01-21-20-pcCHANHASSEN PLANNING COMMISSION
REGULAR MEETING
JANUARY 21, 2020
Chairman Weick called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT: Steve Weick, Mark Randall, John Tietz, Michael McGonagill, Doug
Reeder, and Laura Skistad
MEMBERS ABSENT: Mark Undestad
STAFF PRESENT: Kate Aanenson, Community Development Director; Bob Generous, Senior
Planner; MacKenzie Walters, Associate Planner; and Erick Henricksen, Project Engineer
PUBLIC PRESENT:
Jessica Galatz HCRRA
PUBLIC HEARING:
CONSIDER A REQUEST FOR AN INTERIM USE PERMIT (IUP) AND WETLAND
ALTERATION PERMIT (WAP) FOR THE PURPOSE OF REPAIRING LANDSLIDES
ALONG A PORTION OF THE MINNESOTA BLUFFS LRT REGIONAL TRAIL.
Weick: I will turn it over to Mr. Generous.
Generous: And I’ll turn it over to Erick.
Henricksen: So the applicant here is going to be proposing, or it’s what we’re reviewing here is
an interim use permit, essentially a grading permit. Anything over 1,000 cubic yards of grading
or disturbance requires an IUP for grading. The applicant here, and this kind of gives you a brief
overview of what the proposed repairs are going to be or what the work is going to be for the
area but I’d like to start kind of from the beginning as all things do. The impetus of why this IUP
or grading permit came in. Back in 2014 the metro area experienced some real intense rain
events. I don’t know if everyone remembers but in June 19, 2014 was a very intense rain event
as you can see from some of the precip data that’s given. This event caused flash flood watches
and warnings around the metro area. Eden Prairie, our neighbor there to the east experienced
precip’s in a one day of about 5 ½ inches which is fairly intense. And then also there were rain
events prior to this June 19th event which saturated soils and caused more washout of roads and
other kind of, oh sorry about that. Similar damage to areas or damage to the metro area. The
Minnesota Bluffs LRT regional trail did experience damage as seen from some of these images.
The images on your left here, right here is a drone shot of the south, what we’ll be calling the
south repair area. So here’s a landslide. This was taken shortly thereafter the landslide. You
can see a tree has fallen and what not. This landslide also caused some damage to the culvert
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that’s located just on the downslope of this landslide here and that conveys stormwater
underneath the trail. You can see the concrete headwall is damaged. This photo here was taken
in 2019 and then here’s just a photo of the trail that was closed. The Three Rivers Park District
closed the trail after this event in 2014. Blocked it off with just some black metal fence. In 2015
there was some repairs, some immediate repairs done to the toe of the slope with the installation
of riprap and the applicant or the Hennepin County Railroad Authority secured some FEMA
funds for that. This can be considered phase 1. Phase 2 was kind of a larger scope. A larger
repair of the areas and that’s basically where we’re at today with our IUP application. Just to
give you a better understanding of the project area, we’re located, this failure happened on the
trail in the south end of, or the south side of Chanhassen. The LRT regional trail bisects
Chanhassen as seen here with the red line. Connects Eden Prairie to Chaska. It’s basically a
bicycle highway. It’s a main route in the area which has been out of commission due to these
failures. The applicant has proposed two access routes to these construction areas or the grading
areas. One would be from Eden Prairie. Accessing the trail Eden Prairie about right here I
believe it’s called Highview Court or Highview Road. Access via the trail to the north repair
area and then they’re also proposing coordination with Moon Valley Aggregate and the property
owner there to access the south repair area. Due to, while these project areas aren’t immediately
adjacent to homes they are located and the trail is located kind of sandwiched between some
residential development so normal construction hours, which for the city is 7:00 to 6:00 Monday
through Friday are going to be adhered to. Also within the area and near the construction limits
is a city conservation easement that’s attached to Settler’s West. We have reviewed the plans.
They are proposing to delineate that and not cause any disturbance in that area. Get a little more
familiar with the construction plans. It’s kind of a busy page here but one of the things to note is
a grading permit. The dark black lines are the proposed grades or those are areas where you’re
going to be seeing grading occurring. So the repair area you can see is kind of a little bit larger
compared to the north repair area. Looking at the north repair area, brief overview would be
they’re going to, well here let me point out this area here was one of the landslides or slope
failures and this area here was that one photo we saw previously of the landslide. Down at the
bottom is the culvert that was damaged but in general you can see kind of with these black lines
where the grading will occur. The applicant’s proposing approximately 25,000 cubic yards of
grading so there’s a lot of work to be done in this area but the grading would be mainly across
the trail here. We can see the slope repair area. There’s some grading here and then the creation
of a ditch or a drainage channel and some minor grading over here. To look more closely at the
repair areas, so this here in your upper left corner is a plan view of the north repair area and
below that is a profile view. The plan here is to repair the north landslide with some riprap. Fill
it in as you can see again on the profile and then re-establish grades here. They’re proposing a 1
½ to 1 grade. They will be capping so here is a stormwater conveyance pipe that travels under
the trail at this north repair area. They’ll be capping and filling this and abandoning this
stormwater pipe with the intent of, if we then look to the right here horizontally drilling a new
stormwater conveyance pipe to then enter into a drainage channel with check dams and then it
would enter into the south repair area. Essentially if I back up a slide. The stormwater would
come from Settler’s West, under the trail and then be routed essentially to this culvert area. So
what they’re doing is going to just be re-routing that drainage south here. One of the things that
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we’ve conditioned on this permit is to see some photo analysis on the drainage channel,
especially as it comes to hydraulic calculations and looking at the sizing of their energy
dissipation devices so at the drainage channel they’re going to be using rock check dams which
have been proposed to be evenly spaced at about every 50 feet. There is a slope within this area
that gets a little steep and we just want to ensure that the repair methodology that they’re using
once installed doesn’t necessarily degrade or cause further erosion or any other kind of
environmental impacts of that sort so that’s one of the conditions there. Also when they do the
directional drilling here they will be putting a tracer wire on it per city specifications so that way
in the future we can locate that if necessary. Or the applicant or the owner of this system can.
Looking more at the south repair area where I would say a majority of the grading will be
occurring, the intent here is to stabilize this slope. In order to do that what they’re going to be,
what they’ve proposed is to lower the grade of the trail approximately 10 feet and some locations
10 to 12 feet. Maintaining a 5 percent slope so again up here is the plan view and then below
that is the profile view to kind of give you a perspective of how far they’re going to be dropping
the trail. This is one of the reasons is to draw the slope here to a 2 to 1 so something a little more
gradual in order to maintain slope stability. To our right here you can see cross sections of the
trail kind of right above Station 600 and 650 so kind of right above where they’re doing most of
the cutting. So you can see there’s going to be quite a bit of removal and then the slope will be
stabilized with some reinforced matting. And then here’s just kind of another view to show the
extent of lowering the trail. Grading out the steep slopes and getting that kind of 2 to 1 max all
the way down to again this existing culvert. Additional improvements that they’re proposing is
to remove the damaged concrete headwall to this culvert and install the flared end section. Do
some riparian restoration to the stream here. They’re going to be installing some of these rock
veins or essentially check dams for anticipation and then they’ll also have a stilling basin here to
accomplish kind of the same task there. Essentially that’s an overview of the project. Kind of
how we, or how they came to this point through the storm events and the kind of looking at the
overall plan of attack to do the repairs and open the trail back up.
Generous: Well the staff is recommending approval of the interim use permit to permit the
grading and excavation of this site to repair the sloughing, subject to the conditions in our staff
report and adoption of the Findings of Fact and Recommendation.
Aanenson: Bob were you going to go through any of the findings or the conditions of the
grading permit at all or just?
Generous: Well they, the main thing is that all the improvements they’re doing are to improve
the condition of the site. We’re trying to re-open the trail facility and to do that they have to
clean up this area so.
Henricksen: I think one of the conditions that kind of diverge from your typical IUP or grading
permit is the applicant will have to enter into a maintenance, operation and maintenance kind of
agreement with either the city or the watershed district. These aren’t city owned utilities or
infrastructure or anything of that matter. We’re only issuing a grading permit to get the
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restoration completed. There is concern that in the future if there’s any, you know with any kind
of storm utility for instance that horizontally drilled pipe or when you’re looking at installing
improvements to a drainage channel with basins and check dams you know those kind of things
do have to be maintained so one of the conditions that are within this permit and the findings
here would be to have that executed agreement with the applicant and either again the watershed
district or the City for a clear understanding on who’s going to be maintaining operating those
improvements. Most of the other conditions I think are pretty straight forward when it comes to
grading, the time of operations, the haul routes. There is some encroachment if you see here on
the construction limits on the south repair area where they’re going to be going into the Moon
Valley Aggregate site so temporary construction easements of that sort would have to be
executed and provided to the City prior to any kind of issuance or notice to proceed on this
operation. Are there any others that stand out?
Generous: No and again it’s the slope restoration will create stormwater improvements that
should improve the conditions that are out there right now. It’s a net benefit for the community
to have this.
Aanenson: I guess what I was looking for was what Erick had just answered just for your
edification so as part of the grading permit they manage the traffic, the hauling routes. Those are
all part of the permit that would be administered too.
Henricksen: Yep and that initial erosion control inspection would be called into the City to
review typical to again any grading operation of this size erosion control measures have to be
installed. Your typical BMP’s. From review of the plans they meet our standards and as always
adaptive management moving forward on, if more measures are needed you know it’s something
that we continue to review and inspect as it is in the city of Chanhassen.
Weick: Great, thank you. Questions for the City at this time on what you just heard?
Reeder: Mr. Chairman.
Weick: Yes.
Reeder: I think you heard you say that the trail will go down by 10 feet. What does that do for
the people that are trying to use the trail? What kind of slope are we going to have?
Henricksen: They’re proposing a 5 percent slope over the lowered section so that’s consistent
with ADA requirements. When you’re looking at regional trails I believe 5 percent. I believe
you might even be able to go up to about 8.33 percent over a certain amount of distance but as
proposed it’s within your requirements for ADA so.
Reeder: Okay.
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Henricksen: If you looking at this profile you kind of see it and you’re like well that looks pretty
steep. It’s just because of the horizontal scale that’s given to this so this is over I believe 700
feet. 800 feet that this lowering is occurring. Actually I correct myself. I believe it’s 1,200 feet
so it’s over quite a long distance that.
Reeder: That’s what I couldn’t figure out from this. Okay.
McGonagill: Erick on the, so the owner will be the regional trail authority at the end of the day
when you talk about maintaining this if I’m looking to who is listed as the applicant, who will be
the owner?
Henricksen: The applicant for this IUP is the Hennepin County Railroad Authority. After
conversation with the applicant I believe the intent is to transfer ownership of these
improvements to Carver County, although I would defer that kind of to their, what they are
looking for. In regards to meeting that requirement on the permit on who to enter into that
agreement at this time it would be the Hennepin County Railroad Authority. Any transfer of that
ownership and maintenance would then have to follow up with an update to that maintenance
agreement entered into with the City or the watershed district.
McGonagill: Okay. One more question. You’ve done a lot of work to take care of what I’d call
surface issues. You did a lot of surface grading’s. Surface lowering. And that’s reflecting the
surface conditions. What do you know about the sub-surface conditions? Have any soil borings
been taken along this to know you know is this just a fluff sitting on top of clay that when it gets
saturated it’s going to move again? You know you’re not going to be able to hold it. You know
what can you tell me if anything about that along that profile, what are we looking at? Is it kind
of like, to use a paraphrase is it an avalanche that’s just going to happen someday? Continue to
go on from that.
Henricksen: The applicant along with their engineer, Barr Engineering conducted over the
course of I believe 3 or 4 years subsequent borings to kind of do this analysis. They did a slope
stability assessment and kind of went through all the different alternatives to kind of land on this
one. I think that also was coordination with FEMA in regards to scope of work and the funding
so they have quite a few borings that were provided to the City. The City after review of kind of
their approach and looking at the sub-soils you know find that as far as soils, or slope
stabilization to meet your standards and what’s expected when you’re doing this type of work.
Our major concern would be the new drainage channel that’s being constructed and the stability
of that with an energy dissipation devices and kind of looking at a 10 year event or some event
that to ensure that that’s installed and corrected. Some of our review regarding the toe of the
slope is recommendations from our report but I know the applicant is kind of confined to what
FEMA and their engineers did on their review and then what Barr Engineering did on their
review as well. One of the other things that was found I believe in one of the soil borings I think
in 2015 or 16 was that there were some contaminated soils that were found. This is kind of one
of those rails to trails trail so it was a railroad at one time so it’s fairly typical to find the type of
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contamination that they did. They quantified that at about I want to say 2,500 cubic yards which
they’re going to haul off site and dispose of at a landfill but I mean borings and a slope stability
analysis was provided.
McGonagill: So when they did that slope stability, I mean if you can just kind of summarize it?
Is it fairly pinned in? Is it, is it fragile? I’m trying to think of the right words because when I
worked this in other areas and you kind of look at it and it says well if they have a really good
saturated it’s going to move you know or it’s not. You know that’s kind of where, that’s where
my question’s going.
Henricksen: Right we, our department after review of their study and their conclusions we found
were reasonable. To get into the I think the nitty gritty of you know they show you their mora
circles and their cohesions and all of that but to get into the nitty gritty of that I would probably
defer that to their engineer as well.
McGonagill: Okay thank you Erick.
Weick: Any thoughts down there on the end Commissioner Tietz. Looks like you might be
brewing something.
Tietz: Just scrolling through…
Weick: Alright. Fair enough. I just have one super minor clarification but on page 5 when
we’re talking about tree height, it’s noted as 6 inches and larger. Should that be 6 feet?
Henricksen: So that’s, DBH is the diameter at breast height so that’s, you’re looking at a 6 inch
diameter tree.
Weick: Diameter, got it.
Henricksen: And it’s a certain distance from the ground and that defines it.
Weick: I was confused on that, thank you very much. Other silly questions from the
commission. Better questions would be even better. Alright with that then thank you Erick and
Bob. Would invite the applicant to come forward and tell us about the project.
Jessica Galatz: Thank you Chair and commission. My name is Jessica Galatz. I work with
Hennepin County, specifically the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority and I’d like to
introduce Brent Turro with Barr Engineering is the project engineer on this.
Brent Turro: Project Manager.
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Jessica Galatz: Project Manager from our engineering consultant. I’m happy to answer any
questions. I think Erick and Bob did a great job explaining this project. As you all know, I don’t
know if any of you are avid trail users but this trail has been closed since 2014. It’s been quite a
rollercoaster ride trying to get it repaired. We worked with FEMA for several years and then one
of the questions from Commissioner McGonagill was who is going to own this property. A
couple years ago we identified a funding program through Met Council and we can sell this
segment of the corridor to Carver County so we’ll sell the corridor to Carver County and then
those proceeds will be used for the project repair. So ultimately.
McGonagill: …Carver County.
Jessica Galatz: Yep everything from the county line to the end of our current ownership in
Chaska. So it’s about 3 miles
McGonagill: Oh okay. So it’s a good section. They’re not just buying this. They’re buying a
lot of it.
Jessica Galatz: Yep and I’ll be honest this has kind of been our goal for a while. I think when
we bought this corridor Carver County didn’t have a regional railroad authority or didn’t have,
wasn’t in place long enough to take on this ownership so we bought the 13 mile long corridor in
one piece in 1990 and now we’re trying to convey it to the county that it’s housed in. So they’ll
be the ultimate owner. We are working with them and the watershed district right now on that
maintenance agreement so we’re all in the know about what the expectations are in the future to
maintain that new drainage channel. I don’t know if anyone else has any questions we could
answer.
McGonagill: Well let’s go back to my question on the slope stability. You know with Barr. It’s
more looks like the subsurface geotechnical that you’re dealing with.
Brent Turro: So you want me to just give you an overview of what we found?
McGonagill: Yeah.
Brent Turro: So in general the embankment is a sandy clay soil. It’s a mix of maybe natural
clay soils or soils that were cut as the rail corridor was built and then used as embankment fill,
particularly in this stretch. Below that is some siltier surface soils but then as you get down into
it it’s mostly sand. So slope stability we assess through looking at different alternatives. One
alternative was to keep the trail grade where it is and move the embankment slopes out required
a lot of fill. It’s ultimately more expensive as well. This concept would require, I shouldn’t say
require. This concept would be to take the trail grade down further and then reduce the slopes.
That improves the slope stability so we did the analysis where we targeted standard factors of
safety for trail embankments along transportation or other infrastructure corridors and our
analysis satisfies those factors of safety. And that’s really the gist of it.
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McGonagill: Okay. I notice they’re using flexi mat. Is that what you’re putting in the drainage
channel?
Brent Turro: Correct.
McGonagill: Yeah I’ve just used that in a previous life. It will stay. It’s a good product. It
doesn’t move.
Brent Turro: Okay, good to hear.
McGonagill: Once you get some growth around it you’re pretty well, you’ll pin it in.
Brent Turro: Okay, yeah good to hear. We considered that and upon recommendation from the
County here they had used on previous projects so.
McGonagill: Yeah I’ve used it on some really bad soils and just give it a couple, you know over
seed it a lot and give it a couple years and you’ll be good.
Brent Turro: Well that’s good to hear.
Weick: We’ll have to leave that note for Carver County.
McGonagill: There you go.
Weick: Is the trail fenced at all in that area to keep people on the trail?
Jessica Galatz: Yes I believe when the trail was built it had a fence running along both sides
because both sides of the trail are pretty steep in that area.
Weick: Okay.
Jessica Galatz: And those are still in place although at the specific location of the south failure
not all the posts are still in place.
Weick: Okay.
Jessica Galatz: And then we’ve added fencing at both ends of where we’ve closed the trail to
fence it off from public use.
Weick: Right. So that fence will be repaired then and reinstated.
Jessica Galatz: Certainly, yep.
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Weick: Okay.
Jessica Galatz: So there will be some repair to the trail as part of this project. There was damage
to the trail in the 2014 storm event and then just over the last almost 6 years of not getting in
there to maintain the trail regularly nature has kind of taken back so that will be included in the
project.
Weick: Okay. Good down there? Questions. Okay well thank you very much and thank you
for helping us understand the project a little more.
Jessica Galatz: Okay.
Weick: With that I will open the public hearing portion of tonight’s event. Anyone wishing to
come forward please do so at this time. And seeing nobody come forward I will close the public
hearing and open the item for Commissioner discussion. Seems to me you know hallelujah, this
is one of those where.
Randall: It’s very well planned out.
Weick: Yeah.
Randall: It’s obviously engineered well and they know what they need to do so.
Weick: Yeah it will be nice to have this open.
Tietz: Having biked that for many years I’m looking to it getting back into shape. It was such a
beautiful trail down to Chaska and some of those overlooks were spectacular down at the bottom
so it will be good to get it back.
Weick: I certainly would entertain a motion if there was no further discussion on the item.
Tietz: I’ll make a motion.
Weick: Thank you.
Tietz: The Chanhassen Planning Commission recommends the City Council approve the Interim
Use Permit Planning Case 2020-01 to permit grading, excavation and slope restoration as
proposed in the plans prepared by Barr Engineering Company dated 12-13-2019 subject to the
conditions of approval an adopt the Findings of Fact and Recommendation.
Weick: Thank you Commissioner Tietz. We have a valid motion. Do we have a second?
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McGonagill: I’ll second it.
Weick: We have a second from Commissioner McGonagill. Any interim discussion before we
vote? Seeing and hearing none.
Tietz moved, McGonagill seconded that the Chanhassen Planning Commission
recommends the City Council approve the Interim Use Permit, Planning Case 2020-01 to
permit grading, excavation and slope restoration as proposed on the plans prepared by
Barr Engineering Co., dated 12/13/2019, subject to the Conditions of Approval and
adoption of the Findings of Fact and Recommendation.
1. The interim use permit shall be approved for a period of two (2) years from the date of City
Council approval. The applicant will need to request a formal extension 60 days prior to the
expiration date of the interim use permit.
2. Permits from the appropriate regulatory agency must be obtained; including but not limited
to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Lower Minnesota River Watershed District and
Carver County.
3. The applicant must provide the city with a cash escrow or letter of credit in the amount of
110% of the construction costs for the appropriate phase of the grading operations to
guarantee erosion control measures, site restoration, and compliance with the interim use
permit.
4. Documentation and/or load tickets from the approved waste disposal facility where
contaminated soils will be disposed of shall be provided to the city.
5. All required ROW permits, access agreements, and temporary construction easements shall
be secured prior to the commencement of any construction activities.
6. All oversize/overweight loads leaving the site to the east must apply for County
Transportation OS/OW trip permits.
7. Permitted hours of operation will be 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, and
9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday with no work permitted on Sunday or legal holidays.
8. If any excess material is hauled to another site in Chanhassen, a separate grading permit will
be required for the other property.
9. The applicant shall schedule a walk-through of the site with city staff to review boundary
staking and removals of edge trees prior to any activity commencing.
10. The applicant shall identify conservation easement boundary on site. Vegetation within the
easement may not be irrevocably damaged by construction activities. If irrevocable damage
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is caused, the applicant shall be responsible for replacement plantings at a rate of 2:1
diameter inches.
11. Applicant shall report tree removal quantities to the city.
12. Upon completion of the installation of initial erosion control measures, the contractor shall
contact the city’s Engineering Department (Ryan Pinkalla, 952-227-1173) for an initial
erosion control inspection prior to grading operations.
13. HDPE pipe installed shall be furnished with tracer wire meeting the City of Chanhassen’s
Standard Specifications.
14. The applicant shall submit hydraulic design calculations and follow-up analysis for the newly
proposed stormwater conveyance system, including analysis for riprap stilling basins and
rock check dams as energy dissipaters.
15. One hundred percent (100%) construction plans shall be provided for review and approval
prior to commencement of any construction activities.
16. The applicant shall enter into maintenance agreements with the city and/or Lower Minnesota
River Watershed District to ensure maintenance responsibilities and ownership are the
responsibility of the HCRRA or their designee, in perpetuity, prior to commencement of any
construction activities.
17. The applicant shall provide further justification to the wetlands being impacted being
incidental. This can be accomplished through the WCA permit process that is currently
underway.
All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 6 to 0.
Weick: The motion passes unanimously 6 to 0.
McGonagill: Get her done.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Commissioner Skistad noted the verbatim and summary
Minutes of the Planning Commission dated December 3, 2019 as presented.
ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENTATIONS.
CITY COUNCIL ACTION UPDATE.
Aanenson: Thank you. Since we haven’t met since the last meeting was December 9th. The last
time the City Council met of last year so I’ll kind of give you an update on that. The City
Council did grant Avienda an extension of their grading plat permit. We do have a meeting set
up here in the next week to meet with them and see where they’re at and get things rolling. I
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know Erick Henricksen’s been working hard on their grading permit so kind of see where we’re
at with that whole status so the goal was, previously was you know we extinguished the plat with
the City Council. Just granted them preliminary plat and they were grading under the
preliminary plat with securities in place so it’s still our intention now, then come back through
the process and amending the PUD as I mentioned before. They moved some things internally
around so hopefully they’ve indicated, so they got a 6 month extension so we’re hoping that the
grading permit can be worked on here pretty quickly. The amendments to the city code that you
looked at last year were approved and then also the adopted the new development fees. That’s
always done at the last meeting of the year. So then on Monday the 15th the Bluff Creek Partners
came. I know I was asked by somebody about this project. So that’s a piece of property that’s
across from the Church of the Living, is that the name of the church? Bluff Creek Partners and
it’s kind of the town, office townhouse project right there on Highway 5. And they want to do
multi-family. They presented that to the City Council. 30 units an acre so we’ll be giving some
recommendations that maybe just come through on concept. We don’t have that high of a
zoning district except in the regional commercial and the Avienda project. Those are also kind
of central specific attributes of those district so they’d have to amend the PUD because that’s an
existing PUD. It’s an industrial park so they’d have to change the land use so kind of
sequentially what I suggested to them is if they just want to come through concept and see before
they, because the concept does as you know under the PUD show plans and you’d have to do a
lot of civil engineering so we take that approach and then by then because we make any
amendments to our comp plan until it gets approved which we’re anticipating the approving that
tomorrow night and then going to the first meeting in February and we’ll show with you some of
those, the minor tweaks that were made too so that was the discussion last Monday night so
that’s kind, I have given them some, kind of a course or a path to follow so we’ll see what their
response is with that.
McGonagill: Do you think that would show up on our plates here?
Aanenson: I’m not sure what they’re going to do. If it came through a concept yes. Then we
hold a public hearing on the concept.
McGonagill: But when do you think in the summer?
Aanenson: I think they were interested in doing it rather quickly so yeah. So the concept would
happen quickly. Then we have to do all the civil engineering and the detail work. It would
probably be much later, yes.
McGonagill: Okay.
Aanenson: We’re in, it’s complicated because they’re next to a tributary so you’re in the
shoreland district. There’s height requirements. There’s just a lot, there’s soil type issues there
so just a lot of complications on that one too so I’m trying to navigate all that so we’ll see. We’ll
see what path they choose there. And then they also out there they also approved what you
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looked at the Minnewashta Parkway. That’s the Boylan Shores, that subdivision was also
approved so that was next so we had those two, I think you had a little bit of angst about the non-
street connection there so that one’s going forward so that’s it. I think if it’s okay I’ll just take a
couple minutes and some things that are coming up. So our next meeting which would be the
first one in February, we have on that schedule the Moments Senior Housing and that one also is
kind of in the shoreland district so it’s incumbent with a lot of things there regarding wetlands.
So it’s just south or to the, well it’s straight across from Audubon Road next to Lake Ann Park. I
think we talked about that one so it’s like approximately 40 units of senior. So it’s a great
project. It’s nice architecture. It’s just trying to get the feet on the right so we’ll have some
recommendations so that should be on your next meeting. And then also Commissioner
McGonagill we talked about, he gave a good suggestion where we have some gaps. I think the
last year we were so busy with comp plan we didn’t put other projects on there but we’ll be
sharing with you some projects the engineering so George will be sharing with you the Lyman
Boulevard crossing. What they’re going to be doing. The new construction of Lyman
Boulevard going out to Chaska. There’ll be a couple roundabouts there so be sharing that with
you and then also there’s a ped crossing, some flashing lights going on at Lake Lucy so he’ll
explain both those projects to you too. So then we do anticipate maybe one or two things
coming in. Chapel Hill coming in for a variance on their electronic message center. We’re
waiting to see if…ready to come in on that meeting or not because we have a gap then on March
3rd because March 3rd is the.
Walters: State primaries.
Aanenson: State primaries. I want to say caucus. The State primary so we not have a meeting
that night on March 3rd so we’re trying to get some projects either side of that and somewhere in
there you might see the concept PUD. You might see Avienda coming back but somewhere in
there we’ll see where those land. There’s a couple other things that are floating out there but
none of those are you know, come to fruition yet. We’ve got a couple meetings set up. We’ll see
if some of these other projects take off but as far as what’s public right now that’s what we
know. So yes.
Tietz: It’s kind of interesting when you talk about timing and timing for Avienda.
Aanenson: Yeah.
Tietz: And how long that’s been in the process because you know at one time the Vikings were
considering that site and they were considering the site in Eagan and if you see what’s been
happening in Eagan compared to Avienda, somebody’s moving quite quickly.
Aanenson: Yes.
Tietz: In Eagan.
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
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Aanenson: Yes I get emails all the time. I got one yesterday from someone and I unfortunately
can’t control all that but yes.
Tietz: Yeah.
Aanenson: So it’d be nice to get that going which made me think of something else. I know
Commissioner Reeder’s given me a couple dates that he’s going to be gone. I know people do
spring traveling and so I just if you’re going to be gone if you give us a heads up on that. I know
he said he’d be gone February 4th through March 3rd. You’d be missing that one and we don’t
have a meeting March 3rd so, so if anybody knows of those if you want to just email me ahead of
time so I’d rather do that than frantically call the night of the meeting so that would be great. So
that’s all I have for upcoming meetings.
Weick: Okay.
LOT COVER OVERVIEW.
Weick: Are we covering the lot.
Aanenson: Yeah. MacKenzie’s going to…because that was suggested. That’s kind of our
looking at long term projects and just informational questions so that was brought up by
Commissioner Skistad so we thought we’d just kind of give an overview on that.
Weick: Okay.
Walters: Yep so.
Weick: We’re still on the clock right? This is not a.
Aanenson: Well it’s supposed to be work session. Somehow it didn’t get on the agenda
correctly so.
Weick: We’ll just leave it open?
Aanenson: Yeah.
Weick: Okay.
Walters: So how I’d like to handle this is I’ve put together a very, very brief power point just
kind of highlighting four of the key ideas in the briefing I wrote up and included in your agenda.
I’ll kind of blaze through them and then I’d be happy to ask any questions you have. Answer
any questions you have or go into as much or as little depth as you want. If you felt the report
covered everything well and don’t have any questions that’s okay too. I won’t be hurt so first off
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
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I just wanted to frame what the City considers lot cover. Basically how I always explain it to
citizens on the phone is lot cover is anything that’s going to stop water from hitting the ground
and then I go into the two exemptions I mentioned which is that decks with gaps that are over the
top of grass or soils or landscaping is exempted from lot cover calculations as is the water
portion of swimming pools. But within lot cover we then have, I saw a look there. The reason
why we exempt the water portion of swimming pools is because they’re typically filled with
about a 6 inch excess storage capacity and in theory that allows any water that’s hitting the pool
to be stored instead of running off onto the property. I realize that that theory is sometimes
challenged by the existence of pool covers but that’s been the City’s policy.
Weick: Well explained, thank you.
Walters: Thank you. Within lot cover we break it up into two broad categories. Impervious
surfaces and pervious pavements and we’ll talk a little bit more about pervious pavements later
on in this but impervious surfaces are your asphalts, your concrete, your roofs, the things that
absolutely prevent the water from getting down to the soil. So the next question was how much
lot cover is allowed. We basically use lot cover to help provide an expectation for how intensely
a piece of land can be developed and the table to the side here gives a range of what our different
land use categories will allow in terms of the amount of acreage that can be covered by structures
and improvements of that nature and you’ll see it, you know the residential it varies from 20
percent in our large lot districts with a lot clustering kind of that 25 to 50 percent range and then
we allow much higher intensity of use with office industrial and commercial. That’s partially
due to just the realities of the size of those buildings and the parking facilities they need as well
as the fact that those type of users tend to have the finances and technical expertise to do stuff
like underground storage systems. You know dedicate portions for stormwater ponds and have
infrastructure like that that can absorb stormwater runoff and control rate and flow to city
standards whereas your typical residential homeowner is not going to have that ability or
capacity, nor necessarily want those features on their yard. One thing I will note is we have two
kind of…districts. The Business Fringe. That’s the unsewered area at the bottom of the Y is
limited to 40 percent lot cover and that’s to reflect the fact that it does not have the same type of
infrastructure as the part of the city that is developed. And then the Central Business District has
no lot cover limit and that is it’s intention to be denser, more urban development pattern within
the city. I promised a little bit more on pervious pavers so in 2000 and oh boy was it, it was the
beginning of 2018 I think when we got, finally finished our research and passed the pervious
paver ordinance and what the City had decided was properties zoned residential single family,
those are the ones in yellow on this map, located out of the shoreland district. So that’s 1,000
feet from any lake or 300 feet from any stream would be allowed to have basically an extra 5
percent lot cover as long as they used an engineered paver system that met city standards. So
that’s what we got into a little bit when we amended that to defer to the Interlocking Concrete
Paver Institute’s design standards instead of city design plate a couple weeks ago. That kind of
spurred this conversation. So essentially the City said if you design a system that can
demonstrate to us it will allow for the infiltration of stormwater and you’re not in one of these
ecologically sensitive regions near a lake you could have higher lot coverage in this district. Just
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
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as note any property in the city can choose to use pervious pavers but it’s only exempted from
the lot cover calculations for the properties in yellow here that are outside of the gray area.
Weick: I just can’t read, what are the yellow? What is the yellow?
Walters: Sorry I went kind of fast on that and used acronyms. That’s the residential single
family district. So that is the largest of our single, detached single family housing districts. So
we have, you know the residential single family is your kind of typical suburban land use pattern.
15,000 square foot lots that a lot of the city was designed around. Those tend to be some of the
older areas in the city that had the most issues with either sub-standard lots or things having been
built up you know over 20 or 30 years of occupancy and new homeowners really struggling to
make improvements on their property. So that was a zoning district that staff identified as being
the most likely to be able to benefit from having the increased lot cover. This is also the district
that anecdotally we had noticed the most variance requests coming in from.
Weick: So if it’s not yellow on this map it is not a residential single family zoned area?
Walters: Correct. Now that doesn’t mean it’s not detached single family. For instance we have
the residential low and medium district which is Fox Woods is an example of that. We also have
residential PUD’s like The Park. One of the reasons why we didn’t extend this to those districts
is the city code allows planned unit developments to go up to 30 percent lot cover anyways so we
felt that by allowing the RSF, the residential single family district that was at 25 percent to go up
to that 30 percent we were evening the playing fields. Also a lot of the planned, please cut me
off if I begin, this is what I do day in and day out so I can really get going.
Skistad: Can you make the map bigger?
Walters: You know I’m sorry. I should have thought to just put it on one slide so it’d be a lot
more visible. I can email you all a full sized copy of the map if you’d like after this just so you
have it for your reference. But what I was saying is the other thing you’ll see with PUD’s, I
attached a breakdown of the lot cover allowed in every PUD-R. So PUD residential in the city to
the staff report I gave you and you’ll notice a lot of them say 30 percent spread out over district.
So what we did there is we’d allow them to take, similar to what The Park did, you know a
section of upland that they are preserving. Take the lot cover that ordinarily could have gone
there and spread it out over the other houses and we usually cap that and have a hard limit built
into the PUD so we know they’re not going over that 30 percent. But again because that had
been finely calculated and because in those areas the stormwater infrastructure was designed to
deal with that we didn’t feel comfortable messing with that on a global blanket and felt if there
were rare cases where exemptions were needed the variance process would be more appropriate.
RLM district is a similar mindset with a base 35 percent lot cover allowed but in exchange they
have to dedicate significant amounts of upland to be preserved and we kind of reallocate that to
make up for the increased lot cover elsewhere.
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Aanenson: I just want to add to that. So if you look at the zoning district that’s the most fluid it
would be residential single family. Most people that move into a townhouse or a PUD that’s
besides the RLM where they may want to add a three season porch, those are the people that are
usually adding on. Adding additional garage space. Adding on another bedroom so those are
really when looking at the whole process of where the most flexibility should be is over there
because people have kind of bought into these existing neighborhoods as MacKenzie said that
have already got the double dip. You know they’ve already got the benefit of a smaller lot.
More hard cover with the benefit of some open space attached to it so that was kind of the mad
science if I may be.
Weick: Perfect thanks.
Walters: So with that I’ll go onto just the last one. So one of the things that you know brought
up the entire discussion with the Planning Commission and City Council over the last couple
years of looking into pervious pavers was the realization that one of the more common variances
requests we receive is for increased lot cover. So when we get these in making our staff
recommendation I just quick broke down what staff zeros in on when we try to determine
whether or not you know we think it’s in line with the criteria required to find in favor of
granting a variance. We do really look at the surrounding area stormwater infrastructure and try
to determine you know if this is an area that’s going to be really sensitive to increased lot cover.
If there’s a history of flooding and stormwater management and we do factor that into our
recommendation if we know there are major ongoing issues. Also the weird balance act of how
much lot cover is being proposed and that’s both in terms of absolute and relative terms. So if
you remember we had a variance a while back where an individual was asking for, I believe it
worked out to about an 8 percent lot cover variance which in relative terms if quite a bit but
because the parcel was so very small it really only worked out to about 500 square feet and so we
do weigh both those factors. The relative in terms of trying to make sure like properties are
treated like and looking at overall neighborhood context and aesthetics as well as how much
Impact will this have on the environment. You know in theory a 5 acre parcel could request a
half percent lot cover variance that would have a much greater impact in terms of impervious
surface generated because the absolute number would be very large even though percentage wise
it’d be a 20.5 percent variance or whatever it may be. We also always try to find ways for the
homeowner to mitigate the impact of the increased lot cover be it through the use of rain gardens,
rain barrels or pervious pavements and you’ll see that in a lot of conditions. I also should have
put buffers in there because I know we’ve started requiring those within the shoreland. So you
know kind of a take home is we do realize that no one lot cover variance is likely to break a
neighborhood stormwater infrastructure but we do try to mindful of the cumulative impact within
a neighborhood and balancing the overall impact of these small decisions and how they can add
up. So just thought it might be helpful to give you a little insight into our thought process as we
write our reports. That being said I can talk about this at quite some length so let me know.
McGonagill: Well first thanks for putting this together.
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Walters: My pleasure.
McGonagill: It’s good to have.
Weick: Perfect.
Skistad: How do they decide overall what their requirements are for based on different
properties? Is that just an arbitrary state number?
Walters: No. It gets complicated and those numbers have changed over time. I know you’ve
been interested in that and I tried to do some research. I tracked it back to I believe it was
1977ish DNR guidelines. I might be wrong on the year but it was mid 70’s and they’d been
advocating for a 30 percent in the shoreland. I again I obviously wasn’t at staff at the time and
not everything’s well documented. A lot of it came down to the City does have a large amount
of aquatic resources and I believe that was used kind of as the benchmark for what a low density
residential should have on the maximum. I will say you know now that additional research has
came out DNR says for impaired waterways anything over 10 percent has markedly negative
impacts but you know obviously it’d be very, very hard for us to now go back and tell a bunch of
people that oh sorry, we know you said you could have 25 percent but you need to cut your
house in half so some of these numbers get sticky. Once you start using the guideline you
initially adopt it creates your neighborhood benchmark and you tend to then work around that for
what’s considered acceptable. It also then becomes what you engineer your systems around. So
you know when whatever planner was sitting there and got that DNR guideline and said okay,
you know 25 to 30 percent is where we want to be. We then began engineering our stormwater
systems to accommodate that so again it’s very difficult to move significantly beyond that
because your systems are not designed to handle higher amounts, if that helped at all.
Skistad: Yeah. It makes sense. But when you say your system, you mean like the actual size of
the pipes running under the streets is that what you’re?
Walters: It’s on the ponding. The stormwater ponds.
Aanenson: So I would say too if you look at the overall percentages, those percentages have
been historically with the city since they created the city code. They haven’t changed much so
again kind of the background for the residential which is the biggest part of the city at the time so
as MacKenzie said you have a lot more, when you do the commercial those are typically now
people can afford, or commercial ones can afford to accommodate it on site. There’s more land.
They’re putting in the parking lots. All kinds of things like that so that’s the difference.
Residential when you’re doing individual lots or the older area that doesn’t have it so this is one
of the things that kind of got us hung up in our comp plan approval. We were doing you know I
and I of, because this is a big issue going on at the City Council right now where we have
penetration when we get super rain events that’s going into our stormwater and then it’s being
treated into the sanitary sewer it’s being treated as sewage so they’re trying to get so that bumps
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
19
up, build a bigger system to manage that so we’re trying to back that out so that’s one of the
things that got us hung up at the Met Council. They wanted more details on how we’re
managing our I and I so they’re all related to each other so what we’re trying to do is hold more
of the water on people’s property which means that you have more green space or you have the
facilities to accommodate it so we’re kind of taking baby steps as MacKenzie said, moving into
the pervious pavers, those sort of things to see if they’re working and so we’re trying to find
other solutions like people doing rain gardens or buffers, things that we know work so there’s
we call hardscape and softscape kind of techniques so those are things that we’re learning as we
go but the number of percentage hasn’t really changed that much.
Skistad: So is our sewage treatment an issue at this point?
Aanenson: No. Well they’re working on it right now. There’s a couple areas that, I wish Erick
was still here. There’s a couple areas that they presented this to, at the work session last Monday
night to the City Council. A specialized study looking at where the problems are like for they’re
going through an relining pipes. The Met Council is. They’re spending some on their pipes too
so if you look at their pipe that runs through the property that’s now in the city, that wetland
they’re fixing that pipe for leaks that’s kind of sitting under water right now. They did the one
over by Audubon all the way out to West 78th. They just lined that one but then we also have to
line some of our pipes every year so part of what they’re looking at is the downtown area. That
there’s a lot of leakage there and they’re wondering that when they do small stuff like if
someone’s putting in a utility for something else, maybe a street light or something like that and
they hit, if they hit some of those or there might be some penetration so that’s what they’re trying
to do is go through those and fix those up so we don’t have, it’s mostly noticeable when there’s a
big rain event then they can spike the monitoring of those sites.
Skistad: Like bumps for E.coli or something?
Aanenson: Correct yeah. No just that there’s more flow going through and because it’s going
into the sanitary sewer as opposed to the storm sewer so those are the things we’re trying to fix.
Separating those two.
Generous: Part of the study is looking at the individual homes contribution to that inflow and
infiltration.
Aanenson: Some of the older homes. Some people hooked their stormwater into the sanitary
sewer.
Walters: Because it then goes away.
Aanenson: Then it goes away and it’s not in your yard and so those are some of the things that
council’s now been looking at. What’s the best way to address this problem and try to, because
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
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the City it’s part of our tax. You have to pay for that. We get charged for treating it so we’re
just trying to reduce that treatment so.
Weick: And do the homeowners get charged on that volume then?
Aanenson: No. You get a sewer fee on your utility bill.
Weick: Is based with volume?
Generous: No based on the water usage you have.
Weick: Usage but now dumpage.
Generous: ….no.
Weick: Because if it rains more we don’t get charged more.
Generous: No.
Aanenson: No.
Weick: Because there are communities that do that.
Generous: The City gets charged.
Aanenson: The City gets charged for it. We don’t turn around and charge you.
Weick: Okay got it.
Aanenson: But they’re trying to reduce that gap. If it’s a million or two they’re trying to reduce
that gap.
Skistad: I would like to have that just for my own knowledge.
Aanenson: The what?
Skistad: The report that was done just to give me a greater understanding.
Aanenson: Sure.
Generous: Again that leads into what we’re going to talk about for our work program. That
could be a good presentation.
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
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Aanenson: Yeah so George is one that made that to the City Council so he’ll be here next week
so maybe he can add that to his.
Skistad: Okay.
Tietz: MacKenzie, I had a question. On your attachments it’s the permitted lot coverage by
zone district. That green sheet. At least it shows green on mine. Is that what we currently have?
Walters: Yeah, you’re taking about permitted lot coverage by zoning district correct?
Tietz: Right, right.
Walters: Yes, these are the current maximum lot coverage established by the city code for every
zoning district.
Tietz: So do we have a, is there a gap when you look at single, well the two single families. If
it’s 15,000 square feet it’s 30 percent. If it’s 9,000 square feet it’s 35 percent. Is there a gray
area between 9,000 and 15,000 or does that assume that it’s all 35 percent? And we’ve dealt
with this before I know when we look at lots but is that, how should I?
Walters: So it depends on the zoning. So if you’re all, for instance Fox Woods a great example.
Tietz: Yeah.
Walters: Some of the lots are close to that 9,000 square feet. They get 35 percent of 9,000.
Some of Fox Woods lots are in the 15,000 square feet and they get 35 percent of that. Within the
RSF unfortunately we have some legacy properties you know that have 6,000 square feet lots
and they’re then capped to the 30 percent max lot coverage. 25 percent of which impervious so
whatever zone you’re in establishes your percentage cap and your lot area assuming the lot meets
zoning code will be at that minimum but it may be significantly larger.
Tietz: Larger okay.
Walters: Yep.
Aanenson: And just to back up on that too. The only way you can get that zoning is you’re
providing a significant of preservation area so that’s the offset.
Tietz: That’s the offset.
Aanenson: Yeah that’s the offset so again you’re still, as MacKenzie explained it’s still kind of
the same number. It’s just that, and those again tend to be the less flexible lots. People typically
when you buy that kind of lot except for I would say Fox Woods is the anomaly.
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
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Walters: An exception.
Aanenson: But yeah so now they preserved all that woods behind there and that’s what the
offset is.
Tietz: Okay thanks.
Skistad: Okay so that’s like a lot of the areas they have, not only do they have woods but they
also have all the parkland, does that count?
Aanenson: Yeah.
Walters: Exactly. A lot of the PUD’s that was the theory. You know they gave them maybe
10,000 square foot lots with 30 percent lot cover but you had a really nice neighborhood park
and the idea was that was the public green space and that made up for not having as much green
space in your lawn.
Skistad: Okay.
Aanenson: So when we present those projects to you we explain to you what you’re getting and
giving and that’s part of your job is to decide, does that seem to offset. That’s part of your
challenge when you’re having the public hearing, is this the right application on the zoning
district.
Walters: Well thank you very much for your attention.
Weick: That’s all of it?
Aanenson: That’s it.
Walters: I tried to keep it quick.
Weick: Oh okay. I thought there was more on that.
2019 YEAR IN REVIEW AND 2020 WORK PLAN.
Generous: The last thing is our 2019 year in review and 2020 work program.
Weick: Yes.
Generous: And we’re required by city code to present a work program to the City Council for
the upcoming year. We start out by looking at what we did last year and so this is a little
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
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flashback on what we did but I’d like to start out, this is a census year and so they’re going to
have the census April 1st. They’re going to count everyone in the community. I’ve made my
estimate already and it’s 27,170. So it’s always good because this is one time that I get to check
on it. I actually had a range, it was 26,822 to 27,170 and I took the upper one. But this counts
on the revenue being 95 percent… Fortunately they don’t have as high a person per household.
It’s the single family homes that actually go into that and it’s, it’s based on building permit
activity through this last year, 2019 so. Okay. In 2019 the Planning Commission reviewed 16
planning cases of which there were subdivisions, interim use permits. There was a whole lot of
other things embedded with that so you’d have, if you looked at one of the tables we had, I didn’t
put a good presentation together because most people fall asleep when I put all my spreadsheets
up but I did put the information in there if you’d like so that’s good. The majority of the
applications, all the big projects were really the year before and we were last year doing a lot of
building permit activity. We had Holasek Business Park was approved in 2018 but it was a 2019
project for construction standpoint. Residential development really slowed down this past year.
We had all our building permit activity with the apartments the year before that so those, the
Venue was under construction. Riley Crossing was under construction. We do have one, we’re
working on a couple multi-family projects and you’ll see Moments is the most recent one or the
one that will be the first in line. That’s s 48 room senior project I believe it is. They don’t have
actually dwelling units. It’s a common facility so.
Skistad: Where is that one again?
Generous: That’s on Audubon and West 78th Street.
Skistad: Okay.
Generous: Right on the north side there next to the city park. In 2019 we issued building
permits for 58 dwelling units. Again that’s down. We had projected 200 for the year so we
thought that we might get one, an additional multi-family in there but that didn’t happen which
like I said we were talking to a lot of people and as this year comes up you might see a couple, at
least one more apartment building. Maybe two and again there’s the PUD amendment that
you’ll be looking at that may incorporate what is it, 300 units and 200 units so that would hit my
target in one fell swoop so. So yeah we anticipate about the same number of planning cases for
2020 as we had last year. Again the big one would be Avienda coming back. We believe
they’re going to amend their PUD. And they may do the replat it. I don’t know. They’re
switching a lot of things and Kate’s been working on that with their engineering department so.
For 2020 again most of these, The Park development was approved last year and so they’re
coming in for their second phase of the development. Another 50 units so I think we’re up to
105 units that we’ll have which is very good because that brings us up to a number of the vested
dwelling units that would meet our target if we could have them all built in one year.
Weick: Which one’s The Park?
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Generous: It’s Prince’s old property.
Weick: Oh, The Park.
Generous: The Park I’m sorry.
Weick: I got it. I got it.
Generous: You know we got that great park facility there and they’re working on the parks
commission are working on that an the plans for the development of that.
Skistad: So they sold more of their lots then, is that what you’re saying?
Generous: Yeah they’re platting them. They’re flying out the door. It seems like there’s a big
demand for that development.
Weick: And building right?
Aanenson: Yeah. They have limited, they can’t occupy them. They can just, they can construct
so they’re constructing some of them.
Weick: They should go over to Avienda. They’d move some ground for them.
Generous: Well that’s our hope that Avienda, like I said Avienda’s a big one that should be
going forward and with that we should have, in conjunction with that all the lots that come in
will have to go through the site plan review process though. We anticipate there’ll be residential
be the first components that come in but there may be some commercial development also with
that. The connection to Bluff Creek Boulevard will be a big opening for that part of the
community. It will allow people that are west of that to drive right to the freeway instead of
having to go down to Pioneer all the way around and come back up on Lyman to get there so that
will be a very welcomed thing for the residents down there. And also it will be a nice component
for the community. It provides another opportunity for shopping and place making, a place to go
so. Again the city code, the big code amendments that we’ll come up with in 2020, with our new
water resource person is all the stormwater and local water management ordinances. Any
wetland ordinances. We have to, the watershed districts have been revising their rules and so
we’ll have to make sure that we’re all in conformance with that and so you’ll see, those will be a
lot of the code amendments. MacKenzie has a whole list of amendments that we’ve been
looking at with the code. Small fixes that have to be put into code and clean up’s and so getting
those all done. The big thing as Kate mentioned our comp plan is scheduled for the Met Council
to approve it or find it in conformance with the 2040 plan tomorrow so we went 2 weeks ago we
went to the community development committee. Last week it went to the environmental
committee and tomorrow it goes to the Met Council itself and once they have it, they’ll send out
a notice to us. We’re hoping to bring it to City Council the first meeting in February for
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
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adoption and put it into effect so. Once we have that in place we send it all back to them in the
final format copy and as part of our work program for 2020 we want to go through, Kate noted
that there were a lot of changes and additions that we made to the comp plan to meet all their
requirements and so we’d like the Planning Commission to be made aware of that.
Aanenson: Let’s rephrase that. There wasn’t a lot of changes. It was how we presented the
data.
Generous: Right.
Aanenson: Yeah so it was, and actually because it took a year and a half we had to modify some
of it but it was just how they wanted it presented which I think was different.
Generous: They requested additional information. Like Kate said the I and I was a big thing that
they kept holding us back on and they wanted to know all the programs in the city did and so we
sent them the reports that we’ve sent them in the past and they said we’ve been spending about
$200,000 a year on I and I.
Skistad: What’s I and I?
Generous: Infill and infiltration into the sanitary sewer system.
Skistad: Okay.
Generous: And so we also said that we were doing a study to look at the residential impacts on
that. How the individual connections to our sewer system were impacting our sanitary sewer
flows. Because the preliminary data that they found was that there are some residential areas
that do, during peak rain events were having higher flows as metered by, in our Met Council
metering system so we’ll look at that and what specifically the City can do and residents can do
to eliminate that or reduce that impact. And again reduce the amount of water we’re sending to
the Blue Lake Treatment Facility.
Aanenson: So I just want to not get too deep in the weeds here so, it has a cumulative effect so
every city’s, they’re not accommodating for all these spike it causes them a problem because
they’re managing that system metro wide. The 7 counties so that’s their objective is to making
sure that they eliminate just like we try to eliminate in a budget where you have spikes and down
turns so they’re trying to kind of even that out and if there’s things that the individual
communities that have more of those problems that they try to reduce those problems so we were
identified as one that should be trying to reduce our’s so there’s a lot of, I think we even had to
do I and I by watershed districts. What did we have to do by watershed districts? There’s just a
lot of minutia detail that really we haven’t had to do before so.
McGonagill: How did you reduce it outside of education?
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
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Aanenson: Well that’s what was presented to the City Council on Monday night so that’s what I
said again we’ll have George when he’s here he can go through.
McGonagill: Okay.
Aanenson: The council hasn’t decided yet. They just listened to the study. That’s something
that’s on their work plan. One of the initiatives they want to take so…
McGonagill: Alright.
Generous: And as we said, and so finally part of the work program that we’re proposing is to do
that long range planning when we have an opportunity to bring different items back to you.
Demographic and statistic information especially with the census coming out we may get some
preliminary numbers from them yet this year. Sustainable development, next year’s
development. You’ll see that with Avienda with any revisions they make to the PUD. Senior
friendly development items. We may have, we’re leading the pack if you will on that in Carver
County and so we may have some presentations that they can come in and just discuss so that the
Planning Commission is aware of what’s going on and what are the issues that the seniors have
in our community. We will have another joint tour late summer.
Aanenson: Back by popular demand.
Generous: So hopefully we’ll bring mosquito spray too.
McGonagill: What about having a bicycle tour…
Generous: We can poll people to see who’s interested but yeah that might be interesting. Maybe
when the river trail’s redone that would be a good place to go.
McGonagill: That’s what I was thinking.
Generous: So that’s what we’re proposing or prepared for the Planning Commission as a work
program. If there are anything additionally you’d like us to add to that just let us know. Send it
over to Kate and we’ll include this and then we’ll submit this all to City Council and then
probably with your joint meeting.
Aanenson: Yeah so I say typically we put this out with your joint meeting in March we put this
report so the council can see kind of what the main projects that we’ve done.
McGonagill: Kate is the other committees, commissions like economic commission we have
now and parks commission, do they have work plans like this?
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
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Aanenson: Our’s is more prescriptive in the city code but they do, each of those commissions do
have a work plan that they share with the City Council because our plan’s a little bit different.
Our’s is more reactive you know except for when we look at the long range planning items that
we’re looking at. Maybe it’s other commissions so for example Bob mentioned senior friendly
so they’ve got the dementia. They’ve been working in that is a big initiative. This is the senior
commission. They also want to look at you know housing types so they’ve kind of asked us to
maybe kind of you know we work together with that so and it might take, have them come
educate some of the things that they’re interested when we look at housing projects.
McGonagill: If I can make a suggestion. Maybe just some time staff can just come in with a
summary of this is the key points that each of these commissions are doing.
Aanenson: Absolutely.
McGonagill: I don’t think they need to trot in here. They just say this is where they’re pushing
and we’ll go okay.
Aanenson: Yeah and most of them are working on right now, the Economic Development
Commission is working on their list and I’ll be sharing it with them in March so I think after
everybody’s gone that route with the City Council and kind of got their yes we’re going down
this path and I’d be happy to collect all those and share them with you so yeah. I think it’s
helpful too when we do the tour it’s nice to know what’s on the mind of the other commissions
too.
McGonagill: Correct, thank you.
Aanenson: Thank you.
Skistad: So is that Moments senior housing that’s a memory care of some kind?
Aanenson: It’s kind of like Beehive if you think about, it’s more they have their own room but
they eat collectively and yeah, kind of like a living room kind of setting yep so.
Weick: Are there other presentations or?
Aanenson: That’s it.
Weick: That is it. We skipped over if there were any commissioner presentations we can
certainly hear those now or comments. If not I guess we would entertain a motion to adjourn.
McGonagill: I want to stay here.
Weick: Okay.
Chanhassen Planning Commission – January 21, 2020
28
Skistad: I’ll offer a motion to adjourn.
Weick: We have a motion, do we have a second?
Tietz: Second.
Skistad moved, Tietz seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion
carried unanimously with a vote of 6 to 0. The Planning Commission meeting was
adjourned at 8:15 p.m.
Submitted by Kate Aanenson
Community Development Director
Prepared by Nann Opheim