PC Minutes 8-3-04
Planning Commission _ing - August 3, 2004
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1. The boardwalk shall be installed across the wetland as a permanent structure and
a dock shall extend from the boardwalk into Lake Lucy to provide docking for
watercraft.
2. The applicant shall enter into an encroachment agreement with the City for the
installation of the boardwalk across the drainage and utility easement.
3. The dock shall be located outside of the dock setback zone.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to O.
PUBLIC HEARING:
FRONTIER SECOND ADDITION. PRELIMINARY PLAT TO SUBDIVIDE 2.61
ACRES INTO 5 SINGLE FAMILY LOTS LOCATED AT THE NORTHEAST
INTERSECTION OF FRONTIER TRAIL AND WEST 77TH STREET. CHARLES
R. STINSON. PLANNING CASE NO. 04-26.
Public Present:
Name
Address
Charles Thiss
Charles R. Stinson
Ralph Burrell
Kay Touchette
5090 Greenwood Circle
4733 Eastwood Road
7555 Frontier Trail
7541 Frontier Trail
Sharmeen AI-Jaff and Matt Saam presented the staff report on this item.
Slagle: Start down here. Any questions for staff Kurt?
Papke: Yeah. When I look at the topographical drawing, I know one of the original
issues was setback from the bluff line, and according to our definition of where the bluff
begins and ends laterally on the topographical map, how precisely are those boundaries
determined? I mean if I look at the topographical drawing, I don't know that I could pick
out very well where the bluff begins and ends, so could you comment on how precisely
that beginning and ending of the bluff is determined? If at all.
Saam: The definition of the bluff per our city ordinance I believe is a 25 foot elevation
change, or drop and the slope has to be 30 percent or greater, so basically a 3 to 1 or
greater. Using that criteria and the applicant's surveyor, and staff reviewing the site,
that's how we do it. Sharmeen, do you want to add anything else, but typically staff goes
out there and we kind of both agree that this is the top of the bluff. This is kind of where
it starts and this appears to be the bottom. Have it surveyed. Give us the slope
percentage and let's see if it qualifies.
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Papke: I'm not concerned with the top and the bottom. I'm concerned more with the
north, south boundaries. You know if I look at how for instance the southern boundary,
where it sits and I look at the topographical drawing, you don't see any radical change in
the topography where that border is, so that's more what I'm concerned with.
Saam: Okay. Now I'm going to toss it back to Sharmeen.
AI-Jaff: There is one qualifier. Matt's mentioned the 25 foot rise. The slope of 30
percent, but then is also a distance of 50 feet. At any point within that 50 feet, if you no
longer have a slope of 18 percent?
Saam: I believe that's right.
AI-Jaff: Yes, 18 percent, then it's no longer a bluff. You draw the top and the bottom,
and then you connect the sides. From the sides you need to have a distance of 30 feet.
Does that answer your question?
Papke: Yeah. Qualitatively you're okay with, as you walk the site, you're okay with
these boundaries as shown on the map?
AI-Jaff: Yes we are.
Papke: Okay. On the pond you mentioned there's already a pipe coming into the pond
and a drain pipe going out. Where does the water come from and where does it go?
Saam: Yeah we don't have a good overall area picture but basically.
Papke: Not the drainage into the pond but you mentioned there was some sort of a drain
pipe that comes into the pond, is that correct?
Saam: Correct. It's coming from the south part of the parcel, basically where my finger
is. It's hard to see and that pipe is I believe coming from the street.
Papke: So it's a street storm drain?
Saam: I believe. I believe so, yes. And the name of the street escapes me but we went
out there. Erie? I believe it's Erie Avenue. And then to follow-up the rest of your
question, where the drainage goes. Kind of following this blue line off the site,
eventually it gets to Lotus Lake but it does come up. There's an existing development
here. Kind of following a ditch type system up around to Frontier Trail and then it
follows down I believe a beach or homeowners association lot into Lotus Lake.
Papke: Okay. So there's quite a distance of overland carry if you will for sediment to
come out, etc.
Saam: Yes.
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Papke: Especially with the dams that are going in place there?
Saam: Excuse me?
Papke: Especially with the damming that's going in place there to slow down the water
velocity.
Saam: Correct. Correct.
Papke: Okay. I wasn't quite clear. I know one of the issues was the placement of the
retaining walls. Could you show us exactly on the map where the retaining walls are that
are being built up here. There's apparently some that are fairly substantial.
Saam: Sharmeen's colored them in in blue. With this revised plan set it appears that the
retaining walls have been taken out of the bluff setback and that was one of the
conditions that we had in there. Previously they encroached into the setback a few feet.
Papke: Right, okay. Okay. No further questions.
Tjornhom: Okay, I'm not sure if this is for the applicant or for staff so, you guys can
choose. In reading the proposal, Lots 4 and 5 don't meet the minimum requirement for
lot sizes so they have to be moved over.
AI-Jaff: Correct.
Tjornhom: My question is, are we doing more damage than we have to to the trees and
everything else just to make that lot requirement or is it something that is okay I guess. I
mean, I kind of get the feeling that the developer's main goal is to kind of preserve as
much of the natural trees and everything that is there, and so are we just pushing over
Mother Nature for numbers or is it okay I guess. I tried to see the lot lines and envision
how much would have to be moved and pushed.
AI-Jaff: And I understand the question and it's a very valid question because it's one of
the things that we looked at. What is the impact on the trees? However, we did not want
to penalize Lots 4 and 5. If we reduce the size of the lot to 12,000 on both of those
parcels, they were a little over 12,000 I believe. Two things happen. You minimize the,
well the hard surface coverage becomes an issue. So you've got multiple variances that
begin to take place. We did not advertise the application for a variance and in all
honestly we could not justify a hardship. The applicant in this case is creating a brand
new subdivision and no matter of how you look at it, there will be a self created hardship.
As far as the tree removal, there will be trees that will be impacted regardless of where
we place the structure. The applicant will be working with the site and some of these
comments are based upon our experience with what he has done on Frontier First
Addition but we will work with him very closely and minimize the tree removal.
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Tjornhom: That's all I have.
Slagle: Dan?
Keefe: Again I really don't have much. The question would be in regards to building
setbacks and driveway setbacks. I mean they're still working on placing these homes and
getting them in place so I mean with the movement of the lot line on 4 and 5, in terms of
his intent to get the right homes in here, there's still enough room to maintain setbacks
and everything, even with, presuming when he first set it up he kind of had an idea in the
lot size. But he maintains that there's still plenty of room and particularly it looks like
Lot 3 is the one that kind of took the brunt of the.
AI-Jaff: Sure. What I did here is in that I highlighted the buildable area and as you can
see on all of those parcels there is plenty of building area. That's after the lines have
been adjusted.
Keefe: Right, and as far as you know he's comfortable with that adjustment. We can ask
him, yeah. And then in regards to sidewalks, and I'll leave that up to you. Is there
anything that we would ever do on this in regards to that?
AI-Jaff: On Frontier?
Keefe: Yeah. I'm curious about your opinion or what we'd do. I don't think there are
any, are there?
Saam: No.
Keefe: So this would just be one kind of spot that we'd have it, right. So it really doesn't
make a lot of sense there. Yeah. That's all.
Slagle: Okay. I have two questions. You mentioned Sharmeen on Lot 4 and 5 met the
depth, met the requirements. But if you move the driveway to Frontier Trail, does it still
meet the minimum because doesn't that become then the front.
AI-Jaff: No. The way a lot frontage is defined is wherever the narrower. Whenever you
have a corner lot, wherever you have the narrower width, that becomes the lot frontage.
Slagle: Gotch ya. Okay.
Papke: Just to clarify, that's the existing drive.
AI-Jaff: Correct. That's an existing drive.
Papke: We're not changing any access to that corner lot?
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AI-Jaff: No we're not, and I believe I made a mistake in the staff report. I said the two
existing homes gain access off of 77th. I apologize for that.
Slagle: No, no problem. Now also when the applicant had the informal discussion with
us we talked about Lot 1 attempting to place that home more to what I would call the
southeast. To get it away from the lot line to the neighbors to the north I guess it would
be. Anything discussed about that?
AI-Jaff: We did talk about it and maybe the applicant will be able to address that further.
The homes were placed wherever they would, the term that the applicant uses is the
quality trees. Wherever there is less impact on the quality of the trees.
Slagle: Okay. I have no other questions. Anyothers? Okay. If the applicant wants to
come up. State your name and address. We'd like to hear from you.
Charles Stinson: My name is Charles Stinson. I'm the architect and owner of, developer
here. I, as I think most of you know, I've been involved in the last 10 years with the
neighborhood down below. We've got a couple of the homeowners here. That's how we
got involved in the project. We really wanted to just preserve what we started here and
continue it and we were approached by the owners of these two buildings to, who were
interested in having it developed and selling it and were we interested or not so we got
involved. And the background on the bluff line. With computers today, it's pretty easy
to do the calculations so before we did anything we had a survey done and had the
engineer talk to the city. Find out the criteria which he is already familiar with and just
run the numbers and tell us where the bluff line is and have the city verify it and go there
and then we worked around it. A couple of things. This house will stay as is. The Lot
number 4, we may keep the house and remodel it or it's hungry even for a little bit of
improvements so we'll either do that or we might put a new house there. We're not sure.
The other ones, we really tried to do everything without any variances. It just makes a lot
of things easier so we, kind of like the words of Frank Lloyd Wright, limitations are an
architect's best friend and we try to embrace that. But because, in this case we have
control over all the architecture, the areas that we were given, that has to be the big
buildable square, we don't want to use that whole square. We want to do something
smaller. The other thing, our ideas, we don't want a conventional big yard. We want to
keep it natural, so what the Lots number 1 and 2 really, the goal was to have them almost
have a tree house. I mean they'll meet the requirements. We want to minimize. We've
shown some retaining walls here. We really want to minimize all that and use the
architecture actually as the retaining walls. The building itself, so in this case there's
someone we were talking to at this point, we'll probably build a 3 level cool house that
you actually enter on the top level, so the house is taking up all the transition in the grade.
That way we can, and have all the open space towards the east and the south and
minimize the relationship of the house here. In this case Frank and Jennifer's house is
here. Their garage is on that side of the house, and their idea is that we'll do landscaping
inbetween and luckily we have the luxury and the opportunity to create all these homes
together so there's a language between them. And the same thing with this one. We
actually will move the house closer to the road but meeting the setback. Not to where the
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square is, and this one we want to move back. The idea is this house, we want a view'
here and here. This one, you know across the bluff line and this one over in this area.
That way we're preserving all the trees in the valley for everybody. Coming down the
street, we want to keep, all the circles I've drawn are existing trees that our goal is to save
them. We'll be adding, even where the pond's coming in. At first I was kind of
concerned about what was proposed to do here because it's a pretty big job and I was
concerned about all the trees going down. And, but as we, you know I'm starting to
warm up to it but I would like to put white pines on this side and then some silver maple
or working with the City Forester to come up with trees that would survive there so that it
will fill in again, so we don't have a big hole. And then even between these, between 5
and 3 and 4 and 3 and 4 and the street we'd like to bring in some pines. The white pines
and the different pines we've already integrated into our neighborhood and we'd like to
continue with those so the idea is we want to make you know just, you kind of fall in love
with this neighborhood so you feel connected to it and want to... And the approval is, all
the drawings are for preliminary and the final approval. If you have any other questions,
I'd be happy to answer them.
Slagle: I've got one just to start with. More to staff a little bit but do we know in the end,
is this gentleman adding more trees than he's actually taking out? So we should all
videotape this for the rest of our developers.
AI-Jaff: I was afraid you'd say something like that.
Slagle: Alright, that's it for me. Go ahead Dan, if you've got some questions.
Keefe: I really don't have any questions. I think it's terrific what you're doing and I
think it will be great.
Charles Stinson: I don't have the chance to say this very often but I've got to say,
working with the city, we work with a lot of different cities and Chanhassen and the staff
is really awesome. I mean there's really a dialogue with everybody, from planning to
engineering to the preservation and environmentalists. There's a really a working
relationship of trust and everybody wants to do the right thing and it's just delightful.
Slagle: And I think include the commission in that?
Charles Stinson: And the commission. And I've used the example of the other meeting
we had, the informal one and how helpful that was and I've actually I've used that as an
example to other cities. So it's great.
Slagle: Bethany?
Tjornhom: I don't have any questions.
Slagle: I don't either. Thank you very much. Well, I'll bring it back here for discussion.
Any thoughts? Comments? Oh I'm sorry, I forgot. Public. Apologize for that folks. It
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is a public hearing so if there are any folks here who have any comments they want to
give to us, we'd certainly be open to listening and just state your name and address.
Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing and then bring it back. Thank you Kurt.
Papke: I have no concerns. This is a great development. I appreciate the architect's
desire to keep continuity with what he's already done there and I look forward to seeing
the results.
Keefe: Second your thoughts.
Tjornhom: Yeah, I have to agree. I think that a community is only as good as it's
developments are, and I think we should work harder as a community to make more
developments like this so we have character and quality. That's all I have to say.
Slagle: Okay. I would also concur. I mean I would love to see more developments take
the form and the process that this has over the last, whatever it's been, 6 months to a year.
A lot of folks could learn something from your process so appreciate it. Do I have a
motion?
Papke: I have a question. The developer said he was seeking final approval and the only
proposal we have in front of us is for preliminary.
AI-Jaff: Correct. Maybe just a clarification. Planning Commission approves preliminary
plats only. City Council approves preliminary and final. So we will make that
recommendation at the time it goes to City Council.
Papke: Okay. I'd like to make a motion then to approve the preliminary plat for
Planning Case 04-26 for Frontier Second Addition for 5 lots as shown on the plans
received July 2, 2004, subject to conditions 1 through 23 as stated in the staff report.
Slagle: Is there a second?
Tjornhom: Second.
Slagle: Any friendly amendments or comments? I guess I have one just point of
clarification to staff. Sharmeen, you mentioned that there were some things that were not
complete perhaps. I mean receiving today. Is there anything we need to be adding on the
conditions or anything? Okay. Okay, with that answered. We have a second. I guess
we'll just take a vote.
Papke moved, Tjornhom seconded that the Planning Commission recommends
approval of the preliminary plat for Planning Case #04-26 for Frontier Second
Addition for 5 lots as shown on the plans received July 2, 2004, subject to the
following conditions:
1. Environmental Resources Specialist Conditions:
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Planning Commission .eting - August 3,2004
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a. Tree preservation fencing shall be installed at the edge of grading limits prior
to any construction. Fencing shall be maintained until construction is
completed.
2. The applicant shall pay park fees in lieu of land dedication or trail construction on
three of the five lots. Two lots are exempt from these charges due to the existing
single-family homes on the property. The park fee on three single family homes
totals $8,400 and is payable at the time of platting.
3. The northerly lot lines for Lots 3, 4 and 5 shall be shifted to allow for 15,000
square feet of lot area and a minimum depth of 125 feet.
4. The pond must be designed to NURP guidelines and sized/located to maximize
water quality treatment while minimizing the amount of tree loss.
5. All disturbed areas, as a result of construction, must be seeded and mulched or
sodded immediately after grading to minimize erosion.
6. The applicant shall apply for and obtain a building permit through the City's
Building Department for any retaining wall over 4-feet in height.
7. On the Grading Plan:
a. Label the bluff setback limits.
b. Add silt fence adjacent to grading area.
c. Show the grading limits.
8. Add the following notes to the Utility Plan:
a. Any connection to existing structures must be core drilled.
b. All sanitary services must be 6"PVC-SDR26 and water services l"copper.
9. The remaining street assessment balance with interest due payable to the City at
the time of final plat recording is $6,517.70. Since the developer will be
responsible for extending lateral sanitary sewer service to the new lots, the lateral
sewer connection charges will be waived; however, water connection charges will
be required for each of the new lots (1-3). In addition, sanitary sewer and water
hookup charges will be applicable for each of the new lots.
10. Public utility improvements are required to be constructed in accordance with the
City's latest edition of Standard Specifications and Detail Plates. Detailed
construction plans and specifications must be submitted at time of final plat for
review. The applicant is also required to enter into a development contract with
the City and supply the necessary financial security in the form of a letter of credit
or cash escrow to guarantee installation of the improvements and the conditions of
final plat approval.
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11. The applicant must be aware that any off-site grading will require a temporary
easement from the property owner.
12. Add the following City detail plates to the plans: 1005,2001,2002,2101,2109,
2110,2201,2202,5300 and 5301.
13. On the Utility Plan:
a. Show the existing sanitary and watermain pipe size and type.
14. Detailed grading, drainage, tree removal and erosion control plans will be required
for each of the new lots at the time of building permit application for City review
and approval. In addition, as-built surveys will be required on each lot prior to
occupancy.
15. The retaining walls will need to be moved to comply with the 30-foot setback
requirement.
16. A permanent 20-foot wide drainage and utility easement is required over the
length of the new sewermain.
17. The bluff area shall be preserved. All structures shall maintain a 30-foot setback
from the bluff and no grading shall occur within the bluff impact zone (i.e., the
bluff and land located within 20 feet from the top of a bluff). A conservation
easement shall be dedicated over the bluff area and the bluff impact zone.
18. Drainage and utility easements, a minimum of 20 feet in width, shall be provided
over all drainageways and storm water ponds.
19. Erosion control blanket shall be installed on all slopes greater than or equal to 3:1.
All exposed soil areas shall have temporary erosion protection or permanent cover
year round, according to the following table of slopes and time frames:
Type of Slope
Steeper than 3: 1
10:1 to 3:1
Flatter than 10: 1
Time
7 days
14 days
21 days
(Maximum time an area can
remain open when the area
is not actively being worked.)
These areas include constructed storm water management pond side slopes, and
any exposed soil areas with a positive slope to a storm water conveyance system,
such as a curb and gutter system, storm sewer inlet, temporary or permanent
drainage ditch or other natural or man made systems that discharge to a surface
water.
20. Soil tracked onto public streets shall be swept daily street or as needed.
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21. The estimated total SWMP fee, due payable to the City at the time of final plat
recording, is $9,325.
22. The applicant shall apply for and obtain permits from the appropriate regulatory
agencies (e.g., Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek Watershed District, Minnesota
Pollution Control Agency, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (for
dewatering)) and comply with their conditions of approval.
23. Building Official Conditions:
a. Final grading plans and soil reports must be submitted to the Inspections
Division before building permits will be issued.
b. Lots 1, 2 and 3 must be provided with separate sewer services be served by a
public line.
c. Retaining walls over 4 feet high require a permit and must be designed by an
engineer licensed in the State of Minnesota.
d. Demolition permits must be obtained before demolishing any structures."
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to O.
PUBLIC HEARING:
CENTURY PLAZA BUILDING "C". SITE PLAN REVIEW FOR A
NEIGHBORHOOD COMMERCIAL-OFFICE MULTI-TENANT BUILDING
LOCA TED ON LOT 1. BLOCK 4. V ASSERMAN RIDGE. ZONED PUD. CPV
DEVELOPMENT CO.. LLC. CRAIG ALSHOUSE. PLANNING CASE NO. 04-25.
Public Present:
Name
Address
Lori Day
Craig Alshouse
Steve Lanak
8229 Stone Creek Drive
1300 Willowbrook Drive
548 Apollo Drive #10, Lino Lakes
Sharmeen Al-Jaff presented the staff report on this item.
Slagle: Any questions of staff? Bethany, why don't you start. Your turn.
Tjornhom: Alright. Alright Sharmeen, I think I talked to you before this meeting started.
I was confused. I had read that offices and restaurants were permitted in this PUD so my
questions will be regarding that. If you're going to have a restaurant in a building, does
that require a traffic study?
AI-Jaff: If they meet the minimum requirements of the ordinance with what they are
proposing, then no.
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