss: And the hard surface coverage. Conrad: Yeah I think it's taken care of. Emmings: Signs. Down there number 5 on the bottom of page 1. It says signs so that's a signal to me, a sign to me that we should go to the sign ordinance to find out what's going to be approved and appropriate in the Planning Co~mtission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 48 R-16 and there's not going to be anything in there. So when it says signs, what does it mean? Olsen: ...high density. Emmings: Well we don't have an R-16 under signs though. Krauss: That's a good point. I see what you're saying. Well we could refer it back to the R-12. E~,ings: You could if that's appropriate. Krauss: We're talking about monument signs, yeah. Conrad: It probably is. Olsen: We just have to add an R-16 in there. E~m~ings: I see you can have one dock. I think we should require that they all have one dock. Lake or not. One dock. It'd be a little hard to imagine these on a lake but... Conrad: Do we need a motion on this? We probably do. E~m~ings: They've reco~'~,ended that we approve the attached ordinance. Conrad: Somebody want to make that motion with the changes that we noted? E~,ings: So moved. Wildermuth: Second. E~m, ings moved, Wildermuth seconded that the Planning Co~,ission recommend approval of the Zoning Ordinance Amendment to creat an R-16, high density residential district with the changes discussed by the Planning Commission. All voted in favor and the motion carried. Conrad: Any interest in reviewing the R-12 district? I think we should. I have an interest. We're going to put that down in our work plan and then we'll just figure it out. E~ings: Put it on the list. Conrad: And when I say review the R-12 district, it means review it for what? Emmings: Quality. Conrad: Yeah, there's a good word. Intent. Yeah. Is it achieving what we thought it was really designed to achieve and that's probably higher density. More affordable housing. Planning Co~m'Lission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 49 Emmings: But it sounds like too, Paul is saying we're overly compartmentalized here. Maybe we also want to look at that in connection with the other three zones that we've got and maybe even decide not to have it. Ahrens: I think if you look at R-12, you should look at R-10 and whatever else. Emmings: Might as well. Conrad: I don't want to create a gorilla to review here. Krauss: I think what we could do is give you a su~ary of what we think these districts are accomplishing. Conrad: That's probably real valid. Like how many do we have or what's gone in and what are you hearing is the need. What are the developer's saying that we need. ~mings: And why are they all even numbers? That's what I want to get at. I want something with odd numbers. Conrad: Let's move on quickly and get out of here if we can. ZONING ORDINANCE AMENDMENT TO THE BH, HIGHWAY AND BUSINESS DISTRICT TO ALLOW BANK DRIVE-THRU WINDOWS AS A PERMITTED USE. Conrad: Without any staff co~Lents, do we have any co~m~ents? Emmings: In Section 2 in the ordinance I'm looking at. Krauss: You know something, they stuck it in there. ~,mings: Yeah, and that doesn't have. Number one, that has nothing to do with banks and number two, it doesn't say anything about being underneath the building. Krauss: Well no. Ahrens: This is what was missing last time. Krauss: That's in the text of the original ordinance. I knew I wrote it. I was getting frustrated. The parking ordinance has, this is only one component. One line of that parking line. The parking ordinance itself that was approved had... Emmings: So that Section 2 ought to be deleted out of here? Krauss: Well it doesn't belong in this one that's for sure. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 50 Emmings: So what, Section 3 should be Section 2 and Section 2 should be deleted? Krauss: Right. Emmings: You guys sat and tried to sandbag us again. Ahrens: It's like a picture of the hotel with a green roof. Wildermuth: Don't worry about it. The roof isn't green. In fact, that wasn't even the hotel. E~-m~ings: And nobody noticed. Everybody looks at the building and nobody notices it's not the building that they're proposing. Krauss: I was standing behind Joan and we're going, what is that? That doesn't look anything like the thing. E~m, ings moved, Wildermuth seconded that the Planning Co~,ission recommend approval of the Zoning Ordinance Amendment to the BH, Highway and Business District to allow bank drive-thru windows as a permitted use amended to delete Section 2. All voted in favor and the motion carried. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Emmings: Can we pass these with 3 of us? We can can't we? Wildermuth: Sure. Emmings: On the Minutes with just 3 of us because he wasn't here? Krauss: I think all you need is a simple majority. Emmings: Well you do have a simple majority. E~m, ings moved, Ahrens seconded to approve the Minutes of the Planning Commission meeting dated January 17, 1990 as presented. All voted in favor except Wildermuth who abstained and the motion carried. CITY COUNCIL UPDATE. Conrad: Any questions? E~-~ings: Yeah, on the ongoing list. When does that recreational beachlot thing so to City Council? There's no date on here. Monday? Okay, this Monday? I was just curious. Conrad: I like the report on the City Council. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 51 Emmings: Couid we start knocking things off here when they're done? Conrad: I think so. Emmings: It's nice to see we did something but it's getting kind of cluttery and like number 9 there is done so. It says it's done. I don't remember it but it says it's done. Conrad: Yeah, we did it. As far as I'm concerned. We can have an open and closed list and the staff can have the closed list for their annual review. Then we'll just take a look at the ones that are still open. Olsen: The inactive ones? Emmings: Well, that's another question. Some of them like, for example. Eurasian Water Milfoil. What would we ever do with that? Public Safety apparently has the issue. I don't know that it's really a planning issue. Conrad: I don't think it's planning, no. I agree. Emmings: Recycling of oil. There's a recycling committee, so I don't know why that's on our list. Light rail transit. That might be a planning issue but it's probably out of our hands. When it comes we'll get a crack at it but that isn't going to be tomorrow. It's an important item for sure. And something like the maximum church lot. That's an issue that the City Council has stayed on a little bit. They're still interested in looking at it some more but we're done with that unless it comes back to us from the City Council I think so again, that might be an item that could be deleted. Olsen: We do have to review the conditional use permit conditions for... E~m~ings: Oh okay. Olsen: You will still be working on it someday. E~tings: But this isn't a list of what the City Council is asking us or is it? Krauss: It's an all inclusive list and hopefully it would serve as a vehicle for you and the City Council to come to some concurrence on what we should be doing. Emmings: Do they see this? Krauss: Have they seen this? They've seen it on occasion but what we'd like to do, we were hoping. Tonight's going to get late but that once you come to some agreement on what you want, that we'll pass it along to them and see if they want to add.something. Conrad: Absolutely. And then even like on a monthly basis to forward this report up to them to see. Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 52 Olsen: ..' City Council. Emmings: Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Here's what they're doing. Conrad: I couldn't find mine. I went through reams of paper and I had all their comments and dog gone it, I lost them all. What Boyt said and what, you know I had all their Minutes. My secretary just is not doing her job anymore. The only thing, I think let's go through it when we have fuller commission member participation. I would like to elevate that rezoning BF to A-2 or at least a review of that. I guess I'd like staff to present to us. I'd like to revisit the whole issue down there. Just to review what we think is appropriate. If it's really, and Paul I know your coF~tents have been maybe it's not suitable for residential or whatever but I'd just like to dialogue about that and get yours and Jo Ann's con, tents on that area. Then come to some kind of agreement as to increasing use. Decreasing use. Or at least just plain revisit or refresh the new members on what that zone should be doing. Krauss: Would you like it in the context of a position paper kind of? Informational document or would you like it in the form of an ordinance change? Ahrens: I'd like to know a little history. Wildermuth: Yeah, a position paper I think would be good. The thing that I'm most interested is how do to arrest what's happening down there. How to arrest the evolution I guess. I don't know if that requires an A-2 classification or not but maybe something other than BF classification. Emmings: What did you say? Wildermuth: How to stop the proliferation of what's happening down there. I know we can't halt all activity down there. We can't halt all development because people have a right to do something with the property that they own and are paying taxes on but it seems like the mess is getting worse. It seems like it's proliferating. Emmings: What ever happened with the property that was going to have the garbage tr,]cks on it? I know that project is dead but what's the status right now? Krauss: That was up in the industrial park wasn't it? E~m, ing s: No. Conrad: No, that was right off of TH 101. They had an access right beyond the bridge. Olsen: It did fall through and there's nothing happening... E~m~ings: Nothing going on at all now? No one talking to you about it at all? Planning Commission Meeting February 7, 1990 - Page 53 Krauss: You should also be aware, in fact the newspaper printed it already, but we've got an application for a cellular telephone antenna in the BF district. Emming s: Where? Krauss: On the property just east of Sorenson's. E~tings: We've already approved one antenna west of there. Krauss: Yeah. There's a heightened sensitivity to what's happening down there. You hear radio antenna and it should raise, understandably some red flags. On the other hand, they can demonstrate that they can put this in the A-2 district on a site but that it would impact homes located on top of the bluff and you already allow it as a conditional use in the A-2 district. It's one of those things that's coming along at an inopportune time but it's coming along nevertheless. E~m, ings: How tall is it? Krauss: It's 190 feet from the bottom to the top. Now, they're going to give us some graphics that hopefully demonstrate that if you're standing on the top of the bluff looking through the trees, it's going to be below the crown of the trees because the base is set down. This thing is already into the... Olsen: The soils are, the way the soils are there, whether or not even that tower will be able to be located there. MnDot... Krauss: They can't stop it but they're concerned about it. Conrad: Next meeting, what kind of an agenda do we have? Krauss: You've got a very light agenda but we've scheduled a joint meeting with the City Council on the Comprehensive Plan. Maybe if it moves expeditiously along, it might be an opportune time. Conrad: Absolutely. Maybe that's what we'll do. We'll talk to them about any priorities that they have on our work plan right after we talk comprehensive plan. Remind me if I forget to bring that up in the meeting. Ahrens moved, E~m~ings seconded to adjourn the meeting. Ail voted in favor and the motion carried. The meeting was adjourned at 10:55 p.m.. Submitted by Paul Krauss Director of Planning Prepared by Nann Opheim