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PRC 2004 05 25CHANHASSEN PARK AND RECREATION COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING MAY 25, 2004 Acting Chair Spizale called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m. MEMBERS PRESENT: Jack Spizale, Kevin Dillon, Ann Murphy, Steve Scharfenberg, and Paula Atkins MEMBERS ABSENT: Glenn Stolar and Tom Kelly STAFF PRESENT: Todd Hoffman, Park and Rec Director APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Dillon moved, Scharfenberg seconded to approve the agenda as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: Hoffman: Farmers market will open on June 5th. They've been delaying the market because of the cool weather, but that's their opening date. Saturday, June 5th and they'll be putting the signs up around town. And they'll be right outside city hall here in the first parking lot on the south side. VISITOR PRESENTATIONS: None. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Dillon moved, Murphy seconded to approve the Minutes of the Park and Recreation Commission meeting dated April 27, 2004 as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 5 to 0. REVIEW PROPOSED 2005-2009 IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM (CIPL PARK AND TRAIL CAPITAL Hoffman: Thank you Commissioner Spizale, members of the commission. We're going to take a look at the 2005 to 2009 capital improvement program. Just assist the commission, the city council, the finance department and our administration with planning of investments. Primarily park and recreation acquisition development dollars which we call park fund dollars or 410, but also the general fund. General obligation dollars as investments in our park system. If you go through the list, when we flip to the first page, that's the easiest one to look at, the tallies. We're attempting to spread this out at about a quarter of a million dollars on an annual basis. Our revenues that we see are anywhere from $250,000 to about $400,000 a year depending on where development is at in the city. And the fund has just come down from a high of about a million 7 to a current cash balance of about $500,000. And so we're down to where we're, we don't have a huge buffer in the fund. We want to maintain that conservative spending approach Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 so we still are getting some things done for the community but we want to make sure that we have dollars buffer for future big items such as Lake Ann Park acquisition, future trail construction and those type of projects. So that's a little bit of ground work in the dollars, as far as how they work in the overall plan. If you take a look at 2005, we have two items slated which have been on the docket. Curry Farms Park, a playground replacement for $65,000 and Lake Susan Park, a playground replacement for $145,000. These dollars have been amended upward from past CIP's and that's primarily due to the expense of this concrete border that we're doing. The poured in place surfacing, and increasing cost in playground equipment. And so these things, the dollars continue to increase. Lake Susan will be a very large playground. We'll put fully poured in place material, which we want to see in all of our community park settings. Bandimere, Lake Ann, Lake Susan. We have some additional small items at the bottom. Picnic tables and benches. We're slating $6,000 every 3 years to supplement our park benches and picnic tables and then trees which we want to plant every year at about a $5,000 level. We have a tree inventory program that tells us where our damaged and diseased trees are. Those either come out or we continue to plant new trees in our parks as well. If you move forward onto 2006, $90,000 for the North Lotus playground replacement, and those replacements under playgrounds are the general fund dollars. That's the agreement you have with the City Council that those playgrounds which have been around and are being replaced, they should be financed by the general obligation dollars, not park fund dollars which are intended for new development. Expansion of services. Not the maintenance. $80,000 for Chanhassen Hills which is a playground replacement, and $75,000 for Rice Marsh Lake. And that, those, when you combine those, you've got 5 of them there, combined with the playgrounds that we're doing this year, and then the ones ! talked about last night we're working to combine 4 existing slates down to 2 will fulfill our replacement program with the 10 slates that we started with. And then you have the trees again in 2006. 2007 we have an item on there which is an unfulfilled commitment to connect the Highway 101 trail, which currently stops at Pleasant View to the City of Minnetonka. If you're familiar at all with that stretch, you go up the trail. It stops right at Pleasant View Road and there' s a trail just about within sight that goes into the City of Minnetonka and heads all the way north. The project stopped at Pleasant View Road. The last time we want to make that final connection, and again that's estimated at around $114,000. You have 2 additional items in there for Phase I! playgrounds. When the playgrounds at Round House Park and Sugarbush Park were originally installed, and then also at Power Hill Park. Three of them that are Phase II. The containers were expanded to a size that would accommodate both a 2 through 5 age playground and then a 5 through 12 age playground. And so these are 3 younger playgrounds, age 5 through 12 to go ahead and finish that out. And we've made the investment in the container. The equipment first phase is now coming up on some of these are 6 years old. Some of these are 7 or 8 years old. We don't want to let that equipment completely go through it's life cycle without fulfilling a full commitment to the neighborhood and getting the second phase in there. 2008, we're talking about hockey boards and lights at Round House Park. That picnic shelter at Parkview Picnic area at Lake Ann that we talked about briefly tonight. The allotment of picnic tables and benches and trees. In 2009, it's been an item that's been continually pushed out because there's other high priority items and that's the warming house shelter building at City Center Park, right out here in front of City Hall. 2 Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 Will be building something similar to the building you see at the Rec Center with the warming house for the winter, park shelter for the summer. If you have sporting activities taking place, you have an area to gather. If there's a rain event, people can gather underneath this while they transition to their cars. And so that's certainly a walk but it' s not a priority. It' s not a safety or a trail type of item and so it' s been pushed out over the years. There are other items that we want to hear from the commission about. You know what have you thought about on our system. This is a working document. It's fluctuates. We'll finalize it and then we'll submit it to the City Council sometime in July. Perhaps August, but what we're really concerned with is that 2005, you know that's what's going to happen for sure once they put their stamp of approval on it. Come budget season and this fall, but then we're trying to lay the ground work for where, as an organization as Jack said last night at the joint meeting, it takes everyone to kind of get these things done and there's nothing better than a budgetary document to show what your priorities are. If you're willing to put your money there to make those investments, this is a document which speaks to your priorities as commission, our priorities as a community and then when the City Council says yes we approve this, they're telling the community as well that these are some of our priorities so we want this to reflect you know what the city, the citizens are currently talking about. So that's what ! have for you and ! want the commission to go ahead and talk it over and give staff some ideas. Spizale: Okay. Well let's get some discussion .... we'll go around the board. We'll start with you Kevin and work our way down. Dillon: Yeah, I was, read this over and one of the questions that I had was, it seems like some of the playground replacement slated for a little bit later on have you know safety and ! don't know if there's potential liability issues with that and so we're like, you know ! don't mean, it's just a couple sentences so ! guess we have kind of like an imperfect information here but as based on some of that stuff, ! mean are we like you know, maybe just, should some of those things be reconsidered earlier or something like that because if they're liability issues now, if you wait 2 or 3 years, chances are it's going to become more of one, ! would think. Hoffman: We've accelerated that from a 5 year standpoint to a 3 standpoint. We have it in our plan. These playgrounds met the criteria when they were installed and until you touch them and take them out, you can't install new playgrounds like these today but now that they're out there, there's hundreds of them out there. There's thousands of them out there. As long as you have a conscientious plan to get them taken out or get them taken care of, your liability goes down. Obviously there's always liability but staff feels comfortable with where we're at currently with these replacements. We've taken them from 5 year. We're really taken it from a no plan to a 5 year replacement plan, all on the back of park dedication dollars to a 3 year replacement plan using general obligation tax dollars so we're very comfortable, staff is with the plan currently. Dillon: Okay. And the other thing was is I know that it's maybe not a, well it's scheduled for a little bit later on. This whole budgeting thing but the City Center Park shelter and warming house. ! mean kind of a showcase type of thing. Is that something Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 you know kind of like, ! mean if there was any way to move that up. ! mean that seems like one of those things that would probably get utilized more than all the other stuff put together. So. Hoffman: That's a discussion item we need to have. It probably used to be in 2005 at one point and it just keeps getting knocked out. It's a big ticket item. Those are the hardest ones to get a hold of. Dillon: Yeah, it is a big ticket item. Are there plans for that that have been sketched out or anything? No, it's just kind of a place holder there, yeah. Hoffman: There's also some other factors that play into that and if you've been around town at all you know that this City Center complex is kind of an evolving facility. There was a road in front of City Hall. There's no longer a road in front of City Hall. Now there's a road behind City Hall. There have been discussions about a connecting road behind City Hall that would connect you from Market back over to Kerber, and if that were to be, occur, that would go right through a facility such as the City Center Park shelter/warming house and so there's also that kind of discussion. Should we make that big investment or are our needs at City Hall going to change and so should we kind of wait and see how this whole campus evolves as we move through time. Another reason it's been just pushed out. Spizale: Thanks Kevin. Steve. Scharfenberg: Thanks Jack. One of the things that ! had Todd was a question, you talked about at previous meetings about poured in place surfaces going into all of the parks that have pea gravel and things of that nature and is that part of this budget? Is it not part of CIP? How is that being taken care of?. Hoffman: Sure. We want to put poured in place in every community park. We want to put woodchips, engineered wood fiber in all the neighborhood sites. And so each one of these budget allocations accounts for that individual separate use. The $145,000 at Lake Susan, probably 40-50,000 of that will be poured in place surfacing. And that's maintenance free for 15-20 years. Great investment in these high traffic areas where we have high visibility, and then in the other locations we're going to put the much more economical wood fiber in. And there's maintenance costs to wood fiber that you don't have with poured in place but we understand that with the lower use in our neighborhood parks, it's the best place to use it. If you put this stuff in community parks, it just gets drowned and moved around a whole lot. Scharfenberg: And my other question had to do with ballfields and soccer fields and things of that nature. How are we, ! know some of that is again tied to District 112 and 276 and trying to share facilities but is there anything out maybe beyond 2009 or is there any need for the city at this point to build more ballfields? ! know the issue always arise we don't have enough fields during the summers and things and then soccer also. Do we need to accelerate any of that? 4 Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 Hoffman: ! can give you kind of a philosophy of the staff and parks and recreation. ! can't speak for administration but to some degree they agree as well is that Chanhassen has done a very good job accelerating city park facilities and having good construction, high quality construction, good maintenance, and so Lake Ann, Bandimere, Bluff Creek, those are all city operated facilities. They're not all city owned. The school owns half of this property. The school owns half of Bluff Creek. The city owns all of Bandimere. What we would like to see is that we cannot continue to make that kind of investment on a local city level in athletic facilities. We really need to leverage our school districts, either 276 and 112 or one or the other. There are 9 school campuses in Chaska. All of those school campuses include public recreation facilities paid for by tax dollars from all of us, if you're in that district, but paid for out of the school's ledger. And so we want to see those school campuses come to Chanhassen. We currently have 3 and we have another one which has been purchased out on Galpin, or Lyman Boulevard, and then we would like to see another elementary school put down in what is called the 2005 MUSA area, or the Degler farms, and that would bring us up to 5 facilities, and we would like to see additional athletic fields built on those properties. We don't have a location where we could say let's include $100,000 for ballfield development. There's not another piece of land in the city to build a piece of, to build athletic fields. You could put lighting in these locations. It's probably premature, athletic field lighting comes in at the tail end of a, what you would call the maturity of a park system. When you're fully grown out and you're peaking at your athletic need levels. There's no more land to buy. There's no more land to develop. Then you put athletic field lights up and you get that, you capture that upper third or that upper quarter of usage of your athletic fields. ! don't feel we're there yet. We have lighting at Lake Ann which is sufficient but we have plans to light all of Bandimere. We have plans to light all of Lake Ann Park so ! don't think we're ready to build more city fields. We want a joint park with the school district and build some future fields there and kind of soften that, those costs at the local level. We've made some big investments in parks and it's time that we leverage our dollars with the school district. Scharfenberg: That's all I have. Spizale: Paula. Atkins: Is it, I don't know if it's the right time to talk about the issue Jack Jensen brought up with the Chaska teams getting. Hoffman: Sure, it's in the. Atkins: Is it in the correspondence? Hoffman: You bet. Anytime. Atkins: ! was just wondering if anything was developed there. If you've heard anything. Anything being considered to change the policies? Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 Hoffman: ! know Councilman Labatt would like to take a look at that and would like to write a letter, at least opening the conversation with the school district. If you haven't had a chance to read the letter, it comes back to this 9 school campuses in Chaska, 3 in Chanhassen. As a part of those developments, you know there's deals struck between the two entities. Chaska, City of Chaska and the school district said alright, well how are we getting this particular deal done. This individual deal done. Here's what you get. Here's what we get. Here's some agreements. You know sign, sign, sign. And away you go. These are still public facilities. Chanhassen residents as a part of that school district, if you're in that district, have the ability to access those facilities. As you do with 276. We flip flop back and forth. But it doesn't mean you're going to be the first person there because if the school district gives the authority to Chaska to manage those fields, as they've given the City of Chanhassen the ability to management this set of fields and this set of fields at Bluff Creek, you're going to write your rules that well, your people are in first and so that's what happened in Chaska. The Chaska teams get in first, Chanhassen teams are second, and if there's no seconds left, you know you're out in the cold and that's the, that's had an effect on how our operations run in youth athletics in the city, and it's created some ill will but ! don't know that there's anything to correct, from my perspective and I've worked at it for a lot of years. ! see it, there's probably some inconsistencies and there's probably a little room for improvement but it's more, at least in my opinion, that's just really the way it is. And we do the same thing up here. If we had 9 schools, the balance would be turned the other way, but we don't. We only have the 3, so there's only so much fight that you can take there and there's only so much gain that you can get. Atkins: I was glad he brought it up though. Hoffman: Absolutely. It's been an issue. When these deals were cut with the district, I was there at the school board meeting. ! said this is not in the best interest of the city of Chanhassen and our citizens but what are you going to do? You're not first on the list. Atkins: Again, would you tell me which of the parks you're planning on combining? Hoffman: Play areas? Yeah, sure. We're going to take Carver Beach playground and Minnewashta Heights Park, and if you look at both of those, currently they have two types of equipment. Wood only and then a recycled component which came in probably 10 or 12 years later. During a remodel. As a part of the 1997 referendum. So we're going to take the new equipment from those two sites. Leave it in place and then bring equipment from Rice Marsh Lake Park and Chanhassen Hills Park. Bring up those two sites and incorporate it. It will all come out of the ground. It will all be incorporated into a nice system and it will all go back in and the equipment's put in in 1980. Six years old today. So you'll have very nice playgrounds. Serviceable and we take the $155,000 ! think it was the number, $145,000-$155,000 out of our budget and have it freed up to use somewhere else. Atkins: Lake Ann, is that going to be that new surface? Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 Hoffman: Yep. Poured in place. Atkins: I was wondering about the, you know a lot of residents out at Round House have brought up the tennis court issues. Is that, and ! see you've got hockey. Hockey in the plans for out there and is that, is the tennis thing just kind of. Hoffman: No. It's, you need to put it in if you'd like to see it there. Atkins: It seemed like we had a lot of feedback. Hoffman: Yep, we did get a lot of feedback on tennis. Atkins: Because they're going to, with that much feedback or interest in the hockey rinks... Hoffman: Yeah, the tennis people had kind of a letter writing campaign going for a while so if you want to either take that out and put tennis in it's place or we should put tennis on the radar screen for Round House. We haven't built tennis courts in the city in a number of years. There's also a philosophy about tennis. These improvements that you're seeing here are part of the, when you got the packet of park maps. Those are all master plans so if you go start flipping through each one of those park maps, you'll say alright, here's a master plan. This is what we envision, or what, it's a public document is what. The citizens come in and they say oh. There's going to be a tennis court and a hockey rink at Round House at some point. Somebody better be working on that. And that's how we find these improvements is we go back to those park master plans and we say okay well, are they talking about a tennis court? Are they talking about a hockey rink? Or do we just, you know if nobody's talking about it, if nobody wants it, we're not going to put it in there. And tennis courts, we took them all out of, there was a tennis court at every park master plan in the city. If not one, a double, and we said that's going to be a complete nightmare. We're going to have concrete tennis courts, asphalt tennis courts. These things don't last forever. They're expensive to put in and they're expensive to maintain, and so we wiped the slate clean and it was painful back when we did it because a lot of people thought they wanted a tennis court in neighborhood parks. Now we see them in community parks. Lake Ann has one. Lake Susan has two. South Lotus has two. Bluff Creek has four. Chan Elementary has four. North Lotus has two, and why we left it at Round House was because, if you consider the two parks at the extremes of our community, Round House and North Lotus, they're large neighborhood parks which acts more like a regional or community park. They service a large area of our city so we wanted Round House to have a tennis court, or a double tennis court and hockey and we wanted North Lotus to have tennis and hockey. So those people have more of the community park type deal. And there's a pad all graded out. Jim and the guys graded out at Round House ready for tennis. Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 Atkins: Power Hill Park, I'm just looking at this. My teenagers have been using that sledding hill for the last 5 years. They just love going out sliding... Has there ever been a thought about lighting the hill? Hoffman: Lighting the hill. It's been talked about, but it's in such a neighborhood type setting. Scharfenberg: Where is that? Dillon: It's between Powers and Audubon. It's in my neighborhood, in Lake Susan Hills Drive. Yeah. You'd get a lot of complaints from people living back there with lights. Although you'd probably be facing west, but then you've got farm and other houses that would be looking at that too. Atkins: I just think it would be really cool. It'd be fun to go at night... Hoffman: Those type of, you really need to start in a, that's why there's a differentiation from the parks. Community versus neighborhood. If this was a community park with a large parking lot and more of an industrial or a highway type area, that would be a possibility but ! don't think in this case. Atkins: And my last point is, ! really agree with Kevin on that park shelter/warming house thing just, boy if we could any way move that up a little bit, ! think that would be another piece of a wonderful puzzle here in downtown. ! think it'd be great. That's all for me. Spizale: Anne. Murphy: Actually I'm kind of going to build on that because as ! was looking at the Round House hockey board, ! was a little surprised just because ! looked at the warming houses this past winter so...! didn't see a whole lot of skating traffic. Rarely did ! see more than 2 or 3 people out at Round House skating. Maybe that's because there isn't a hockey part, ! don't know but. Hoffman: That's part of it. Murphy: ...City Center had lots of traffic. City Center obviously has the most. So ! mean ! concur with the comments that were made about the warming shelter at City Center as really being necessary. That trailer gets pretty crowded on a Saturday afternoon. There's just hardly a place to sit some days, so ! think that would really be a necessity having been in there every weekend and seeing it this past winter so. A lot of people take that park really, really like that. City Center Park, even in the worst weather. ! mean people were out there shoveling off the snow themselves to skate so it's really population. Hoffman: Yeah, it's been recognized for a long time. Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 Murphy: Round House was always empty every weekend I was there so. Atkins: Is this the first year of skating at Round House? Hoffman: Second year maybe. Murphy: The first year the round house shelter. The shelter was open last year too. Hoffman: This is the first winter it was open. Last year we had the trailer there. Murphy: We had a few people coming and look at that just out of curiosity but not a lot of skaters. Dillon: Where is Round House Park again? Hoffman: Highway 5 west to Minnewashta Parkway. Then turn north on Minnewashta Parkway and it's halfway up the parkway. It's an 11 acre site there right on the lake. It's got a beach on Lake Minnewashta and we have facilities on the other side of the road. Very nice neighborhood park. Murphy: It's a nice figure skating rink. It's very nice, ! just never saw anybody out there. And then the other thing ! have seen, ! think I'm becoming the dog park lady but. Hoffman: ! made a note about that after last night. Murphy: I've done a little research into it because there's a web site that tells you how to get your city council to approve a dog park. Hoffman: Yeah, I went to the web site today too. Murphy: But ! need to do more research today. It doesn't appear to be a big ticket item. That's one of the telling points with me. ! don't think it necessarily has to be a huge safe issue. Hoffman: We just have to find the appropriate location. The smaller it is the more difficult it is to maintain the turf and so you want a larger, and the more hassles you have with dog conflicts. And so if you can spread them out and so. Murphy: And that's a concern... Hoffman: Oh yeah. Yeah. There's so many similarities between the skate park and this dog park. This dog park, if it's built somewhere in the city, it's going to be hugely popular and there's going to be some issues similar to the issues we have up here with the kids that these dogs, you know they get in tussles. People don't clean up. The people are as much of an issue as the dogs and so you want it in a public location... So before we Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 shuck that piece of change, an allocation in here, we need to find a location and get an idea of what that is and that's our job. Murphy: You know my question is, what's the rule on how far it has to be from a neighborhood? ! think you mentioned that there was some type of a. Hoffman: There's no hard and fast rule. You don't want to put it in a neighborhood park ! don't think. And ! don't think you're going to convince people to put this in Meadow Green Park or North Lotus Lake Park, and so we have very limited areas to look at, and that's why Minnewashta Regional Park is such, and I'm going to meet with Marty Walsh tomorrow, the Carver County Parks Director and we'll talk about that. We'll see what their plans are and if the city wants to jump on board and especially write a check, they'll accelerate their plans out at Minnewashta Park. That's obviously always one way to solve a problem that you have that you don't have the means to accomplish. They have the land. They don't have the cash and so if there's a deal to be struck there, we could work with the regional park system. Murphy: I'm just curious about, a lot of people, at least from my neighborhood are asking well why don't we just do it at Kerber Pond Park? Because there's a lot of dogs there running loose there anyway. It's almost a dog park, it's just not fenced in. That area just near the pond right there... Atkins: That's what ! was looking at too. Murphy: Is that a wetland or something? ! know there's water in there. Hoffman: Yeah, a majority of it's a wetland. And ! thought about Kerber Pond as well today when ! was going through it. ! was on the web site for about an hour and thinking about Lake Ann. Jack and ! talked about potentially Lake Ann Woods. There's a small site at Lake Susan. We'll look at all these. You know in park planning it just kind of comes to you when it's the perfect fit and anytime you try to cram something into a location, especially a dog park, or controversial facility. These kinds of controversial, you want to make sure you start out with the right site because you're not fighting yourself right off the bat. And if we told the neighbors down at Kerber Pond that we were going to throw up a fence in part of that park and let the dogs run loose, you'd fill that council chambers. It'd look worst than that assessment hearing last night. It would not be popular. Murphy: Okay. Plus there's no parking there. They can park here and walk down. Hoffman: No, it's got to be convenient. People, if you go to these dog parks, many of them barely get through the fence. They get out of their car, up to the fence. The dogs run around. They've got their coffee. They're talking to their dog park friends and they're there for 20 minutes and away they go. And you know great social activity. That's what these park activities are supposed to be about. And the dogs really don't, the 10 Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 dogs aren't building community but the people standing around talking and making those relationships are. So let's work on that one. Scharfenberg: Anne, did you say there's one in Bloomington? Murphy: There's one in Bloomington. Scharfenberg: Where is it? Murphy: I've only been there once. I'm trying to remember exactly where it is. ! can find out and let you know. Hoffman: It's on a web site. It's about 13 acres ! think. Murphy: It's pretty big. There's a lot of problems with a lot of people with big, aggressive dogs in there and they just run all over the little dogs and you see these people with little dogs getting all upset. ! won't bring my dog, ! know that... There's just a lot of aggressive ones. Hoffman: Yeah, many of them have. They have the regular dog area and then they have a small dog area but then you have to have a rule on the small dog area because you have like this, where while my lab is not aggressive so ! don't want to take it in the big dog area and then you've got, so there's lots of different issues. Burnsville has one. Plymouth has one. Minnetonka has solved this issue in a unique fashion. You know there's always one way, more than one way to take a look at these things. Any natural parkland, you can have your dog off the leash as long as it's within voice control. Minnetonka is left with a large amount of natural type park areas. Purgatory Creek. All of the different areas that are, what do you call it, quote natural, undeveloped. They're public. You can go in there and let your dog off leash. You can train your dog. You can run your dog and so they've spread it out throughout the whole city and that's just a part of their ordinance. We have some of those areas. Kerber Pond would be one of those. But other than that we don't have a, there's not a, we don't have the same amount that Minnetonka does so I'm not sure that that policy would work in Chanhassen, but it's another option to look at. And right now you can have your dog on leash on our trail system in Chanhassen and many of those trails go through the parks and so people are out, they always want to let them off that leash to run. Spizale: Todd, how soon can we get this on the agenda? Hoffman: June. I've got it slated upstairs. That's how ! penciled it in. Spizale: You all set? Murphy: Yep. 11 Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 Spizale: ! guess the only thing that ! have, ! guess I'm also in favor of any early playground replacement. The sooner the better. ! had a question on that shelter at Lake Ann. Can we, or would we charge additional revenue if there was a shelter on that? Hoffman: Oh yeah, it would go up. Right now they're very economical. They're $25 bucks a time versus the shelter is there, you know upwards of $120-$170 depending on the group. Spizale: So if that was felt that that additional revenue would kind of help a little bit over a period of time. Hoffman: Over time, yeah. The 20 or 30 years that it's going to be there. Spizale: Well that's about the only thing that ! had to add. When do we have to make these decisions for the. Hoffman: We'll work on this in June and July and probably send this up to the council in August. The general fund budget comes first. The capital budget, they're typically working on it a little later so we might even have some time in September. Spizale: Okay. ! thought we had some real good ideas come through. Scharfenberg: Jack, I've got one more thing that ! thought about. Spizale: Go ahead. Scharfenberg: Todd, when you were talking about that a lot of the master plans, park plans had calls for tennis courts at one time, do those same plans also have calls. ! know like Power Hill Park has a pavilion. You know small picnic pavilion. Do any of those plans call for any of those at any of the other neighborhood parks? Hoffman: Currently no. But it's a great idea. I'm a strong believer in those because of the focal point that it adds to the destination and teens rally around it. Birthday parties. Everybody says you know meet at the shelter, and that's kind of the focal point and then if you can have a barbeque afterwards and all those things. It really, two things that we've put into our parks in the recent past that have helped is these park trails. They just run through the parks. North Lotus, Meadow Green and then these pavilions and so there's room to have an additional gathering point in our park system. Scharfenberg: You wouldn't even have to put them in every park but just identify some of the bigger neighborhood parks that may be that would fit in with. And have a plan maybe to build a few of those. Hoffman: ! agree with that. Spizale: Okay, any other new business? 12 Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 Dillon: Just last night when we were at the City Council meeting, one of the City Council members kind of like funning in jest but not totally, talked about the wine in the parks. ! was just curious, what, if any role does the parks and rec commission have in that, you know in saying creating that policy. Hoffman: We're going to bring that back to you in August probably. That's when ! currently have it slated. We'll do some research. There are park districts, cities that do permit both wine and beer. Typically it's by permit and so the history, it's not a written history but the unwritten history of alcohol in city parks is it really dates back to the softball leagues. And so the softball leagues at Lake Ann have beer associated as a part of that event. That's continued on and they have a keg out there on different evenings and so as long as you drink keg beer out of the plastic cup, that takes place. And then it's been throughout the park system it's allowed. About half of the park systems in the metro area have no alcohol. About half of them have alcohol and so then of those half we'll find out how many are permitting wine. The difficulties that come with wine, if you don't want glass in your parks, wine typically is, you know you can buy a box of wine but it's typically in bottles. It's typically served in glass. You can serve it in plastic and then kind of the, if you think about, you always try to want to tend to down turn your potential problems in your park system and just adding additional alcohol consumption to your park system is kind of going against that grain. If we were to talk about alcohol at all, ! would want to talk about well should we take it away altogether instead of add additional opportunities for alcohol consumption in our park district. That would be part of that conversation and so we'll investigate it. They brought it up. The council has put it on our minutes as something they want us to look at and part of that is because of our downtown park and perhaps we could allow it just by special permit. So if there is a special event in the city parks, City Center Park, you just write a permit permitting wine as a permitted substance, or at Lake Ann. You know if there's some big event or for these picnics. For company picnics, they want to serve wine. We just write it into that part of the permit. You don't have to have it just you can have it any time. There's different ways we can take a look at that, so we'll investigate for the commission. We'll make a report. You guys will talk it over and then you'll either decide that you don't want to make a recommendation to the council or you send up a positive or a negative recommendation to the council. Spizale: Okay. Dillon: Any further updates on the fitness center site? Hoffman: Just the Lifetime continues to work along and the Advance Fitness is scheduled for another appearance before the council tentatively in June, but they may or may not go ahead and make that happen. Murphy: What does that mean Lifetime's going forward? Have they purchased land then? 13 Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 Hoffman: They have a purchase option on the land at Highway 5 and 41. On the south side. Now they have to have a zoning change and have to make application. Formal application for all those processes so, but from what we know they're committed to entering that process. And they want to move their corporate headquarters there as well. It's an aggressive plan. 250,000 square foot office building and then one of their premiere facilities. The office building would be on the corner of 41 and 5 and just to the east, and then the big facility would be just to the south behind those two office buildings. Murphy: So they're not put off by the Advance Fitness Center? Hoffman: It's a horse race. It's like the poker game. Who's going to bluff who out of what? Spizale: Okay, last call. Any other new business? Okay, any old business? Dillon: Anything on Miracles for Mitch? ! know there was the stuff in the correspondence about that. Any update on that? Hoffman: It's rolling along. Yeah, they're continuing to work and is it Steve Fowler. He was at the Chamber meeting today so, Chamber of Commerce meeting. He continues to work on it and as far as we know the triathlon will take place and scheduled for what, the 21st or 22nd of August. One of those two. RECREATION PROGRAM REPORTS: 2004 SUMMER PROGRAMS. Hoffman: Just a listing to keep the commissioners up to date on what's going on with field trips, preschool program and youth programs. They're in the list there but they're also online and then you can see them at any time in the summer brochure. So lots of activities going on. Spizale: Any questions for Todd on any of the programs? 2004 LAKE ANN PARK OPERATIONS. Hoffman: We just visited the park. The concession stand will open this weekend. We have a new concession manager. Actually the husband of a former employee down at the building so Jerry's very comfortable with that individual. They'll get it opened up. It's stocked. The product is being delivered all this week. Obviously with the cool and wet weather, ! think we'll start out with a slow weekend but that's not always a bad thing. They get some good training in, and the shelter is really the kind of hub of all activity down there. It's the lifeguard station for the lifeguards. Boat rental for row boats, kayaks. Or row boats, canoes and then the paddle boats, so lots of activity at Lake Ann. Good program for beach concessionaire. We make a little bit of money but it's more or less a service for the beach patrons that are there. And then Jerry's talking about the 14 Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 picnics and he's projecting that we'll book 90 to 100 picnics. Revenues over $9,000 and that the covered shelters at Lake Ann and Lake Susan are always the most popular and that's the reason we'll continue to pursue that second shelter at Lake Ann. Beach opens that Saturday, July 5th and Minnetonka Community Education provides that lifeguard service as they have for probably close to 25 years. Minnetonka Community has always worked with the City of Chanhassen. We pay them on a contractual basis and they provide lifeguards. They do the lessons at the beach. Spizale: Any questions for Todd? SELF SUPPORTING PROGRAMS: SUMMER ADULT SOFTBALL. Hoffman: You saw some of it going on out there this evening. The women's league plays on Tuesday nights. If you don't get a chance to visit Lake Ann, just do it once during the summer. Go out there on any one of the league nights. Feel the atmosphere which takes place. It's really, it's one part of our community, one element of our community. These people just absolutely adore Lake Ann and the adult leagues that they have there. ! managed these leagues when ! first stated. It was my first job when ! came to Chanhassen in 1986, and there's still people out there. They were in the over 30 league at the time. Now we're the over 35 league. Now it's the over 40 league and they're all over 50 and they just keeping going, and there's the other leagues as well. Monday's has always been corporate. Women has always been on Tuesday. Thursday is Men's Open and then the Friday the Co-Rec league has been added over time, but these people have a great time. They have a great experience. Lake Ann is one of the premiere parks in the metropolitan area for ball. With the natural stadium type seating on the hillsides, just provides for a great atmosphere and we've been fortunate to have the Lion's involved in Lake Ann. They've made that $100,000 contribution. You'll see the monument at Lake Ann, Lion's Field at Lake Ann Park. They paid for the lighting and some of the field improvements, so it continues to be a popular program. Popularity has waned, just to give you an example of that. It's still it's steady now but in the early days when ! was here, they wanted to tear down the Lake Ann woods and build additional ball parks. That was before we acquired the field to the east and they had some support to tear down the oak woods and put in additional ballfields so ! don't think we'd ever get to that point today but back then they were serious about building softball fields and so. It's still popular but not as popular as it was 15 years ago. Spizale: Any questions for Todd? Todd, I've got one question. What is in that Lake Ann woods? Just kind of a trail? Hoffman: Yep. Nature trail is in the Lake Ann woods. It's one of those undiscovered and then currently under utilized resources in our local park system that, we have a trail that's cut out that goes all the way through it and has parking available. People find it on their own but you could do a variety of things there. There's been some cross country skiing that takes place there, but we're not going to groom it. It's just not a large enough scale. But yeah, we can take a walk through there one day. It's gorgeous. It's about 30 acres of oak woods. 15 Park and Rec Commission - May 25, 2004 Spizale: And we had talked a little bit earlier, would that be a good spot for the dog park? Hoffman: It'd be one option. The visibility is something that, you could do that but there's some restrictions so you put a fence through there and then visibility and those type of things are going to be an issue because you can't see through all the way. And so I've not seen a dog park that's built in a mature stand of woods and there may be some issue with you get a lot of waste in these facilities and that could start to affect some of the trees and those type of things so, it's something we'd want to look at. Spizale: Alright, very good. COMMISSION MEMBER COMMITTEE REPORTS. None. COMMISSION MEMBER PRESENTATIONS. None. ADMINISTRATIVE PACKET. None. Scharfenberg moved, Murphy seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The Park and Recreation Commission meeting was adjourned at 8:15 p.m. Submitted by Todd Hoffman Park and Rec Director Prepared by Nann Opheim 16