CC Minutes 4-8-19Chanhassen City Council – April 8, 2019
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community. I also found a paper by Hamilton Johnson which is a Minnesota law firm.
Assessments allow common ownership communities to maintain attractive property values.
Maintenance, repair and replacement and so forth but the inspection responsibility was not
discussed. Our Arboretum Village handbook states and I quote, the association must ensure that
contractors are licensed and insured. Period. No mention of the inspection responsibility. And
our board has, and perhaps other community association boards may not comprehend the idea of
inspections. Our property manager recently sent an email to residents seeking new board
members and one of the criteria was, and I quote, no experience necessary and another criteria
was time commitment minimal. So apathy can be a reality in this situation. Intuitively I think
that the inspection responsibility remains with the municipality. That said I would like to see the
documentations that privatized Arboretum Village and I’m wondering who I should contact.
End of presentation.
Mayor Ryan: Thank you Mr. Titus. By any chance I know you have a written, you wrote out
your presentation but did you get a chance to fill out one of the forms that’s on the back?
Mack Titus: I signed in.
Mayor Ryan: If you could fill out with your name, I know we have your contact information
with you being a commissioner but if you could just, you know we obviously heard your
presentation but if you wouldn’t mind just writing the one or two questions that you have that
you would like to be addressed by city staff and/or council then we will follow up with you and I
understand that it’s about the inspection responsibility and private, I can’t say that word. Private.
Why can’t I say it?
Mack Titus: I’ll fill this out and turn it in and then I have to leave. I have another commitment
tonight.
Mayor Ryan: Yeah we understand. I think tip off’s 8:20 right? So if you would fill it out and
hand it to Chelsea that would be great. Thank you Mr. Titus.
Todd Gerhardt: He could bring it in tomorrow.
Mayor Ryan: Okay. Oh perfect. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Next we have new
business.
CONSENT AGENDA: AVIENDA: EXTEND PRELIMINARY PLAT AND
EXTINGUISH FINAL PLAT.
Mayor Ryan: I had pulled this off the agenda. It was for, it was the consent agenda item number
8 and it had to do with the extended preliminary plat and extinguishing the final plat for Avienda.
The reason why I wanted to pull it off, and I let Mr. Gerhardt know about this and just because
Avienda is such a big project that the community has been continuing to follow and ask
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questions and were interested in an update. In reading the packet material that spurred on
additional questions of what exactly we were approving. What does this mean? What’s the state
of the overall project and kind of where we were at so instead of just moving it forward on the
consent agenda I thought it would give us an opportunity for an update from staff and a
representative of the developer. So Mr. Gerhardt I’ll turn it over to you please.
Todd Gerhardt: Yes. Mayor and City Council members, before you tonight is a request for a
grading permit for the Avienda development. What is excluded from the grading permit is the
zoning or what the property is currently guided as a PUD. And right now we have a
representative from Avienda group here to give you an overview of where they’re at as a part of
the PUD amendment but solely the responsibility of the council tonight is to extend grading
permit to the Avienda development and also as a part of that allow them to final plat the property
so that they can mass grade and put in the infrastructure for the east/west collector road. So with
that we have Mark here from Avienda and he will give you an update on the PUD process.
Mark Nordland: Thanks Todd, Mayor and council members. Yes this project has been a long
time coming and it continues to be a little bit longer and I know there’s a lot of eyeballs looking
at what we’re doing here and wanting to make sure we do it right and that’s what we’re doing as
well so the actual approval that’s in front of you is more of a procedural thing to get our, to make
sure that we’re still in good stead with our approvals that we have in place already but as we’ve
discussed, we discussed it in a work session I believe it was last fall where we presented the plan
that I think went through with this letter that we sent you showing some modifications to the
plan. We’re still working through those modifications a little bit. As you look at the overall site
plan it’s up on the screen now. You know on the west side there’s quite a bit of housing in
various product types. There’s single family. You know villa homes. There’s some apartments.
There’s some senior housing. There’s some senior services. All the things that we’ve talked
about here since the beginning of the project. In the upper right hand corner of the plan, so that
would be the northeast corner we’re showing you know the retail node if you will. There’s also
some other retail sprinkled throughout the project but that’s the primary retail node. And then
down in the southeaster corner is where we’re showing office. Office. Maybe potentially some
entertainment type uses. Other things that could go down there. That was really put in there as a
place holder as the plan was coming together. As things have evolved, as this process has
evolved our plan has changed quite a bit. We got the PUD approved in I think it was 2017 and
that’s the zoning that’s still governs the property. We’re not asking for a change in that right
now although we will be asking for an amendment to that after we get the plan worked out. We
need a couple more months, 2, 3, 4 months to work through. I think the residential is likely to
remain almost untouched if not just slightly modified as we work through it. I think the office
and the retail nodes are likely to move a little bit. Some of that’s based on tenants in the
marketplace. Some of it’s just based on sort of the evolution of development. If you think about
these last oh at least 5 years and certainly since the downturn in whatever we count that. 2007-
2008, retail has changed just dramatically right. At one point there was several million square
feet of retail on this site and then there was a million and a half square feet of retail on this site.
You know now we’re somewhere around 400,000 square feet of retail and so one of the
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blessings of the fact that this has taken as long as it has been to get the wetlands and the other
site entitlements in there approved is that we’ve been able to follow that evolution and evolve
our plans on paper and not in actual bricks and mortar on the site because had we built what was
right probably to build in 2006, it almost certainly would be wrong today because this, the rapid
evolution as far as what’s happened with mixed use development and retail. So that’s sort of a
long winded answer to, I don’t have specifics to talk about tonight other than the fact that we are
looking at the retail and the office components and looking at reworking some of that a bit. The
approval we’re asking for is not to approve that or even this plan. We showed this plan just
because it had been shown before and we wanted you to know the general direction that we had
been heading with things. But before we’re able to do anything other than what’s currently in
the PUD we’ll be back before you to do an amendment to the PUD and to fully explain exactly
what we’re looking to do and what those changes are. It’s not going to be wholesale changes.
It’s not throwing out the entire plan and scrapping anything by any means but it’s some
tweaking. This approval tonight will allow us to get started with some grading. I know that
there’s you know everybody would like to see progress, or most people like to see progress keep
moving on this site. In particular the Bluff Creek Boulevard extension and connection is an
important thing so that allows us to do that while we’re still working on finalizing plans and then
coming back in with a PUD amendment request so with that I’d stand for any questions. I wish I
could dive into a lot more detail but it’s still the process that we’re going through and we look
forward to being back in front of you. Probably Todd I’m not sure what you think but probably
in a work session first and then in front of the entire council to have a couple of different venues
to talk through that as the plan evolves. Whatever Kate and Todd and staff think is the most
appropriate way for us to.
Todd Gerhardt: Definitely come back through a work session. Maybe a neighborhood meeting
would be in line to after a work session with council. After they give you feedback on your
proposed changes and then inform the neighborhood of those changes.
Mayor Ryan: Perfect thank you. Any questions council? I appreciate you being here tonight
and as I said it was more of a process thing and when this concept came out and people looked at
it we immediately received emails and questions about the specifics of this proposal and so the
purpose again to reiterate why I appreciate you being here this evening but to pull it off was to
have a clear understanding of the process at hand and to let folks know that tonight is about
approving the grading to move forward but not necessarily, we’re not, you’ll come back with
variation of this overall concept so I just wanted to make sure that was clear.
Mark Nordland: Yeah and we’ll be happy to talk about it with everybody. As we’ve all gotten
to know each other here over the last few years we’ve been very transparent with what’s going
on there. We hope everybody feels that way anyway and the danger of putting plans out there is
then people you know start to jump on certain aspects of it that are most important to them. This
is a concept right now. We’ll continue to refine it but then we’ll be back in for the actual
approval for that here in the next few months.
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Mayor Ryan: Perfect, thank you for being here. Appreciate it.
Mark Nordland: Thank you.
Todd Gerhardt: Mayor, council. I think the City Attorney like to maybe reword the proposed
motion. We’re bumping up against the one year limitation on approval of a development like
this so staff was looking at extension of the preliminary plat and that a final plat would come
back to the council for approval but allow the developer to grade as stated as a part of the
conditions of approval of the staff report submitted back in June 25th of 2018. You in agreement
with that Roger?
Roger Knutson: Yes. I think they want the approval, extending their preliminary plat approval
until December 31, 2019.
Mayor Ryan: So inject after approve extension add approval through?
Roger Knutson: Extend the preliminary plat approval through December 31, 2019.
Todd Gerhardt: And that roughly gives them 6 months to work through the PUD changes and
without keep asking for extensions.
Mayor Ryan: Right. And then it comes back to us work session and we have that amount.
Todd Gerhardt: Open house. Back to the Planning Commission and then back to council for
approval.
Mayor Ryan: Perfect. Alright thank you. Thank you for that. Any further questions council? If
not I would entertain a motion.
Councilwoman Coleman: I’ll make a motion for council to approve an extension of the
preliminary plat through December 31, 2019 and extinguishes the final plat for Avienda but
allows for grading as stated in the conditions of approval from the City Council staff report dated
June 25, 2019.
Todd Gerhardt: Perfect.
Mayor Ryan: We have a valid motion. Is there a second?
Councilman McDonald: I’ll second.
Mayor Ryan: Valid motion and a second.
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Councilwoman Coleman moved, Councilman McDonald seconded that the Chanhassen
City Council approves an extension of the preliminary plat through December 31, 2019 and
extinguishes the final plat for Avienda but allows for grading as stated in the conditions of
approval from the City Council staff report dated June 25, 2019. All voted in favor and the
motion carried unanimously with a vote of 4 to 0.
Mayor Ryan: That motion carries 4-0. Thank you.
Mark Nordland: Thank you.
COUNCIL PRESENTATIONS.
Mayor Ryan: Any council presentations? I would just like to say a couple things before we
move on here. First of all I would like to thank the Rotary for the opportunity to come and speak
last Friday morning with the Strive program at Chanhassen High School. The Rotary does a
tremendous amount of work for this community and I really appreciate the relationship that they
have with the students at Chanhassen’s high school and felt very honored to be a part of that
morning so thank you for the invitation. Next I would like to acknowledge, I did not pull it off
the consent agenda but I would encourage those at home to look at item G-13. It’s the Park and
Recreation Department Annual Report and we had commission meetings earlier this evening and
mentioned it to them as well but it’s a great report and highlights the tremendous amount of work
and great activities and relationships that we have with the residents of this community. You,
Mr. Hoffman you and your group do a fantastic job and I really appreciated reading through that
report and all that you’ve done so appreciate that. And then last but not least I want to thank all
the students that submitted letters for Mayor for the Day. We will be announcing winners this
week but it was really, really fun to read through all of the letters from the 4th and 5th grade
students of Chanhassen residents so thank you for the submission and really appreciate you
taking the time to do it. It was extremely fun. Great letters. That’s it for me.
ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS.
Mayor Ryan: Any administrative presentations.
Todd Gerhardt: A couple. I’d like to introduce our new Public Works Director Jason Wedel.
I’m excited to bring Jason back to his roots. Jason grew up in Eden Prairie and, but lives in
Savage right now and excited to have Jason come onboard as our new Public Works Director and
he is in the past has been working with the City of Prior Lake as their Public Works Director
under a contract basis with WSB and Jason is not new to us. He worked with us on a couple of
projects through WSB and also Pulte Homes when he worked with Pulte Homes so he brings a
variety of public/private experience to the city and I think that is a positive indication that we are
friendly to our development friends and understand the roles and responsibilities of what they go
through but Jason also understands the rules and regulations that cities need to enforce and with
that I don’t want to take all of Jason’s thunder but anything that you might want to add?