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1988 08 03 e - CHANHASSEN PLANNING COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING AUGUST 3, 1988 Chairman Conrad called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m.. MEMBERS PRESENT: Tim Erhart, Steven Emmings, Annette Ellson, Ladd Conrad, James Wildermuth and David Headla MEMBERS ABSENT: Brian Batzli STAFF PRESENT: Barbara Dacy, City Planner; Jo Ann Olsen, Asst. City Planner; Larry Brown, Asst. City Engineer and Fred Hoisington, City's Consultant PUBLIC HEARING: COMPREHENSIVE PLAN AMENDMENT TO AMEND THE TRANSPORTATION CHAPTER OF THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN TO IDENTIFY THE REALIGNMENT OF TH 101 ACROSS TH 5, CITY OF CHANHASSEN. Public Present: Name Address Mark Senn Rome Roo s Don T. Smith Mike Wittrock Drew & Melanie Wright Gene Heikkinen Greg Gmiterko Grace Johnson Jack Atkins Gary Disch Bill Streepy Elizabeth Kersch Jeff & Holly Peters Bruce & Cindy Marengo Sharon Loeckler Tom Lehmann Larry Guthrie Jim Lewi s Jan Coey Janine Ringdahl Bill Davis Ivan C. Johnson Jeffery Cook Gene Borg Ulrico Sacchet Brad Johnson 7800 Park Drive 1450 Park Court 8012 Erie 8022 Dakota Avenue 320 Sinnen Circle 301 Sinnen Circle 8121 Hidden Court 3143 Marsh Drive 220 West 78th Street 8170 Marsh Drive 321 Sinnen Circle 271 Hidden Lane 8120 Hidden Court 8150 Marsh Drive 8028 Erie Avenue 330 Sinnen Circle 520 3500 West 80th, Bloomington 8133 Dakota Lane Taco Shop 8032 Erie Avenue Minnetonka 7910 Dakota Drive 1800 Meritor Tower 90 Lake Drive East 8071 Hidden Circle 7425 Frontier Trail _ Chairman Conrad called the public hearing to order. Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 2 e Dacy: Staff would like to present our report in the following manner. I'd like to have Fred Hoisington, the City's consultant regarding the Year 2005 Transportation Study make a presentation first to overview the project for the Commission and then I'd like to follow that up with staff's recommendation on the Comprehensive Plan Amendment application. e Fred Hoisington: Mr. Chairman, members of the Planning Commission, it's been quite a long time since we were here and discussing the broaden study area. A little longer ago than we really hoped the interval would be. We hoped we would be back much sooner. I know you've had a chance to review that, re-review that again and I'm not going to go over it in detail. The good folks who are behind me here have heard it twice already so I know they aren't interested in hearing me run through the whole presentation again. But let me tell you a little bit about, first of all the objectives of this plan amendment and TH 101 as we saw it in the broaden study area were really three. One, to provide some continuity in the way of a north/south roadway, major roadway through the City of Chanhassen and as it turns out, TH 101 is probably the only option that the City has to provide that kind of continuity all the way from north towards the south. To provide the acceptable levels of service on TH 5 primarily at the intersections where we have continued to struggled throughout the course of the studies that we've done with trying to get the level of service down to the point where traffic could move in the year 2005. When we look at it today, we know of some traffic problems along TH 5 but it's a little hard to visualize what it will be like in year 2005 when we have at least twice and in some cases 3 or 4 times as much traffic as we're experiencing today. Another thing that we spent long hours on because the broaden study area was done in conjunction with the downtown area, or kind of spun out of the downtown studies, had to do with the separation of traffic. Separating through traffic from downtown traffic. Not wanting those who don't have to go downtown, to be forced to go there. So those are really kind of the broad objectives that this prorposal for a new alignment of TH 101 our intent to keep. In looking through the broaden study area, remember that we had kind of a "S" curve sort of configuration for this, or for TH 101 at TH 5, and that proposal is no longer valid. We hope you had a chance to look at this one. This is almost, I think this is a third or fourth generation alternative now in that it is geometrically configured in a manner that takes or goes more through the center of the Kerr property in the south leg but leaves the north leg basically intact as it was originally proposed. Originally we had hoped that we could use a portion of Lake Drive East as part of the TH 101 alignment. We know you've got some concerns about that and the alignment existed but this is a very difficult stretch to engineer. In part because of some of the things that the neighbors have told us or expressed concerns over, we have continued to look at alternatives and I'll tell you a little bit about those later. But this is the alternative that presently is before you or is a more detailed version of what's before you tonight in the way of a planned amendment. Just before we met with the neighbors the last time we were able to, we received some information from our traffic engineers, Jim Benshoof and Associates, having to do with the through movements that need to be accomodated on TH 101. Just summarily what Jim indicated was that there would be about 1,200 to 1,230 vehicles approaching that intersection from the north and south during the peak hour of the day, which is the - Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 3 e e p.m. peak. Of those, 800 would go through the intersection. Of those, 565 originate outside the study area, outside Chanhassen for the most part, past all the way through and go out the other side of the study area. We're talking about a fairly appreciable number in the year 2005 of people needing to pass through the study area and of course that's in part what the function of this street is intended to accomodate. On the first we received another report from Jim, we have been trying to get these piecemeal as best we could, that dealt with what we term the north leg option as an alternative to this approach to dealing with TH 101 and TH 5. What that north leg option does is uses the north leg and then use this TH 5 to the west and then Great Plains or present TH 101 south. So what it does is puts all, in year 2005, all 800 of those folks that want to go through that intersection, on TH 5 and forces it to take both TH 5 and TH 101 traffic for that stretch. What Jim has surprisingly concluded, surprising to me because I didn't think we had even a ghost of a chance of that working in this case, was that from a pure traffic standpoint, it's conceivable that we could engineer something that will allow that north leg option to work. Here's what it would take. It would take two left turn lanes from the east bound movement on TH 5 to the south bound movement on Great Plains and two left turn movements on east bound TH 5 to north bound TH 101. It would call for the elimination of the right turn lanes at this intersection. The free right turns because we couldn't afford to have people weaving across in that relatively short distance, 1,000 or so feet. I wish we could say right now that that would work and that we could get approval from MnDot for that kind of approach. MnDot's indications have been historically that they would not be interested or would not entertain that kind of proposal. However, we will continue to explore that with them because we think it is warranted that we continue to look at that alternative and to look at others. I guess all I want to do is tell you that it's not as clear cut because it does take a complete lane from this intersection down through Great Plains in order to accomodate it and there are some serious questions associated with that that only MnDot can... We know there's a lot of opposition to this proposal from the folks who live further to the south. This is not an easy decision and we certainly don't envy you having to make it or do we envy the Council having to make the decision. Erhart: Fred, can I ask you a question? On this north route you're still proposing to move the intersection that you've shown. Essentially to move the intersection where the proposed...to use TH 5 as designated TH 101? Fred Hoisington: was or it is. That's correct. The intersection would stay where it Erhart: Is today? Fred Hoisington: Where it is right here now, shown here, in the yellow. The north leg option would do that and then run the traffic down TH 5. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not proposing that. I'm just saying that we're still continuing to explore that because we haven't exhausted it but all indications are that we may not get it. e e e e Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 4 Erhart: Excuse me, then you said you would eliminate the right-in/right- out intersection on Dakota? Fred Hoisington: No, that would stay. What we'd be eliminating Tim, would be the south leg. If we could do that, we would take the entire south leg off. Oh, excuse me, you see the free right turns, those would not be able to stay if we used TH 5 as TH 101. Erhart: Where you don't have to stop? Fred Hoisington: Exactly becase we can not afford to have those folks making those free right turns into that huge volume of traffic on TH 5. You'd have to weave across that lane of traffic if they're able to make free right turns. We just don't think that's possible to do that. Excuse me, that's what we were talking about. Resident: Could you show that on the map? Fred Hoisington: What we're talking about are these turns here. These free right turns here and any down here. Especially this one because what it amounts to is those vehicles would have to weave into that volume of traffic, cross through it and then continue and make a left turn further to the west. Again, we're continuing to study what we will call the north leg option and if it's approved by MnDot and it will probably take a good two months, we probably won't have an answer until November in that regard but if that proves to be a viable option in this case, we can always revert to that we believe and therefore do not have to build the south leg. In the meantime, we feel that we need to continue to the process. We need to continue it as it's currently proposed or there are some serious possibilities here that I have difficulty with. You may not have so much difficult with. We understand, we realize that the possibilities tonight are for you to approve, to table, to deny, although I would suppose that denial might be a little bit difficult but if it were to be tabled, you would run the risk, a couple of serious risks. One, as you know, TH 5 is being accelerated for construction start 1989, completion 1991 and that would run out to CR 17. If we were to go to the north leg option and have to add an entire lane, that segment would have to be completely redesigned. It's already in the course of being designed and everything in transition back to the east and the west of that would have to be redesigned as well to widened that so we could accomodate that additional lane. If that happens, we lose two years. We will not be on the accelerated schedule for TH 5 and they will probably break it at about the city's limits. Maybe 184th. Very close to 184th we think. The second risk I guess that you run is that we have a development proposed that you also have on your agenda tonight, for the Kerr property which, I won't say we've been threatened but obviously there's some concern with the delays that have occurred here. If that delay is further without any real foundation, of course you risk a suit in that case. I don't mean to make that sound too strongly but there are some risks that you have to run and would have to run if we did not get approval from the Planning Commission and Council. I don't want to make this too easy either. It is a tough decision to make but we did want you to know what the ramifications of that happen to be. It may well warrant delay to allow Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 5 . for further studying. We just simply are suggesting that the outcome of that could be pretty negative as far as TH 5 is concerned and as far as the Kraemer property is concerned. with that, I, Mr. Chairman would just simply turn back to Barbara and then would answer questions later. e Dacy: Based on that, the application that the Commission is considering is looking at a few pages in the City's existing transportation element of the Comprehensive Plan. As the Plan is written right now, it makes the general reference to the study that was done in 1981 regarding the five alternatives regarding TH 101. What the proposed amendment to the Comprehensive Plan will entail is merely adding language describing the proposed project. I'm just showing this not necessarily for everybody to read at this time but to show you that what staff is proposing to the Comprehensive plan is a written description based on the analysis that was done in the Year 2005 Land Use and Transportation Study. It summarizes the objectives of the realignment and the results that were identified in that study. The amendment would also include a general conceptual realignment of TH 101. Again, the Comprehensive Plan is a planning document showing proposed corridors and general alignments of streets. The exact design such that you see on the easel over there will be refined during the construction feasibility study process. Staff is recommending that the Planning Commission recommends approval of the Comprehensive Plan Amendment as proposed in the staff report subject to holding a public hearing at the Planning Commission and the City Council level on the addition analysis regarding the north leg option is completed. In other words, to restate what Mr. Hoisington just reviewed for the Commission, we believe that the process regarding the Plan Amendment and the official map should continue so that we reserve, so to speak, an alternate option but reserving the opportunity to go back and re-evaluate the north leg when we get a response from the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Conrad: For clarification, by proceeding with the mapping and the Comprehensive Plan, I'm sure the people who are here are real concerned with, when you do that that's like casting something in concrete. You're saying that the process is to hold another public hearing when all the data is in. Dacy: Regarding the north leg option. Conrad: Right. And at that time, what commitments have we made? We have reserved, we have mapped it, we have amended the Comprehensive Plan to really position it where the current proposal is. Not the north leg, let's call it the south leg or whatever. What commitment do we have at that time, does the City have to follow through? Dacy: We have merely identified in our plan that this proposed corridor that the City is evaluating and conducting a feasibility study on. The official map merely identifies the center line and the extent of the right-of-way limits such that it puts the property owners on notice where the official map goes through. That the City is looking at constructing a road through that area. e Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 6 e Conrad: At that point mapping can be changed if the north leg is decided at that point? Dacy: That's correct. Conrad: This is a public hearing. That's why we have you here tonight. Again, we have petitions in our packet which we have read. We have most of the notices that people have sent to City Hall that are in our packets. We probably have history on the project for the last 10, not 10 years but since we've been playing with TH 101. We've read through that. We're interested in your comments and we'd like to give you the opportunity to speak to us at this point in time so with that, as I said before, if you have a comment that you think is real pertinent to the issue, we'd appreciate your comments. I'm not going to force you to come up to the microphone but I would like you to stand up, state your name and your address and make your comments. Who wants to be first. e Uli Sacchet: My name is Uli Sacchet, I live at Hidden Circle, 8071. Let me introduce myself a little further. I moved into the area about a year ago. I built a house there in an area that I considered very desireable. Very ideal to have a family home. I have two little children. One a baby, the other one 2 1/2 years old. I chose this area because I felt it was a good place to raise a family. I was a little dampen when I got my first tax estimate for the property coming through but I guess that's a fact that we have the highest property taxes in this area here in Chanhassen. However, when I was faced with the proposal that you're currently considering, I felt like stabbed in the back. It's a very special neighborhood. It's amazing that within a few months of living there, the neighbors have found a tremendous cohesiveness. Not last, because every house has at least one, if not several children. Small children. Some of them, the ladies are still pregnant. I've never seen a place that had such a big population of really small children. And as such, talking to the neighbors, we decided that this is totally unacceptable to us. I'm here as the spokesperson officially of 70 people that signed the petition and in addition to it a sheet that says I can represent them as a spokesperson so I'm not just talking for myself but I did take the time to introduce me personally because I know that just about everybody of those 70 people that signed their name onto that sheet is in the same situation. Chose that place to have a healthy, serene place for their family and their little children. Now, obviously as you can see, there is a relatively low level concern here to basically route a street through our backyard that is supposed to be 3 or 4 lanes, carrying 15,000 to 20,000 vehicles per day. Adding a second freeway inbetween where our development is and where we are. Not to mention that there was absolutely no indication at the time that when we chose this area to live that there would be such a thing in the works and I can guarantee you that a lot of us would not have built there. We have made a commitment to this City. We trying to make this city our home and for our children and we're basically stabbed in the back with the project. It's, as I said, not acceptable to us for relatively close concern. The threat of safety that it poses to our children. Being cut off from the City plus all the environmental elements. The pollution. The noise. Because that's considerable. Right now we're shielded from TH 5 by a hill. That hill e Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 7 e e would be basically cut down and not only cut down to TH 5 but would be a crossing. And not only a crossing for that we hear TH 5 but a crossing that would let an equal amount of traffic come north/south that is currently going east/west on TH 5. This is to me a very heavy concern and let me add a few further aspects though I don't want to take too much of your time because I'm sure some other people want to talk too but talking for 70 people I believe I can take a little time. It's going to basically destroy the desireability of our neighborhood. It's going to decrease the value of our properties as such. Already one house at least that I know of has gone on the market because of this proposal and undoubtedly there will be more. My basic question is, is this the way the City of Chanhassen welcomes a whole community, a whole segment of their community after they come believing that it's the place they chose and all of a sudden they realize they're next to a freeway. I'm very glad that Fred Hoisington is seriously considering using TH 5 as an alternative because I really even have questions about the project overall. The improvements of through traffic on the intersections is only marginly improved by this whole proposal. As a matter of fact, the main intersection that we're dealing with, the intersection of TH 5 and TH 101 is only improving from an E level to a D/E level. Is this not even a whole step improvement? Is that worth the cost? Millions? It's going to be several millions of dollars. Probably 3-4. If I understood Fred Hoisington correctly, it costs roughly a million just to do the building itself. It's going to be at least 2 to 3 million to get the right-of-way and I understand that some of these people have to be actually placed somewhere else which will be an additional cost. One of the things that was also in the proposal is that intersections are too close together the way it is right now. If you look at this drawing, I'm not that familiar with Bloomington but I know about it and I've heard a lot of people, it's like going through Bloomington. There's one intersection after another. It's not really improving it much and the main points of foundation for the whole proposal, the three points, the continuity north/south, the intersection improvement, I addressed that, and the downtown traffic situation. Are we really responsible as a City to ram the north/south major traffic corridor through an area where it doesn't fit anymore? I'm sorry, this doesn't really inspire me in confidence in the planning of the City. You don't go plan a major freeway after we have put in major developments for families. A freeway type road like this would be a 3 or 4 lane road. It seems to me something that should be planned a little further ahead. I do believe in all fairness that it's too late to route that now through where this is proposed because it's my understanding that you are representing the residents of the City and certainly the City Council is. I don't know whether we have any City Council members here tonight. I sure wish they hear this. I would be awfully disappointed to find out that through traffic interests under some extent, maybe business interest, come first in this city before the interest of the residents and their children. An interesting aspect, just to close my points here, I don't want to bore you too long but the proposal calls for TH 101 to be classified as a major arterial. What is TH 101 now? It's an access road for people who live up north and south to come to TH 5 basically to go into town. It's a collector. It's not a major arterial and to make a major arterial out of it, to encourage this incredible through traffic volume, what benefit does that really bring to the city? I don't see certainly any that it brings e Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 8 e to me except a lot of dismay and probably a very good motivation to try to get another house as soon as I can. I guess that's all I have to say, thank you. e Don Smith: I'm Don Smith, I've lived here for 15 years. I'm going to probably second his motion but I don't understand and I doubt seriously that you're ever going to straighten out TH 101. It should have been straighten out 4 years ago but one of the questions that I have to ask is, is this being done in conjunction with the overall plans of the State to change TH 101 into a north/south highway? To me they should change this to something further east and the main route for north and south is either going to be Powers, Kerbers, CR 17 or TH 41. Not the present snake bed we call TH 101. I don't care how you cut the mustard, you're trying to put in intersections where they don't belong. You're talking about traffic into 2005, that's only 15 years from now. You can't drive through TH 101 now unless you've got skis or a snowmobile. I'd like to know at the time who's going to be paying for all of this. The roads and Planning Commission certainly didn't figure the width of the road when they did 76th Street. It's too narrow now and I think all of this came together in my mind when you put TH 101 together and cut out where it should have been and put a courthouse that is now and completely eliminated TH 101 and that doesn't make sense. They call it the Wizard of Oz plaza now and that's exactly what it's turning into. I can't see how you're going to punch TH 101 through an existing neighborhood with residents in it where you could use the railroad access, the farm buildings, the cemetary or the buildings that are very limited there now, go further east and punch it south so that it lines up straight so eventually 10 to 15 years from now when it might go to the racetrack or get past the railroad track at TH 212, then we've got something to talk about. But north and south on TH 101, where do we go? You don't go anywhere. For two blocks you're out of Chanhassen so stop considering making this an accessway when it should be Powers, Kerber, CR 17 or TH 41. Not TH 101. It never will be. It's not intended to be that way unless you rip it up now and make a 6 lane highway. That's all I have to say. Mike Wittrock: My name is Mike wittrock and I live at 8022 Dakota Avenue. I wanted to inform the City that I've been going around to our neighborhood asking people what their feelings are to the proposed TH 101 which has that south leg on it and I've only met one person who didn't sign my proposal. I'm sure if I went around the community, everybody would sign this except for probably 1 or 2 people that I found out was real surprising. Pretty much I agree entirely with your comments. I also think that this traffic that will generate on this Lake Drive, the way it is proposed, that all the westbound traffic going to McDonalds would have to go on Lake Drive creating another busy street. All that traffic going back and forth, we don't have an adequate crosswalk there and I think that would be a hazard. I just wanted to mention that too. . , Larry Guthrie: Good evening council members, my name is Larry Guthrie. I'm an attorney and I represent united Mortgage Corporation and Rottlund Homes. The reason I'm here is basically to show the support of united Mortgage and Rottlund Homes who basically sold most, if not all of the houses to most of the people here. They support the residents 100% in Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 9 e e this in their efforts to change the plan. I support the statements that have been made prior to my speaking here. Specifically what's before the committee here is the proposal of the amendment to the Comprehensive Plan and I'd like to direct some comments specifically to that. Comprehensive Plan is the plan that's supposed to be guiding the City in it's development and that was in effect when united Mortgage started this development and it's supposed to be a document that can be relied on by people, the developers as well as the homeowners. There was nothing about this proposal at that point in time and it's a major change that's affecting the lives of many people and that needs to be considered when changing the guiding plan to guide the city in the future. The change, if anything is to be made, I guess I would urge the Planning Commission to consider the north leg option that's been proposed and eliminate the south leg. The reason is basically because psychologically and legally, once the Comprehensive Plan is changed and includes this south leg, it's going to be difficult, I feel, for MnDot to agree and approve that yes, we'll take the north leg option if you've already approved the south leg option. The Comprehensive Plan is going to be on the books. It's a matter that has metropolitan significance. It has to be approved by the Metropolitan Council and if you think you can just change the plan then back to eliminate the south leg, that's not necessarily so. I would urge that you get legal counsel with respect to your ability to freely do that. I don't think it's quite accurate that you can say let's adopt a plan as it is because we can eliminate that south leg anytime we want. I don't think that's true from a legal standpoint and I don't think it's true from a psychological standpoint. I think it would be a much better message and much better support on the citizens of the community if you tell MnDot, look, the north leg option is the only way. If we can't get the north leg option than we're not going to do anything at all. I think that's the message you should be sending to MnDot. I think for that reason you should not even consider taking the south leg option. Thank you. e Jeff Peters: My name is Jeff Peters. My wife and I live at 8120 Hidden Court in the Brookhill development and the reason I came tonight is not only to support all the comments that have been made so far but also to voice some concerns that I had with regards to the proposed realignment of TH 101. A year and a half ago when my wife and I decided to purchase some property in this area, we did so because a similiar in a suburb in Minneapolis, namely Plymouth, decided to pull a similiar measure on the residents of Plymouth. It was a very unpopular decision. There were almost 1,000 city residents at City Hall the night this proposal went up. We were members of that 6,000 and the meeting lasted until 2:00 a.m. at which time most of the people had left because most people do work in the morning. Nothing was ever resolved except for the fact that the City Council decided to ram this through the residents' throats and we decided to move. We figured the old adage of not being able to fight City Hall is so true. The unfortunate part is that a few months after we moved, the City Council was defeated by the Mayor and the proposal was never adopted. We moved to Chanhassen because we felt it was a beautiful suburb to come to. It was a good place to raise our children and in general was the sort of community we were looking for. When we moved here I didn't make the same mistake I made in Plymouth. I checked the zoning. I checked it very carefully. I've been through this three times. I'm holding in my hand a Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 10 e document by the State of Minnesota showing any development on TH 5 which concerned me at the time because they were proposing to, and still are, widened TH 5 extensively. This covers all bridge replacements, intersections modifications and major capacity improvements along TH 5 in Chanhassen and Eden prairie and nowhere in this report is there any mention of any improvement to TH 101 nor was there any mention of it when I checked with the City Planning Commission, at that time, anything like this. If there was, it was either well hidden or was intentionally left out of any comments. I feel like we were seduced into buying the property in this area knowing full well, this Council knowing full well, that this was going to happen. Unfortunately it doesn't affect any of you because none of you live south of TH 5. You all live north of TH 5. What it's going to do is it's going to lower my property value. It's going to make a dangerous road for any children present and heaven help you if any children ever get killed on that road. It's just in general a very stupid thing to do. TH 101 can not be straighten out. How are they possibly going to straighten it out at Gray's Bay? There's no way they are ever going to allow that to corne across Lake Minnetonka. I urge you to stop this proceeding. To stop further procedure on this modification. Adopt either the north leg or can the proposal all together. TH 101 is not a problem. It's TH 5 that's the problem. Thank you. e Elizabeth Kersch: I have a question. Does the Council feel that they have enough information to make a decision tonight? Conrad: Maybe we'll talk about that later on as we go around and you can hear the commission's comments. Elizabeth Kersch: will a decision be made tonight? Conrad: We're going to make some decision as to what we want to do, yes but remember my preface to this meeting. The City Council makes the final decision. We're looking at certain criteria. They're looking at other criteria. We're going to pass along our recommendation tonight. It will reach the City Council in two weeks and then they'll make the final decision. - Brad Johnson: I'm Brad Johnson, I live at 7425 Frontier Trail. Today I think I represent the northern segment of the people who are concerned about TH 101 and the traffic and also the downtown business interest which we've been spending quite a bit of time at. I'm very sympathetic to what the people to the south are concerned about as far as their traffic patterns are concerned. We also have a major problem on the north side in the area of st. Hubert's, Frontier Trail, Great Plains Blvd. and if the TH 101 through traffic continues to go through that particular point, we too have the same problem with our children. We have a school there. We have a church there and therefore, I think we talk about the north leg, something has to happen on the north side because we are going to continue to have traffic problems in that area. I don't know Fred if you've done any studies as to what it needs on that corner but one of the problems we're having right now is we don't have the ability, with the State Highway going through there, to put any traffic control at the st. Hubert's corner because the State is, I believe has said no to any stop e Ie e Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 11 signs or anything like that at that particular corner. St. Hubert's and Great Plains? Is that true Fred? Fred Hoisington: Are you talking where the stop signs were before? Brad Johnson: Yes. Fred Hoisington: That's what I understand. Brad Johnson: Because I understand the City has requested and they've been turned down by the State, therefore we just have a problem that will go on for some time in there. Those of us that have to go to work in that area are getting caught in stacking. If we are in fact going to have 500, 600, 700 more cars going through there at peak time, traffic will be backed all the way up to TH 5 right at that corner. I think that's just a problem you folks in the south should be aware of is that the same problem does exist on the north. It's a community problem, TH 101. It's not just your problem. Ideally probably 5 years ago if this had all taken place it would have gone over so I think you should be concerned about that and I guess it's kind of funny, I think you corne to a couple of other meetings and everybody's complaining on the north side about what's happened already. In fact, this is probably the only solution that's available is to get the traffic over to TH 5. The other problem that we do have is that in saying that TH 101 is not going to be a through carrier. I do a lot of work in downtown. Most people take the shortest distance between two points to get there. I always use TH 101 when I'm going north. I do not use TH 5. It just short and it's quicker to go that way even though once TH 5 is improved. I think a lot of people know that. We've done some studies trying to figure out, because our job is to create retail traffic into the community from what we perceive to be the targeted market area which is over to Excelsior, TH 101 and those particular areas. The only road that's practical for north/south traffic is TH 101 because there is no interchange in Excelsior at CR 17 currently to get into downtown Chanhassen. It's another 3 miles past TH 101 to even get to that interchange. We're blessed with two lakes we can't move. One is called Lotus Lake and one is called Christmas Lake. In real life they do divide and make impossible that north/south traffic movement. As TH 5 the corridor is improved, we are going to be blessed I guess with a lot more people moving out here who anticipate they'll use TH 5 to work. Traffic will be corning over on TH 41. Traffic will be coming over on TH 5 and we're just going to end up with more and more traffic corning from the north looking for routes to get through and TH 101 would be one of them. I don't think we can do much about that. The other thing we have to face with is that we are in a school district with Chaska. They do a lot of things in Chanhassen and during the winter, I live here, I probably spend at least 5 to 10 trips a day on TH 101 to go to Shako pee where our hockey arena is. You've just got a lot of traffic on TH 101 that's just going to be there because it's the only way as I understand. I understand that you were told last time that Dell Road would not be a through road and CR 17 has terrain problems as I understand it. Again, most of us, even if the road was there, would not go west to corne all the way around and go south. It's just not the way people do things. You can't control it. I guess the message I'm saying tonight is that we should probably, we've got to Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 12 e e admit we've got a problem and obviously this one situation where we just have the north leg is one solution. I don't know what the rules are. We also have spent, the City $50,000.00. The communities have spent $250,000.00 trying to accelerate TH 5 to get it done. We're only 10 to 15 years behind schedule as it is, to get that done and most of you take that to work and I think you'd like to have that completed just like myself. I guess my message is this evening, I've been sitting through all these public hearings and I can hear you, what you say. I don't think you're going to change TH 101. It's going to have traffic. It's the only way to get to town from my analysis and I spend a lot of time at that. I think that you're going to have to do is encourage the Planning Commission and staff to look hard at the various solutions. I don't know how you do that in the mapping process. There are probably a number of different corridors you can figure out still on the south side. I think we've all mainly addressed the north side historically because we didn't have as many residents over there and so my comments are today, I think if we don't do anything, you're going to have the same problem or greater on the north side. I think you'd have as many people at the next meeting if they knew somebody was going to say you're going to run 1,000 more cars down Frontier Trail or in that area. You'd have the people here from the other side of the community. It's just that people aren't as aware of what exactly is all involved in this meeting so I think everbody is going to have to work on this and somehow within the time that we have, which is a year to try and figure out some type of solutions, that we can maximize. Rather than be totally negative, we're not going to change TH 101. It's there. It's something you just can't change. I think we all have to work together on that and I don't know how to do that exactly techically and still stay within some type of time table. I think you have to address the planning staff. Something will have to be done and this probably, as Fred has said, is the last chance we have. Never the last but one of the last. Thank you. Jack Atkins: My name is Jack Atkins and I live at 220 West 78th Street, also on the north side there and I guess I'd like to throw my support with what they say that we shouldn't all back a plan that nobody believes in just because it's the most expeditious way to do it. I think we should have a plan we can all believe in that will really solve the problems rather than compound them. Melanie Wright: My name is Melanie Wright and I live at 320 Sinnen Circle. I think Mr. Hoisington, what you're concerned about is your MnDot money that you would get from MnDot to develop these streets. I think another concern would be the money that it's going to cost to develop the street going that way, the way he's got it planned. If it goes out to TH 5, you're not going to have to develop TH 5. It's going to be developed so if you do route it on TH 5, it's going to cost the City a lot less money. I think that should be taken into consideration too. e Uli Sacchet: There are three things that I think in all fairness have to be pointed out in order to make sound decisions. I wanted to just underline once more what he just said. I think an attitude of fear, the idea that this is the last chance to do this is solely a very, very bad foundation to make a wise decision. I haven't seen many wise decisions Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 13 e based on fear. This thing about the risk we're taking in tabling this, I think that it's a much, much bigger risk that we take if we're going to be led to made a decision that is not founded on a complete set of information. If the information is not present and the research has not been completed sufficiently, you will not be able to make a sound decision and the risk of that is far greater than having to wait maybe two years for this stretch of road to be out there. The last point, it was interesting in the last informational meeting we had here, it was mentioned that the State really doesn't have an interest in TH 101. They would like to turn it over to Carver County. I think that's in dire contradiction with this proposal of making it a major through traffic road. Thank you. Mike wittrock: What I forgot to mention too is that, the way it's designed here, it has like a hairpin turn up on the top where it meets 78th Street and then they do the same type of turn onto TH 5 and it makes a real awkward type of intersection. I don't know why they would want to propose that. Then it was also mentioned about the stop light distances. Where that Lake Drive intersects with Great Plains Blvd., in the future if you ever put a stop light there, it's probably too short a distance so you have those two problems too. Another problem that you have, we mentioned about this sound barrier. If you have a natural incline in the elevation above TH 5 there, you'd eliminate any possibility of a walkway if you removed the elevations there. That wasn't brought up. I guess that just about covers it. e Larry Guthrie: I'd just like to ask if the petition that's been talked about for the plans, are they a part of the public record here that's going to be forwarded to the Council? Conrad: We've got it here. Headla moved, Emmings seconded to close the public hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed. - Conrad: Basically what we do now is we go through Planning Commission comments. Comments of the advisors of staff and maybe I'll start it off a little bit and preface our comments a bit. I think highway and TH 5 just is the number one problem that Chanhassen residents experience living in Chanhassen. without a doubt. When you take a look at the surveys, everything else is fine compared to TH 5. I think that's number one. Obviously TH 101, as we're looking at it today, has an impact. I think the other concern, the thing that we're looking at as a Planning Commission is the concern of the entire City. Not only the neighborhood that gets impacted but also the other neighborhoods that will be in here as we take a look at whatever occurs in terms of highways and we find that you put the highway, as TH 212 comes through, that's going to have major impact on some of the things that we're talking about here tonight. TH 212 is going to be a major corridor that's going to be linked up to Chanhassen. There are traffic implications and I'm not sure if those have arisen as you've had your community meetings or not but I think those two Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 14 e things are of interest there. Of interest to the Planning Commission and we pay attention to those things as we make our recommendation. Just wanted to give you that little brief introduction. Dave, what questions, comments do you have? Headla: Let me start out with a couple of comments. I really take issue with the gentlemen and the 70 people who say we stabbed them in the back, we have low level interest. I think the City has acted with high integrity. We have a very capable staff that has played open the whole time. Where I live, my neighbors come in quite frequently to talk to the staff. They don't like what the staff tells them at times and I hear about it but the staff has always been very open with them and they say this is the way it is. This is the ordinance. I've never known them to be any other way and I really find that hard. I think that's just terrible that anybody would say something about the staff on that or the City. Another comment, a plan we all believe in, I've never seen a plan of any kind that everybody believes in. That just doesn't happen and it won't happen here. We can go an easier route but I don't think that's our job to go the easy route. I think we've got to make a good decision. Fred, on that north arm that you're talking about. Is that similiar to where Crosstown and 35 meets? Is there a similiarity there? e Fred Hoisington: The commons? If there's a similiarity, one this would be somewhat diminished from that and that brings in...this would probably less the volume of traffic but nonetheless the similarities are...two highways of traffic on one roadway... Headla: The gentleman mentioned about many, many young people on the southeast corner. In the future if we have a community center or whatever up here, how are these young people going to get across the highway either route? Have we given that a lot of thought? Dacy: What we have told the folks at the informational meeting is that, as part of the feasibility study process, looking at the design of whatever option is chosen, is that pedestrian access will be a major part of that analysis. We will have to address the pedestrian issue as well as the noise issue. Headla: Is one way better than the other for this pedestrian access? To me that's, we're going to have young people and they're going to try to cross that road and either way, there's a high probability that one way they're going to do it compared to the other one. I think we've got to avoid that. Is there a better route than the other? Dacy: I agree with your statement on the importance. We can not give you any type of analysis or recommendation on which option would be better than the other at this time. That will be included as a part of the feasibility study. e Headla: The noise generation, I think Brad had some good comments on it. The road, people are traveling up and down all along TH 101 and...I would assume you will address that particularly in that area. Either a noise barrier or whatever. I guess unless there's reason to believe that north Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 15 e arm route is safer, I've got to go with the present plan. It just makes, to me, makes more sense. It isn't an easy decision but I think it's the right decision and a lot of people are going to be hurt by it but I think that's a good decision overall. wildermuth: Fred, what would be the distance between the intersection that would cross TH 5, where TH 101, the north side would cross TH 5 and the current TH 101/TH 5 intersection in the north leg option? Fred Hoisington: Just about 1,000 feet. Wildermuth: Does MnDot consider that enough stacking distance? Fred Hoisington: That is going to be part of the problem with MnDot. That distance they consider rather short. What we have to try to demonstrate to them, if we really want to pursue hard that north leg arm option, that is no matter if the spacing is 1,000 feet, you can still accomplish that. We think the numbers suggest that but we're not sure MnDot philosophically, they don't agree with this kind of proposal because they've had to live with the commons and some other areas where this happened so they have some real struggle with, 1,000 feet isn't enough for that movement. e Wildermuth: I can see where those two lights are close together and the section between full of traffic, emergency vehicles just couldn't get through. Fred Hoisington: Let me just qualify a little bit more, if there were two intersections there, the one that is being proposed plus the one that exists there today, that 1,000 foot spacing is also not at all ideal between those two intersections. In any event, we have spacing problems that can only be dealt with through good engineering and geometrics in making traffic flow. There is no ideal spacing. We're never going to find any ideal spacing up and down this road to do that so I don't want to suggest to you that the 1,000 feet won't w,ork because of the spacing of the north leg but it will with the other. That spacing is too short in any case. Wildermuth: I wish I could see a win-win proposal in this situation. There doesn't appear that there is one. Based on the different alternatives that we have seen and looked at, I think the proposal that's being put forward now tonight is probably the best one to carry us into the future. e ElIson: I'm afraid I like the proposal and I'm sorry to say that to the people. I know I would be just like you and I would be here fighting it tooth and nail. I think we're not making it a major thoroughway. I think it already is turning into a major thoroughway and it's already having problems and I couldn't have a clean conscience and say well, we're just going to tell people not to use it anymore. It's just not going to be improved. I can't see that that's realistic to expect people to go down to TH 41 or even CR 17 or something like that. I think a spacing problem that you're concerned with would also be a safety problem compounded if we Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 16 e didn't do anything. I see a bigger safety problem not fixing the way it is right now. I think that the Planning Staff is entertaining your ideas of the north leg. If it wasn't for you people they wouldn't even be looking at it. I think that they're showing some sort of compromise or attempt to compromise if possible and I commend them for even trying that because I'm not sure I would because that is a hard pill to swallow for someone like MnDot. I applaud them for giving it a shot and taking what they can and I would see approving with the contingent that if the north leg got approval that it could go something like that but I can't go along with north leg or nothing. I think something has to be done. Granted it's a problem that should have been done 20-30 years ago. The fact that it wasn't doesn't mean you can ignore it. It just means the further you put it off the more and more people who are hurt by the consequences or the correction if necessary so I'm going to be voting according to the Planning staff. Emmings: I have a question of Barb I guess. If we would adopt the north leg option that they proposed and MnDot was to disapprove that in November. If we were to say we want the north leg option. That's all we're presenting you and they disapprove that in November, what would happen then? e Dacy: It really depends on what happens on the land parcel where the south leg is being proposed. You do have a shopping center application currently pending on that piece. The City would have to decide on that application, approve or denial and would have to look at either initiating condemnation proceedings on that commercial piece or taking a chance that that piece would not be developed. Emmings: And if development went forward on that piece of land we might be foreclosed from... Dacy: That's correct. e Emmings: I think one of the overriding things here is that, and I guess Ladd eluded to it initially, is TH 5 is just a horrible road. It's widening is of great importance to the City of Chanhassen as an east/west thoroughfare. I think TH 101 also is a horrible road and never will be fixed up at the Gray's Bay end and probably will never be fixed down at the south end as you get closer to TH 212 either but nevertheless that is am important north/south route. We've got to have a realignment. I think that the way that TH 101 comes down and goes through the city at the present time, through the downtown city of Chanhassen as it is, is absolutely horrible. That we can't live with. I think that the proposed plan is not a very good one. It may meet whatever criteria designers use to plan curves and intersections and all that but it looks awkward. I don't like the looks of it. I think that the north leg option is a good one. I think that it keeps TH 101 in perspective somewhat in that it isn't a good street/road but I was glad to hear that Benshoof thought that maybe it could work. That gave me a lot of encouragement but again, that's only a mediocre solution. I think we're dealing here with a horrible situation as it's exists, basically a bad plan to fix it and then kind of a mediocre option in the north leg option but that's sort of the Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 17 e best one. The one that looks the best to me at this point in time because it eliminates the problems on the north side that we heard discussed. It eliminates the objections of all the people that are here and have spoken. It would also eliminate the need to condemn the shopping center land if we knew that we could do it. Unfortunately, it looks like we'll have to condemn that property anyway because we're going to have to preserve that option. I guess bottom line for me is this. TH 101 has to be changed. I'm for the north leg option but, I'm strongly for the north leg option but if we can't have the north leg option, than I would vote for this plan. I'm not comfortable with voting for this plan when I think the north leg plan is a better one and I don't know why we don't do it the other way around. If other people agree that the north leg option is a better one, maybe we could have that as our first alternative but make sure we preserve our options to implement this plan if we can't approval on the north leg option. e Dacy: If I may add, if the Commission wants on the Plan Amendment application, as proposed now the language and the map solely indicates what you see on the board over there. If the Commission decides to go or to choose the north leg or both or the south leg or anyone of the combinations of the three, we can propose to amend the proposal that you have before you to talk about both options. To talk about the north leg. Identify it on the plan. This would also address the concern that Mr. Guthrie had from the Rottlund Companies so two months from now if MnDot does say the north leg can work, if they do in fact say that, that you would not have to come back with another plan. Prepare the plan in such a manner that it gives the City some flexibility to look at either route. e Erhart: First I want to clarify that not everybody on the Planning Commission lives north of TH 5. I live so far south that I don't think it makes a lot of difference in this case. I think number one in my mind with the situation we currently have with TH 101 running or designated to go through the downtown is not tolerable. It certainly isn't tolerable with the redesign of the downtown street plan so I think that has to be a number one priority to change that. By the same token, I don't think that we can easily go down and basically take what Lake Drive East, which has been on our plan essentially, more or less as a neighborhood street or frontage or collector and at this point turn it into a minor arterial or major arterial, whichever, without going through some very heavy thought processes and unfortunately I think we haven't done that yet. I have to agree with Steve that the alternatives certainly aren't fun but I've got to believe there are more alternatives than what we're looking at and if there isn't, we certainly ought to somehow create a way that we can look at those alternatives at the same time keeping on schedule with TH 5. It's a little hard to look at the whole plan and to see that we have somewhere around an estimated 1,000 feet or more between residential development on the south of TH 5 than that on the north of TH 5 and we can't figure out some way to get TH 101 through there without going next to somebody's existing practically new house. On the other hand, I question the emphasis on continuity traffic through Chanhassen because I think the emphasis ought to be on, at the same time we remove the problem with West 78th, just put the emphasis on creating better intersections for those people going from TH 5 to TH 101 north and from TH 101 north to TH 5 ~ I Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 18 e as well as those people in the south going from TH 101 to TH 5 and back south and not put so much emphasis on the continuity. I find it hard to believe that even in the next 15 years that a majority of the traffic is going to corne up TH 101 or going down is going through town. A majority of the traffic has to be going in and out of town. Now you've got some figures there Fred that indicates that currently, they're projecting that half the traffic would go through. How do you determine that? Fred Hoisington: What they've done is to look at the socioeconomic characteristics of the City in the year 2005 so they know about what the population estimates or what estimates are at that point. They also know what the percentage of the through traffic is today and know that the total sheer volume will go from 48% goes through of the total volume and that that will reduce to 43% in the future. Just simply by using the information that exists today Tim. BRW transportation studies have been done... Erhart: Do they put pneumatic sensors on the roads to determine the traffic court? Fred Hoisington: No, most of the traffic counts have been done by MnDot. Yes, some of it has been... e Erhart: How do they know a car corning down TH 101 from the north ends up going south, the same car ends up going south on TH 101 5 minutes later? Through traffic, how do we know a car is going through TH l0l? Fred Hoisington: All the way through town? Erhart: Yes. Fred Hoisington: They know that from the information provided as far as the base information from MnDot and from BRW. Studies that have been done in the past, they know now based on the counting and all the studies of what people are doing now and they're forecasting in the future and saying that in addition to the growth in the City of Chanhassen, there will also be a growth in that volume and those people will continue to do that. e Erhart: I guess I question that data because I feel what we really need to do here is to improve the accesses onto TH 5 particularly with TH 212 and TH 5 being improved. I think that's where you're going to get the emphasis. Again, one of the things I look at, again I haven't done a study on this thing or anything but somehow have we evaluated using West 98th Street option at all? I won't even ask for a response but somehow in going through that today, walking through that area, somehow it's in that 1,000 or 1,500 foot corridor there's got to be some other options to get through there is continuity is even required to the extent that I think we're talking about. In summary, I guess I'd prefer to look at some other alternative. I think we have to make a change. I think the north route on using TH 5 is preferable to using Lake Drive East because I think if we do I think it makes you question our whole comprehensive plan and the planning process. Lastly, I guess if it comes down to that is the only thing we can do, than I think you really have to take care to answer and Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 19 e spend some of the money that these taxpayers are spending on making some major changes in Lake Drive East to make it compatible. The most compatible with the problem they have including taking into consideration the noise, environmental issues and how do the children now get over there to the Q store and into the recreation areas and so forth. I just think we're talking about, if we have to use that road, we're talking about more than simply putting up a couple of signs saying this is TH 101. I think we have to do some major, major, major things if we're forced to do that. It's corning down to, what do we do here tonight. Fred, could you repeat to me again, I apologize to ask you this, but why, with the situation with TH 5, why do we have to make a decision tonight on the mapping and comp plan alteration? Fred Hoisington: Tim, there are a multitude of things that have to occur actually between now and January when the design of this has to be done and in MnDot's hands. What they intend to do is if we can stay on this course for the design that has to be done by our consultant's, the City's consultants, and then hand this package to MnDot in January to simply include it, they would have to review the plans but they could approve it with their package and admit the whole package. The key thing is that if we miss that time, then we miss being able to have this included. Erhart: And that time is what, January? e Fred Hoisington: January, right. Now, if we go to the north leg, we have a completely different problem because the City has no control over the design of that leg. MnDot is doing itself through it's own consultants and they are much slower than we are. If they have to make that adjustment, they will take, where it would take our consultants maybe 3 months to get the whole job done, it will take MnDot a year to get the whole thing done so that alternative should continue to be explored and I think we may corne back, could corne back at a later date and say listen, we're going to lose 2 years but it's worth doing to get the north leg option. In the meantime, the process has to go on. We just can't ~igure out another way to do that if we don't get this completed and approved. Erhart: If we go back and say we want the north leg option, and they're already redesigning TH 5 anyway, don't you think they would incorporate that with the design? Fred Hoisington: Yes, I think if we can convince them that that option is a viable one and if they can buy into that, then they will do that but they will not do that on this schedule. They'll do that on a schedule that will go with begin in 1991 and completion in 1993. In order Tim, to let the project and I think it's June of 1989, they have to have those plans completed in January of 1989 and they can not get this stretch done by January of 1989 if we change it. It's just a fact of life that they can not... e Erhart: But you're saying, if we want to give them our idea of where this intersection is going to be today and they're going to start doing their drawings, or when this goes to Council, they're going to...based on the proposed location. Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 20 e Fred Hoisington: They're already doing drawings as if we were going to do one of two things. Either leave the intersection kind of the way it is or, if we can move fast enough to get this done and get it into their bid package, then they will accomodate this into this proposal... Erhart: And if our proposal is the north option... Fred Hoisington: The proposal is the one we're talking about tonight which includes the south leg. Erhart: How is it that the north option is so significantly different than this? We're basically putting the intersection in the same place. e Fred Hoisington: That stretch between the north leg and Great Plains Blvd., the TH 5 stretch would have to have a center lane added to it in order to be able to accomodate that traffic flow and volume to get the second left turn lane incorporated. Their consultants are Barton Ashman consultants and not ours which are BRW. In order to make that change it takes them about 3 or 4 times as long as it takes us to do the one we're talking about so Tim, they can not do the north leg option and get it into this construction package. What they will do is, they'll forego it and it simply won't get done if we do it here or they'll cut it off at 184th and they will do everything in Eden prairie in the first construction phase and shut everything down for 2 years and go west into Chanhassen. It just can't be done. If we had control over everything to do the whole thing, than it would be possible but there are so many things that are associated with that, they can not adjust fast enough. Erhart: Okay, so then what are we talking about doing with the north option? Fred Hoisington: What we will continue to do with the north option is to study it and see if it's a viable option if we can get through MnDot. If MnDot says yes, we'll come back to you and say okay, now you can make your choice. Which of these two options are you going to pursue and if you choose the north leg, just understand that it's not going to be built until 1991 through 1993. ElIson: Nor will the widening of TH 5? Fred Hoisington: That's what I'm saying. occur until 1991 to 1993 in Chanhassen. The widening of TH 5 will not Erhart: Okay, those are my comments. e Conrad: I don't have a whole lot of new comments and I'll make mine brief. I think every time a neighborhood has something new in it there's concern because it's a surprise. The concern for safety and well being and property values are understood. I think we're concerned with that. I'll stop and ask a question. Is there any benefit, other than routing traffic to Chanhassen in having this additional road put through? Is there any other benefit other than getting traffic through Chanhassen? Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 21 e I I Fred Hoisington: Oh absolutely. You mean tio create a separation between what amounts to through traffic and downtow~ destine traffic? Conrad: that one? Yes. That's what I said. Is Other than eliminating some I I ther~ any other benefit of tge traffic going to other than downtown? e , I Fred Hoisington: I think so Ladd. In any dommunity that plans, it tries to provide some streets with a degree of codtinuity so that the traffic that you want to put on those streets doesn'lt have to use residential streets or streets of lesser classification.'1 We're having difficulty doing that in Chanhassen because the streetsl are not a great pattern necessarily and they wind around so it's not! real easy to move from let's say, off from a major street that's over caPlacity to one that is purely residential. In order to handle through traffic through the community and to handle the traffic of the people that ard sitting in this room right now who aren't necessarily going all the wa~ through the City, whether they're going from one sector of the city to! another sector of the city, they have to have a way to get there so thisl not only serves people that are going some distance but people who live Ihere and in addition it separates traffic according to functions so that people can get to the places where they want to go and are not forped to go places they don't have to go and that's always been one of our I major contentions that TH 101 is doing that. Forcing people downtown that don't need or want to be there and that's putting an overload on down~own and it's causing a lot of people inconvenience who need to get places ~hat can't do so, by going down...forced to go downtown. I think therel are a lot of good reasons why a city does a plan and tries to establish a petwork that serves all traffic according to destination and functio~ and this is just one piece of that puzzle. We don't have any other opt~ons. CR 17 kind of does it but it doesn't do what TH 101 can do. I Conrad: TH 101 is a pretty lousy road and npbody wants it. I Fred Hoisington: Exactly. I I I Conrad: We're going to put in probably the ~est stretch of TH 101 in our community that's on the whole road from up op TH 55 or whatever. I think if I saw some real benefits to the overall T~ 101 strategy but no government body wants it. I really have a PrOblem with TH 101. I'm not concerned about this through traffic as much as I am as to it's benefit for Chanhassen. We've dealt with it so manYI times and we've really never corne up with a very good solution because there aren't many good solutions. That's the risk we're going to tkke tonight that we're going to look for some solution and it's not therel. I've been around it long enough to know that we haven't corne up with hood ways to solve the traffic problem on TH 101. Yet again, I don't want ~o make Chanhassen the stellar TH 101 owner when it's of very little benefi~ to the community and I really do mean that. I don't know that ther~'s a whole lot of benefit here. We do have to solve the downtown prob~em of traffic. We do. There's absolutely no doubt about it. When you're not here in this chamber, we're hearing other residents talk fO us about the really bad I I , I I I i - Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 22 e e traffic problems. Dangerous today. Dangerous today. You can't get out on West 78th Street. You sit and wait. You've got to run. You got to get out. It's a real problem. We, as a community, have to solve that problem. It may come back to your neighborhood, with the land in it, solving that but I think there may be some other alternatives and I would hope we can explore those. There's got to be a better alternative. There's just got to be. We have new TH 212 coming in. We're saying TH 101 is going to be our access to downtown Chanhassen from TH 212. Because TH 101 now is playing a more major role in downtown Chanhassen and Chanhassen access, I'm wondering how this all comes into play. How the curved TH 101, maybe it's not the beautiful, it is really a pretty road. It slows people down. It's just gorgeous going through the wetlands. I'm not sure that I want to change it yet on the other hand, we have TH 212 going through our community. It's going to be there and people are going to want to use it. It's going to be a better access for most of you than TH 5. We're going to have to get there and we're going to have to get you off and we're going to have to get you to your homes. I'd like to see some kind of plan that shows us if there's any possibility of making TH 101 work from TH 212. I'm also interested in how CR 17 ties in because it is a north/south. How does that interrelate with maybe that new access that we have planned for the western portion of downtown coming off of TH 5? There's a right-in/right-out access. I don't know. There's some loose ends here and I don't know that I know enough information yet to make some final decisions yet. We've got to move. As I said before, the number one problem in Chanhassen is TH 5 and I tell you, we've had so many lobbying efforts and so much, we have to move and make sure that we're not holding things up. Now if we do, it's going to be by our own decision. If we do decide that there's a better solution, I want to make sure it's Chanhassen's decision to delay TH 5 access to the community, not MnDot. I want that to be ours and the community can have some kind of say on that. Basically, I like the north option but I do want an option. I will go to the south option if we can't make the north option work. I want to make sure what we do tonight i~ give that north option decent chance of having a good look at. I don't want to solve all of the county's and the state's problems going north and south. I want to solve Chanhassen's with that option on that north and I think I want to send a signal and Barbara you've got to help us on that, or if the Planning Commission agrees, I think we've got to send a signal that we're equally interested in both options at this point in time. I need legal advice or I need somebody's advice to tell us how we have that option to go either way and if it comes back and it says the north option is possible, it's going to delay things for 2 years, well I think that's a Chanhassen decision that we've got to make and that will be an interesting one. Then we can weigh things appropriately. If I were to draft or make a motion tonight, I guess it would be something that would approve what we see in front of us in terms of the comprehensive plan text amendment but I would like staff to be drafting in the interim. I don't want to word it, we can't word things but I would like to have staff draft some language that by the time it gets to City Council, that that north option is woven into that possibility and that those are two equal possibilities at this point in time. Those are my comments. with that aside, is there anything else? e Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 23 e Headla: Yes, let me ask, Fred when you were involved with this, what type of consideration did you give TH 212? The new route of TH 212. Fred Hoisington: TH 212 was considered as part of the transportation model when it was done. Headla: I'm saying, you still felt that this was the best alternative? Fred Hoisington: alternative. I hate to even keep saying this but it is the only Headla: You had a good point there and I just wanted to make sure they did look at it. Wildermuth: Fred, did you look at the option of following the railroad tracks? Picking it up on the current proposal instead of making the cross at TH 5 along the tracks down to Great Plains Blvd. and maintaining the TH 101 and TH 5 intersection where it currently is? Fred Hoisington: Are you saying corne down in this fashion and then doing what? Wildermuth: Tying into Great Plains. e Fred Hoisington: Somewhere in here? Wildermuth: Yes. Something like that. You'd end up taking the Hanus building and probably that car wash if you carne south of the tracks. Fred Hoisington: A couple of problems with this. If we bring this road down parallel to the tracks, then we have to take a real goodwick turn in order to get it across the tracks at least this angle. That is extremely difficult to do. He's talking about bringing it down in this fashion and then corning across in some manner or form like this and then tying in right through here. The geometries of what you have to do here makes it almost impossible. You'd end up with maybe a 10 or 15 Aegree curve for a speed of very low speed. Wildermuth: Why a curve? Why not just a right angle? A stop light there. Fred Hoisington: You mean just come up like this and then come down in this manner? Wildermuth: Tie right into Great Plains. Erhart: North or south of the railroad tracks. Fred Hoisington: Well, we did not consider that as an option. e Erhart: He's saying the same thing I did. Look at East 79th Street, extending that and making that TH 101 as an option. Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 24 e Fred Hoisington: In this manner? That can't be done. Erhart: For what reason? Fred Hoisington: Again, you have to get across these railroad tracks and if you had to get back,...in this fashion, it simply couldn't be done. I won't say you absolutely couldn't put a right turn but then of course, then we're bringing back into downtown or what amounts to... wildermuth: At the edge of downtown you've solved all the problems of going through the neighborhoods on the north side and the school. Fred Hoisington: There are geometric problems with that. There are questions of whether we really solve any problems at all with respect to relieving pressures on downtown. It's very much a forced situation to do that. Let's face it, you can do anything. It's only a matter of whether you do something that produces the desired results. wildermuth: Right, for the long term. Fred Hoisington: And I'd have to say that that probably, for a lot of reasons would not achieve the objectives. e Jeff Peters: I just have a comment. I understand consultants. I work with consultants everyday in my business and one thing I know about consultants, there are a lot of them and they all have different opinions based on their own biases. Is there any reason we can't look at another consultant to give us a second opinion on this? I don't feel we have an objective company here? Conrad: I suppose that's possible. Mr. Hoisington has worked with the City. I'm real confident when he tells us something, I'm real confident in what he says. It is an option as you suggest. We could hire somebody else but he's really not trying to do something that's anti-city. He's worked with us many times. He's trying to find the best workable solution and I think there may be another approach. There may be something that he has overlooked but I guess want to support what... Jeff Peters: I wholeheartedly agree with you but there is one thing that I have found is that there is never only one solution. There are always alternatives. I think it's important that we find something here that is a compromise between the neighborhood concern and the City's concern both on the north and the south side of TH 5. Conrad: I think we're all looking for that same solution and we'll pay attention to your comments. e Emmings: Can I ask a question? In your comments you said something about wanting to identify these alternatives as equal alternatives and I guess I'm thinking more along the lines of saying here are two alternatives. The City feels that the north leg should be the primary alternative. Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 25 e Identify it as a prImary rather than an equal alternative. reason you don't want to do that? Is there some Wildermuth: I can't support that. Emmings: I'm talking to Ladd. Conrad: I possibly could support that as long as I've got the flexibility to solve the problem if the north leg doesn't work. You've got to solve the problem so as long as I'm not locked out and the City Council's not locked out from solving the problem. Erhart: What are your plans, if we do the south leg, what are the plans for Lake Drive East? Are you going to widened it past where these homes are? Put up a barrier? Fred Hoisington: What they do is they come down from about 4 lanes crossing TH 5 with turn lanes and all and so forth down to 2 lane intersection in the short term. Erhart: So you're just going to leave it the way it is over by... e Fred Hoisington: No, I suspect there would be improvements all the way over to Great Plains Blvd. but because that intersection also has to be part of this study, the feasibility study will tell us that and I don't know yet, exactly what that amounts to. But we would have 2 lanes probably as you come to Great Plains Blvd.. Dacy: Lake Drive East, as a collector on the transportation plan, as you're aware we've done a feasibility studies for Lake Drive East on the west side going through the business park and that has been identified as a two lane road section. Conrad: Have we ever looked into moving the TH 101 intersection further west? Where the Holiday station is and moving that in there. Is there another way to go south on TH 101 further west? Fred Hoisington: Ladd, we are considering something of that nature that would deal with the Market Blvd. intersection. Because we have to deal with that whole Market Blvd. thing in light of some of the things that are being considered right now, all I will say is yes, I will continue to consider a lot of things here. We don't look at this process as being closed at this point. We look at it as a dynamic one that has to go on and that it is continuing to change. What we're trying to do is not foreclose options too soon also so we can deal with this in the shorter term. If we didn't have to deal with TH 5 at the accelerated schedule that it's on, we wouldn't even be here at this point in time in doing what we're trying to do. e Conrad: Is there a motion? Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 26 e Headla: No one else picked up on the safety aspect. Any particular reason? When I hear about all these young people over there and the way we've got these roads going, to me that's got to be one of the central criteria we should be looking at. Emmings: Isn't the traffic though Dave gOlng to be there. It's either going to be TH 101 up here or it's going to be on TH 101 over here. It is a problem and I think what Tim said did address that. He said if we're going to run this road down, we've got all these neighbors that have just moved in down there and now they've got to cross a busier TH 5 because it's bigger and a busier TH 101 because it's bigger. We can't be satisfied with putting up signs like he said. I think he hit it right on the head. We're going to have to look at that as part of the feasibility study and if we need pedestrian bridges or whatever to get people safely across, we're going to have to put the money into it but I don't think that what we're doing here is going to affect that that much. Headla: I think it can in the recommendation that we put forward. e Conrad: I think we can do that when we have a route. A specific plan. I think if we ran it south, we can recommend buffering. We can recommend sound barriers. We can build stuff there but I personally haven't gotten into that detail yet because I don't know where it's going but I think underpasses, walkways underneath the new TH 101. If it happened to go south, I think we could consider that but we still have the TH 5 problem. We still have that gorilla sitting there and I don't know how to solve that. It would be nice if we could get people under and over or whatever, TH 5. It'd be nice but... Headla: I don't want to let this thing go by. If one is better than the other, I think we should be looking, I think there should be a criteria for a decision. That traveling criteria should be another one. I don't know if you people take 62 to get to 35. That's deadly. 2005 and we go through here. In 2005 I'm going to be 75 and I'm going to go whizzing through here with all this traffic merging? Erhart: The count, the through traffic count was 800 cars a day? Fred Hoisington: The traffic approaching on both approaches to the intersection where it wants to go through the intersection, in other words, straight through going south. Erhart: Was what? 800? Fred Hoisington: No, excuse me Tim. That's the peak hour number. Erhart: Oh, 800 per hour. Emmings: At the peak hour. ~ Dacy: Between 4:30 and 5:30. Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 27 e Erhart: There are going to be how many car? Fred Hoisington: 800. Emmings: I'm going to move that the Planning Commission recommend approval of the Comprehensive Plan Text Amendment #88-5 as presented in Attachment #1 with a change that would identify the north leg option as the primary preferred route for TH 101 and identifying the proposed plan as a secondary option in the event that the north leg option is not approved by MnDot. Erhart: I'll second that. Conrad: Fred, in that language, does that hurt us in any way? In terms of your being able to... Fred Hoisington: That's a good approach. As I look at it, both of these have a possibility of being viable options. Excuse me if I said there is only one option. There isn't but I think that's a good approach to dealing with this whole question. As long as we can designate, get on the Comprehensive Plan and do the official mapping and so forth, then we're satisfied. - ElIson: I just had a question, if that north option were granted, we would then again go to the public and let the rest of Chanhassen help us decide if we want to put off TH 5 for 2 more years? Is that the way we're seeing it? Fred Hoisington: No. If you decide on the north option, that would cause the option but project, TH 5 in Chanhassen is put off for 2 years. There will be no choice there. As long as the City understands that, that's it's decision to make. Headla: Say that again. Fred Hoisington: If it becomes the north leg option is the one that MnDot approves and that's the one that then becomes implemented. Then you will delay the Chanhassen stretch of TH 5 for 2 years. Emmings: But TH 5 will be widened up to the Chanhassen border? Fred Hoisington: Probably up to 184th. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 184th. Conrad: Versus where? Fred Hoisington: Versus all the way through to CR 17 I think. e Larry Guthrie: If the people who are planning TH 5 will accept our consultant's plan for the cross intersection, why won't they accept our consultant's plan for the north leg option? Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 28 e Conrad: They just might. They just might. It's not precluded that they won't. What is precluded is that if they accept the north option, you don't have TH 5 coming to Chanhassen for 2 years. Larry Guthrie: I'm saying, back to something he said, the reason for the delay for 2 years was that the consultant's who planned the TH 5 intersection would take probably a year to incorporate this extra lane in. Why couldn't our consultants do that plan and turn it over to them upon being accepted? The same as they do for across the intersection. Fred Hoisington: It's a different situation for this reason. When we're dealing with TH 101 we're dealing with different alignments. It is a State trunk highway alignment but at least it's not part of only MnDot design at that point in time. They will not relinquish that to our consultants. Their consultants will do that on their... all the additional right-of-way as a part of that. Barton Ashman will need 2 years to... e Emmings moved, Erhart seconded that the Planning Commission recommend approval of the Comprehensive Plan Text Amendment #88-5 as presented in Attachment #1 with a change that would identify the north leg option as the primary preferred route for TH 101 and identifying the proposed plan as a secondary option in the event that the north leg option is not approved by MnDot. All voted in favor except Wildermuth and Headla who opposed and the motion carried with a vote of 4 to 2. Conrad: The reason for opposition Jim? Wildermuth: I don't think the north leg is viable. I think there have to be other solutions other than the south leg or the current proposal. I don't think it makes any sense, I think it's poor planning to look at routing minor arterial traffic for 1,000 feet of a very busy state highway. Headla: term. I think the north route is very poor planning in a long range ...come 2005 we'll have the south route and...decision. Conrad: Okay, this item goes to City Council on August 22nd. all for showing up tonight. I thank you PUBLIC HEARING: CONSIDER ADOPTION OF OFFICIAL MAP FOR THE REALIGNMENT OF TH 101 ACROSS TH 5, CITY OF CHANHASSEN. Public Present: Name e Mark Senn Rome Roos Address 7800 Park Drive 1450 Park Court Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 29 e Don T. Smi th Mike Wittrock Drew & Melanie Wright Gene Heikkinen Greg Gmiterko Grace Johnson Jack Atkins Gary Disch Bill Streepy Elizabeth Kersch Jeff & Holly Peters Bruce & Cindy Marengo Sharon Loeckler Torn Lehmann Larry Guthrie Jim Lewi s Jan Coey Janine Ringdahl Bill Davis Ivan C. Johnson Jeffery Cook Gene Borg Ulrico Sacchet Brad Johnson 8012 Erie 8022 Dakota Avenue 320 Sinnen Circle 301 Sinnen Circle 8121 Hidden Court 3143 Marsh Drive 220 West 78th Street 8170 Marsh Drive 321 Sinnen Circle 271 Hidden Lane 8120 Hidden Court 8150 Marsh Drive 8028 Erie Avenue 330 Sinnen Circle 520 3500 West 80th, Bloomington 8133 Dakota Lane Taco Shop 8032 Erie Avenue Minnetonka 7910 Dakota Drive 1800 Meritor Tower 90 Lake Drive East 8071 Hidden Circle 7425 Frontier Trail e Conrad: Barbara, we don't need any staff report on that. Dacy: Based on your previous motion, when you make the motion to adopt the official map, you should identify both the north leg and the south leg. Conrad: Technically, should I open this up for public comment? Okay. We will open it up for public comments. Relatively it's the same item we just talked about. We just have a different step that we have to go through. Is there any comments relative to the mapping process? Larry Guthrie: I have a question, the comments that were made.. .in the crosstown comments. Is the north leg option supposed to be utilized, would there not be a signal at the north leg? ElIson: Yes. Larry Guthrie: So traffic from TH 101 would not have to merge. They would just have to wait at the stop light and then they could immediate get over to the left lane. Conrad: It can be solved that way. e Uli Sacchet: I certainly want to take the opportunity to express that I believe it is absolutely mandatory from the viewpoint of the people that live down there that two options are both fairly accurate. Certainly the north leg option has an equal value alternative to what's currently Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 30 e proposed. Also, I'd like to ask a question. It has to be considered what would happen at the intersection of Great Plains Blvd. where the east leg comes into it if the current proposal would go through. Fred Hoisington: You're talking about Lake Drive East west of TH l01? Uli Sacchet: Correct. It's basically a "T" intersection at this point which to me seems a very undesirable situation which would be an additional point for the north leg option the way I feel. Fred Hoisington: As lIve indicated in the past, I hate to keep putting things off on the feasibility study but that's what itls for is to deal with design problems such as that and to try to determine what the costs are and so forth so that will be answered. 1111 say again, if it is not...but it is viable solution that can be engineered. - Conrad: The north route, and lIve always been concerned about realignment of TH 101 because I want to make it easy access to downtown. lIve always been, I think those of you have been here, I've always been concerned that some of our routing is taking the highway too far away from downtown. I want to make sure that people who are close have an option to use our downtown services. There is that little added benefit in the north route where we haven't routed people all the far. We haven't routed them additional distances away from making that alternative choise of going to downtown and visiting some of our businesses which I think is important. Just as a footnote, I think that the north route does do that a little bit better. Any other comments? Mark Eidem: From what I'm hearing is, what we're coming up with here is a short term solution to a long term problem. The big issue here is whether or not it's going to cost 3 years of construction time and whether or not TH 5 is done. I guess what I'd like to say is, why not wait to make the right decision and do it right in 2 years. It's not that much of a wait to do it right and do a long term decision. e Conrad: Yes, and that's what we like to do on Planning Commission. We like to plan. We like information. If we do our job right, that's what we're doing. There are some other issues that are out there that we haven't talked about but there are other issues. This may be our only opportunity to do something thatls kind of good planning. Obviously, from your standpoint it's not but from the residential neighborhoods in Chanhassen, this may be the opportunity to do the good planning. I think the folks over here who voted against the motion, they're probably right. Probably the better plan is the south route but in my mine, I don't know that we gain a whole lot from it. I donlt know that we gain much and I really want to pursue some other neutral solution to the problem at this point. I just don't see a real long term benefit any particular direction on this one. TH 101 is just a real problem. It may never be solved and itls one of those things you can study it to death and never come up with a perfect solution and thatls what 11m afriad of. As we study it to death, we may lose the ability to solve the biggest problem Chanhassen has based on what everybody tells us every other week when welre here at the Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 31 - Planning Commission. So anyway, I hear your point and it's not that we're ignoring that. Conceptually we've got to agree with you. Any other comments? Resident: I'd just like to point out if I could make this document a part of the public record. Conrad: Sure. Just deliver them to Barb Dacy here and she can do that. Mark Eidem: Is this normal procedure where you approve something like this with so many... Conrad: Maybe not. Mark Eidem: with something of this importance, how can you approve? e Conrad: We're approving some concepts. Actually I'll take it back. We do that and when we see new developments coming into Chanhassen, we ask for sketch plans. We like to see concepts before we get into some details. In this particular case, I think it's prudent to approve some of these things right now so we have the alternatives because if we don't approve them right now, these alternatives may vanish. From a planning standpoint, yes, maybe we should have more data but from being real wise about it, we are protecting more of our options right now and that's what's important. At least that's what's important to me and maybe some of the members on the Planning Commission tonight. We're asking staff and consultants to find more information. We're also being forced into this a little bit prior to when we would prefer to be looking at the issue but we see the benefits are there. From a city standpoint, we've got to take a look and we've got to make sure we're not going to be forced out of having some of these highway access problems solved for the entire city of Chanhassen. We have to make sure that the rest of the community is aware that if we change this to a north route, the rest of the City is going to be missing a section of TH 5 for a couple years. They may not be pleased to hear that but anyway, tonight we're reserving some options. We don't have all the data in. We're asking our consultants to get us more data and we haven't precluded some things also. Is there a motion to close the public hearing? Erhart moved, ElIson seconded to close the public hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed. Erhart moved, Headla seconded that the Planning Commission recommend to approve the adoption of the Official Map for the realignment of the two routes as proposed in the Comprehensive Plan Amendment to amend the Transportation Chapter of the Comprehensive Plan of TH 101 across TH 5. The official map shall be prepared by BRW in time for City Council consideration on August 22, 1988. All voted in favor and the motion carried. . Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 32 e SITE PLAN APPROVAL FOR A 40,000 SQUARE FOOT SHOPPING CENTER ON 4.86 ACRES OF PROPERTY ZONED BN, NEIGHBORHOOD BUSINESS DISTRICT AND LOCATED ON THE NORTH SIDE OF LAKE DRIVE EAST, JUST EAST OF Q-SUPERETTE, HIDDEN VALLEY CENTER. Dacy: Given the Commission's previous action on the first two items, the City Attorney has made a recommendation as to a motion that the Commission should adopt. The motion would be to recommend denial to the City Council because the location of the shopping center would be within the proposed official map. Headla: Since there are alternatives, are we better off tabling it? Dacy: A motion to table is an option but the Chairman may want to pose that question to the applicant. I really think it's going to be up to the applicant as to, well, maybe I should put it this way. The applicant is aware of all the options. He has seen the language in the recommendation to pursue the north leg option. He may still want to "take his chances" and pursue his application... e Conrad: I think tabling keeps it away from the City Council and I don't know that that's the right thing to do either. Yet on the other hand I think staff has made some comments on the plan and the applicant has not incorporate those comments into the plan so I would feel well justified in tabling the site plan until I saw the plan. Things like the two accesses on the site plan. I don't feel the applicant has considered what we talked about the last time when we were here. There were some recommendations that we made during the sketch plan or whatever we had and I still don't see that incorporated into the plan. I typically like a plan going to City Council. The one that we see is the one I want them to get and I don't see any plans. I don't see any of those modifications made on the plan that we got tonight. There's another option. We can table it until we get those changes. We could turn it down. We could approve it. We could do anything the Planning Commission so desires but I think there's some rationale for tabling it for reasons other than the location and the previous two items. Tim, what's... Erhart: I'm for denying it. I think it's more consistent with our previous action here tonight and basically make a decision to remap it which does not allow this proposal to work. I guess I wouldn't mind asking the applicant what he wants to do but... Conrad: I'm sure they want to proceed. There's no doubt about it but why don't you take the floor, being that you brought it up Tim, I'll let him talk to us. e John Cairns: I'm John Cairns, 4150 Multifoods Tower, counsel to the developer. We prefer to see the matter go to the Council. We don't think there's a technical grounds for denial but you're the commission and we're not and I don't mean to stand up there and argue with you about the technical grounds. You see the staff report. For your information, we Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 33 e would consider denial in effect a condemnation of the property. Because of the potentially your raising of the second alternative, the north leg is, of course, fine with us because a lot of it has to do with what the property here can do so I think that is helpful and I think the Council ought to be the place where we decide whether or not they want to in effect condemn the property by not doing what we thing the ordinance requires them to do so we prefer to see you send it ahead and if it's on a denial basis, that's the way we will see it go to Council. Erhart: Yes, except the northern route still has the east Lake Drive alteration. Could have even if we did do the northern route wouldn't it? Dacy: I'm not sure I know what you're referring to. Erhart: If we had the north leg option, you still have to put in an intersection where we're proposing and you'd still be putting, still be making a change to Lake Drive East which would cut across this property. Either way it significantly affects your property. John Cairns: No, I don't think that's right. Dacy: The north leg option would not have Lake Drive East crossing this property. e John Cairns: As I understand the north leg option, the south side of the highway stays as it is and the north side has a new intersection. Our property stays intact there that's why I'm saying, we think the ordinance compels the issue for approval of the site plan because we're technically complying and the effect of saying that there's a secondary option that may prevent that is in effect saying we can't use our property and we view it as condemnation of the property. That's really the City Council's decision, not the Planning Commission decision that's why we urge you to send it forward and we'll argue it out there. Dacy: Dakota Avenue will still be closed off. There would be no change to Lake Drive East in the area the applicant is proposing. Erhart: Okay, I didn't understand that. Emmings: I agree with Tim. I just think we should do something that's clear cut and be consistent with what we've already done. Ellson: If we deny this, can they corne back if the north leg option is approved? I guess that confuses me. If it all goes through and the north leg option is the way to go and we've already said, no, you can't have a shopping center there, then they can't? And it goes to the City Council and they also do the same thing, does that mean they can't or can they corne back? e Dacy: They do have the option to reapply. Ellson: Okay, then I would go along with you. Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 34 e Wildermuth: I agree with what's been said. Headla: Denial is consistent. Conrad: I don't have anything new to add. Ellson moved, Emmings seconded that the Planning Commission recommend denial of the Hidden Valley Center site Plan because it conflicts with the proposed Official Map for the relaignment of TH 101. All voted in favor and the motion carried. PUBLIC HEARING: CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT REQUEST TO PERMIT GAS PUMPS ON PROPERTY ZONED BN, NEIGHBORHOOD BUSINESS DISTRICT AND LOCATED AT THE SOUTHWEST CORNER OF HWY 7 AND HWY 41, SUPERAMERICA. Public Present: Name Address ..... .. Betty Lang Allen Putnam Bob Wagner Gene Conner Roman Mueller Bud Randy Peterson Roger Zahn Sandy 2631 Forest Avenue 6285 Chaska Road 2511 Orchard Lane 2521 Orchard Lane SuperAmerica Super America Real Estate Agent for Applicant HSZ Jo Ann Olsen and Larry Brown presented the staff report on this item and the Site Plan Review. Chairman Conrad called the public hearing to order. Allen Putnam: I live at 6285 Chaska Road which is just to the east of the proposed site. That just off of the street I live on, TH 41 where the traffic has been getting worse there more and more. I believe that gas pumps located on this site, and this site has been brought before this body in the past. Traffic was a major concern for this particular site and by putting a 12 outlet gas station there, even any gas station there would significant increase the traffic turning off TH 7 onto TH 41 to come into that area. It would increase the traffic on TH 41. There are six gas stations within a mile of that location currently in the Excelsior area. Three of them located right on TH 7. Because of that, I would ask that this body deny the motion to put gas pumps at this location. tit Betty Lang: I live 2631 Forest Avenue and I thought this was all cut and dry before when you talked about this cute little shopping center that was Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 35 e going in and nothing to us about a SuperAmerica. For one thing, they had discussed before the run-off in which they were going to have a holding pond. What kind of run-off are you going to have around Lake Minnewashta? Another thing, ...gas stations have been brought up many times and I don't think... Conrad: Jo Ann, in terms of run-off? Brown: Through the HSZ site, because it's fairly common that the parking lot is going to pick up from the exhause fumes, etc., part of the structures that have been proposed here in the storm sewer system by the Watershed District in trying to maintain the water quality, is a device that would skim off the oils that could possibly enter into the ponding system and the storm sewer system. So that device will prevent the oils, the gasolines heading straight through to the lake. All the water quality issues have to be addressed through the Watershed District as well. Conrad: Does this put any new perspective, having a gas station on this corner versus a restaurant or whatever some of us might have imagined before, your comfortable that the runoff from the gas station is not going to pose any additional problems to water quality because of the skimming devices that we're talking about? e Brown: The natural run-off that we have through any parking lot, whether it's going to be a gas station or a restaurant is going to be the same. I'm not going to speak in regard to if there's a major gasoline spill there. My previous comment regarding the gasoline station may be corrected that we do have gasoline once in a while that maybe a couple drops here or there or whatever that may corne out of the spouts as the customers fill his car, in that aspect the concentration of oils that corne off the parking lot could be increased. Thankfully HSZ, through their planning of their parking lot, was concerned about that as the Watershed District was and they did install, or have proposed to install a skimming device. That device would in fact take care of not only the HSZ proposed strip center but the run-off incurred by the proposed SA station as well. Again, this would not take care of any unforeseeable event. I can't imagine what would happen then but any expected use in this area would be accomodated for with that skimming device. Allen Putnam: Did Chanhassen run the number of cars that would be expected typical at a SuperAmerica? Randy Peterson: I represent the real estate investment firm. Randy Peterson. I have here officials from SuperAmerica that any of these questions and the design of the building to show model. Would you like that done at this point? My name is can answer you the Conrad: Go ahead. Why not? e Randy Peterson: Also, one other thing that I did in talking to staff was, we do have a hard time if TH 7 access is cut off. We have a very difficult time. It mayor may not work, like I said but we need TH 7 Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 36 e access if at all possible. That isn't an issue here really and it's being worked on as I understand right now but that's not on our... He asked a question on the cars right? This is what it's going to look like. Roman do you want to come up because you're a little better advised on this. This is a whole new design that's coming into the cities. You're one of the first to be seeing this design and I'll let him take it from here. e Roman Mueller: We've all met before. I'm Roman Mueller with SuperAmerica. This is our latest prototype design that we're proposing for this area. Changes to a more residential style than our older flat roof buildings. Going to a lighter style brick, solarium on it. The same basic entranceway. You see a skylit area over the entrance. Different signage appearance on the outside of the building with lighting up to this edge. Putting a stripe trim on it. Trying to make it blend better with the residential locations where we're building more often than not these days. One thing I'd like to clear up what was stated in the report, there are 6 pumps capable of serving 12 cars. Those are not 12 pumps. There are more than 12 hoses. Each dispenser has 4 hoses on each side but only one can be operated at a time giving a maximum of 12 cars to be serviced. I just want to make that very clear. This is the style dispenser we're discussing. On the question of traffic that was brought up, we've done numerous traffic studies at a number of different locations and each and everyone of these around the country has shown that over 80% of the traffic that draws into our site comes from existing traffic in the area so the impact of increasing the traffic flow in the area is not that much. That's the simplest it can be put on the traffic issue. Yes, we do increase the number of turning motions in the area but we're not increasing the traffic. There is some concern about theft in an existing convenience store and I'd like to point out one of the differences that we have between ours and a majority of other convenience store operations. That's the number of people we have on duty in our shifts. They're running 2 to 3 people on duty. Using the buddy system more often than not versus many of our competitors using a single employee at any particular time making them more susceptible to theft because there's no one there to watch but one person on duty. I think the issue of contamination was very well handled. If people really look into the issue of cars driving onto the area, you'll find out that actually the asphalt is going to be putting out more contaminates than the cars driving on it for the most part in the initial stage of the project. Conrad: Tell us a little bit about a disaster though. A disaster meaning a pump, a spill. A major spill. Not just minor stuff. A car sitting and idylling and oil and a little bit of gas, I'm talking about a major spill. How would that affect the particular drainage that our engineers have looked at? e Roman Mueller: One of the things that is required of us and we do on all our sites these days is there is a spill containment program established for the store in which the grade in the area, all aquafirs, all water systems are looked at. The drainage to them. The people that need to be contacted to stop any type of a spill to contain it as it travels. Notification of Fire Marshalls. Everybody we can think of is listed in Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 37 e each store and it goes down starting at the first person to be called on down so we can control it if it does happen. The potential is always there. Anytime you have a human working with something that can be spilled, it can happen. We've got an extremely good record at our stores to this point in time. I'm not aware of any major spills that we've had. We've had some minor ones where a truck driver is not following the rules and is not watching when he's filling and it will overflow. The underground tank, we're taking preventative measures now with a system that will shut it off in the tank before he can overfill it. That's again, a part of the new system we're putting in as well as the inability for the gasoline to travel up through the vent pipes and be spilled out through that area. We are addressing those issues because they are very important to us as they are to everybody else. Emmings: will this store have access to that system? e Roman Mueller: This store will have that system. We are starting as of this summer putting that system in every store. What it is, it's a containment system at the tank that as you fill it, it begins to slow the filling from the truck which immediately the tank driver is going to notice. It begins to slow as it gets towards the top. If it gets to the top, there's a ball valve in there that shuts it off and then there's a 20 gallon container above the tank that will hold all of the gases in the line. So if he's standing there, he shuts it off, he hasn't got anything to do with that 20 gallons in the line, he pulls the hose off. It will dump into this secondary containment and as the tank is lowered by people pumping gas, fuel will drain back into the tank. So the possibility or the probability of an overfill is almost non-existent. At the dispensers where the gasoline actually comes out of the ground, it's been required for years for a valve to be put in there. If somebody drives across and hits the dispenser, knocks it completely off the island, the valve automatically trips and shuts. It's just a very, very simple trip valve that's in there so the gas can't come out of the dispenser then either. Conrad: Talk to us a little bit about traffic. SuperAmerica is a real fine operation and I'm pleased to see, it's just a good operation. It's so good that I perceive, I get a problem with what I'm seeing on the board. Access. I still have the problem now, I have an additional problem that if we don't have TH 7 access, what that does to traffic coming in. It's like we're begging for another problem here. We not only have the other HSZ traffic that's going to come into the site, we now have a whole lot more coming in from possibly one site and location and that's a real concern to me. e Roman Mueller: I think in just a very brief moment I had to read through the staff recommendations, I thought that was pretty well handled in that if the access from TH 7 isn't allowed, we don't get building permits. Also, that issue is primarily something that's been dealt with the HSZ development. Access, understandably this is operating, we are developing only the lot area that you see in front of us. The accesses to the area are whatever HSZ lives with. I didn't understand that access would be an issue involved with our conditional use permit. J Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 38 e Conrad: Well, did he reflect accurately the staff's report? My opinion of how I read the staff's report is, we would not deny their application given TH 7 access. That's the way I reviewed it. You're asking for, the applicant shall not receive a permit until MnDot approves access from TH 7 but you haven't conditioned it on access to TH 7. Olsen: If it's found through that access permit to use that site can function just off of that one access on TH 41, that's through MnDot, the site could function separately. I think everybody is thinking that the TH 7 access will still be permitted. If it doesn't I think changes will be made. Conrad: How does this SuperAmerica affect all of the concerns, all the access concerns because it is a high traffic generater. It's not like a restaurant where you have turnover every half hour. It is a high traffic generater every hour. How does that impact what we've previously seen with this whole site? In terms of traffic studies, should we refer to Larry? Brown: Two things, I'd like to call your attention to condition 9 of the site plan. It states that the applicant shall not receive a building permit until MnDot has approved access permits for TH 7 and TH 41. Conrad: So if they don't approve TH 7, then what happens? e Brown: Then it would have to come back to the Planning Commission. To address your second concern, if you're satisfied with the first. Conrad: Well, that clarifies that condition. Randy Peterson: Say Jo Ann, would that really take place, to come back in because just eliminating TH 7 doesn't change our site plan though? ElIson: According to this it will. Olsen: The whole HSZ site will have to come back. e Brown: The HSZ site was, correct me if I'm wrong Barb, was approved with those accesses. Unfortunatley your site is a part of that plat. If that plat does not receive approval, then there is really no reasonable way that we can proceed with that. The second point brought up regarding traffic, one of the things that staff looked at was, I believe the gentleman from SuperAmerica brought this up as well, the majority of the traffic that will be serviced by SuperAmerica in fact is already there. How many people drive 30 miles out of their way to go to the gas station? SuperAmerica right now is, I think you've heard their indication is, depending on this movement to direct the eastbound traffic into their site and in onto the site from TH 41. From a traffic volume standpoint, people would rather take this free right turn if it's granted by MnDot, fill up and continue the continous path back out to TH 7 than they would coming here, waiting at the light, making this turn, getting into SuperAmerica, coming back out and doubling back. If in fact MnDot comes back and says that no access is permitted at this point, more than likely it's bound to Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 39 e reduce this traffic volume here because people are not as willing to make that movement. Conrad: No, I don't agree with that. you're absolutely right, you're going to do the most convenient thing. That right in access is very important. I'm sure it's very important to SuperAmerica. I don't know that they'd want to be in this location if they have, the same logic holds to get in 300 feet away from a site and try to work your way back to SuperAmerica is not the most convenient access to a gas station either. I'm really concerned with the overall traffic. The amount of traffic that now potentially is in that site. Either coming in right-in or exiting by going through the HSZ site. Most of your gas stations are designed, you get in and you go right back out to whatever highway. Now we're routing them, there's no right-out. There's no right-out as we go to the north. You've got to wind through the rest of the site and then we go out to a congested intersection because the rest of the shopping center is going to be pulling in some folks. Roman Mueller: Increasing the left turn off of TH 7? e Conrad: But basically at this point in time Larry, you're not concerned about the amount of traffic. The amount of traffic that's coming to that one intersection, that intersection will be able to tolerate in the future. Assuming that there's ho right-in off of TH 7, you're convinced that that one access will accomodate all the needs for the HSZ site and the SuperAmerica which could generate, I don't know how many cars an hour but it would be a significant number of cars because it's a good operation. It's a natural draw. People are going to go there regardless. They're going to wind their way through. Not as many as if they had TH 7 but they're still going to get there. You're not concerned? Brown: Obviously it's a concern. From staff's viewpoint it's not a very good traffic plan as you mentioned here and staff surely would have loved to have these issues all cut and dry before we had brought approval about. Conrad: What internal, within the HSZ site, what internal traffic problems do you see if the TH 7 is not there? Brown: From the HSZ site, HSZ I believe, for their main access is going to depend on this intersection on TH 41 right now. I don't see any real strong impacts with this. Obviously they're not going to have, as I mentioned before, the entire volume that they would like to see coming off of TH 7 because some people are going to say, it's more convenient to keep on going through out to wherever but as far as the outlots, yes it does have an impact because of the rerouting of traffic. Conrad: How do you merge the shopping center traffic with the gas station traffic? Is there any cross traffic there? It looks like there isn't but how do you get the other shopping center traffic in que to get out on TH 41? I'm directing my comments to our engineer because I want him to talk about it but jump in if you've got some answers. e I 1 I I Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 40 - Roman Mueller: One thing I wanted to point out that I don't know if there's confusion here or what, but the comment about people from the SA wandering through the site is somewhat off because this is the access off of the SA site to the service road onto TH 41 at this point. So they're not entering anything that is controlled drive. They are not wandering through this area. They do not have to corne from this point down and then through and around. The access is here and the way our islands are laid out, it more or less funnels the people in that direction. Conrad: If we lose the TH 7 site and you've got people coming and going out and then coming right back down, it's a two way and the only access to the site. Then as you exit, how do you merge that traffic with the traffic from the rest of the site? How is that lined up? I can't visualize it? How do the parking people at the site get in line? Emmings: If you're parked in here, how do I get out of there? Roman Mueller: You're going to have to go north up to the drive. Ernmings: Okay, so the only way into this, you can't go in anywhere along there? e Roman Mueller: Correct. Only at this point. Take off of let's say the SA site and put a stop sign there... Keep in mind from our aspect, our entire business is built around convenience. If a person can not move in and out of our site with some level of convenience, we know that they're not going to go there. We go through the traffic issues very, very closely. Conrad: I'm sure you do. I'm sure you're much more versed in it than I. Allen Putnam: I have a question. Is the approval of the gas pump permit and your convenience store tied together? In other words, you would not do one without the other? Roman Mueller: I've never presented that. Allen Putnam: I assume they're considered as one? Conrad: It's kind of confusing administratively from my standpoint right now. In our public hearing we're trying both together right now. In terms of how they approach it, a public hearing has to be held for a conditional use permit and that's what we're really going through but we're really getting into some site plan reviews right now which is sort of fogging some of these issues. Allen Putnam: I have another question that's related to, since he brought out the model, related to the convenience store and that is, can you tell me if in your convenience stores now, do you have any pornographic magazines? e Roman Mueller: No, we do not. They were pulled out a number of years ago at substantial expense to the company. Bud, do you remember? Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 41 - Bud Kelp: Yes, they were pulled out approximately 3 years ago. We were the convenience chain in the country to pull those books off of our shelves at a cost, profit of over 3 million dollars a year but we pulled it. Allen Putnam: And you have no intentions of putting them back? Bud Kelp: No sir. Gene Conner, 2521 Orchard Lane: In the consideration of the original HSZ proposal, one of the prime reasons that came up over and over about the, I would say, the necessity for a TH 7 access was for emergency vehicles service to that area. It hasn't been mentioned here at all tonight. I understand that the whole thing may not be viable but that was one of the prime reasons, aside from business. Your emergency services are on TH 7 and you put a gas station in there, and I know that they take all the safety precautions in the world, you are indeed increasing your risk of the need for emergency services which I don't think you can handle adequately with TH 7 lost. Roman Mueller: One thing getting back to the TH 7 access, it's really not an issue with our conditional use permit. e Conrad: That is true. We've merged two issues here. We have and you did it, not me. You brought this up. I was trying to keep the items separate but you decided to come up and show us this and that is merging site plan review with conditional use permit request and I was trying to keep them separate a little bit so we didn't do what you're experiencing right now. But anyway, as the Planning Commission operates, we will vote on those, we will review them separately. Our discussion has merged the two together. It's still a public hearing. - Bob Wagner, 2511 Orchard Lane: We had a neighborhood meeting last Thursday and of course some of the questions were addressed and the opinion was asked of how I felt. I said I'll flow with the feeling of the neighbors who are closest and that's what I'm here to tell you about so I'm addressing not myself but several people. We've talked about, and I'll try to jump over looks quickly, but we talked about cosmetics. Like I have a mustache and this fella has a mustache, you fellas don't but we all have faces and when we get right down to it, it's still a gas station. However cosmetic they want to figure, we have a gas station. That brings, in my opinion, contamination in several areas. We've talked about the possibility of contamination of fuel but I'd like to talk about the intensity. The 24 hour useage. The type of fuel. If we're going to have deisel there, I realize it's not likely but deisel fuel can pull that odd truck in that's running out of fuel to that thing at 2:00 in the morning. I'm not excited about that. The hours I think are a big issue. We sat before this group and said we want BN to preserve the integrity and something less than commercial. When I think of commercial, I think of gas stations and I think of 24 hours and I think a lot of the things we're looking at here tonight, which I don't think is the direction that the neighborhood and this group and the group above this one has talked about Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 42 e for 3 years. Traffic pattern has been mentioned and I don't think we need to go into that. The whole area to me is, is this good for the neighborhood? Is it good for the area? When we talk about people drive by this and they're going to get gas if they need gas. Well, that's argument is good for people who drive by here and they can live in residential houses here. People come by here and they could buy a hamburger here if it was something else. I don't lean to that argument very strongly. I do lean to something much less commercial however and I think that's been the intent and the integrity that the community and the City of Chanhassen has worked for. Gene Conner: Also, it's been stated that the petition of the SuperAmerica station, and I have nothing against SuperAmerica. I buy a lot of gas at SuperAmerica but the addition of a SuperAmerica station would add no affect on the volume of traffic along TH 7 and TH 41, that's probably true. It won't increase the volume of traffic but there's a hell of a big difference between traffic flowing by on the highway and stopping, starting and the general increasing to the noise contamination, if you want to call it contamination. I object strenuously to the concept of a 24 hour operation out there as Bob Wagner said. That does not fit at all with what I think we were sold in a very fine selling job by HSZ Corporation. The concept of a 24 hour fuel operation does not fit at all with the neighborhood shopping center and with adequate berming and all the rest of that, I think we were sold a very fine... e Bob Wagner: It's not the win-win situation that Mr. Headla thought we didn't have last time and... Bud Kelp: My name is Bud Kelp, I represent SuperAmerica as well as some of these other guys. One of the things about the 24 hour operation, that is a period of time when we do a lot of business. Our average transaction in a 8 hour, 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., is approximately 175 vehicles. Between 11:00 and 12:00 we would estimate on an average of maybe 50. From 6:00 to 7:00 a.m., on an average of 60. So from midnight to 6:00 a.m. we're talking about 65 or 6 1/2 vehicles per hour. In that period of time, that is when a lot of cleaning up is done in the store. Stocking the shelves, some of the paperwork is accomplished and policing of the outside area. These are things that are done at night. A lot of times your tanker comes and drops it's gas so that they're not there in the daytime congesting the driveway, blocking the driveway, whatever. The question was asked how many transactions a day would we assume we would have. We would estimate approximately a total of 800 transactions. That would figure out to be, if they just took it over a 24 hour period, 33 an hour but there are peak periods obviously. They might double that amount between 7:00 and 8:30 in the morning. Bob Wagner: 800 per day? Bud Kelp: Yes. 24 hours. That's in a 24 hour period. 4It Bob Wagner: How many did you say between 11:00 and 7:00? Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 43 e Bud Kelp: We estimated 175. That's an average. That's just between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.. The other thing is that we cater to all people. We have people going to work, everybody isn't fortunate that can just work from 8:00 to 3:30 or 4:00. We've got people working second shift. We've got people working third shift. These people, they purchase gas. They purchase food items. They purchase things too. We're there for their convenience. It's a lot, we found, safer to be open 24 hours than it is to have an 18 hour. We've had more incidents when the store closed at a certain given hour, be it 11:00 or 12:00. There were incidents that happened where the people were forced back into the store in a safe surrounding. Our crime rate at SuperAmerica is extremely low. We don't even talk about it because we don't have a lot of problems. I can't even remember, I've got an area supervisor here that could probably tell the last time he had a store hold up. I don't know if he even had one. Area Manager: During my 3 years as an area manager, I've had one store in northeast Minneapolis that experienced a robbery. Basically my territory is Burnsville, Eden Prairie, Mound and I've had those stores for the past 3 years, I've never run into any kind of threatening, life threatening or robbery or anything like that. e Bud Kelp: I guess what I'd like to sum up is that SuperAmerica wants to be part of the community wherever we're at. We encourage our managers to join the local chambers or whatever. The company itself is city minded. There are many, many things we do for the communities that we're in like what I just did recently was donating of bullet proof vests to Twin City departments. We did that at a cost of half a million dollars. We did that in Milwaukee as well as here. Every city, for every store that it had, received 3 bullet proof vests compliments of SuperAmerica. We just had the big run for MS. $250,000.00 was donated. This was sponsored by SuperAmerica. We're able to do these things, yes we are a big company. There's no question about that but I think in each community we're small. We're not big because we want to be a part of that community and we want the store to be a part of that community. We offer jobs to children. I've been with the company for 23, going on 24 years and I came through the ranks. I was a store manager at one point. I was an area supervisor at one point. Today I'm working with the zoning and permit end of it. I've seen a lot of young people come through our stores and today have very responsible positions in the community and they're thankful that they got their start at SuperAmerica. As far as the 24 hour issue, yes it's important for us to deal with. It is not mandatory for us. I wouldn't want to jeopardize the approval based strictly on the hours of operation because we could compromise there. If it came down to it but there are many things that need to be done during that third shift period of time. We certainly wouldn't like that option taken away from us. e Sandy: I understand that SuperAmerica has...in the Twin Cities. I don't what percentage of them are 24 hour operations but I do know that they have a store at the corner of Ewing and Lake in downtown Minneapolis that is not open 24 hours and it is in a neighborhood. ...a very clean store. It's a nice store, that's fine but it is not open 24 hours and it does blend in with the community. I think having to change...,which you mentioned yourself during the night hours and my house is right over the Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 44 e corner, gearing down and then gearing back up is totally unnecessary contamination in our community. This is a neighborhood. They should conform to the neighborhood hours. They don't go 24 hours a day. We sleep at night because we work during the day and I think SuperAmerica, if indeed you allow them to come in here, even though I do not agree that they should because they have an access problem, they should conform to the neighborhood. Roman Mueller: Out of curiousity, can I ask you what the distance is from our site to your home? Sandy: Oh, what would you say Bill? I'm right over the hill. Bob Wagner: It's one of the houses that borders the development. Roman Mueller: You folks are obivously more familiar with the area than I am. About 1,500 feet? Gene Conner: About that far. Roman Mueller: Out of curiousity, which side? e Sandy: My house is right here and my neighbor is sitting next to me and her house is right here. Roman Mueller: So relatively well blocked by all of the development. Sandy: I currently hear the trucks gearing down and gearing back up now. Roman Mueller: highway... I can understand that. You're going to hear an amount of Sandy: I'm going to hear them going into SuperAmerica even more. Roman Mueller: The noise wise, you're primarily concerned by the trucks going in and out of there? Sandy: I'm concerned by the 24 hour traffic. I'm concerned by the access. I'm concerned by the sound contamination irregardless of what you've said. Conrad: Talk to us a little bit about trucks, diesel fuel and trucks going into this site? - Roman Mueller: Currently it's not planned to have diesel fuel in there. As long as we're looking for a lesson on contaminates, diesel fuel is actually the least contaminate that you can put products in the ground. Trucks seem to be a concern. The trucks coming up and fueling with diesel fuel, currently I've been taking diesel fuel out of most locations that have diesel fuel in it and it's not scheduled to go in this location so it's not going to be drawing the odd truck that comes in there. A lot of the city trucks run on gasoline anyway. The noise that's in there, there's a condition in here under recommendation from staff that the Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 45 e public address system can't be audible to any residential parcel. That's in the condition. I believe we can control that. That's not a problem. We work with people on that all the time. Truck noise, I guess we can't stop the trucks noise out on the highway and yes, there will be automobile noise in the area no matter what. I would like to point out that our building separates from the islands to the areas as well as the other developments in the area. The vegetation that I've understood is going to be planted in that area, I had one brief glance at the overall vegetation plan so that portion I can't speak for. And if I remember correctly on the recommendation from staff, they're having us plant several coniferous trees in that area to help block sound, light, etc.. We are addressing that problem. - Gene Conner: Excuse me, this has gotten akin to, it sounds like do we over here are trying to...SuperAmerica. That's certainly is not the case. SuperAmerica I think, certainly I would be, SuperAmerica proposes a fine operation. As service station operations go, I have no objections to SuperAmerica. The objection that I think we all have is that it does not fit with what we were told that this site plan approval for HSZ was going to be. It does not fit the neighborhood business concept of limited time, rather low key, quiet operation. No matter how fine your operation is, you can't convince me that it's going to be consistently quiet. It certainly is going to be bright. It's going to be lit up all the time. I can understand how they'd be...24 hour a day operation. I doubt if it would be viable if it was completely limited to the hours that we would like to see if gas tanks are allowed in there. ...SuperAmerican but it does not fit with what we were sold very hard over a very long period of time. In rezoning that from a single family to residential area all the way up to a business neighborhood. It's exactly what many of us said we were afraid of years ago. Once you start the commercialism, it is going to go on and on and upward and upward until we lose control of it. We feel we've lost control. Sandy: This is indeed an escalation of what we had... Bud Kelp: I have just presented some pictures that you can look at. Lighting. The type of lighting that SuperAmerica uses at it's location. Downcast lighting. It does not light up the neighbors, especially this is ideal, if the closest house is 500 feet, they are not going to be affected by the lighting of SuperAmerica. It is not going to shine into their houses because as the picture illustrates, it's downcast lighting. Headla moved, ElIson seconded to close the public hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed. Conrad: As we made comments, we'll vote on these issues separately. The issue of the conditional use and the site plan but I think it's hard to separate them as we talk so feel free to address both issues as we go through the Commission. Dave, start at your end. What do you have to say? e J Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 46 e Headla: I talked to Barb about this. I looked at this place as very much like the SuperAmerica at TH 4 and TH 5. I've gone in there at many different hours and I think the homes are pretty much the same as they would be over here at TH 7 and TH 41. Barb, did you get a chance to talk to Eden prairie people? Dacy: I asked Jo Ann to contact the staff. Olsen: I discussed whatever issues they had for their Eden prairie site, if they had any problems or what good points or whatever. They did have a traffic issue because with the improvements to TH 5 and TH 4, the traffic was going to have to be routed through residential streets so that was their major issue which was not a concern at this site. The lighting, they said if they could change it they would have the canopy lights which we already have in a condition. The noise, it is also open 24 hours, they have not had any conditions placed about that. Headla: The 24 hour operation didn't bother them? Olsen: No, they would just reduce the amount of light, to receed them for any impacts to the surrounding area. The major issue was again the traffic, those commerical sites, they have a Chiropracter business there also, using that residential street. That was a major issue. Other than that, they had no real complaints from the neighborhood. e Headla: One of the ladies that called me from that area was quite concerned about noise and traffic. That's why I was interested to see what you found on that traffic. How big are those fuel tanks that you have in the ground? Roman Mueller: That we're proposing here? Three 10,000 gallon tanks and one 12,000 gallon tank. Headla: So you're bringing in maybe two tankers a day? Area Manager: Most of our locations that are extremely busy get a tanker a day. For a station of this size, it is more comparable to the one on 169 by Flying Cloud Airport and that gets a tanker every two days. Sometimes one depending on the traffic but you're looking at unleaded every other day. The same size tanks. Headla: So that would be the maximum major truck traffic going through there. Roman Mueller: And we can, I should mention, control the hours that they deliver. If there's a problem there at night, we have it within our power to tell them so that can be something to consider. e Headla: I'd kind of like to see it go in there but we started out with just office building in there and then we made the neighbors buckle under and we let this other stuff. Now we're going one more to gas pumps and now this thing 24 hours. I don't know how far we should push these people. That's nothing, I don't have anything against SuperAmerica at Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 47 e all. I think maybe we've come to a limit. The only other thing I've got is I see an awful lot of conditions on the recommendations. When I see all these conditions and it really tells me that your consultants didn't deal in earnest with the staff. Revise plan, revise plan. Revise the landscaping plan. Provide plans. The site plan shall be revised. Revise the plan. Why didn't the act get cleaned up before this even came in here? I just think it's excessive and somebody didn't sit down and deal in earnest with this ap. Olsen: A lot of those are just, the landscaping issue and the lighting issues were conditions of staff after it came in. It's not necessarily that the applicant didn't provide it. Headla: How come so many revised plans? Erhart: Did you sit down with the applicant and go through all this? Headla: You talk about revised plans and we haven't seen them and obviously you haven't seen them. Roman Mueller: What are you referring to? Headla: Items 2, 3, 4. I'm on page 5. - Roman Mueller: Okay, I guess I was going through recommendations on the Planning Staff. Their recommendations on a motion where there are 8 conditions on there. Emmings: You're looking at the conditional use permit. He's looking at the site plan. Roman Mueller: Not having had a chance to go through it very well... Bob Wagner: If this is an open hearing, I've got a few comments too. Roman Mueller: Most of these appear to be just clarifications on ordinance questions. These are not a problem. Headla: For this size of plan, I think it's an awful lot of conditions. Wildermuth: We're talking about the conditional use permit first right? Conrad: When we vote we will be talking about the site plan and then the conditional use but I think in terms of how we're going through here, it's hard to not, the issues are so close that I can't keep them apart so I think the comments Jim, can be made regarding anything. Site plan or gas station. Conditional use. - Wildermuth: I really sympathize with the people in the neighborhood. I certainly would not like to have a service station close by, within 500 and 600 feet of where I live despite the fact that SuperArnerica is probably one of the class acts in the business. I'm really concerned about the traffic, the increase in traffic that's going to happen in that Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 48 - area from that corner. It just looks like that's a corner that would lend itself to a small office building. Accounting offices, something like that rather than a relatively high intensity use. It's a confusing intersection to begin with on the north side going into the Shorewood Shopping Center and I think this is going to confuse it further. I think that the intensity is too great, too severe for this particular corner. Conrad: You mentioned 800 cars a day, I converted transactions to cars, whether that's right or not, that's what it is versus whatever else is generated there. 800 is not as many as I thought. ElIson: First I wonder why this didn't come through with the original site plan. I feel badly that maybe this was being discussed and the site plan came through initially because they thought that would go through easier and now this is coming in later. That would make me really angry because as I said before, I was telling you people, you know it could be worse, you could have a gas station on that corner and here a few months later comes in that gas station. In our ordinance with a conditional use, it has to meet a lot of different things such as it has to have approaches for cars that are not going to create traffic congestion. It's supposed to be compatible with the surrounding area. It's not supposed to depreciate the surrounding property values. I think based on these conditions, it's not going to be able to meet these things so I'd be voting down a conditional use permit for pumps. e Emmings: I don't know where you start. I've been here with this property coming in front of us a few times and it's obviously a commercial corner. There were a lot of people who didn't agree with that but at least to me it was always obvious that it's going to be developed as a commercial corner. We also went to some real pains to make sure that as a commercial corner it would offend the surrounding residential neighborhood as little as possible. I don't know exactly where that takes me but now we're in a situation where they're asking us to take the second step and I'm sitting here thinking to myself, are we going to wind up with a gas station on that corner and no shopping center because they wind up not liking that? I feel like we're taking step two before step one has really been taken. Before we decide on this, I'd really like to go back and look at the HSZ thing and see if we want to pull our approval of that based on the fact that there is one entrance. I don't think, every time we've got a project that's only got one entrance, we've said no. We make churches put in an extra entrance to the site because we worry about access for emergency vehicles. The gentleman out here pointed out the fact that fire equipment for that area comes from the west on TH 7. They really need that right in off of TH 7. I don't know why we're spending all this time on this until that issue is resolved. That kind of bothers me. I don't know why we have to look at this right now. Now I'm going to shift gears and go the other direction for a while. Conrad: So you'd rather table it? .~ Emmings: Oh yes. Like I say, I feel like we're taking step 2. We're on mushy ground with step 1 and it's just mushier when you get up to step 2. That really concerns me because I really think there's a possibility here Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 49 e that if a station were suddenly to appear up there on the corner, we may never see that shopping center back there. I don't know how committed HSZ is to it. I feel like Annette, and I have of course no basis for this, that they were probably dealing with these folks when they brought in this other proposal. Not I don't know if they were or not but I'm suspicious about it and I don't like it. I don't like the feeling I've got about it. That's offensive to me. If they had something on an overall plan for the whole thing, we should have seen that whole thing. Maybe that didn't happen that way. Let's assume it didn't but you're still stuck with the situation where we don't know if the HSZ thing should have our approval anymore. It was approved with an entrance off of TH 7. That entrance is not there anymore and I think we ought to go back and make sure we know what we're doing there before we look at this one. On the other hand though, I don't mind this particular plan. If there's going to be a gas station on the corner, I don't mind this one and I even think that area down there needs a gas station. Somewhere in that west of Excelsior. I would say that if they're willing to restrict the hours of operation... Wildermuth: Isn't there one across the street? Emmings: No, there's not. wildermuth: Isn't there one on the frontage road across the street? e Emmings: No. I live down there. I have to go all the way into Excelsior. It's no big deal but I do go into Excelsior to get gas. If they're willing to limit hours of operation, if they're willing to tell the tankers when they can come. It sounds like they're willing to be flexible enough so that we could probably put something together here. Another thing that I personally don't like is having all that pop and stuff for sale piled up outside. I would want to impose a restriction on that. I do~'t mind the looks of the building. When you pile up 432,000 cases of pop in front of it, it kind of takes away from the overall appeal as far as I'm concerned. I'm uncomfortable, I feel like we've taken a bad first step and now I think we're being asked to take a second step and I don't want to do it. I want to go back and look at step I before I even look at this. Dacy: I can appreciate your concern about the right-in only to the site and what was originally approved with the HSZ. I just want to clarify that when the City acted to rezone the site to Neighborhood Business District, in that analysis we changed it 01 to BN and there's a list of permitted uses and a list of conditional uses. Whether or not, yes the shopping center was proposed as a proposed user of the large lot but in rezoning the site to the Neighborhood Business District and making that decision, the Council recognized that there could be applications for conditional uses such as convenience stores with gas pumps. That's why it's a conditional use because it's a different type of use that the Commission has to evaluate whether or not the applicant is meeting the standards of the conditional uses in the ordinance. e Emmings: Then, looking at it strictly that way, then I'd have to agree with Annette. That there are several conditions of the requirements of -- Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 50 e the conditional use permit that this doesn't meet. Conrad: Which ones? Emmings: She read most of them. ElIson: Traffic. Congestion. Conrad: Traffic. Congestion. Emmings: It will be aesthetically compatible with the area. What is the area? Are we talking about just the HSZ site? I don't think so. Ellson: Will have the vehicular approaches to the property which do not create traffic congestion. This is our basis right here. Or interfere with surrounding public thoroughfares. e Dacy: But the Commission's concern is that you want to make sure that the right-in from TH 7 is there, then that can be a condition of approval or if you want to make sure that's going to be there and table action, that's another issue but when the HSZ plat carne in, the traffic analysis for the right-in off of TH 7 and the full intersection of TH 41 was based on any use that was going to be allowed in that district could occupy those three lots. The right-in only and the full intersection on TH 41 is the best way to serve that center as a neighborhood business user. So are you saying that the addition of the gas pumps is causing... ElIson: More traffic. More congestion because people are stopping and then going off onto TH 41. Dacy: But just recognize that that was the way it was intended. Traffic would corne in off of TH 7 and go to whatever those two outlots were going to be used for and then travel out onto TH 41. e Emmings: But Barbara, that's not quite fair because, and I'll tell you why I think it's not quite fair. That ignores the whole history of the property. That ignores the whole controversy with the neighbors that we've heard over the 3 years I've been here and that had to do with the fact that we don't want intensive use of this property. It was a tough vote to get people. Once we approved another shopping center in there and that ended up not being approved. I made the motion on that. In fact I remember making the motion...want to rezone this piece because we know what's going there. Don't ask me to rezone these outlots until I know what's going on there and everybody said, oh no. You can't do that. That's spot zoning or something. I got shouted down on that. No one would swing with me on that. Should have done the same thing here because what they did is they carne in with a plan for a nice little low intensity use shopping center and that's what we focused on. We're not focused on those empty outlots out there. They sold that to us as a low intensity use that's surrounded by a residential neighborhood and we finally all agreed to take the step. Okay, this is clearly a commercial corner, we're going to take this step to this low intensity use. This isn't the same. This is a much higher intensity use and yes it's recognized as a potential Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 51 e use under the BN. Dacy: Don't misconstrue my comments. What I'm trying to drive at is, to make sure that the Planning Commission fully understands and identifies valid reasons for denial based on the ordinance standards. I just wanted to bring up the history when we looked at this site. That is a 20,000 square foot shopping center and that in itself does generate a lot of traffic exceeding the 800 trips per day of SuperAmerica. I just want to make sure that you're fully aware of all that. Ernrnings: And I guess what we're saying is, if we don't have access off of TH 7, do we want to have approval of that shopping center? Dacy: Right. I'm not disputing those comments. If you feel strongly about that, then you have the option to make that a condition of approval but the statements regarding not meeting the standards of the ordinance, I just wanted to make sure that you're aware of all that. Ernrnings: Well, do you? How do you feel about the general issuing standard, let's say 8 or 10? That it will be aesthetically compatible with the area. e Dacy: They have exceeded our standards for construction. a maximum distance away from the neighborhood. It's located at Olsen: ...with the new style of the brick. Emmings: I agree with that. If we're going to put a gas station out there, that's the spot to put it. I agree with that and I have said, they seem to be willing to work. If they'll curtail their hours of operation and when the trucks corne, I could probably be sold on voting for this. My problem is, without the access issue... Erhart: The history is certainly a matter in this thing but looking at where we are today and that we've zoned this as a business district and knowing quite frankly that SuperAmerica is willing to go in here considering the questionable access, which I do think we ought to spend more time at, I think we ought to be happy that they're going to take that outlot. That particular lot so you don't get a gas station on the lot to the west because then you are going to have problems. I think what the real thing you can do is make sure what goes into the other outlot is compatible with the homes. That's it. I think you ought to look for a restaurant and be happy you're getting SuperAmerica as opposed to, I won't mention any other names. That's the only comment I've got. e Conrad: I don't know what I had envisioned for that lot. I probably wasn't thinking gas station at the time. I think if any operator is going to go in, I'd prefer to have a SuperAmerica than anybody else but I will echo some of the comments on overall traffic patterns. That it just looks real bad. We are looking at one parcel but as a part of the overall area and it just makes me real nervous. Part of that is due, I think, City Council has made some recommendations that may not be the same as what we would have liked to see in terms of access and at least in terms of what I Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 52 e would like to see. I'm probably playing with some old memories of things that I envisioned differently with that parcel versus what I'm seeing the area turn out to be but overall I'm still nervous with the traffic flow in that area. It's not the site as much as it is, it's not this particular site tonight, it's the overall site. It's going to be tough for me, I guess I don't have as many problems with SuperAmerica going in there because I'd rather have a fine operator in there than somebody who's not so fine but I go back and I have to relate to what steve has said. What if the shopping center doesn't go in and I don't know if that's necessarily logic that we can use in making our recommendation here tonight but it would bother me if the shopping center didn't go in. You had a comment? Roger Zahn: I should just clarify this TH 7 access. MnOot had approved that right-in only about a half a dozen times verbally at meetings and a couple of times in writing. It wasn't until last Thursday when we got a call from Larry saying that gee, now they may be questioning that issue. That there might not be access off of TH 7. It came up and obviously we were a little surprised after having it approved so many times. We have a meeting with MnOot on Friday. The result of that meeting is that I expect the approval will be granted. Conrad: But you don't know. e Roger Zahn: I can't say before right now so obviously from my standpoint I'd have to do some rethinking if the access wasn't granted... I can't speak for them. It certainly would add some issues that were addressed in the meeting and with some studies from our consultants that I really don't think it would be a problem so the idea of making it conditional upon approval of the TH 7 access doesn't bother me at all. I would prefer it. Emmings: Did they at least tell you when they would make a decision? Roger Zahn: I hope to hear something by the end of the week informal but I've heard informal before. e Conrad: I don't want to delay this. It's getting late tonight. I think I've heard SuperAmerica say things that I'd like to hear. I probably would want to put them into words or paper but the limiting of the truck traffic and the diesel fuel, although that may be minor, it still may be something that I'm concerned with. I'm concerned with the hours of operation fitting in. I think that was, the concept of business neighborhood is just that. It fits in. Other business neighborhoods that I know of, it fits into the community and I will hold you to those types of concepts. It fits into the community. We're not fitting into TH 7. We're not fitting into the shopping center across the way. We're fitting into Chanhassen and the community that's right there. I want that to be done. I think the aesthetics of the building is a nice start but on the other hand, there are some other things that I want to fit in and hours of operation might just be one of those things. I'm still concerned with disaster. I heard some good things from SuperAmerica tonight and I guess I need those things in writing. I need to know that our drainage problems are solved even in a disaster situation. I want to know what Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 53 e e they are. I think that's the biggest issue. I'm not going to deal with concepts and Larry probably, you folks have worked with it so much more. When we look at it, we spend a half an hour looking at papers and we don't get into it that deeply but I want to know that we're covered generally in terms of run-off and I think we are. I think the skimming devices sound great but I also need to know that disasters are taken care of too. I heard those nice words tonight but I just wouldn't feel good about having a disaster on that site and not having us be able to handle it or have the storm water system take it right to Minnewashta. I won't deal with that particular problem. I've got to know we've resolved it and maybe they are but I'm not comfortable that they are right now. I guess the traffic and the circulation of the site remains to be the biggest issue for me. Not only the SuperAmerica site but the overall site. I guess this adds to some of these other comments that Dave brought up. Should revise and should revise. I think the revisions are pretty small and I'm not holding SuperAmerica or anybody responsible. I think it's just a matter of staff reviewing them and making those comments. I guess some of those things I'd like to have, when it gets to City Council, they should be taken care of and there shouldn't be that many revisions that have to come. I'd like to see those back here personally and I guess my idea tonight would be to table this until we can get a better handle on some of the items. Maybe until we get a better handle on the TH 7 item and that may be very simple. You may just come back and say it's approved. I guess I have a tough time, I'm approaching it from an entirely different standpoint tonight without the TH 7 access. I'm just really caught up in overall site traffic. It bothers me that I see some little lines on there that Larry's telling us that may be an access in there and maybe not through grandfathering or whatever. I don't know what that means but that bothers me. It bothers me that we may have only one access to the overall location and I don't feel good giving this site the go ahead when I don't know that the whole location has two sites so my preference is to table the item. I'm sorry for the neighbors, maybe we do that tonight, maybe we don't but we bring you in here every 2 weeks and take you through the exercise but unfortunately when you're in an area that has land in it, that's wanted, the good news is they're a great operation. The bad news is, they're a great operation that wants to be in your neck of the woods. I guess the only other comment I have, the only other thing that affects me is this 800 car count. I thought SuperAmerica would pull in more cars than that. I really did and 800 really seemed, I can almost accept 800 as not being a major change in intensity because a restaurant might generate 400 or 500. A gas station I thought would pull in a lot more and especially the pulling power of SuperAmerica. They're like putting a Cub in a location where you can pull from 17 miles around versus a couple. So anyway, for those reasons I prefer to have it tabled and maybe have it back here when we have a little bit more clarification on TH 7. Headla: How do you people feel about berms between the highway and there? Is that less secure or more secure for you? e Roman Mueller: We have berms in many, many of our locations put into our site plans by conditional use requirements such as what you're... Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 54 e Headla: Okay, so that doesn't bother you as far as property or anything goes? Roman Mueller: That doesn't bother us. Either does conditions for no outside displays or sales, that was requested. Headla: I thought that was a good point that Steve made. Roman Mueller: It's not a concern. Randy Peterson: All I was going to say was, what I'd like to come away with tonight is if at all possible is to be able to work out these concerns of yours with staff and get your, if possible, your recommendations to go to Council with because we are on some little bit of a timeframe here. I'd like to go that way rather than to table it because we're scheduled also, and we can work out those conditions with staff. Conrad: I know you can. I guess I'll leave that up to whoever makes the motion tonight. We do that occasionally when we want to get rid of an item. We'll get it out of our court and we'll kick it up to City Council. If we don't want to see it and we want to let the neighbors have their say with the City Council folks, we will do that. Gene Conner: There's a lot of other concerns being expressed, may I e express one? Conrad: Sure. Gene Conner: The subject of conditional use permits came up and it seems to me I heard Barb's comments imply that gee, anybody who comes in with a request for a conditional use permit, if it's a nice plan, it really ought to be accepted. Conrad: I don't think that's the case. What we try to do on conditional uses is detail what those conditions are. The City's getting much better at that. In the past we'd say it requires a conditional use permit but we didn't have any conditions so they'd come in and say gee, now we get to look at it but there are no conditions so we might as well grant it but we're quite a ways away from that in this day and age, at least in Chanhassen and the staff has gone through it, looked at the conditions. Made their recommendations to us. We have a disagreement between staff and Planning Commission on interpretation. Is the noise significantly increased? Traffic increased versus what the staff perceived to be permitted under a conditional use so I think there's some differences of opinion but the conditions are still there. Staff does not normally go through, staff turns down many things because of conditions. Gene Conner: I think I can assure you that this doesn't fit our idea of a conditional use that should be permitted. I- I Dacy: My comment was that this is why it's a conditional use. It's a public hearing process with specific standards. The applicant has the burden of proof to prove whether or not he meets those 10 standards. Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 55 e You're saying that they're not meeting those standards. That's fine. The Commission then has to decide whether or not the information they submitted about traffic and the lighting and aesthetic quality and noise and no diesel fuel, if that satisfies those concerns. Bob Wagner: It's just amazing that we're even sitting here talking about a gas station after the discussions that I've heard the same group talk about those. I just can't believe it. Allen Putnam: You've expressed a concern about the 800 cars and using the numbers that you gave me where you indicated from 11:00 to 7:00 you have about 175 cars. That's from 11:00 to 12:00 you said 50 of them... With those hours being the low hours, if you take the 50 cars per hour and take the other 16 hours in the day, that adds up to 800 and then you put the 175 on top of that from 11:00 to 7:00, it's already 975. Bud Kelp: No, that's including that. Subtract the 175. Allen Putnam: I understand that but I'm thinking the 50 cars per hour you said you had between 11:00 and midnight. If you averaged that for your daytime hours, which you indicated were busier hours, just the other 16 hours, excluding those 8 hours you have us, would be 800 cars. 50 by 16 hours is 800 plus 175. e Bud Kelp: 24 hours time the 800, you're looking at 33 cars per hour. Conrad: I think I want to do something here before we all go to Sleep. A gas station like maybe the Torn Thumb in their business neighborhood on TH 101 is a low intensive gas station use. I think here we do, in my mind, we have a little bit different intensity and it has been zoned business neighborhood. It's a real matter of perspective in terms of intensity. They may get, in that particular location, they may get 4 or 5 cars for gas in an hour and that's a whole lot different than 30 or 50 or 150. Anyway, my recommendation was to table it for a little bit more information and review it again and bring the folks back but I'll open it up for any recommendation that somebody would like to make. Emmings: Just as a quick comment, I think that Dave's point is very well taken. We shouldn't get these with, this will provide you with an opportunity, instead of having 17 conditions on here, it should come back with 3 or 4. The rest of this should all be incorporated in the plan. I think these are real hard to work on when they're this long. Tim, actually brought it to my attention. When we first opened this up he said, what is this. Dacy: A lot of these are standard conditions. Emmings: I understand that but I think a lot of the stuff could be taken care of even before it comes here and should be taken care of before it goes to Council. e Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 56 e Headla moved, Emmings seconded to table the Conditional Use Permit Request #88-10 and Site Plan Review #88-10. All voted in favor and the motion carried. Ellson: Are we saying until we know about TH 7 or are we tabling it indefinitely or having a reason to come back? Wildermuth: Do you want to put some conditions on the tabling? Conrad: I think we can give staff direction in terms of what we'd like to see them bring back. I think the items deserves attention and hopefully can be back here in two weeks so we don't destroy a time table. I'd sure like to see the neighborhood back here again but I think if we can give staff some direction after this so maybe we can make the motion and then tell them what we'd like to see. I think basically, traffic to the overall site is a major deal. I think the pollution control or the disaster issue for me is a concern that I'd like you to work with SuperAmerica on so we know how it would be handled and we would know if it's going to get into the Minnewashta system or not. Hours of operation is probably a concern that we all have and whether or not that's something that could be worked in the staff report. Steve, you're concerned with the. . . e Emmings: Hours the trucks come to deliver and outside display of merchandise for sale. Wildermuth: Also no diesel fuel. Conrad: And possibility maybe working with the SuperAmerica folks to resolve any of the conditions. If they have to stay out there, that's fine. I don't think you need to do extra work to try and bundle them in and make them do that additional work but if they can incorporate them in their plans and the documents they've given us, it would be good to have that so when it goes to City Council, Council can see everything in a nice, neat package. Anything else? PUBLIC HEARING: ZONING ORDINANCE AMENDMENT TO AMEND SECTION 20-904 AND SECTION 20-615 6(B), ACCESSORY STRUCTURES, CITY OF CHANHASSEN. Conrad: I don't believe that staff has to give a report on that. It is a public hearing. Wildermuth moved, Emmings seconded to close the public hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The public hearing was closed. e Erhart: Page 3, item 5, the way I read this now, it says detached garages in all agricultural and residential districts. Clarify for me, are we differentiating between detached garages and storage buildings? Dacy: We wanted to make sure that a detached garage was... Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 57 e Emmings: But the storage building might be one of those purchased ones. Erhart: I guess what I was trying to get to and Dave and I agreed on this one is that on lots of, I guess we settled on 5 but anything of lots less than 5, no one could build a building over 1,000 square feet and it had to be architecturally consistent with the house. Somehow that's not the way that reads to me. To change it to read that would be, say detached buildings and storage buildings on lot sizes of 5 acres or less in agricultural and residential districts must be architecturally. The 5 acres is gone completely. Ellson: The little Sears storage building, you could put in those. Erhart: On lots of 5 acres or less. Wildermuth: I don't think you can do that can you? Do we want to do it? Dacy: This is one that we discussed around and around and basically you proposed it as this way. Erhart: Well, if that's what we agreed, that's fine. understood Dave? Is that what you e Headla: I'm not sure when this was here what I understood which one. Erhart: The way it's going here now is that on lots of 5 acres or less, they can go buy a Sears or a Mennards building of any size and put it on that lot. Headla: On 5 acres or less? You can put up a pole barn? Erhart: Yes. Really anything. Headla: Those little Sears buildings, there's nothing wrong with them. Erhart: No, but I'm talking about it could be a 10,000 square foot pole barn and they could... It says can not exceed 1,000 square feet in the RSF and R-4 districts. Wildermuth: I don't see how you can enforce number 5. Architecturally consistent, what does that mean? Dacy: We discussed that issue also. We had the concern that the size of an ag parcel and so on, that there were a number of folks out there that want to have the hobby farms and so on that would want a larger sized... Erhart: I agree. I thought anything over 5 acres I thought is what we were talking about. e Dacy: But we were saying for lots less than 5 acres or if there would be occurrences of that in the ag area that somebody may want to put up a 1,500 square foot building. The Commission talked about that and said, ~ Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 58 e let's not restrict the ag areas. Erhart: Is that what we agreed? Is that what you guys want? That's fine. I thought Dave and I made a good argument that on these lot sizes or 2 1/2 and 5 acres that tend to be clustered and they tend to be neighborhoods and people put real nice homes on it and consistent architecture. I thought we successfully argued that in those circumstances, that they should not be allowed to put these Mennard's buildings on there. 2,000 or 5,000 square foot and if they really wanted to do that, they had to buy bigger than 5 acres. Olsen: A lot of those subdivisions, like Lake Riley Woods, the size acreage that you're talking about, have covenants that restrict storage buildings like that. I know that's out of our control. Dacy: Tim, are you proposing that that would be still, that the parcels underneath 5 acres in the A-2 zones would also have the maximum of 1,000 square feet? Erhart: I thought that's what we agreed but it's been so long. More concerning than the way it's written right now is that you say detached garages for all agricultural. That means you could have 100 acres and you would have to have your garage architecturally, unless you're differentiating between a detached garage and a storage building. e Dacy: Yes, we are. That's why we made that clarification. Erhart: I think you're probably right. anymore. It's not worth battling over Dacy: If you're going to amend it, number 3 would be where you would. Conrad: Tim, you lead us on this one. and I can't help you much. I'm sorry. I'm sort of burned out Dacy: We've got a stacked agenda in two weeks on the 17th. to table it... If you want Conrad: No, I don't want to table it. Erhart: It's not that important. Conrad: Are you comfortable with the way this is? Wildermuth: Yes, as long as you don't get into storage buildings. On my 4 acre lot I want to be able to put up a building to store antique cars. You're going to tell me that it has to be architecturally consistent with my house, I'm going to tell you hey, take a hike. But, I think your point is that you're talking about garages here right? Detached garages. . Erhart: Maybe Barb's right. Maybe the best way to handle that problem is to have restrictive covenants in the development. If the developers say these are going to be architecturally consistent, maybe that's the best I I I , ~ Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 59 e way it's handled. I'm willing to believe... Wildermuth: I think it's going to be tough to enforce. Conrad: Tim, do you want to change some words here? Erhart: No, I think it's fine. I think it's fine other than item (c), that 3 acres. You're satisfied Barb, that's what we understood? If you had anything greater than 3 acres you can build a shed on it first. Do we all understand that? Dacy: No. Erhart: Isn't that what it says? Dacy: In any residential district or agricultural district, parcels with less than 3 acres. In the ag district. Erhart: That means to me that anything more than 3 acres you can build a shed on before you build a house. Dacy: If the shed or building is storing agricultural equipment or anything that could be directly related to the principle use of the property as ag, than it would be permitted as a permitted use. e Erhart: Then the question is, is it 3 acres or should you remove residential district? Dacy: We want to keep it the residential district part in there because you don't want somebody building accessory building and somebody might have a lot prior to the... Emmings: If you take out the clause that says, or agricultural district parcels with less than 3 acres and just read around that clause it makes perfectly good sense from that. Erhart: Yes, just take out the phrase, or agricultural district. Emmings: No, I'm not saying that. I say leave residential district in because it makes sense for residential. I don't understand the agricultural with less than 3 acres. Wildermuth: Why would you say 3 rather than 5? Dacy: It was reduced to 3 because there may be parcels that are 5 acres or 4 acres that are in ago Erhart: It's fine. e Erhart moved, Headla seconded that the Planning Commission recommend approval of the following amendments to Sections 20-904 and 20-615 (6b) and an addition to the definition of the City Code as presented by Staff. All voted in favor and the motion carried. Planning Commission Meeting August 3, 1988 - Page 60 - APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Emmings moved, ElIson seconded to approve the Minutes of the Planning Commission meeting dated July 20, 1988 as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried. Headla moved, Emmings seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion carried. The meeting was adjounred at 11:35 p.m.. Submitted by Barbara Dacy City planner prepared by Nann Opheim - -