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1986 10 22 PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES REGULAR MEETING OCTOBER 22, 1986 4Itchairman Conrad called the meeting to order at 7:40 p.m.. MEMBERS PRESENT Tim Erhart, Steven Emmings, Robert Siegel, Ladd Conrad, and David Headla MEMBERS ABSENT Howard Noziska and James Wildermuth STAFF PRESENT Barbara Dacy, City Planner; Jo Ann Olsen, Asst. City Planner; Todd Gerhardt, Planning Intern; and Bill Engelhardt, Acting City Engineer. PUBLIC HEARING: T.F. JAMES COMPANY - LOCATED AT THE NORTHWEST CORNER OF WEST 78TH STREET ------ --- AND KERBER BOULEVARD: A. REQUEST TO REZONE 43 ACRES OF PROPERTY FROM R-lA, AGRICULTURAL RESIDENC~DISTRICT INTO 18.9 ACRES TO C-3,-SERVICE AND 24.1 ACRES INTO R-4, HIGH DENSITY RESIDENTIAL. ~PUbliC Present: B.C. Burdick William F. Kelly Charlie James James R. Hill Olsen: The property is located between three streets, Powers Blvd., also known as CR 17; West 78th Street, also known as CR 16; and Kerber Blvd.. The rezoning request to rezone 50.4 acres of property into one parcel for C-3, which is actually 24.7 acres and the northerly portion would be rezoned to R-4, High Density which would be 25.7 acres. The Land Use Plan currently designates the lower property as commercial and the higher property as high density. The C-3 District currently does not have any designation. It acts just like a fringe commercial district to support the downtown area and also to be located in the proximity of like a highway or major thoroughfare and this property does meet all of those where it is next to the downtown area. We won't have downtown uses but we will have uses supporting the downtown area and it is near TH 5 which is down here and Kerber and Powers. The property just to the south was also just recently rezoned as C-3. For the R-4 District which is high density, the downtown redevelopment has always wanted this area to have high density to support the downtown area. Again, it meets the Comprehensive Plan and it meets the intention of the C-3 District and R-4 District and Staff is recommending approval. 4ItChairman Conrad asked if anyone from the public wanted to make comments. Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 2 ~Headla moved, Emmings seconded to close public hearing. favor and motion carried. All voted in Erhart: Is the developer here? Is there anything specific planned for the parcel at this time? Charlie James: No. Erhart: Basically you are doing this for future development? Charlie James: Right. We have had discussions with numerous parties but at the present there are no plans. Erhart: You're not going to put up a Byerly's? Charlie James: Not yet. Erhart: We're not doing anything at this time with regards to the realignment of 78th Street? Dacy: No, that comes next. Headla: I don't understand the sequence. What are we looking at now as compared to the next step? ~onrad: Right now we are rezoning that property period. Our next step we will decide if we like the subdivision the way they want to subdivide it. As I see it in the Comprehensive Plan in their zoning is they are saying that is the way to go and they are asking the way for it to be rezoned the way we would like it to be zoned. Emmings moved, Erhart seconded that the Planning Commission recommend the City Council approve Rezoning Request #86-2 to rezone 50.4 acres into 24.7 acres of C-3, Service Commercial and 25.7 acres of R-4, High Density as depicted in the legal description requested in Attachment #6. All voted in favor and motion carried. B. SUBDIVISION OF 50.4 ACRES OF PROPERTY INTO FIVE COMMERCIAL LOTS AND ONE HIGH-oENSITY PARCEL. ---- ---- Olsen: This is the same property and the applicant, as seen here, is proposing five commercial lots in the southerly portion and one high density lot in the northerly portion. The five commercial lots range from a .9 acres to 11.9 acres. Right now the C-3 District does not have any minimum lot sizes but the proposed C-4 District, which is what it will become if the Ordinance goes through, requires 20,000 square foot lot minimum and 100 feet of street frontage and all of these lots will meet that requirement. As far as the high density lot, the Ordinance right now requires and the proposed Ordinance, this area is again 24.1 acres and will meet all the requirements of the high density district. utilities are 4Itavailable. Water is available from West 78th Street. Sanitary sewer is Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 3 -not at the site yet but must be extended to just last Monday reviewed whether or not to they tabled the action until November 3rd. it from the west. The Counc i 1 request plans and specs and Conrad: plans and specs for what? Olsen: For the extension and improvements of sanitary sewer so the feasibility study has been finished we just have to approve the plans and specs. The streets, again it is bordered by Kerber Drive, Powers Blvd. and West 78th Street. Staff, when we first met with the applicant, proposed that West 78th Street should be realigned 600 feet to the north to include this intersection. Carver County, MnDot, a downtown redevelopment study by BRW and a Broadened Area Study by Benshoof all concurred with the realignment and also with the Comp Plan determined this as a deficient intersection. TH 5 is, in the future, going to be widened so that means the intersection is also going to move up closer and with stacking distances of 600 feet that they require for an intersection, that would work. Right now West 78th Street is designated as a County State Aid Highway and what that means is it is under the jurisdiction of the State Aid Office. Staff is recommending that this be transferred over to a Municipal State Aid Street to allow it to be built sooner then it would if it stayed under the County State Aid Highway. It would have to still maintain the same regulations required in the Standards by the State Aid Office. The proposed realignment is for a 35 mph curve. Currently West 78th Street has aa 40 mph road speed limit and the City would have to request the County, it .would have to request the State to do a study to see if this speed limit could be lowered to 35 mph. We are in favor of that because it allows for the, Bill will get into this further, but where the curves will fit into this area and not take away as much street frontage as possible. We are also recommending that the current existing West 78th Street be maintained but be cul-de-saced once the new realignment is built. This will allow for the Burdick property to still have street frontage and will also then improve that intersection. Right now the West 78th Street has 150 foot right-of-way. Staff is maintaining that this could be vacated to a 60 foot right-of-way which would give more property to Burdick and also to the James property. As far as access, the lot line of Lot 2 will be sitting on top of the new West 78th Street and also the existing West 78th Street. Staff is recommending that the access on the old West 78th Street be 300 feet back from the intersection to conform with the part that was given to the Burdick's property. As far as Lot 1, Block 1 that will be served as temporary access until West 78th Street has been aligned. They will have to get that temporary access permit from Carver County. When they do access off of the new alignment, we are recommending that it be 200 feet back from Powers Blvd. to allow for the stacking distance. Lot 2, Block 1 will not have access until the new alignment and therefore can not be built upon until that time. Lot 3, Block 1 we are recommending that they share a driveway with Lot 4 off of Kerber Blvd. to reduce the other driveway conflict that leads to more traffic. As far as the Park and Recreation Commission, they reviewed this and they recommended that a Class I Bikeway be provided along the new alignment which connected to Lake Ann Park. The ~Downtown Redevelopment Plan also has specified a separate bike path so this Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 4 -WOUld also go along with that. We will look at a feasibility study of when the street improvements go through to see the feasibility of a bike path. In summary, the realignment is the major issue here and Staff is supporting the realignment as is MnDot, Carver County, and the Comp Plan. We are recommending approval of the subdivision request with the following conditions: 1. That the City proceed with declassification of CSAH 16 to MSAH 16. 2. Existing West 78th street be cul-de-saced at CR 17 after completion of the realignment of West 78th Street. 3. Any access from CR 17 receive a permit from the County. 4. A building permit for Lot 2, Block 1 cannot be issued until the realignment of West 78th Street is completed. 5. Lot 3, Block 1 shall share an access with Lot 4, Block 1, from Kerber Boulevard and Lot 1, Block 2 shall have only one access from the existing West 78th Street and the new alignment. 6. All driveways on the new West 78th Street must be at least 200 feet from the new West 78th Street and CR 17 intersection. eI added another 7 which should say: 7. Driveways on existing West 78th Street must be at least 300 feet from the existing West 78th Street and CR 17 intersection. 7 would become 8 which would be: 8. No building permits will be issued until municipal services are available to the property. Conrad: Would you repeat 7 again. 01 sen: I changed 6 to say tha t dr i veways on the new Wes t 78th Street should be 200 feet and then I added 7 which would say that driveways on the existing West 78th Street must at least 300 feet from the existing West 78th Street and CR 17 intersection. Conrad: This is a public hearing. Those that would like to speak I would ask you to preface your comment with your name for the record. Without any further comments. The applicant is here. I'll give you, if you would like to say anything about Staff's report or proposal, we will open the floor to you. Charlie James: I have James R. Hill here of James R. Hill Engineering and he is the person that prepared the plat and survey and worked closely with Staff so I guess we will just defer to any questions that may arise. e planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 5 ~conrad: You have read the Staff recommendations and you concur with the recommendations? Charlie James: Yes. William F. Kelly: I'm the Attorney representing B.C. Burdick who is the owner of the property immediately to the south of the subject area that you are looking at here tonight. You may recall that I was before you on at least two other occasions involving the preliminary plat for Mr. Burdick's property. On both of those occasions when I was here, the principal subject of concern and some discussion for more then an hour each time were one, the location of the driveways into the properties. Where they should be located in relation to the intersection of West 78th Street and Powers Blvd. and the second was some discussion relative to the relocation of the highways and how that might effect or have an effect upon the platting of Mr. Burdick's property. with your permission I would like to address the issue of the location of the driveways back from the intersectin of Powers Blvd. and West 78th Street. You may recall that the Engineer, Mr. Monk, and Staff was very adamant that there were Standards which said that you couldn't have a driveway closer then 300 feet and I think those Standards he said were set by MnDot. Subsequently we found, and they admitted, the Manager in a memo indicated that there were no Standards but that of course doesn't change the basic concept. That is, that driveway should be located in a safe location so as to provide an adequate location and a safe ~location for exit into and out of the particular properties and I fully .agree but it seemed as if everybody got stuck on the figure 300 feet and we couldn't get off that figure of 300 feet and the 300 feet always had to be computed from the tangent of the curve of the blacktop as it turned off of TH 5 into West 7 8th Street. You may recall they wan tedus to put two lots together, be sure tha t we only had one access for the two lots and if we are going to have any access to this property on the south we had to provide our own service road. This afternoon I had a chance for the first time to study the report and in reviewing it I noticed that the recommendation was that they could have driveways for this property at 200 feet and that 200 feet would be the limiting factor for the driveway for the property immediately across the way, Lot 1, Block 2, onto West 78th Street so I called Staff and called it to their attention. I said would you make the correction at least. If you are wrong at least tell them you are wrong but when you figure the 300 feet, and that is what they have done here tonight. They have changed it. They said no we are going to have an access onto West 78th Street where presently it is 300 feet. They didn't indicate how you are going to compute the 300 feet. As I looked at it, it seemed to me they are computing it from the inside edge of the turn or rather from the center of Powers Blvd. but what really concerns me is that we are still back at 300 feet when it comes to a straight piece of highway. West 78th Street as it currently is laid out and yet on a curve where you can't see around the complete area, around a curve, it is only 200 so it is going to make exactly the same number of turns left and right off that intersection 120 feet north. What justification is there to have 300 feet on West 78th Street as is now and 200 feet on West 78th Street as it is 4Itbeing proposed? Where is the justification? I see there is none. There Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 6 ~iS none. They all ought to have 200 feet and let's recognize that 300 feet was ridiculous in the first place. There was no justification for it. We want to have safe driveways but if it is safe to have 200 feet back from the intersection of what you are going to create, it is safe to have 200 feet from where we presently have it now. At least that is our position. On the second issue, the relocation of the highway. You will notice the plans show the only access into the property to the south, Mr. Burdick's property would be showing on the plat as a 20 foot easement. I have been informed that that 20 foot easement really is a 40 foot easement but that isn't even a full width of a street. Not even a full width of a street to get to the property to the south. This plat if approved would in effect take from Mr. Burdick his property any reasonable use and access to it. Here you have property which fronts now on a collector street and when you are done he is going to front on an alley 40 feet in width? He is going to be ending up with one driveway for 10-15 acres and the property to the north is going to have a driveway every 200 feet. Lot 1, Block 2 is only 300 feet wide. They are going to have an access and a driveway. We were willing to say we will go 250 feet and put a driveway in. Trying to be reasonable about it. Now when we brought in our plat we showed the Planning Commission a different curve. The curve that was originally proposed by the City was a 40 mph curve and there was some comment from the Planning Commission that this is what the County thought was great. It would be a little longer curve. It would take a lot of land. That isn't acceptable now. We had proposed a curve which would be 30 mph curve. We ~felt that area, you can see that is a 30 mph curve, we felt that if you Whave a road which leads into the central business district which is 30 mph, it doesn't make much sense to have a 40 mph road leading into a 30 mph road nor does it make much sense when you leave a central business district at 30 mph to say to the drivers of the car, please increase your speed to 40 mph. You can do that but be sure you come to a stop in a block and a half. It makes much more sense to say this is our central business district. Everybody is going to drive in a safe and sane manner, 30 mph and you are going to get from here to there just as fast and at 30 mph there is a curve like this. We had suggested that that curve could serve four properties. The property to the north, the property to the south and also meet the requirement of the City to adjust the location of the intersection. The intersection is located exactly as it is on the proposal of the James Company that the intersection be located at Powers Blvd.. We think that this is a logical, reasonable method of getting traffic in and out of the central business district without eating up too much land and it will give an opportunity to develop the entire area. Now, we fully recognize that it is hard to plan something like this at a meeting of this kind. At the Council meeting on Monday night I asked, please could we have a meeting with all the parties involved. The owners of the property on the north, the James property, Mr. Burdick, he was not in the country at the time. He has now returned and Staff and other interested parties from the Councilor Planning Commission to sit and see what can be done to have a good development so that the property on both the north and south side of West 78th street will be properly developed and used for the benefit of this City. As now as is being proposed, there is no way you can make any ~reasonable use of the property on the south. Access 300 feet back. Access Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 7 ~to the road only with a 40 foot alley. The proposal is to dead end West 78th street as it now is located with a turn around. No access onto the highway at all. We ask that there be some more thought given to the proposal. Particularly thought as to these driveways. When we were looking for a driveway 300 feet was the figure. Let's look at it reasonably and let's find out how we can have a safe driveway. If you can have a safe driveway at 200 feet on the relocated highway, you are going to have a 200 foot safe driveway on the present highway. The only difference is that the present highway is a straight on street. You can see everything. The proposed new one you can't see everything. Thank you. B.C. Burdick: Before I start I would like to ask Jo Ann Olsen here a question so I haven't misunderstood anything. Did you state these lot vary in size from .9 acres to 11 acres? Olsen: .9 to 11.9 commercial acres. B.C. Burdick: Okay. Gentlemen, I have just been treated so unfairly here. I just want to speak for myself. It is almost unbelievable. A few weeks ago, a month ago, Bill Monk stood here and testified, he swore that MnDot's minimum distance was 300 feet. The entire Staff believes 300 feet was the minimum. If it was less then 300 feet people would be, numerous accidents so let's either make it 300 feet or 200 feet. We argued for 200 feet that night and I'm sure not going to change tonight but that is just completely ~unfair. A month ago to say nothing less then 300 feet. Never possible. ~All kinds of accidents and a month later this has all been forgotten. That is number one. Two is the size of the lots. You made me go up. There is a lot that is being approved here tonight for .9 acres commercial. The same as mine, when the smallest allowed was 2 acres. That is three times as large for me as for someone else a month later. What could be more unfair? I'm going to suffer an ungrievable loss if we have to have access to my property through this alley. It just isn't going to work. It just isn't going to sell. I had a good deal going on the property down there. Signed earnest money and all. A clean deal. Very reputable people. High caliber people and they went to City Hall and they told them about the change of West 78th Street and from then on all they wanted was their earnest money back and we finally gave it to them. At the time I wasn't aware of the changes to West 78th Street. I heard about it four years ago and the I understood about three years ago it was dropped. I most certainly agree with what has been said here about 35 mph there is not reasonable for that short distance. In other words, it would be 30 mph through the business district, probably past the bank, then a short stretch of 35 and then a stop sign. We have the plan here for 30 mph with our curve here which I think I would buy. I think I would go along with that. It is going to hurt me but I think I would go along with that. There is another possibility I could go along with is if West 78th Street was made an one-way street or at least a possibility of us going along with it. In other words, keep the present West 78th Street stretch there as one-way coming in so people could corne into my property but then they have to leave ~by the new West 78th Street when it is constructed and I think Mr. Kelly ..,said this maybe didn't, maybe it wasn't quite clear enough, but we are Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 8 ~Willing to sit down with Charlie James, a couple members of Staff, City Engineer, a member or two of the City Council and Planning Commission and just go over these possibilities and work something out so that I won't be asking the City of Chanhassen for their compensation for the great reduction in value. I don't want to be in that position. I want to amicable and work it out but I sure as heck can't if one month the minimum distance is 300 feet and the next month is 200 feet and if one time the lots have to be over 2 acres and a month later it can .9 of an acre. That's all. Thank you. James R. Hill: Mr. James has no problem with recommendation 6 as proposed by Staff and changed to 300 feet. In our preliminary study and the lot locations and the sizes in this area here, we determined that we would have a common driveway 300 feet from Powers so whatever you wish. Also, there is no final design. I don't know of anybody proposing alley access to the property to the south but in discussions with the sketch plans and Staff, we have provided, at their recommendation, access to the property to the south from here down to the existing 78th Street including an additional 20 foot easement that could be used for road purposes. What with the triangular, that hasn't been decided and we only had, as I indicated, decided the proposed alley access. Headla: Pardon me. Would you go over that point again. I missed that. ~James R. Hill: I don't know of anybody that has proposed an alley access ~from 78th to the southerly property but in our discussions with Staff, in the sketch plan review with Staff, we have proposed access to the property to the south from the northeastly corner of Lot 2 all along until you hit the existing 78th so access to the property to the south is in this area here. Including 20 feet of easement that can be used for road access if the City so determines. Access then is, in this area here, for the property to the south. That final design has not been made. There are no final locations. That will come with the final site plans and the locations that the City Staff determines where that access will be. Headla moved, Siegel seconded to close public hearing. All voted in favor and motion carried. Conrad: Let me ask just a couple questions to Staff and get them into responding to some of the comments. The first one, I guess I am curious about the 200 feet versus the 300 feet. Jo Ann do have that? Olsen: What we did was we contacted Benshoof and Associates again to find out exactly what would be the stacking distance for the new alignment of West 78th Street and he crunched numbers and he carne up with 200 feet would be the minimum setback. It was an oversight on my part. When I was doing it I was just assuming it would be on this new alignment and again, it was just an oversight as far as the 300 feet here until Mr. Kelly did call. The reason we proposed 300 feet here was again to conform to be equal I guess with what was conditioned upon the Burdick property. One of the ~reasons the 300 feet was determined with the Burdick property was that it Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 9 e was 40 mph straight through and a faster speed limit then what is happening here. Dacy: The criteria was a design curve of the street. Existing is 40 mph but the proposed is 35. The existing intersection is much different then the proposed realign. As Jo Ann pointed out, we should have clarified that further. Conrad: Bill, do you have any comments? Bill Engelhardt: The comments I have are basically on design speed and the alignment that you see on that particular map on the board. We have virtually no control over the speed limit in that area and the reason for that is that West 78th Street is a County State Aid Highway. In other words it is being funded and was funded for constructed by the State Aid that the County receives, the dollars that the County receives who in turn apply it into their County road system. Every year the County receives so many dollars to maintain or so many dollars per mile of roadway that is County State Aid Highway so the design criteria for the existing West 78th Street with the nature of the area being basically rural, the design speed was established at 40 mph for that stretch of highway. The new alignment that is being proposed will remain a County State Aid Highway but in conjunction with that, it will also be designated as a Municipal State Aid low carrier or low speed urban street. What that means is that it carries ~the designation of the County State Aid Highway until the time that mileage ~can be traded for, I can show you on this map. I can explain it a little bit better. This stretch of highway will remain under both designations, Municipal and County State Aid until an equal portion of length of roadway can be traded or substituted somewhere else in the City of Chanhassen for that stretch of roadway. The reason for that is that State Aid funds are very, very, they are sought after and once the County has them, they are very difficult to get any more and they don't want to lose anything so they will carry this designation as a County State Aid Highway to maintain their funds until they can trade it over to another stretch of road. So the road is going to County State Aid and Municipal State Aid. The reason it is going to go to Municipal State Aid is that the City then can designate their State Aid funds or the funds they receive the State for the construction of this road in lieu of the County using their funds to construct this road. What that means is that it will get built sooner then if the County uses their funds to build it. The County does not have this programed into their construction plan and it is entirely unlikely that you would see any County dollars, County State Aid dollars, going into it until 1991 whereas the City, using their Municipal State Aid money could funnel funds into this roadway and get it built much sooner. What all this means is, it all ties back to the speed limit and the criteria that you have to use in order to receive State Aid Funds in order for the road to be built. The initial speed of this road is 40 mph set by the State, under State Aid design standards. The County in order to reduce the speed limit on this road has to request the State to do a speed investigation of the area and then reclassify the road and change the speed. with this plat coming in eand the new alignment, talking both to the State and the County, they feel Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 10 -that 35 mph speed limit is the right speed for this stretch of highway when the area is developed. They will look at it as if there was development there in order to reduce the speed limit down to 35 and not down to 30. They just don't feel that it would warrant going down to 30 but we have no control over that. The County has no control over that. It is a State Aid design standard and it is the speed investigation study that will determine what the speed of this road is. That is all tied back into getting funding because you don't get funding unless you build the road the way they want it built basically. This particular alignment that is shown, is shown as a 35 mph design which everybodys feels comfortable with the State and the County, feel comfortable that it could be reduced to that speed limit. The proposal that Mr. Burdick had with an "S" curve, almost a back to back "S" curve coming on has a 30 mph speed limit roadway. The comments I received on it and I haven't specificaly checked them out myself, the comments I received from both the County and the State is that they don't feel that what was shown met their Standards. The back to back "S" curves are not good in this type of situation and the curves that were shown are at a bare minimum and may not even meet the design criteria for the 30 mph. The other thing that you want to take into account is that with the back to back "S" curves coming in like this, there is virtually no stacking distance on a tangent plane for the traffic coming onto CR 17. We much prefer the alignment of 35 mph which does meet the criteria and which would fall into the classification of both the County and State guidelines and Municipal and State Aid Highway and therefore qualify for ~the funding to be constructed. Now, something that has been discussed and "'Mr. Hill talked about it, is this triangle right in here is going to remain right-of-way so Mr. Burdick does have access anywhere along this triangle onto West 78th Street should then access into his property. When we looked at this we felt that with the realignment that this would definitely have to be closed. An appropriate way to close it is to cul-de-sac it which would then give him access off of the cul-de-sac road. You have to understand that any time you change or realign roads, you open yourself up for potential litigation. That is very common so I wouldn't be scared. That does happen. It happens all the time. I like the idea that was brought up tonight by Mr. Burdick of the one-way on 78th Street. I haven't had really time to analyze that with the Planning Staff but the potential is there for a right-in only and that is also very common. with a right-in only you can eliminate that cul-de-sac area and they could work our their drives through here. A portion would have to be two way or whatever but there is some potential there for the right-in. I like that idea but at this point we haven't had time to really pursue that. Conrad: Right-in only, is that a long term or a short term? Engelhardt: That would be along term. Really, I would prefer that to the cul-de-sac situation myself after hearing it but I guess that is one thing that we never thought about. I guess one of the reaons for it that usually you don't anticipate someone requesting that there be one-way traffic to their property. A right-in, I don't think it causes any problems. e Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 11 -Emmings: Are you talking about right-in onto West 78th Street? a right-in to that lot on the corner or a Engelhardt: A right-in onto West 78th Street. Emmings: What do you do with the traffic corning down on the new 78th Street then? If it is corning in this way it is going to have to stop for that traffic going across. Engelhardt: This is only right-in from the south. Emmings: Right but if that is a right-in on West 78th Street you aren't going to use it for going downtown and people that are corning in here, are they going to have to stop for that traffic? Engelhardt: Again, like I said. We haven't had time to analyze it but there is some potential there and there could be some signing but that would have to be looked at. There are some details here that have to be worked out and I guess we were never aware that the property owner to the south would consider a one-way on that so there is some potential there. The other thing is just briefly on the right-of-way width. If 78th does go to just a service lane or service street, there is no reason to maintain 115 foot right-of-way in this area and we would recommend going down to a 60 foot right-of-way and basically swap back and forth between the two ~properties so that the road is shifted to the I think it is to the south ~slightly so that was the reason that the Burdick's would receive 25 feet and the James 35 feet is because the blacktop surface itself was shifted to the south and we tried to maintain a 60 foot strip across the centered on that but we won't center it in this 60 foot strip. That is essentially the plan. This ties in with the overall downtown area. It is nothing new. The relocation, from the way I understand it, I'm new on the job myself but from what I understand the relocation of this intersection has been on the table for quite a while and there have been numerous discussions in conjunction with the downtown area. This road will tie in and then eventually hook-up with the overall downtown area. The reasons for the 600 foot separations briefly is that when you add up the stacking distance, turn lane, taper distances that you need to design, again getting back to the design criteria of State roads, the requirement is 600. That could shift 50 feet one way or the other depending on what the taper distance of these but it is essentially the 600. I know the County asked to verify the sight distance going up the hill with this location is appropriate and I think that during the final design that is something that would have to be addressed by the applicant's engineer and we could review it and if that road had to be shifted 50 feet to the south, the taper distance from go from 15 to 1 to 12 to 1 and that is still an acceptable standard. That was kind of long winded but if you have any questions. Conrad: We talked a little bit more about 30, 35 and 40 mph. Logically speaking and when the City grows up that will be all business and we aren't ~going to have a transition from 30 to 35 mph there, more then likely it is ~all going to be 30 mph. Right now as we develop you are saying that 35 is Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 12 4ItprobablY what is is what is going required based on studies but in reality in the future, 30 to be there. When we develop better. Engelhardt: I don't think that is necessarily true, no. The State Aid design standard very seldom ever go below the 30 mph limit. Conrad: Regardless of the classification of the roadway, we are talking about downtown Chanhassen. Engelhardt: The potential is there from going to a 30 to a 35. There is no questions about that but I don't think you are going to be allowed to go to the 30 if you want to use State Aid funding to build the street. Charlie James: I would like to give a little background to this whole thing. I've been working on this piece of land for over a year and have been working with Staff for that period of time and when we first came in, I guess the idea that I had for the land at that time was I wanted to do something entirely commercial with the land and I was advised by Staff that the Comprehensive Plan and the Staff themselves felt that this was one of the few remaining areas in the Chanhassen that would meet certain criteria for multi-family type development given it's proximity to downtown and that sort of th i ng so we prepared a prel im i nary pl a t I have here da ted under March 13th of earlier this year and it was at some point subsequent to that that we had thought, even though the Comprehensive Plan showed this ~realignment, we thought that issue was dead. It was about that time, ~somewhere after March that the City commissioned the study by Benshoof regarding all your interchanges and they found that in the future this intersection would become deficient so we were asked by Staff at that time to hold off doing anything until this study came in. When the study came in, the study in essence said, based on our projections we are going to need this amount of stacking distance here for the movements that are going to happen here. Particularly as this is connected to TH 169, TH 212 in the future and that will tend to increase the traffic here so we were given a dotted line and said this is the preferred alignment here. At one point we had a 40 mph alignment on that dotted line and we were told that we had to hit this point here because there is some grade conditions on this side of the road and also this would be, given those grade conditions and the top of this hill, that this would be the ideal point for a frontage road to continue in the future straight across so with a 40 mph design classification, we had another preliminary plat after the March 13th one that never got submitted, we had another one on May 30th that when we first learned of this proposed realignment there. It was about that time I think that Mr. Burdick had a plat for three lots and this original alignment would have come over down this way much more and that was a 40 mph alignment. Then at some point along the way we saw a plat from Mr. Burdick where there were three lots. I don't know where the lines were but essentially there were three lots and then Mr. Burdick and I had a meeting on the 2nd of June in which we discussed our I told him these things getting reved up again with this realignment and we met at his office in Excelsior and we exchanged ideas on this. At that time what I had 4Itsuggested was that I assumed from that preliminary plat that I was shown of Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 13 -three lots, that there was going to be an access point here that was shared by those lots and so we went back and we compromised from this long 40 mph thing that actually would have come over this way and then down to this alignment down here and what my suggestion was, and we took it upon ourselves, we assumed that since this what appeared to us at that time with a three lot development here to be the access point that he was given. If we had a straight landing here where people could come up and stack here and align, then you have the tangent there and then you have another straight line here before the next curve so this is at the point which you wanted to have access, the engineer is telling me anyway, on the straight section of road so I agree at that point that I would give all of this land here as an outlot for this road plus I would give this triangular piece of land here so that the existing mat on this blacktop here is only about this wide in scale, so that at any point in the future the City and Mr. Burdick or whoever, plus I agreed to an additional 20 feet there, so we have way in excess of over 100 feet of latitude here where that road can come through and I said okay, I'll even give a 20 foot easement along there so this was not intended as blind alley. It was not intended as a 20 foot street. It was saying, look it, I'll give you a triangle here that is approximately 130 feet on this bottom side and maybe 100, I don't know, 25 on these lanes or something like that and I will plat that as an outlot along with this additional right-of-way here so that in the future that determination can be made as to where that connection would come through. The idea was that we were giving Mr. Burdick access to his property at that driveway APoint which was as close as it could be right on target with that existing ~driveway. Somewhere along the line, unbeknownst to us, Mr. Burdick came in and requested five lots along here and I don't know what the status of that is but I want it clear one, that I haven't been promoting this thing. This is not my idea. It's not like I'm coming into Chanhassen and saying I'm going to redesign all your streets. What has happened here is that in every instance I have attempted to respond to recommendations that have come from Benshoof, from the County. We went down and had three or four meetings with the County Engineers. We've had numerous meetings with the Staff on this and I said, I don't care what you do but I can't live with the uncertainly. I'm willing to work with you. You tell me. I'll dedicate the land. How best do you want it but this is not Charlie James' street. This is not something, I'm not trying to work a hardship on anybody. If anything, I think I have tried to demonstrate here that we have gone out of our way to try to accommodate something down here and provide an access at this point where at that time, to the best of our knowledge, we assumed access was going to be and this area in here would always be an open space as far as visibility into the property here so that is how we thought we had resolved that issue there. The latest thing now is something about a 35 mph design here... *A tape break occured at this point with Mr. James stating that he just wanted to set the record straight as to where he was coming from. Dacy: I just wanted to respond to some of the questions that Mr. Burdick had. One question that you had was regarding lot size. In the C-3 4ItDistrict that your properties are zoned, there is no minimum requirement Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 14 ~for lot size so, just as Mr. James did, you come in with a number of lots, you also requested whatever you felt was appropriate for the property and it eventually ended up to be five approved lots so there is no unfairness here. I do recall having a meeting originally with yourself and your potential client on that corner lot in March and April and I remember describing the C-2 and the C-3 District regulations which would set out that there are no minimum lot size requirment. As far as that issue is concerned we do not feel that there is any unfairness. As far as whether or not you were made aware of the realignment, I think upon application for your first three lot subdivision that was a part of the Staff Report. As Mr. James noted, before we got the preliminary findings back from Benshoof's study we did not realize the impact of those projections upon that particular intersection. We did receive those on a preliminary basis when we first met and through the process we tried to coordinate as best we could between the two property owners. That is the end of my comments. B.C. Burdick: I agree wi th Barbara that there is no minimum lot size. However, I feel the minimum lot size was imposed upon us a month or two ago by this body and the rest of what Barbara said is quite correct. With what Charlie James said here, I don't think Charlie said this intentionally but Charlie James said that he and I spoke in my office and ended up with a compromise. There wasn't any compromise. Now Charlie has compromised somewhat on his own but he and I didn't agree to any compromises on the street at all. We didn't even talk about it. I said possibly I could _consider living with this 313 mph curve, this type of curve and now we put ,.,it to the engineering here about this. However, I have engaged and paid $4,131313.1313-$5,131313.1313 to the firm of Schoell and Madsen. I don't think there is any better engineering firm and I think these other engineers here tonight are very fine engineers too and they told me that this 313 mph curve conforms to everything. They have gone over it. I said go over it again and they set it. Particularly, Jim Orr, professional engineer and others ha ve gone over thi s and I sa id be sure it does and they told me it does a couple of times this 313 and it just makes sense to me, as much as I don't like to disagree with Bill here, if it is 313 mph down by the drugstore and by the church and by the thea ter, it surely should be 313 mph down here when it is developed. What is the difference? Now I want to talk about the access. Charlie James has said that he is going to give us access over here. I don't want this access. I want the present access and I'm going to compromise slightly but here is the situation. Okay, I'm talking...anyway. I say my God, what do you think. We're going to build here and my customer has to drive down here, over here, through in here, through in here again, turn again, turn here again, turn again to get in. They aren't going to buy that in a million years. I get a country boy that I don't think has ever been to the city before to buy that their customers are going to go here, here, here and all these heres. I believe you have to go a total of six different directions. We want an access where you can turn off the highway and come into us somewhat, not 11313% but somewhat with the same ease as they can at the present time. Of course I do have a driveway here. William F. Kelly: Mr. James spoke about this triangle down here. I think 4Iton the plans that you have in front of you, you may have looked and you Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - page 15 ~might find that to be a ponding probably see that in your... easemen t. I have here, and I think you can Charlie James: That is an old print. William F. Kelly: But there is a ponding easement up here and there still is an easement down here. Charlie James: That whole area. That has all been changed. William F. Kelly: Let me just show you from what this shows if I may. It shows the three alingments. One the 313 mph curve, the 35 mph curve and a 413 mph curve. I just wanted you to be able to see the difference between the 313, the 35 and the 413. Now, as you looked at it, you also take a look at the location of the various lots that Mr. Burdick has. First of all, the three lot configuration initially which he wasn't able to work that out and then the five lot configuration. Using the present 35 mph curve, it would not provide any access for Lot 1, 2 and 3 of the five lot configuration as I drew it. The access would be to the east. It would be nothing and you have to make a turn of more than 913 degrees to get back onto West 78th Street. Almost 2713 degree turn. I don't know whether you have any people that make 2713 degree turns because they can't see that far. Engelhardt: I was just going to comment. We are addressing, everybody is ~getting hung up on the 313, 35, 413. We have no control over that. We're ~not going to set that. The State is going to set that speed limit. We have absolutely no control it. All you can do is request the State to do a speed investigation study. Indicate to them what the properties are going to be used for, what the zoning is, what the potential uses are. They will go out and establish the speed limit. You nor I nor Mr. Burdick nor Mr. Hill are going to establish that speed limit. It is going to be the State. Emmings: And it is never going to be 3r3? Engelhardt: It is highly unlikely. Conrad: How can that not be? Engelhardt: I can't answer that. demonstrate. It is highly unlikely. Unless we Emmings: Unless we take off the CSAH designation. Engelhardt: Which you can't do either. The County has to take that off and the county will not take it off because as soon as they take it off they lose funding. They lose money. There is no way that that is going to be taken off. Headla: We talk a lot about money. Are we talking about $5,131313.1313 or _$5r3r3,r3r3r3.r3r3? Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 16 ~Engelhardt: We're talking about the construction of that road. We're talking about dollars per mile that the County receives from the State which is a significant amount. Headla: What is a significant amount? I have no idea of the dollars you are talking about. Engelhardt: To build that road, Jim do you have an estimate? James R. Hill: No. Engelhardt: You are probably looking at $50,000.00 to $100,000.00 to construct that road. It's not $5,000.00. Potentially it is a three figure number but getting back to the curve and the alignment that Mr. Burdick has got, if his curves meet the 30 mph criteria, I can't stand here and recommend to the Planning Commission to accept that alignment based on that it is a back to back "s" curve going onto a major County Road coming out of your downtown area with no stacking distance. That's where I'm coming from. Headla: Can you help me out to understand the stacking distance? Engelhardt: You want me to explain what stacking distance is? ~Headla: I don't see where stacking distance... Engelhardt: If you have a certain volume of traffic that is proposed or is calculated for that stretch of road, when you come up to a intersection so many cars are going to go left, so many cars are going to go right and at a four way intersection so many would go through it. Each one of those movements take so much time and the time involved that it takes to make those movements backs the traffic up behind that intersection and that is your stacking distance so the volume that you generate, you are stacking cars up. The reason you want them on a tangent is so that the majority of the cars coming up to a intersection have a clear view both ways so that when they get to an intersection they can see the traffic going both ways. That is the reason for stacking distance on a tangent versus being on a curve. Headla: I look at that "s" curve like what we have on 76th heading west coming up to Highway 100 and that is pretty much an "s" curve there and there is a tremendous amount of stacking. Apparently it can be done. Engelhardt: It can be done if it is acceptable to the State. them. When they pay for it, they set the design criteria. I don't think that the back to back "s" curve coming up to that intersection is a good design. It is up to personally major Headla: That 35 or 40 drives me up a tree. In the year 2000 we're going to live with that 35 and 40 mph when we have high density housing just ~north of there? Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 17 e Engelhardt: You can at that point petition the State to do another study and based on the conditions at that time, it may well come down to 30 but you can't do that until you have the conditions there. What I'm saying is that we can show this plat to the County or to the state and we can show them land uses and they will take that into consideratin when they establish the speed limit but right now it is rural. If you were going to request them to go out there without this plat, they would come back with 40 for sure. Now we have a potential plat with some rezoning on it, they are going to take it into consideration but there is nothing out there. There is nothing built so it may still be 40. Headla: On any of this, do we allow street parking? Eventually are both sides of the street going to be signed? Engelhardt: They will be signed no parking probably. I would suspect that it would no parking on the roadway. Headla: Do we have plans in Chanhassen that allow street parking or not allow it? Dacy: No. There are no plans that I am aware of that would allow that. It is within the core area of the downtown allows it at this time however in the new studies for the downtown area, one of the options open to the community is two lanes with a separated median with streetscape ~improvements and so on so there would not be an opportunity to allow for .parking but that has yet to be decided as to whether or not that is going to be allowed in that whole area. Headla: I think that "S" curve might be bad just because you are going to have parking on both sides. Siegel: I'm intrigued with the possibilities here with the one-way streets making access and leaving the existing West 78th Street open coming from the west as an one-way and the new West 78th Street just an one-way heading west. If it is alright with the petitioner, like Bill said, it does pose some restrictions on all properties concerned but that can be overcome by designing the accesses but that seems to me to be a much better alternative then cul-de-sacing West 78th Street. I agree with you. I would like to see that. It would also make, of course, that Lot 1, Block 2 very attractive for development even greater than it would be on this design but I don't know if this is throwing it all back into the design phase again but if the petitioner and all parties agree that that would be an alternative that would meet the present feelings about the development, that would be certainly an attractive proposition from my standpoint. Dacy: If I could comment. In a meeting that we had with MnDot officials, I recall asking them about a right-in and right-out at that location and they did not look favorably on that option. However, just a right-in may pose a different situation that we could try to clarify. e Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 18 ~Engelehardt: There is some potential there and of course, we talk to MnDot and they throw it back to the County and say it is a County road but yet it is in their right-of-way so you are going against two agencies here but I think there is some potential there and just having it thrown out on the table tonight doesn't give us enough time to really check out what could be done. Siegel: It would seem to be a lot easier on all concerned for any kind of problem that would come up for anyone else on traffic situations there. You would be moving the traffic coming out of downtown further north which is desirable and leaving the access coming in high volume without the question on where they should turn. There is some potential there. Emmings: Just to follow up on that. There might be a problem of this West 78th Street is continued as a frontage road across Powers Blvd. which is also contemplated. Once that is there, then traffic coming east, where does it go? Siegel: What is the Comprehensive Plan for the extension of West 78th Street west? It is going to be just frontage road. Really a service road right? So you would have to take your lefts and rights and depending on where any development comes in at. Emmings: Then coming east when they get to Powers Blvd., how do I get to ~downtown if West 78th Street is a one-way coming towards me? Siegel: If the alignment is there? Is that where the alignment is planned? Dacy: Yes, the realigned portion should remain... Conrad: There may not be a good solution to this problem. Steve, any other comments? Emmings: I'm real disorganized on this. Condition number 1 strikes me as being odd as a condition. I don't know why that is there. Erhart: I agree. Olsen: I am just getting your approval of whether or not you wanted it to even be or if you even cared to have it switched over to a municipal street. Emmings: I always think those are conditions on the applicant. Olsen: I just pointed it out. Emmings: I'm confused by Mr. Burdick's comment that he feels that a minimum lot size was imposed on him and I just haven't followed that. Let 4Itme ask you this. Did he ask for five lots? Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 19 eDaCy: Yes. Emmings: And he got five lots? William F. Kelly: No. When we were here asking for five lots we were told 300 feet minimum or combine Lots 1 and 2, if you may remember, we were told to combine 1 and 2 and put the driveway on the east end of 2 and provide an access for 1 through 2. In effect you were saying to him that he was required to have a larger lot because he is only going to have driveway at 300 feet from the tangent to Powers Blvd. which meant that instead of having five lots he would be down to four and then I think there was only going to be one other driveway to be allowed for the other three lots. That was however the precise location of that second driveway to be located when he was to come in with his site plans and that was the position of the Staff at the time and there was a lot of talk about that here at the Board at that time. I think that is where Mr. Burdick got the impression that he was required to have a larger size lot. The only thing we have here is if you have 300 foot back from the intersection and the present highway, why not 300 feet back from the newly reorganized located highway. What is the justification for a change to 200? I donlt know. Dacy: The justification is it is a different design speed and a different type of intersection. eEmmings: 11m curious why we design for standards for a 35 mph speed limit when it is presently 40 and 11m also confused about why we do this on a plat. I just have never encountered this before and maybe that is why 11m confused but is it because everybody agrees from the State to the County to the City that this is where they want the road that they do it on their plat? Dacy: The MnDot and County officials have indicated their preference, I believe that the 35 mph design speed is appropriate based on their standards etc. based on State Standards. The property owner on this particular piece is identifying through the plat process the proposed right-of-way designated as Outlot A has to have a particular alignment. The alignment that you see on the plat now is based on 35 mph standards and you can see those design standards on the board. Emmings: Bill just got done saying that we could ask the State to do this study and they might come back and tell us no, it has to be 40. If we approve this plat and it has been final, what does the applicant do at that point? Dacy: If the State does come back and have a different design speed, then the plat will have to be replatted for that right-of-way for them to go ahead with the realignment. It would have to change. Engelhardt: The best information we have at this time is that the agencies _are tending to agree that 35 mph is going to be acceptable and the reason Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 20 ~we're getting into the design is that we're trying to establish that alignment for the Outlot A to the platting process which incidentally should be designated as right-of-way plat versus as being called an outlot. Emmings: My comments here I guess that unless all of those, with those small lots and with this being commercial, it only makes sense to me that this ought to be 30 but apparently that is something that is going to take time. If we are going to get it down to a 30, the development is going to have to already be there. We're going to have to stack up some accidents and bodies before we will convince them that it ought to be 30. If there were a cul-de-sac at the end of 78th Street, where would it be? Olsen: When we were discussing wherever this lot line is so that Lot 1 would have access on it. We wouldn't put it where... Emm i ng s: Barb, did you say, was Mr. Burd i ck made a ware of the realignment of West 78th Street at the time he asked us to rezone and subdivide his property? Dacy: The original application, yes. Emmings: I think the applicant has done a lot to go along with what the City has wanted and has been very flexible and seems to be and still is somewhat flexible even if he is getting to the point of suicide but I still ~think that Mr. Burdick has a point for his Lot 1. I think 300 feet was ~right. I made that motion and it was a little arbitrary at the time. As I recall, our engineer said 350 feet, was it 400? And we had an engineer here that represented Mr. Burdick that 200 was adequate and I just split the difference is what really happened. It was arbitrary but it seemed reasonable at the time because I thought the concerns of Bill Monk were real legitimate and I think that if something could be worked out for a right-in there, even if it was only a right-in into the business that is on the corner. If it is right-in to West 78th Street then everybody that is going anywhere down here, there is going to be heavy traffic and then it is going to create design problems here because you are going to have two-way traffic on this because this has to be continued across Powers Blvd. but if it were just a right-in to the business that was on the corner and then people would have to leave the other way. Conrad: How would you get out? Emmings: I don't know. You would have to get out onto what is planned here which is real reasonable to me as the way to describe this, the way it is set up now and it would have to be designed such that you don't have people cutting through the parking lot and I don't know how you do that but there probably is a way. I think it would be a nice thing to accommodate Mr. Burdick somehow for that Lot 1. He is sitting on a highway to the south and kind of major roads on each side but he can't get in directly and somehow that doesn't seem completely fair to me and I think a right-in there to the business that is on Lot 1 would be a good thing. The other thing, my last 4Itquestion I guess is that Mr. Burdick said that he felt that his land value Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 21 ~WOUld be damaged and that he would approved this thing and that makes since he is threatening a lawsuit, he thinks of this before we act on seek compensation from the City if we me think, is it appropriate to have, shouldn't the City Attorney tell us what it at all? Dacy: If you want to table action on the item and request the Attorney's opinion, that is an option. Emmings: If that is our option I would say let's not table it, let's act on it and let's ask the City Council to get the Attorney's opinion before they act on it. I don't want it back. It seems to me it is more appropriate for them to consider then us. Erhart: I had a whole bunch of points here but I was going to suggest that we table it because I think the engineer needs to study this one-way street idea anyway but let me go through my list here. One, the whole concept of the Burdick's property and the Hill property here, all this work is based on the assumption that we are going to put this curve in here and I guess, we're asking for these people to invest all this time and effort and money, what commitment are we making to do this before the year 2000 or whatever? Dacy: The commitment that the City has is to make sure that our road system in the downtown area, into and out of, functions properly. This intersection since before 1980 has been identified as a problem. The HRA ~originally doing their original BRW plan recognized the need to realign the ~roadway. Our investment is that we will have to, we are petitioning to have this a municipal street to accomplish the realignment, authorizing construction plans and so on to make sure... Erhart: What commitment does the City have to put in this road? You are asking these people, not asking you are requiring that they refrain from really selling any of this property until that street is put in. What commitment are we making to put that street in? Dacy: I think what we are trying to do now but also to try to achieve a longframe goal of the realignment. There is disagreement about where the access is into the Burdick property and so on. We can work together to achieve temporary access to both the Burdick piece and the James property piece. City Staff is just translating to the applicants the policies that have been dictated by previous HRA's, Council, Comp Plans, that this is a project that the City should commit itself to. Erhart: Okay, but your item 4 on your recommendation, one of the conditions is that a building permit for Lot 2, Block 1 cannot be issued until the realignment of West 78th Street is completed. I think that is asking a lot when we're not making a commitment to put in that street. Dacy: That is one particular lot but on the other hand though we are trying to allow for the lot in the southwest corner to be built until that ~realignment is established. We are also attempting to allow for a ~temporary access to Lot 1. Yes, your point is well taken. We are Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 22 -preventing building on Lot 2 but on the other hand we have to tell them of the situation. Erhart: When realistically could it be built? When are we thinking? Engelhardt: 1987, 1988. Dacy: We are fortunate in that we do have State Aid money mileage to trade and the money is there so tha tis another reason why we wanted to have it municipal instead of the county. Erhart: Well, if we do it I think the planning aspect of it is all great. I would just feel pretty bad about the whole thing if we go through this and require these people to make their plans around something and then we don't follow through so I think it is important that Staff and the City take this and if we say we are going to do this and then we should take it very seriously. We really owe it to these people to complete this thing. Moving on, you are restricting the access on all these lots, again referring to both the Burdick property and this one, in a commercial area, what is the purpose for example of restricting access to Lot 3? Dacy: That was off of Kerber Blvd. and Kerber is acting as a minor collector. West 78th Street and Powers Blvd. all have collector functional classifications. The purpose is to minimize traffic interruptions and _allow for the smooth flow of traffic. On Kerber, Lot 3 is a very small "'lot. It is 200 feet and so on from that particular intersection. You want to maximize the distance from the intersection to the driveway as much as possible. Erhart: So the purpose is not to restrict access on West 78th Street, it is just to prevent having a driveway too close to that intersection, is that right? Dacy: Yes, that is correct. Erhart: I just want to understand that we're not trying to restrict access to a business. It would seem to me that is our access. That is our through street through downtown. Dacy: You raise another good point to which Mr. Kelly referred to earlier about the number of points remaining on the Burdick piece. We are going to try and plan as site plans come in, to try and gage these access points so they are across from one another across the street to minimize them but we need the site plans to do that. Erhart: I also agree with Steve. Conditions 1 and 2, I appreciate being reminded and also the City to be reminded, these shouldn't be attached to the applicant's requirements. This is something that the City... Dacy: If the Commission feels more comfortable not including those on this ~articular application, however, in order to implement this particular Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 23 e proposal, the City needs to do these. to do that. In fact, it reflects our commitment Erhart: Okay, if that is what it is. Would you explain to me this bike path thing. I'm not sure I completely understood that. What is the plan from downtown to Lake Ann Park and how does that relate to this project? If this is going to be a commercial district with Burger Kings and McDonalds, how does that work? Is it a sidewalk or is it a tiny street or what is it? Olsen: This is a Class I that the Park and Recreation Commission's recommended and what it is is a street, a sidewalk and a bike path all separated by boulevards. The downtown, as Barb mentioned, one of the plans for the downtown area is to have separated bike paths so that would connect up with this along West 78th Street, along the new alignment and out to Lake Ann Park. Erhart: Where does it start? Olsen: It would start hopefully right downtown. Erhart: Is it in front of the bakery? Is it a sidewalk there and at someplace it gets into the boulevard with two lanes? ~Dacy: West 78th Street continues down and then, if you remember from the ~sketch plan, Great Plains Blvd. is proposed to be realigned in front of Pauly's and Pony's so the consultants are coming back and saying you will have pedestrian systems up where the commercial areas are on the north and Herb's development on the south. You should though create bikepaths consistent with Park and Rec's overall trail plan and they are proposing to start that in this area where the old City Hall is and the Lutheran church and so on. Create a separate bike path on the north side, continue that on the north side. Continue that on the north side of West 78th Street and on up through the realignment and through the Eckankar piece and then on out to Lake Ann Park. What is reflected in the report is that we don't know at this time, again final designs, if this right-of-way can accommodate a road, boulevard, sidewalk, boulevard and a bike path. Just initially, we think not but it is a recommendation from the Park and Rec Commission that we at least want to investigate. If we can't accommodate, at least the bike path to connect with the downtown. Erhart: I think a bike path and a walkway to the park is absolutely essential but whether it should be along West 78th Street, I just can't see that. It just seems to me, perhaps it ought to be behind the commercial district next to the high density residential. Dacy: I see, somewhere up in here. Erhart: Not along the street where you have cars turning in and out. We ~don't have a master plan for the City? Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 24 e Dacy: That is in the process. Charlie James: Barb, isn't there a park that runs just north of our property line? It's a designated trail system and it is that low area with a culvert and there is a horse trail in there? Dacy: Right. I think the Park and Rec Commission is coming at it that they want to try to provide a bike path system through the downtown area and up to Lake Ann Park and that may be a good suggestion to try and put something in up here or through here. Erhart: It would be a good barrier between the commercial but I don't know if you want cars going in and out across this bike path. That just doesn't seem to be right. Conrad: How did we get a separate bike path and sidewalk? Has that been in the plans for years or is this something new? Dacy: Something new. Conrad: And it is just being thought of now and we don't know where it is planned to go? Dacy: The Class I bikeway came from the Park and Recreation Commission. ~Olsen: It is in the Comp Plan, these different designations. The different bike classifications and this is the optimum one and this is the one they said go for. Emmings: I think it is kind of interesting in light of that one we approved south of Lake Ann where they put everybody on the street. They didn't want a separate even sidewalk much less a bikepath. Conrad: I don't understand that. Erhart: I guess I may be wrong in this but my feeling is about this land valuation of Burdick, I think the City has to provide good planning in locating streets and just not react negatively to make us responsible for maintaining values on properties when in fact we are supposed to make a good street design. We'll let our attorneys respond to that. If something changes here, obviously I think we would welcome Mr. Burdick to come in and replat based on our final conclusion of the street here. Lastly, I guess I would recommend that we would table this whole thing. I think there are a lot issues that we don't really have a clear consensus on. Conrad: If you want to table it Tim, what would you recommend? Table it for what to happen? Erhart: Review the street thing. ~onrad: Who would review it? Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 25 e Erhart: Our Engineer and Staff. Conrad: In light of the fact that one-way in might be a solution. Anything else. Erhart: I would like to see them corne back with a whole, rather then a drawing that just shows this property, I would like to see a drawing corne back that shows this potential cul-de-sac and everything. It is a little hard to visualize and solve and corne up with ideas and solutions when you are just looking at a partial view. I would like to see how it goes across into Lake Ann. Engelhardt: That would give us an opportunity to work with Mr. Burdick too to address some of his concerns for that Lot 1 and if there is potential and he could see that he would want to replat or something, readjust his lot lines where a compromise could be reached. Erhart: Yes, maybe further clarification on this park sidewalk thing and if we can get some direction on the legal aspect of it. B.C. Burdick: I'm going to suggest that during this tabling period that the three engineers get together, Mr. Jim Hill, Bill Engelhardt and Schoell and Madsen and try and work out this one-way street deal, etc. and corne up with drawings and a plan that will resolve this conflict that will be ,aacceptable to us and the James people and to the Ci ty by the three ~engineers perhaps along with the principals being there part of the time and to corne back with the drawings and go to MnDot and the County. Schoell and Madsen get different information from MnDot and the other engineers say they did not so find out what MnDot has to say to figure what they are saying and corne back in writing and drawings that are acceptable to all the parties involved in this. Conrad: Mr. James, what is your druthers on this issue? It is your petition for subdivision right now. We have gone along with the zoning. If you were to advise the Planning Commission to do something tonight, would you want us to forge ahead with it as Staff recommended or would you defer to us tabling it and allowing you to get together with Staff and engineers and Mr. Burdick one more time and see if something could be, some of the issues, not something could be worked but some of the issues. We're concerned with access to his property. I think there a couple other issues that could be resolved possibly. I'm not sure they can be. I don't know that there is a solution to some of these problems but what is your direction to us tonight? Charlie James: First of all, on the 2nd of June I went to Mr. Burdick and suggested that his engineer and my engineer get together and I was told at that time that he was set on his plan and that there was nothing to discuss and he didn't see any reason. He had Schoell and Madsen hired to do this plan and that was what he was promoting and I indicated at that time that I ,awas told by the County Engineer and Bill Monk that that design would not .,m e e t c r i t e ria. I too kit up 0 n my s elf torn a k e a corn pro m i s e . He i s cor r e c t Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 26 -When he said we did not reach an agreement at that meeting but I went back and took it upon myself to move this thing along to see if I could bring something down in between the 40 and what he had. Secondly, I do recall and maybe Barb remembers this, at one time in a meeting with Bill Monk the issue of a right-in turn on West 78th Street, preserving that was raised and it was rejected at that time or we would have pursued it and I believe the reason given was that it was a conflict with the turn lane movement going in. There is going to be so much traffic wanting to get onto West 78th Street that they were concerned about conflicts along the right hand turn lane getting up to the West 78th Street and whether that would divert people or whatever so it's not like that stone was left unturned. I'm willing to sit down I guess. The other aspect, the sewer was tabled until the 3rd or whatever and I've been at this for over a year. I'm on my fourth plat. You are just seeing the first of the last so I think a couple more weeks to me isn't going to make, at this point. The horse is out of the barn. Conrad: I have one concern and my concern is, I think Tim brought it up, is I don't know how the access to the Burdick property is going to occur right now. It has nothing to do with your property but on the other hand it does. Your property is going to dictate some of the access points and right now I don't see anything very good and maybe there is no solution and maybe Mr. Burdick is going to have to settle this some other way and that is just real real. We have a situation where there may not be a good _traffic solution, street alignment solution of the problem but at this .point in time I can't imagine how the access could occur down there and I would kind of like to see that. I would kind of like to see somebody saying rather then a cul-de-sac that we drew up there, I would like to see somebody really think about that and put it down where I could react to it. I'm not seeing that now and that would clarify whether I like this or there is another solution to the problem. B.C. Burdick: One thing here on this turn in. I didn't say a right turn in. I said one-way street. I did speak with Bill Monk, probably some time in June and he said we might have something there, I'll look into it. I called a few weeks or month later and he was very busy and he hadn't had a chance to even look into it so it isn't a case where Bill Monk gave any reasons for... Conrad: If we table tonight, rather then going back and forth, I'm not interested in that. William F. Kelly: Mr. Conrad, is what you are suggesting is exactly the same thing that I was suggesting to the City Council on Monday night. We have never had all principals, Staff in one room to sit down and discuss this and to plan one of the more important corners for this city. Half here and half there and never the two halves meet is ridiculous. We've never been able to sit down and do it all together. Charlie James: Not true. We had meetings with Mr. Burdick was there, the _county Engineer was there, Bill Monk was there, Barbara was there, I was Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 27 ~there and Jim Hill was there. William F. Kelly: We're talking about since we have been coming here since July. You might be talking about last March. Conrad: If we do table this, what is a fair amount of time to review it and come back. Bill do you have a thought when it would be? Engelhardt: I would say let's go for the two weeks. Table it for the two weeks until the next meeting and then if we can get everybody together and come up with something that everybody can agree on, we'll go for it. If not, we'll just have to make a presentation to you and then table it again. Conrad: Barbara or Jo Ann, do you think we are going to come up with some other, is this an opportunity to get the groups together and we might find something? Olsen: We'll try again. Emmings: Would it be appropriate to ask them, it seems to me to be an engineering exercise. If these people could get together and put together three or four alternatives and then take them back to their principals and let them comment on them and have them tell us what they like. It would be nice to look at more then one if we could I think. ~DaCy: I think in order to prepare the Commission, the next meeting is November 5th. We have been working on this issue for a year. I know all parties are frustrated and I think everybody in this room is trying to accomplish the same thing but in between times the Commission should think that the alternatives are few, numbering anywhere from no realignment at all. We have to look at that issue. Do we want to do that? Secondly, if we do the realignment, how high do we hold that as a priority to making traffic circulation work? Three, there have been a couple of alternatives mentioned here tonight so what I'm saying is that basically your scope of alternatives are going to center around those issues. Conrad: Do we, as a Commission and Staff believe that 78th should be moved? There should be a new 78th. I think all the reports say that 78th has got to move. Is there somebody here that feels that it shouldn't? Okay, so there is going to be a new 78th. That is an absolute in my mind as a Planning Commissioner and I think you have that support. We also know that it is going to be, at this point in time, the State is going to dictate the miles per hour on that curve and we don't have control over it unless we want to delay it for 10 years when there is more development and that doesn't make, I guess the applicant's want to move right now so they are going to be forced to dealing with what the State is going to do right now. Any other variables for guidance? As I say, I'm not sure I see a solution to the problem. I don't know that I would like the right-in. I don't know that I have ever seen something like that anyplace. I don't know that we ~have a good traffic flow in 20 years there. There may not be any solutions .,but on the other hand, maybe there is. Maybe there is something tha t we Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 28 ~can explore there. Any other variables directions that we could give? that we should pin down or Headla: What about that 200 and 300 feet? Conrad: I think we are set at 300 feet. That is what the arbitrary rule came down before, that is 300 feet. That wasn't arbitrary. I'm getting caught up in the discussion. Dacy: 300 on the existing West 78th Street, 200 on the realigned. Emmings: They said they were willing to go to 300 all across the board. Dacy: Well, the more the merrier but to justify what Staff was saying, to answer Mr. Kelly's concern, that was why. Headla: Are you saying Barb then that everyone agrees to 300? Conrad: The applicant is saying that if it makes us feel good, we can go to 300 feet. The standards based on a 35 mph highway says it only be 200 feet. William F. Kelly: You won't be able to get into Lot I, Block 2. ~DaCy: Yes, that is right on the lot line. William F. Kelly: I thought that 300 feet is the beginning of the driveway. Siegel: They are going to share access with Lot 2. Conrad: The Standard is based on miles per hour and that is why 200 was appropriate for that with the new West 78th Street. William F. Kelly: I never heard the miles per hour having any relationship to the 300 feet when we talked about it last time. Not once was the miles per hour ever mentioned. Conrad: But it does kind of make sense when you think about it. Erhart moved, Emmings seconded to table the Subdivision Request #86-11 until the next Planning Commission meeting scheduled for November 5, 1986 and ask that the City Engineer and the engineers from both the applicant and Mr. Burdick try to get together and try to find a resolution, and have Staff come back with a more detailed proposal for street layouts and access and further clarification of the Class I bikeway as recommended from the Park and Recreation Commission. All voted in favor and motion carried. Conrad: Not only Burdick but how it relates to the West 78th Street on the other side going to Lake Ann Park. What else? ~ Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 29 - Dacy: Originally you said to review the one-way in, to show potential cul- de-sac on the overall plan and to Lake Ann Park, further clarification on the Class I bikeway and a legal opinion. Did you say that? Conrad: Can we request that? Dacy: Unless you want to defer that to the Council. Emmings: Can I suggest something? Maybe we should decide what we are going to approve and then once we have done that, say that that approved plan should be reviewed to see if our Attorney thinks that it impacts Mr. Burdick's property adversely so there might be a problem and then he could report to the Council and they can decide. Conrad: Okay, so hold off on the legal opinion. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Emmings moved, Erhart seconded to approve pages 23 through 54 of the Minutes of the Planning Commission meeting dated September 24, 1986 as amended by Steven Emmings on page 37 and 42. All voted in favor except Robert Siegel who abstained and motion carried. Siegel moved, Erhart seconded to approve the Minutes of the Planning ~Commission meeting dated October 9, 1986 as amended. All voted in favor ~and motion carried. COMPREHENSIVE PLAN - HOUSING AND TRANSPORTATION CHAPTERS. Mark Koegler: Since we met last time, we have brought you some additional material that, from sitting down and talking with Barb, we thought we just had to bring to your attention prior to proceeding further with the housing elements and as it shows the Metropolitan Council is the entity that has to review and approve Chanhassen's Comprehensive Plan. We have some more detail on the structure and how I guess they view housing plan updates. We are bringing that to you this evening for your knowledge or consideration or whatever action you care to give that. Weill start it off with some background information which is some 1980 census data and I think the numbers are pretty clear. I don It think it is really necessary to review those unless somebody has something specific. When we update or give you next time the updated plan text, there will be a comparison of the 1970 data versus the 1980 data through most all of those categories rather then the last one instead of now. The Metropolitan Council's policies pertaining to Comprehensive Plan updates is something we want to spend a little bit of time so we can bring you up to speed a little bit on at least of what their thinking is so you can at least consider that as we go through and set policies and so forth for the City of Chanhassen. As is outlined in the report, the Met Council went through, they updated their Housing Chapter in 1985 and don't anticipate that that will be updated again for quite some time to come. They feel it is current at the present _time. In doing so they identified, what is listed as seven major issues Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 30 _ related to housing and those are in the memorandum and then basically identified what they categorize as four major goals that are somewhat related to those issues and presumably to the resolution of any problems or circumstances that they felt needed attention. The Housing Chapter has, which literally any other chapter that the Metropolitan Council ever produces, is full of policies. There is a policy that seems to cover almost every top i c tha t you can ever conce i ve and tha tis the case with housing and in going through that material, what I have done is simply brought a number of them to your attention. Not all of them by any means but the ones that perhaps are more pertinent to Chanhassen, to the Comprehensive Plan update and probably omitted some of the ones that are very much consistent with typical planning theory, certainly what this city and most cities have been doing for a lot of years. Things like resource preservation in terms of housing development and those kind of things which are already part of the Chanhassen Plan. Policy 1, and don't worry I won't hit everyone of these but just a few high points, policy 1 that the Met Council has does encourage production of what they term more afforable housing for households with low, moderate, modest incomes. On the following page in the memo there, there is a chart at the top which does list what the definition of each of those categories is. The low, moderate, and modest. There is upper listed there as well. Those are based on 1980 census data. please keep in mind that that is what we are dealing with is a base on the plan update and on this material as well. Within the Metropolitan Council's material, they supplied some statistics ~that persumably were accurate from about 1980 to 1983 in looking at ~Chanhassen's building permits which I'm not sure that that is a totally germain representation but at least it is a benchmark of some proportion. It was indicated that the average purchase price of a new home in the City in 1980 was about $105,000.00 which according to the census figures is probably beyond the reach of some 80-85% of the people that live here now in terms of them being first time homebuyers, not using FHA's criteria. That basically reinforces Met Council's essential position on housing that in their estimate there is a major shortage of affordable housing throughout the entire Twin City area and if you apply that kind of criteria, I guess you can rationalize that within the City of Chanhassen as well. The second policy they talk about, affordable rental housing to meet the needs of all age groups. They advocate that cities consider accessory housing. I don't know if that is an issue that this body has addressed or not. Many cities have. There are some cities in the metro area right now that do allow accessory apartments, that is like mother in-law kind of things. There are a number of cities though that have gone through that exercise and have chosen specifically not to do that because they inherit problems that those create and those are acknowledged by the Met Council in their plan in terms of traffic, parking, law enforcement are some of the issues that come up but they do advocate that the cities consider that as one possible avenue of increasing housing supply. The fourth policy in their listing is an interesting one in that they strongly support what they term local efforts to reduce housing costs and recommend that cities in the metro area, particularly in the MUSA area, which Chanhassen is one, adopt the Met Council's Advisory Standards. For your information the Advisory _Standards are listed there. There are really only four points. I think it Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 31 -is fair to say that most of those are contrary to most of the actions that this city has taken in the last 5-10 years in that they are looking at single family lot sizes in the 6,000-8,000 square feet in at least a portion of the city. They are looking at multi-family densities of 20 units per acre again in all or a portion of the city. I don't think any community would have all. The third point being reduction of elimination in minimum floor area requirements and then the fourth one would be elimination of regulations requiring that garages be constructed for housing units. Again, that is probably I think, I don't know what it ended up being but I'm reasonably sure that when the zoning Ordinance was discussed the addition of the garage requirement is being considered right now and certainly the lot sizes that are being proposed are obviously no where near the 6,000-8,000 square foot range. I just wanted to bring out and point to your attention that in terms of the way the Met Council is thinking and the way the City is thinking, obviously they are not totally in sync on all those kind of items. The policy 5 deals with the use of cluster and site design. Planned unit developments if you will. Here again, the City is again obviously the City is updating it's PUD Ordinance and depending on what your outlook is, maybe it is getting more restrictive. Maybe it is getting less restrictive but there are standards in there that certainly that weren't there before. Conrad: Just a comment here Mark. We talked about a cluster and no developer wants to cluster. Since we've been here we've said that's nifty ~planning, let's do it so either we don't have the mechanism to encourage it ~or it just is not the thing to do in development. It is kind of nifty to talk about it but I guess I would be looking for your comment as to, if it is not something that is happening in the building industry then I don't know as though I want to put it in and two, then I would look to your suggestion as to what do you do to encourage that? Koegler: I think you are hitting the point directly, that the market plays a major force in determining the type of housing that is constructed. The cluster concept is one that has been around for a lot of years and not one that you see used in too many places very strongly at the moment. I think the reason the Met Council leaves language of that type in here and why I think ultimately Chanhassen's plan will have some kind of language toward that issue is that that is an area that may change in another five years or whatever. Their plan as the City's plan is meant to have some flexibility as the Metro counties change and I think it is in there for that reason only. It is not a major concept right now. I think you will find that kind of thinking prevalent in a number of these particular items. In my personal view the accessory apartment thing is another issue. It is not terrifically popular in a lot of the cities right now but that doesn't mean that haven't asked you to consider it as an option. The sixth item deals with consideration, they suggested that cities allow development of mobile rental parks within the community. Policy 8 is one that I think probably is very easy for everyone to agree with in terms of streamlining the approval process. I think most cities and most government bodies have been trying to do that for a number of year and probably have made some _significant strides in that behalf. Policy 9 encouraging development of Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 32 ~attached housing and alternative forms of ownerships such as Co-ops. Again, that is somewhat similar to the clustering as to a major degree of market perception. Policy 10, whether each city has responsibility to plan for a variety of types and costs of housing. That really is a goal that goes back to one that was in Chanhassen's Comp Plan in 1980 although it almost is along those same lines. The only thing that is new out of this is a new monitor for all of this activity and that now they have labeled this as life cycle housing which is a term that was not prominent five years ago or whatever. That is something that if you look at criteria in Exhibit 2 that Met Council suggests be a part of the plan, I think we can work that in very easily without any problem. Basically accommodating a range of housing types that will allow people to stay within the community if they so desire as their housing needs change. I don't know if that concept is particularly controversial. Perhaps the housing type that will meet their needs is something that would be subject to debate but anyway, they ask and suggest that the life cycle aspect be addressed and we can do that fairly easily. Conrad: So we can say it but not mean it. Koegler: I didn't say that. Conrad: But we can say it without applying numbers to it. ~Koegler: Well, let's wait until we get a little further and we'll talk ~about numbers. Numbers are still a part of the plan as I'm sure you have picked up on through this. Policy 14, 15, 17 to some degree simply relay that they are advocates that cities look at providing housing over a total range of users. Elderly, single parent households, and so forth. We have more specific needs. Policy 17 however, again introduces a new concept which was preceived in 1985 and that is that it really targets communities which have a heavy domination of single family homes as the overall housing structure and Chanhassen I presume certainly would be one of those. What they have done is establish what they call a community index the goal of which is to help communities achieve a more balanced housing style. Balanced, obviousy by their definition. There is a note in their plan that states that the use of the index will be monitored and at some future time the Council may determine that it should be included in the review guidelines for various Council housing reviews. I will get into that a little bit later here in a few minutes in the discussion but what they have essentially done is gone through with this little matrix, which is only a guide right now. It is not applied formally to anything. They do have that little note that says they may apply it in the future but right now it is not. The first chart that is there, I just picked out some communities, it obviously listed all the communities in the Metro area. I just picked out some southwest ones and we had talked last time about Edina's housing mix so I threw that one in as well since that is in the southwest also. The first chart that has ranking percentage of altnernative housing types and again this relates back to 1980 figures. The Metro Council established a regional goal of 41%, which essentially says that 41% of the housing ~thrOUghout the entire region should be as an alternative type to single Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 33 ~familY detached. Chanhassen at the present time provides 23.8%. Their intent in setting a goal is simply so that communities can look at that as they continue to grow and I am paraphrasing their words out of the Plan but they do state because a city scores higher or it scores low doesn't mean that it is necessarily good or bad. They are advocating that it is a tool. If you want to use it you can. To say that maybe we are too heavily single family detached dominated and should look at some alternative forms. Again, that is essentially their thinking. The second chart is the ranking by percentage of low and modest housing and it is based on value in 1980. Again, they set a regional goal that 63% of the housing in the entire Metropolitan area should be low and modest cost. If you recall back to those income definitions, the modest income is a fairly substantial number and in 1980 that represented a maximum value of about $62,000.00 per house. In that ranking, the 63% being the regional, Chanhassen is at 39% and there are other cities there. You can see Chaska is at 65%, actually above the regional goal right now and areas like Edina and Eden prairie are down about 25-26%. The only reason to bring that to your attention again is that is a new wrinkle. What they are possibly doing, according again to their verbage, is setting up for the future that they will use this as a guide perhaps in lieu of the specific target numbers that were idenitifed in 1980 and if you remember at that time they had set definite goals for cities of low and moderate income housing with modest cost housing. X number of units that Chanhassen was expected to working toward over the next 10 year period and those numbers have kind of gone by the wayside and ~in lieu of that this is one technique that they have applied. The next ~page there is, what they termed, the recommended strategies for communities in the area of planned urbanization. Again, that is Chanhassen. That is cities within the MUSA area. One, is to provide subsidized housing and they still, consistent with what their theme was in 1980, advocate the best way to do that is through new construction programs. Their second point is develop zoning ordinances and other procedures that permit modest cost housing and that gets back again to their advisory zoning standards. Smaller lots, no garages, those kinds of things that you have potential to bring down the cost of housing to some degree. Third, that adequate amounts of land be designated to accommodate growth and that growth considered again is life cycle needs which is kind of a popular theme that they picked up on. Those are just some of the major topics I guess that in reviewing the plan, felt at least in going through and objectively looking at what Chanhassen is doing right now and what it is trying to achieve. I wanted to bring to your attention that is the Metropolitan Council's focus so you are aware of that going in. It is fair then as the third part of this exercise to look at implementation. What does this all really mean and I think we kind of kept touching on that last time and perhaps didn't have as definitive an answer as we can maybe provide tonight. I guess in looking at that category of implementation in two ways. First of all, some comments on the ability of the Met Council to implement their original plans. They have established the regional goals. What can they literally do to see that those occur and the second part of that is the ability of this city to implement what it perceives as the local climate and what it wants to achieve. In the past, the Metropolitan Council has had Policy 39. ~POlicy 39 is not new. It has probably been one of their most controversial Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 34 -and probably from their perspective, one of their most effective tools in getting compliance with communities towards meeting low and moderate income goals and other related types of goals and objectives and that essentially said that whenever they reviewed any kind of funding application that this City has, there was a section on housing performance and if you didn't perform you lost those points. Maybe that meant you lost on a grant. Maybe it meant nothing. In looking at what it probably actually meant to the City of Chanhassen over the last five years, the only grants that this city was involved that Met Council reviewed was the LAWCON/LCMR monies for some of the park projects like the Lake Ann Project, South Lotus Lake and some of those things and it did not seem to have any bearing, at least from my observation, on those grants. The City's performance was not reviewed at the goals that were adopted in the Comprehensive plan and the grants were approved. In reviewing the topic further and discussing it with some Met Council people and specifically asking them what kind of authority they had and really their clout is, if you will, the only other thing that came up, which peaked a little bit of my interest was the fact that they review subdivisions that are going to be FHA financed. I talked to the people at HUD and there is a formal checklist that goes over to the Metropolitan Council for every FHA project anywhere in the Metro area. There is a housing performance review section in that. Again, from my observations and having been involved in subdivision within this community that were set up that are being financed through FHA, pheasant Hills is one of them, I suspect most of the major subdivisions now within the community are ael ig ible for FHA. It hasn't seem to make any difference. Those were ~approved. They don't treat that at the present time as a major comment kind of item. when HUD gets it back, they look at the boxes and they maybe check yes and maybe check no and so forth and it doesn't seem to have any major bearing. The only concern that we have, and it is noted as a word of caution in the memo, is that simply because at this point in time things are kind of quasi-criteria that aren't really employed does not mean that they will not be employed more forcefully in the future. I'm advocating that we don't totally ignore all of the concepts and some of the language that they bring out but that we address it as reasonably as we can consistent with the policy direction that you wish to take. I think there is room to accommodate that and to accommodate the framework the Met Council has set up and not totally ignore that which I think will lead to smoother relations in this community in the future between the two bodies. I asked very specifically of one of the Met Council staff people if a city simply says we are not going to plan any lower and moderate income housing. We don't think that is appropriate. We're not going to plan anything but single family detached, half acre lots. How would you react and their comment was that they would provide some verbage back pointing out that it was not obviously keeping with their thinking but it would not make the plan inconsistent with the Metro Plans. It would not. I then pursued a line of discussion as to what criteria they would look at. What criteria was in place that if Chanhassen said okay we need three modest cost housing units in the next five years, what do they look at? What are their numbers? What is Chanhassen being compared to and I was told they have no guidelines. They have no guidelines at all at this point in time and they esta ted tha t when we get some plans in and we start review ing them, if there Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - page 35 -is the need for guidelines, maybe we will draft something at that time which is kind of a scary philosophy. It is better to know up front what you are dealing with but that is not an atypical pattern as history has shown. I think what we are trying to do here is using the framework that they have suggested here. They have suggested a framework that I have copied only a portion of. That is Exhibit 2 in your memo which I think is realistic for us to follow in putting together a plan. It meets basically the format of the previous plans with a few additions and I don't see that there are any real problems with that. The second part, before I get too far off the subject on the implementation aspect is what the City of Chanhassen has available to implement any goals that it identifies to provide more modest cost housing units or low and moderate housing units and much the same as what the Metropolitan Council has experienced in the past, the City of Chanhassen has had similar experiences in that many of the local tools that were available as much as 3-5 years ago are no longer there and that specifically are programs that have been offered by HUD and the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency many of which no longer are funded. Many of which are no longer even in existence. Some of the more traditional, more local rooted powers that the City has that other cities have that have been used quite extensively in the past, the tax increment financing and housing revenue bonds are now as a result of the tax legislation, severely curtailed. They are subject to the $150.00 per captia cap statewide which is going to mean that there is going to be dramatic decrease in the total amount of bonding that is occurring so that aas a tool may still be one that can be pursued but it certainly is not easy .to accomplish as it was in the past. Chanhassen really is in the same situation as the Met Council is in with regard to if we identify we want to do something, how do we do it. The methods of achieving that are more difficult then they were. There are still some programs. Those are paraphrased in the material and coming back with the housing plan, we will expand on that as much as we reasonably can. We also will look at other techniques that may be out there that haven't been uncovered or used as extensively as today. As I started off with this evening what the intent was in bringing this to your attention was to get some reaction as to how you would proceed. These are valid points at least from a regional perspective that have been identified within Metropolitan Council's Housing plan which is like the Development Framework, is a overall framework type of planning document. We will need to address some of those in some fashion. Most of those are rather specific fashion and any direction you want to provide us in how you wish to accommodate that will certainly be appreciated. I think there are some things that we can certainly, in working with Barb, determine that there is probably very little interest in. I think probably something like the mobile rental park is one of them. Again, this city like every other city has to accommodate manufactured housing in certain guidelines. Manufactured housing and mobile homes are two different things even according to the Metropolitan Council's definition. They do deferentiate between the two. The accessory apartment issue is in the middle I assume. I don't know what Chanhassen's history is. Probably not a great deal of interest in pursuing that. What about some of the other things? This concept of this life cycle housing thing. _IS it something that you agree with that as somebody moves into this city Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 36 -they can acquire housing units that they can afford on the lower end and they can move up, move up maybe another step and then at some point sw itch into another type of housing which is perhaps smaller and more fits the needs again of an elderly individual? Is that something you want to state? What kind of direction do you wish to provide for the housing section? Conrad: In the past Mark we may have said the things they wanted us to say but we really haven't had programs to implement them and more then likely, of all these policies I see, I see very few that I think we really want to pursue where we can put numbers down. I'm speaking for myself and I really do believe that the market should dictate whatever should happen. I guess for myself, I think there are some things in here. The clustered housing I think is something that I feel should be worked in and we can work that in easily. Policy 8, efficiency in operation and how we look at things and process applications through. I don't feel real strongly about any other of these policies. Is there anybody who has some that we would like to have Mark definitely work in? Emmings: I've got one I guess. There are statistics here that say that according to building permit data, the average price of a new home in Chanhassen in 1980 was $105,000.00. To buy a $105,000.00 home there has to be $61,000.00 in income and according to 1980 census, only 12.4% of Chanhassen's population made over $50,000.00 so it meant that 1980 only a small portion of Chanhassen's residents could buy the average new home in ~our own community. Somehow that is just awful. The thing over on the ~other side, Metro Council's Housing Chapter identifies four major goals and one was promote affordable housing in a choice of locations for people of all income levels. I don't like that wording. A choice of locations. I'm worried that you are creating something that everybody refers to as the other side of the tracks and no one wants to live there and they only live there because that is all they can afford. I think there ought to be affordable housing in every neighborhood for all ranges of income and I think that while the market should dictate what happens, and I think it never will whether we say it shou Id or shou Idn' t, we might have an opportunity to influence that with our PUD Ordinance if we mean what we say and that we will award people for coming in with a variety of housing types. To me that means a variety of income levels and we will award them by letting them build more and somehow make it worth their while, we can do this. If we open those doors and direct them that way, maybe it will happen. Maybe the market will make it happen and that would also allow for the life cycle business. If you have a variety of affordable housing for all different markets. For the single parent, families, elderly, for people who are just forming families and everything else and I think that is just critical. I wouldn't like to see Chanhassen be Edina or Eden I don't want to live in a totally homogeneous community. I like this community. I liked my neighborhood in Minneapolis before I moved out here and believe me it was bizarre almost but every household was from the opposi te end of some spectrum and that was good and I avoided looking in those other communities. I avoided looking in Eden Prairie. I wouldn't ~have considered it. In this community at least there is some rural, it is ~a little more mixed and I like that. I think about this Chan vista or Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 37 ~whatever it was called, development that went in and all of the concern about the small lots in there and it really bothered me at the time that there was so much sentiment to make Chanhassen purely a large lot community and the reference by one person to them as being trashy or implying if not stating that that would mean trashy people and I absolutely don't believe in that as a matter of faith and I think when a developer comes in with some smaller lots on a deal like that, I think it is great. I think there should be. I don't know how we can support a large lot community when only 12% of our population can buy the average house. Conrad: But it's happening. Emmings: But that's why. It means that our ideals or our goals are out of line with our own reality which is spooky. Conrad: Most of the developments are brand new stuff. Emmings: People who can afford a $60,000.00 house or $50,000.00 house ought to be able to buy a brand new house. Conrad: Developers tell us you can't build a $50,000.00 house. Emm ings: I bui 1 t a $45,000.00 house in Minneapol is on a lot. It isn't true. I know it's not true and I did it with one of the biggest builders ~in Minneapolis just by making the design fit the money I had to spend. Erhart: When was this? Emmings: In 1978. Couldn't do it today maybe but I'm not sure you couldn't. I don't think anybody tries to. Maybe the profit isn't there but maybe it could be there in the PUD. I think that is our one opportunity to really promote that kind of an idea if anybody is interested besides me. Dacy: I think too that the way the Comp plan is written now identifies the PUD as a major vehicle to encourage mixed uses or I should say different types of uses to meet that life cycle need. I don't believe it actually said life cycle but it referred to it in general and you are saying some of the things that I think the Commission has said in the past. Siegel: How specific do we have to be in addressing these points? If we say we are in favor of the points under 10 of life cycle housing within Chanhassen, we're sort of covering most of the previous points. Koegler: To a certain degree. The Metro Council's guidelines specifically state that it is there for us. That communities identify numerical goals just as they did for communities in 1980. They hypotheticate that Chanhassen would say between now and 1990 we are going to provide 100 units or whatever the number might be of modest cost housing to off-set the ~otherwise high priced housing. They are advocating that you go that far. ..,That is not required. You can certainly provide language that says we Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 38 -WOUld like to have life cycle housing and we would like to have a range of housing mixes. Realistically though, I'm not one that advocates putting something in, kind of what Ladd was saying unless there is some mechanism to back it up and unless you mean it and if there is no mechani sm to provide more modest cost and more of a mix of housing in Chanhassen's Ordinance structure or in the rest of it's Comp Plan, that statement really doesn't have a great foundation behind it. The PUD Ordinance, if that is changed as it apparently will be and you set something up as a 12,000 square foot lot minimum or whatever the number may be, mayor may not be conducive to supplying that type of housing so I think it all fits as a package. What you say in some form or fashion you need to be able to back up and try to implement. Siegel: Okay, but are they talking about what is planned for within the MUSA line only and not that part of the community outside of the MUSA line? Koegler: Correct. Siegel: So in structuring our percentages and our numbers, we're only talking about the developable area within the MUSA line so when if we designate so much rental property or something, that has to be within the sewered district? Koegler: The Met Council's focus is on the sewered area. Their philosophy _is a rural area is a rural to remain rural period and things like multiple ~family housing, large parks, commercial centers, things of that nature are not appropriate in the rural service area. Scattered residential development on property that will support that but will not support agriculture is consistent with their thinking. Siegel: Okay, but when we are looking at these figures, percentages and the pricing of the average homes, are they including all of Chanhassen? Including beyond the MUSA line? Koegler: The $105,000.00 figure for example was city wide. One could have gone in and located I'm sure those and said okay only seven of those or twelve of those are on the MUSA line. That mayor may not be a good example to use. $105,000.00 may be more then it was then previous years or for the years that followed 1980. I don't know. I didn't really look at that. I took 1980 simply because all of the other data was based on 1980. Siegel: But it certainly reflects on those percentages like it were ranking percentages by alternative housing. If we are looking at 23-28%, if that is all of Chanhassen, if we narrow that down to the area that is on the north side of the MUSA line, the percentage might be considerably higher. Koegler: I don't think it would be proportion amount of housing units. alternative housing types, they are e significantly higher just because this When they talk about providing talking about those being provided in Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 39 ~the MUSA are. Under their definition, those types of uses are to have full services which include sewer. Conrad: In the years that I have been here I have never come across people in the audience that have asked us to make housing more affordable, that have asked us to reduce lot size, that have asked us to reduce the cost of housing, that have asked us to bring in more elderly. I'm stating that just as... Siegel: But you have to think of the make-up of the community as it stands. You aren't going to ask people who are part of the majority to be in favor of minorities which is what you are saying. You can't expect the community to come in and respond to low income housing when we don't have any low income people to respond on that side of the question. In other words, there has to be leadership from the City Council and the City as a governmental body designating these things. You're not going to get the community to come in and say yes, I want three old folks homes out here and some low rental housing over here. There is no one in the community in favor of that. You're not going to get that kind of response is my point. Conrad: They're not asking for it and there are other issues and really what has occurred to me in past Comprehensive Plans we have satisfied the need of Met Council to sound like we wanted everything good and fair for everybody but in reality there never has been anything to pull it off. I ~think very practically we discourage a lot of that through our zoning and ~our lot sizes. I think on the other hand, what we have done in our new Zoning Ordinance is going to be encouraging a lot of the things that will help for senior citizens, will help for lower costs and I think our zoning tells them that we are planning ahead. I don't know. I think these are really tough issues and some of Met Council, I don't know that they apply to Chanhassen. They apply it to us but we are a developing community. We are a different community then the City of Minneapolis and I think some of the things they are trying to do simply doesn't apply out here. Koegler: Let me interject one point. They recognize that. If you look at where all the job creation has been in the last 10 years. It has not been in the center city. It has been in the surburban communities which further emphasis their point that if you are going to have jobs that are a full range on the spectrum, many of which are probably on the lower end, are you going to provide housing for those people or are we going to have a case where the center city residents are commuting out and then they get into their next chapter which is transportation and transportation services are not available so it all fits together. The bottom line point is what direction do you really want to take. Certainly all of the points in the Zoning Ordinance that you were eluding to, that are promotional creating a mix of housing and creating more of a range of prices perhaps, we will emphasis those. Any of the tools that are available we will certainly point those out in the plan that those are available. ~conrad: Anybody with direction to Mark on this? I guess my direction ,.,would be to put a couple in the clustered housing or stress it. The Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 40 ~streamlining of the approval processes. I think to tell you the truth, we should come in with something that talks about affordable housing for all ages and incomes. I think we just really should put that there. I don't feel that I need to put numbers behind it however, I'm doing that more to meet a direction then I feel we are going to be able to carry it out with policies. Headla: I think if you put in some passive wording. At least if a builder is interested in coming and they look at it they know we will support it. I guess I'm with you. I don't like putting numbers in right now. I wouldn't even know how to pursue it but at least we wouldn't be discouraging it. If we don't put anything in we are discouraging it. Conrad: I think we should put something in but Tim, what do you think. Erhart: I think the market is going to dictate although it is a little strange because I'll bet you 80% of the people that work now in this community can't afford housing. Dacy: That is very close to the actual facts. Siegel: Or in Eden Prairie. If you have ever been on the Crosstown when work closes down between 4:00-5:00, you used to be able to get to Southdale between 4:00-5:00 quite easily. You know where they are going. They are ~going to Richfield, St. Paul from jobs in Eden prairie and Edina and St. "'Louis Park and Chanhassen probably. Emmings: This really ties into having a downtown too I think. If we had those people living here, maybe we could have a good grocery store in downtown Chanhassen but I think until those people are living out here we won't. Erhart: There probably is a quite close connection there. The problem is you have a Planning Commission and City Council that is sort of bent on this 15,000 square foot lot throughout the city and if you really want to make it happen, I think you have to look at the zoning map and say we are going to put on there areas that are going to encourage 10,000-12,000 square foot lots. I don't know if politically you can do that here but that is what it would take beyond our PUD, which is a good start. I think that gives it enough to solicit service to do those things but if you really wanted to do it, you would have to take the Zoning Ordinance. Headla: Did we note tonight when we had high density housing proposed and no one gave any encouragement and said hey, we're interested in that. Emmings: That is a first great step. That is what I most interested in that whole plan. Headla: We had an opportunity and we didn't take advantage of it. 4ItEmmings: We got focused on the road. Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 41 -Siegel: We have high density though that nobody is coming in with a plan. Headla: But we can say we are really interested. Erhart: What is that high density we are talking about? I assume it is apartments or something. We allow apartments and we allow 15,000 square foot lots but we don't allow in this city 11,000 square foot lots anywhere. We leave that segment out and you have that 80% people that can't live here and a majority of them that are going to buy something and become real residents... Headla: But the apartments are a good start. Erhart: Yes, but a lot of them are looking for starter homes. Siegel: There are lots that are 8,000-10,000 in Oak Grove behind that commercial development by the Estates. Erhart: Those are small lots? Siegel: Yes, 8,000-10,000. Olsen: That was the end. That was the last we... _Siegel: Erhart: But we did do that. But in the new Zoning Ordinance they are out the way I read it. Siegel: That's what I mean. What are we strapping ourselves in for with the new Zoning Ordinance by doing this as far as what we are talking about tonight? Dacy: I think the new Zoning Ordinance is a lot more flexible with the policies that are in the Comp Plan now. There is a more lenient approach to density and multiple family areas so the Council has acted on 12 as a break which is a little bit more realistic in the development world to come up with a detached single family in renting situations. Siegel: That's why, why can't we talk about those certain percentages in those areas? If we have designated high density zoned areas, why can't we talk about those kind of percentages for this purpose? Koegler: Are you speaking about a basis of land designations that we have x number of acres representing so many percentage points of R-12? Siegel: Can't we relate it to our Zoning plan and then pull those percentages out and just talk in terms of percentages and at least give some figures instead of speaking entirely in generalities and still have the philosophy there that we are in favor of life cycle housing. e Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 42 e Koegler: That is a good suggestion. To turn the question around. I think I have a reasonable feel for direction. What things do you want to specificaly avoid? Conrad: I think your mobile homes is one. Koegler: Accessory? Siegel: That is one, what do we have to gain by addressing that? Dacy: Are you referring to the accessory apartment issue? Siegel: Yes. Dacy: Okay. Currently, right now we don't have a specific Ordinance. Well, I shouldn't say that. We do in some way that if there is certain crtieria met, for example if it is separate entrance, separate water meter and so on, if it is appearing more as a duplex rather then as an accessory apartment, we do have the zoning controls to prohibit that. Instead of encouraging that as an apartment inside that home be a part of the same family home and not necessarily as a separate unit. In the proposed Ordinance, the Council directed Staff to come back with an alternative to the way that was proposed in the Ordinance which was a variance procedure for mother-in-law apartment if it appeared that a mother-in-law wanted to acome back and live with you and you wanted to crea te a cer ta in 1 i v ing ~arrangement, you would have to come in through the variance process and the Council was not happy with that. That came from the State Statute that they wanted the simplier procedure for someone so right now they are trying to address it in some way realizing that there is a need but they are concerned about it and of course, what happens if the mother-in-law dies? They don't want to continue the house as a duplex per see Siegel: Is that something that we really have to address as an accessory housing? Dacy: It is an issue that has become more of a national concern and I think the Met Council is coming at it from the regional perspective that the grain of the population and so on and how do we house the elderly. Funds are deteriorating from the Federal programs to create separate projects and they do tend to go back and live with their children and there should be availability in the Zoning Ordinance to accommodate for that so it general language that the community is acceptable toward that. Siegel: I can only comment on that, why can't we do that? It's happening already. Emmings: I'm facing this issue at my house right now in fact. We're at the point where we're talking about plans and so forth and I talked to Barb about it the other day. I think it is getting to be a real kind of a trend and I know I have other friends who are in the same situation right _now. Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 43 e Headla: Do you think we should address this then? Emmings: I don't know. I don't know if it has to be. Right now there is a mechanism there. I don't know if it has to be separately addressed but I th i nk it is a com i ng trend just beca use of the expense and even there is an attitude change about it where people seem to be more willing to take in parents then put them in a nursing home or whatever or before they have to go to a nursing home to take them in but there seems to be some of that going on and the problem is, what do you do with that accessory unit. In my neighborhood for example, what do I do with it after the parent is deceased or finally has to go into a nursing home, what do I do with all that space and I add a bunch of value to my home and I have to pay taxes on. It's a mess. Siegel: You're talking about attached housing aren't you? You're not talking about a separate unit on a piece of property? Dacy: Redoing the garage. Siegel: Mother-in-law apartment. Finishing the basement. That's happening already. I don't understand why we are in a quandry about this. Conrad: It can happen if it is in the house. ~Siegel: You mean the possibility of renting it out to somebody else should ~the mother-in-law or whatever? Dacy: It is becoming a separate unit in and of itself. Separate entry, separate utility connection, separate driveway and so on. It becomes a duplex in essence and rather then... Conrad: The whole issue of cars, how many garages do you want? Siegel: I know but that is happening as your kids grow up. All of a sudden you have only a one car family 10 years ago and now you have four with a two car garage. I mean that happens. I don't see the quandry. Usually what happens of course, when you are all alone you sell the house and go to a condo or something. Decrease your size of living. I just fail to see the real importance of this without addressing it in general terms and leave it at that. Koegler: We can address it in general terms, at least along the lines that the City is investigating the options. That kind of statement can be in the plan and be valid. It is though, as Barb was pointing out, it is a legitimate issue. I have run into that in other cities. A specific case where a young couple bought a house from someone who had retrofitted a mother-in-law apartment and then rented out the mother-in-law apartment to somebody else and three months later some neighbors filed a complaint and the city went back and said no, that is an illegal conversion because they are not allowed within that community and of course everyone was 4Itthreatening to sue everybody else and the guy simply could not afford the Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 44 ~house. He had counted on the rental income. Put the house on the market and sold it. Somebody else has bought it and I don't know what their aspirations are now but it is the next one down the line that creates the problem and unless you have a mechanism to identify that that is an accessory building and have a special use permit of some type saying you have to have so many park ing spaces and they have to be here and you have to have landscaping buffers for the neighbors and those kind of things, it has the potential to get out of hand. Erhart: But if you are designing these neighborhoods as single family neighborhoods, can't you define who is family and who is not. Mother-in- law is family but a brother is not and a rental of a non-relative is not. Can't you define the use in those terms and not get so hung up about driveways? Koegler: I don't know. I really question the legality right now of defining family. The whole concept of family has been changing so much in not only planning but in legal jargon also in the last years. I don't have the qualification really to count on that. The way the census bureau even now looks. It used to be family units and now it is households to a large degree because we have so many single people living together or significant other s or wha tever it might be so there has been such a change there tha t I don't know if the traditional norm fits anymore. I think it does in many situations but not all. ~Siegel: It sure is a can of worms. Conrad: It is complex. The average age in Chanhassen is 31 years old right? Something like that so we're not going to have at this point in time, the mother-in-law issue is not going to be a real key one for another 5 years so when we revise the Comprehensive Plan in 5 years, those of you who are still here, you can address it. I guess I feel based on the population age right now that it is not a hot item for me and maybe in five years it will be as the average age gets older. Have we generalized this enough Mark? I really do appreciate your perspective on keeping things in that we know we really need. I really do like that. I don't like to garble it up with stuff that defuses it. It interfers with the quality of the other goals that we want and makes it all look a little bit wishy-washy or mish mash. Koegler: The issues I have brought to you tonight are not as applicable...but I would probably be remiss not to let you know what the Council's position is as part of the process. Next time around then we will take a shot at putting together a housing draft which I'm sure will be critiqued quite closely. Hopefully we will pull together the general discussions at that meeting. Conrad: Anything else? Transportation? Koegler: I don't think I really need to go into that in any detail. There _is a memo there and I think the only thing that I was going to point out, Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 45 e the transpor ta t i on is a bit un i que from the other sect ions in tha t the HRA makes those transportation plans for a significant portion of the community. We will be weaving that into the Comp Plan and there is some material there that just summarizes the high points and I think there is really no discussion that we need to bring to your attention. Conrad: What are you going to do on bus service? Anything? Does bus service out here have any merit because we have a new system service, are you going to weave that in somehow? Koegler: Yes. Conrad: In talking about rail service out here. We do have a railroad tracks that goes through and it has always fascinated me that we really don't push anything. I am intrigued by, I know Wayzata or somebody is going to have light rail service, commuter service, and I am intrigued by what it would take for Chanhassen to be a little bit aggressive in pursuing light rail. Any thoughts along that line? Koegler: My reaction is that it is an extremely long range concept for this area. We followed the LRT issue quite closely and there were four corridors identified and those were prioritized and the only one that really showed significant ridership was the University Avenue Corridor. ~conrad: Isn't Hopkins going to get, they are not on a... Koegler: Nothing is real definitive on that and we have been talking a lot about jobs and housing units and things and to be quite blunt, I don't think the ridership is anywhere near what it would have to be to support something like that. Dacy: Isn't it the theory that it is so capital intensive for that particular form of transportation that we don't have the ridership and people there but even then that doesn't even begin to defray those capital expenses. Conrad: Which are what? We have a track. Dacy: Billions. Conrad: All you are doing is pushing the service out further from Hopkins. If there is a train coming this way, dropping people there then they can be dropping people off here. I do know that it is costly but I guess on the other hand, here we sit on the outskirts of the Twin Cities and we have a railroad track going through our community and we are playing around with 169 and TH 5, we have good mass transit potential and it goes downtown. How many people are working downtown? A whole bunch that is why we have the bus service to bring people downtown. Dacy: It may not hurt them, if I know what you are saying, to call the _railroad to see what are their long term plans. They made an attempt to Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 46 ~vacate a certain railroad through for the line through Chanhassen? downtown work. Eden Prairie. What does the future hold We have to use that anyway with our Conrad: Maybe it is just me and I do realize that we don't have a big population that is descending on that rail but on the other hand, at some point. I don't know. I do like the idea of having a mass transit that is focused on rail that takes it downtown. It is here. Siegel: Could you get an update, I think that was mentioned before, about the studies that were done on the line all the way out to Chaska, 15-17 years ago they actually had demonstrations. Riders, political people took the trip out to see the scenery and I think that is just sort of dead. Somebody said that they decided to scratch this plan for this track and go to Wayzata with it instead but I think it has to do with the development. They are discouraging development on the southwest corridor. The Met Council is not helping with this section of the metro area. Koegler: The Regional Transit Report is a wealth of information right now and we will get some update information. Conrad: I think that would be good. There are a lot of words on this piece of paper that I don't understand. Functional classifications and stuff like that that I don't understand. ~KOegler: I would suggest that it is appropriate to hold that lack of understanding until we go through it next time and I will make that clear as to what all the different categories mean. Conrad: Good. Thanks Mark. The next meeting is? Olsen: November 5th. We've got Nelson. Conrad: with all thoes exceptions. As I read the Nelson deal, I don't know as though I want to deal with it and that is obviously why it didn't come tonight but would you bring it to us if there were still that many issues to resolve. Dacy: I guess we look at it as we would tell the developer that if you want to pursue it to the Commission fine but our position would be recommendation of denial or recommendation of approval with all these conditions. Our position would be if he wants to take it to the Commission despite our particular recommendation that is fine and that is his right. Conrad: When I see so many changes, so many variances, so many exceptions, the Planning Commission can't react to that many and we're going to turn him down, we're going to table it and as long as you are communicating that to him, he has the right to come in here but I wouldn't have dealt with this tonight the way it was done. There was nothing I could read in to. There were so many problems. e , Planning Commission Meeting October 22, 1986 - Page 47 -Olsen: The reason we would have had it I think was just to bring up even more from your standpoint. Dacy: We didn't know if you agreed on some of those or wanted to add some. Emmings moved, Erhart seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and motion carried. The meeting was adjourned at 10:50 p.m.. Submitted by Barbara Dacy City planner prepared by Nann Opheim e e