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PC MinutesChanhassen Planning Commission – June 20, 2017 4. The developer shall not encroach into the Bluff Creek Primary Zone. 5. The developer shall comply with the with the 40 foot primary zone setback and preserve or create a 20 foot buffer from the primary zone. 6. The buffer will be required to have a vegetation management plan and soil amendments. 7. The plans shall be revised to remove any structure in the BCOD. Commissioners Undestad, Randall and Madsen voted in favor. Commissioners Aller, Yusuf, Tietz and Weick voted in opposition. The motion failed with a vote of 3 to 4. Undestad moved, Randall seconded that the Chanhassen Planning Commission recommends the City Council approve the Variance to encroach, not to exceed 1.3 acres, into the primary zone and required buffer for the construction of the development; and adopts the amended Findings of Fact and Recommendation. Commissioners Undestad, Randall and Madsen voted in favor. Commissioners Aller, Yusuf, Tietz and Weick voted in opposition. The motion failed with a vote of 3 to 4. Aller: The motion does not carry. And that finishes Avienda at this point in time and they’ll of course be back after their consideration with the City Council on future items. Before you go gentlemen I want to thank you again for your presentations and for your continued efforts in working with the City and we look forward to seeing you as the project progresses. Darren Lazan: Thanks for your time. Mark Nordland: Thank you very much. PUBLIC HEARING: 2740 ORCHARD LAND: REQUEST FOR A VARIANCE FOR A SECOND DRIVEWAY ON PROPERTY ZONED SINGLE FAMILY RESIDENTIAL (RSF) AND LOCATED AT 2740 ORCHARD LANE. APPLICANT/OWNER: FAYE KAMRATH. Walters: Alrighty whenever you’re ready. Aller: We’re ready. Walters: So this is Planning Case 2017-13, 2740 Orchard Lane variance. It will go if appealed th before the City Council on the 10. It’s the applicant and owner Faye Kamrath is proposing a second driveway access for her property. The property is zoned Residential Single Family and I have the minimum criteria for that zoning standard up here. 15,000 square foot lot, 30 foot front yard setback, 10 foot side yard. It needs to have a 40 foot setback from the Manage 2 wetland to the north of the property. It’s limited to 25 percent hard cover and our code limits every 27 Chanhassen Planning Commission – June 20, 2017 residential property to a single driveway access. This parcel is about 4.4 acres and currently has about 2.6 percent impervious surface. This right here is a picture of the site conditions. As you can see the rear of the property has a very large wetland. There is a rental, a house that is currently being rented out to a tenant here which is served by an existing gravel driveway. There is no garage on the house and then there’s a detached garage that is being used for storage by the property’s owner. Currently it’s accessed by driving over the grass which has basically created a dirt way and the variance is to allow them to have a paved driveway to better access that detached garage. It is within the shoreland overlay district of Lake Minnewashta and we had approved the detached garage to be built without a driveway in 2013. The applicant is proposing the second driveway. One of the big reasons they’re asking for it is because it would result in a lot less impervious surface for the lot. They do have because it’s such a large property they could connect the proposed garage to the existing gravel driveway. Doing so would require at least 3,800 square feet of impervious surface. A second driveway access would require a 1,440 square feet of impervious surface. The other factor to consider is this is a very large property. It has about 350 feet of lot frontage. That allows for quite a bit of space between the existing driveway and the proposed driveway. I believe it actually works out to 215 feet separation between the existing gravel driveway and the proposed second driveway so typically you know you have a minimum 90 foot frontage in single family lots so the gap would be larger than you’d see generally between driveways in this district. The alternative of building a frontage style road paralleling Orchard Lane would have a larger visual impact on the neighborhood so they are proposing constructing a 32 by 30 foot apron and serving it by a 30 foot by 16 foot driveway. The area here in the right-of-way does not count towards the property hard cover and again that would be 1,440 square feet. So staff looked it over. It’s indisputable that it would result in significantly less impervious surface and less stormwater runoff possibly being directed into the wetland. Just for fun I sketched out two alternatives that they could do that meet code. Alternative 1 as I mentioned ended up being at 3,828 square feet of impervious surface. Alternative 2 looping behind the house past 5,000 square feet of impervious surface so it would have a lot less impact in terms of stormwater generation to do the second driveway. As mentioned the main reason we restrict the amount of number of driveway accesses is to create a situation where you have lots of cars entering in a short space. There is a lot of spacing between the comprehensive plan’s guidelines are 40 feet of spacing. At 215 it’s well in excess of that. Looking around at the neighborhood we found 4 other properties starred here within 500 feet that also have a second driveway access. Those are all legal non-conforming’s so because it seems to comply with the guidelines of the Comprehensive Plan would result in substantially less impervious surface being constructed and we don’t believe that the spacing would create any safety issues, as well as having less of a visual impact on the character of the neighborhood staff does support this variance request. I would be happy to take any questions at this time. Aller: Can you tell us what if any way the use of the garage would have on our deliberations? Walters: We were contacted as was in the staff report by resident’s concern that the garage was being used to run a home occupation. That would not be allowed by city code. The applicant has been informed of this. They have stated that it is not being used for that purpose. That it’s 28 Chanhassen Planning Commission – June 20, 2017 all personal storage. Staff is recommending just to make certain it’s clear that a condition be placed that the property not be used for a home occupation. But ultimately the property’s compliance with that aspect of the code is viewed as a separate issue from the variance. Staff will enforce city code whether this variance is granted or not and in neither event this property would not be allowed to have a home occupation run out of the garage. Aller: And that same result would be utilized with any of the other properties that have legal non-conforming uses within 500 feet for instance if there was a business being run out of there. It would not be permitted and a neighbor could potentially bring that to the City’s attention and then the City would have to act. Walters: Yep, just like any property in the city whether they have one driveway or two driveways. If I get a call saying there’s a home occupation we investigate. We do our due diligence and if we find out that there’s reason to believe there is one we work with the property owner to bring it into compliance. Yep. Aller: Thank you. Any additional questions of staff at this point in time? Weick: When you say home occupation you mean a business out of the home? Walters: Yeah. So without going too deep into the weeds the city code does not allow any type of business to be run out of a detached accessory structure so no garages. It doesn’t matter where, the only exception are existing agricultural uses. Weick: I was just confused by that terminology. I’d never seen that before. Walters: Yep. Aller: Great, okay. We’ll move on. If the applicant would like to come forward and make a presentation that would be great. If you could step up and state your name and address for the record sir and then tell us about your project. Jeff Kamrath: Okay. I’m Jeff Kamrath. I live at 2731 Orchard Lane which is across the road from this piece of property. My wife actually owns the property. We bought the property approximately 10 years ago. The lady who lived there was a 86 year old widow. The property had gone into quite a state of disrepair. It was very over grown with brush and trees and buckthorn. We spent 2 years cleaning up the property. Cleaning up the brush. Mitigated a lot of buckthorn that’s in the woods on the property. We also went ahead and did the buckthorn along Sandpiper Trail even though it’s not our property. It enhanced the appearance of the property so we cleaned that up as well. My wife has planted many gardens there and improved a lot of the landscaping with shrubs and we view it as kind of a unique piece of property. It’s a large piece of property. It’s very visible because it’s the biggest piece of property when you come into the neighborhood so we’ve tried to be good neighbors and keep it up and improve it and make it 29 Chanhassen Planning Commission – June 20, 2017 look well. We’ve gotten many comments from other neighbors along that line that appreciate what we’ve done here. I built the garage 4 years ago with the full understanding that you know we would not be allowed to have a second driveway. We’ve just been driving across the grass and thus created basically a dirt road to the garage is what’s happened. The issue of the driveway actually came up, the road contractor who’s doing the streets there needed a place to store materials and to store equipment. It was very convenient for him because we have a large piece of property and he said if we would allow him to do that he would put a driveway in for us so that’s why we’re applying for the variance. Trying to take advantage of an opportunity here to be very truthful about that so. But the driveway seems to fit in with the neighborhood. It doesn’t seem to create any issues that staff has found and again it’s a much better option than try to build a driveway from all the way across from the east side of the property and we just think it would enhance the property. Enhance it’s appearance and enhance the use of the property for us. Aller: Thank you. Any questions of the applicant? Seeing none thank you sir. Jeff Kamrath: Thank you. Aller: Okay at this point in time I’ll open up the public hearing portion of this item so again this is an opportunity for any individual that’s present to come forward and state their position or ask questions or comment on the matter before us. Seeing no one come forward I will close the public hearing. Open it up for commissioner comments. Tietz: Well I understand the situation. I tried to bike down that road the other day and almost had to walk my bike down the road so I understand the situation over there but it seems like a good solution. Aller: Any other comments? Questions? Again thank you for the report. It’s very clear and again for those at home these reports that we receive are on the website so feel free to go take a look at them. With that I’ll entertain a motion. Madsen: I’ll make a motion. Aller: Commissioner Madsen. Madsen: The Chanhassen Board of Appeals and Adjustments approves a variance request to allow for a second driveway access at 2740 Orchard Lane subject to the conditions of approval and adopts the attached Findings of Fact and Decision. Aller: I have a motion. Do I have a second? Yusuf: Second. 30 Chanhassen Planning Commission – June 20, 2017 Aller: Having a motion and a second, any further discussion? Hearing none I’ll put the matter to a vote. Madsen moved, Yusuf seconded that the Chanhassen Board of Appeals and Adjustments approves a variance request to allow for a second driveway access at 2740 Orchard Lane, subject to the following conditions and adoption of the Findings of Fact and Decision: 1. The applicant must apply for and receive a driveway permit. 2. Tree protection fencing shall be installed around existing trees prior to any construction activities. 3. Double silt fence must be in place to protect the wetland prior to any excavation of the site. 4. The driveway must be constructed in accordance with current construction requirements/details as well as the requirements in City Code Section 20-122 Access and Driveways. 5. The driveway shall be surfaced with bituminous, concrete or paver surface. 6. As stipulated by City Code Section 20-977 the detached garage may not be use to operate or store material for a home occupation. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 7 to 0. Aller: Okay we have two other items coming before us for public hearing. With the commissioners permission I’d like to kind of take a poll and see who’s here on what and try to deal with the one with the biggest impact first or second, whichever way we’d like to do it so by a raise of hands those individual who are here for item 2, West Park. I have 2, 4, 6, 7. And item 3, the Venue at Aldi. 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Probably just take them as is. There doesn’t seem to be a big significant difference. Is staff ready to go with item 2 which is West Park? PUBLIC HEARING: WEST PARK, 8601 GREAT PLAINS BOULEVARD: REZONING, SITE PLAN REVIEW, SUBDIVISION, AND VACATION OF RIGHT-OF-WAY WITH VARIANCES ON PROPERTY ZONED PLANNED UNIT DEVELOPMENT (PUD) AND SINGLE FAMILY RESIDENTIAL (RSF) FOR CONSTRUCTION OF AN 82 UNIT TOWNHOME DEVELOPMENT AND LOCATED SOUTHEAST OF WATERS EDGE DRIVE, WEST OF GREAT PLAINS BOULEVARD, NORTH OF HIGHWAY 212 AND BISECTED BY LAKE SUSAN DRIVE. APPLICANT: PULTE HOMES. OWNER: BRIAN KLINGELHUTZ. 31