oh it's all right we are recording so in at seven o'clock so you are ready to go okay uh first question i i am assuming that we do not have a new member of the commission to fill mr commissioner dickman spot okay not today hopefully next month okay well at this point then uh i'll call to order the corcoran planning commission for april 1 2021 and we'll go through our roll call uh commissioner jacobs here commissioner sherlock here mr varenkamp you're here and commissioner wu yeah okay good all right um for those that would like to partake please join us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay thank you everybody uh for being here tonight um okay uh item three the agenda approval um so um natalie uh you informed us earlier this week that the uh the sheer or sherbert um item was 6d correct yeah so the applicant uh t-shirt demolition and excavating last i heard correct me if i'm wrong kendra they did request to table their application until the may 6th meeting that is correct okay now they are they are still on the agenda tonight because the planning commission will of course have to uh take a motion and vote on tabling uh said items so it is still on the agenda and we'll deal with it in its due course for anybody who might be on the line for that item mr chair reminder that the public hearing will be with a presentation next month oh okay well that's at least what it's scheduled is for next month correct okay yeah and the next month will be i believe the eighth uh the sixth are the sixth yes the sixth okay so for anybody again out there that uh is here for that hearing um it'll be tabled until our our uh public hearing on may 6th okay um any other uh changes or questions to the agenda okay not hearing any i'll take a motion to approve the agenda as amended or as stated i'll make that motion shulac second camp okay um roll call uh chair jacobs yay uh commissioner schulich okay so the agenda is approved for nothing okay open forum uh now this is an opportunity for anyone to uh interested in speaking uh in open forum um but we'll remind you uh that this is for speaking on items that are not currently on the agenda so if you are in attendance here tonight you speak to one of the um items under new business um you'll have to uh you know if you could please just wait uh to enter your comments at that time when it is uh up uh for our review um so with that being said natalie will give you instructions if you would like to speak to something on open forum and um natalie yep thank you mr chair if you'd like to participate in the open forum please raise your hand if you're joining not joining us by phone this can be done by pressing star nine if you're joining us via zoom on your computer the raise your hand function can be accessed via the reactions button which is located on the toolbar along the bottom of your screen some tablets and mobile devices will have the raise hand function under the participants tab we do ask that all comments are kept to a five minute time limit and i will call on each speaker thank you natalie um so we'll give it a a few seconds here see if anybody raises their hand so to speak okay and mr chair i do not see anyone raising their hand at this time okay good um well then we will move on um item number five the minutes from march 4th 2021 anybody have any questions comments corrections to the minutes from last month um not i i don't have any uh meredith i don't have any comments okay uh commissioner varenkamp oh everything's great all right i'll take a motion to approve the minutes for march 4th i'll make a motion to approve the minutes march 4th all right i'll second that um okay uh roll call vote um mr jacobs i uh commissioner shellack aye mr berenkamp aye commissioner wu hi okay the minutes are approved thank you very much okay the meat and potatoes time um item six uh new business so um now again it says here that we're going to ask anybody interested in speaking on new business which is not a public hearing i again i'm a little unfamiliar with why we do that and not in open forum um natalie's is is so mr chair item 6e is a variance request and it's technically not or it is not a public hearing so uh since it's a new business item this would be the chance for someone to comment on that particular item okay now um i did meet with the applicant today when i was out on a site review um and uh i know uh they it indicated to me that they were gonna be uh in attendance and so if it's all right with the rest of the commissioners and with our professional staff i'd like to maybe reserve comment from them until we take up their item later this evening as then we can discuss that in more detail anybody got an objection to that no okay all right is there anybody natalie that's raising their hand to speak under new business that's not a public hearing no i didn't really have it i didn't really explain it though quite yet so anyone that was hoping to speak at this point please feel free to raise your hand star nine if you're joining us by phone computers via the reactions tab or the participants tab and we can just give them a couple seconds all right we'll wait for the chair to come back real quick oh i can hear you i'm just okay i'm just grabbing i'm just grabbing the packet for our next item okay i don't see anyone currently raising their hand to speak uh and i just got a message from someone saying that they'll reserve their comments for later so i think that was to what you're saying chair so we are set to go okay good all right uh moving on then to item 6a public hearing uh rezoning preliminary pud development plan and preliminary plan for cook lake highlands at 19220 county road 10. and kendra if you would be so kind to share your presentation with us that'd be great thank you mr chair this is a public hearing for cook lake highlands and if it looks familiar is because you saw a different version of this application last month this is on the eastern border of the city north of county road 10. this is lions park excuse me this is the new townhouse development in maple grove the applicant as you may recall has submitted several concept plans to the city in the last two years for informal city council review and at the last planning commission meeting the commission voted four to nothing to recommend denial of the plan as presented at that meeting the applicant took the comments received at that public hearing and revised their application and submitted a revised application so this is a new public hearing we sent new notices and published this new notice to the paper the big change to the plan is the elimination of the market rate apartments and keeping the trail existing trail where it was there are a number of nuanced changes that go along with that but those are the two significant changes that drive the rest of the changes so because we looked at it last week and you're familiar with the site i will slide pretty quickly through some of the background stuff and go to the plan itself the property is guided mixed residential and zoned mixed residential it's in the shoreland overlay district for cook lake and there's a fema flood plain in the northern portion of the site again aligning with the wetland shoreland up there and there's a high quality maple basswood forest in the northeast portion of the site and a potential rare species identified as the potential landing strip again here's the site at the top of the red arrow the request in front of you is still the rezoning from mixed residential rmf2 to planned unit development or pud and so when we have a planned unit development request we use the underlying zoning district as a base for evaluation and all of the uses proposed are allowed in that district except the assisted living memory care so the co-op and apartments and villas and daycare all allowed and it would be appropriate for the city to find that a memory care unit that people live in is appropriate in a residential puv because a pud is a negotiated zoning district it establishes the specific zoning standards for this particular development and when you review that the city is reviewing it to promote a more creative development or a development that could not otherwise be possible without the flexibility uh provided by the pud so the pud flexibility is for excuse me from the shoreline standards for minimum lot size and lot width for the villa units for the side setbacks for the villa units for the height standards for the senior co-op for the shoreland impervious surface coverage the parking stall length and to have a six foot tall fence in the front yard setback where only four feet is allowed in exchange for that flexibility the applicant is providing additional landscaping beyond the ordinance minimum standards additional right-of-way for county 10 for future improvements dedication of a lot for a future city booster station easements for both the city and the metropolitan council utilities and access to those utilities and a mix of land uses that wouldn't be possible under standard zoning i want to note there was a lot of discussion at the last meeting about density that the new plan reduced the density from 9.27 units an acre to five point three units per acre a pretty dramatic change in the density again that's based on pre-development density that's how we calculate density for compliance with the comprehensive plan the comprehensive plan requires 8 to 10 units per acre in the mixed residential zoning district so if the city were to approve this plan it would require a comprehensive plan amendment to down guide the property from mixed residential to medium density residential which would allow a five to eight unit per acre land use so the change to reduce the density resulted in a most significant change that now would result in the change in the comprehensive plan this is the new plan again county road 10 here the border with maple grove here the entrance furlane entrance into the bass lake crossing development which that this street would extend through development as a new public street and a new public cul-de-sac would be added to serve 20 what's proposed as 20 villa homes where 12 were previously shown previously the villa homes were just on the west side of the cul-de-sac and now they wrap around the co-op remains in this location the uses are separated by this pond which was removed from this northwest corner and moved into here and then we've got the memory care and the daycare on the south side of the new road with some ponding down there as well the north west corner of the site does uh is proposed to have a trail looping here that would connect with this existing trail that was built as part of bass lake crossing so we heard a lot about the need for that trail to remain this plan does allow that trail to remain and proposes to expand that trail loop in this area in the mix of uses we talked a little bit about that change 20 single-family villa homes where there were 12. staff notes in the staff report though that lots 11 and 12 at the end of that cul-de-sac are what we euphemistically refer to as flag lots lots that don't meet the minimum lot width we have a 50-foot minimum lot width requested at the setback line is how we measure it and so those two lots here and here you can see there's this little flag pole that sort of provides the access back to the lots and staff is recommending that one of those lots be removed which would allow the remaining lot to comply with the lot with standards the 102 senior co-op units that you saw last month remain as well as the day care and the assisted living memory care the applicant's narrative indicates that they have a a different end user proposed for that memory care unit but the building itself remains essentially the same this site is in the shoreland overlay district the shoreland overlay district covers the basically the whole site and pud flexibility is requested from the building height lot width and impervious surface coverage standards for the shoreland in the shoreland we have a 25 25 foot building height limit and a 25 impervious surface limit and again the shoreland overlay district applies equally to places like lake minnetonka where you can actually use the lake and this wetland which is defined as a lake the table that was in your staff report is intended to highlight the areas where some flexibility from the lot standards is required or is requested in red here so the lot size the lot with the side yard setback and the maximum building height the daycare um i showed you previously that the six foot fence is encroaching into the front yard setback where four feet's allowed um the applicant has verbally agreed to just pull that fence back that six foot fence back to the 25 foot setback and if that's done it would then comply and no longer need that puddy flexibility last month the plan had a number of very significant retaining walls the number of those retaining walls and the size of those retaining walls has been reduced but there are still some significant retaining walls on this site in particular on the north end of the site there's a retaining wall that still remains at about nine feet tall there's a lot of grade change across the site and in particular if you recall there's the canyon is not the word i'm looking for but the canyon that runs through the center of the site so there is some grating that requires the larger retaining walls again so the pond moved out of this area in order to provide more tree preservation and shift it into this area and here this was the fence they'll just clip the corner of this fence so that will be in compliance they did move the pickleball court that was once in the front yard set back and move that out and change it to a bocce ball court that's that's meeting the setback requirements this box is the city booster station so that is being deeded as part of the project the co-op remains as i said largely the same with a main entrance coming in here into this large parking lot and a fire lane that would wrap around the building and would use this existing met council access as part of that fire lane that could serve as a pedestrian route for the folks in the neighborhood there is a trail that runs the north side of this new street and then connects to the trail here and a sidewalk on the south side of the street that will also connect down to 10. there is a sidewalk on the east side of this cul-de-sac staff recommends again removing one of the flag lots and then making a trail connection from this cul-de-sac to connect with that trail so homeowners wouldn't have to go all the way down to the street around to get on the trail the pedestrian connection with the j the grade changes that once connected the apartments to the marketplace apartment has been eliminated to avoid another trail connection in a side or rear yard for the single family villas the utilities will be on sewer and water and one of the pud benefits noted by the applicant is that they're working with the met council and the city to provide access to that met council lift station and they will donate a lot for the city booster station the city will be designing bid and managing the improvements needed at county road 10 intersection but the developer will pay for them you remember last time we were suggesting that these this driveway and this driveway should be aligned because of the amount of traffic with the removal of the marketplace apartment and that traffic the city engineer is less concerned about the alignment certainly remains our preference but is not included as a condition of approval however we have included a condition requiring that the apple can provide a pedestrian crossing at some point my guess is at this point in generally this location to ensure there's a safe pedestrian crossing from the north side of the street to the south side of the street again this is just the site plan on highlighting the booster station site you can see some of the retaining walls highlighted on here we still have a little bit there and we have some retaining walls back here as well as back here and some smaller ones scattered in a few spots they are still asking for some flexibility on the parking uh frankly pretty minor flexibility to allow 18 not eight and a half feet foot parking stall depth all other parking standards are being met and that is just a one request on the parking storm water i mentioned has been moved primarily to the center of the site to allow open space preservation in the northwest corner there's still some minor details to be worked through on the wetland mitigation plan they're working with the city as the local government authority on that this image is the new tree removal plan so the tree removal is limited to this area if you remember the previous plan it extended up into this area that means preservation increases from 11 of the wooded areas to 30 percent of the wooded areas again we don't have a tree preservation ordinance we encourage tree preservation and as part of a pud that's one of the things the city can negotiate in exchange for pudd flexibility the landscaping complies with the ordinance requirements the building design still generally appears to be in compliance but we just don't have enough detailed information about the buildings themselves yet if the council supports the project we would ensure that we have final design prior to the final pud plan coming back to the planning commission but the images do suggest compliance the co-op is still a four-story building which requires some security flexibility the building architecture is consistent with our southeast district standards design standards excuse me which looks for sort of a prairie agrarian style architecture and they've done a nice job on these renderings of providing that for the apple woodpoint co-op the uh oops i'm sorry it's not the apartments this is the uh villa units the applicant is suggesting that it may be mi homes doing that and so we'd see a product of what we see in bass lake crossings to the west new horizons daycare is the proposed uh daycare provider i think while the architecture is attractive it could uh be modified to be more in line with our southeast design standards in terms of those themes that we look for but the quality of the materials is is consistent with our basic ordinance standards and then as i mentioned the applicant suggested a new tenant may take over the assisted living memory care facility and these are some renderings that you didn't see last time from that potential new provider which includes a lot of stone a lot of variety in the building materials to make an interesting building that does appear to at least provide a nod to the architectural character that soki's design guidelines are looking for we talked already about the sidewalk and trail locations and again staff's recommendation that the trail should connect from the cul-de-sac to that public trail and planning commission if you may want to talk about that um the emergency fire access as i said can also be used for pedestrian use there were questions last time that will be blocked so that because it's so wide it'll have some bollards or a fence so that vehicles can't drive down there other than authorized vehicles but it'll be open so that it's still available for bicyclists and pedestrians to use i said the plan has been revised to keep the trail on the west and the applicant is proposing dedication of a 9.6 acre outlet sea to the city that outlook sea actually includes the whole wetland area and that new ponding area staff's recommendation is that we wouldn't want those for park dedication but there's probably three or four acres of of park that could be accepted in the northwest corner that park as i said contains a trail loop if the the site were subject to park dedication they would be required for land they'd be required to dedicate 5.9 acres the parks commission will review this on april 15th at that meeting they'll provide a recommendation that we will forward to the city council in general the city takes parkland when it is shown on its comprehensive plan this park area is not shown on the comprehensive plan the city does have the discretion if it finds value in the park land to accept a public park even if it's not on the comprehensive plan you might remember that we did that with tavara there was no neighborhood park shown in tavera and when we looked at it we felt like the number of units warranted acceptance of the park as proposed by lennar so those are the standards that the parks commission will look at i think uh from a planning commission perspective we really want to kind of wait and let them weigh in on that um if it were not park dedication that land would all be owned and maintained by the developer under a master association again a park dedication would be 5.9 acres if it were land uh 421 thousand dollars if it were cash but it could be a combination of the two to meet the park dedication requirements so that's where that is at you can see outloud sea extends over cook lake into this park area and down into this pond area and as i say if the city were likely to accept it you know i don't think we'd be interested in in the park uh excuse me in the pond as part of our park land the developers responsible for maintaining stormwater ponds so if that were to happen that would be something to consider at the parks commission meeting this is the plaid again the plat just creates the lot lines it shows very nicely the fact that the met council did take land from this landowner for the lift station or the yeah the uh lift station here uh land is being given to the city for a substation here and then we have the two lots here the co-op lot and the 21 or the 20 lots for the villas this outlet to the south is under different ownership but it does provide a stub street so that that does have access if that should develop in the future that would have access here so again just as a comparison for a reminder on the left here is the march plan that the planning commission reviewed the applicant took the comments from the planning commission and the public hearing and revised the plan to try to address the concerns identified by the planning commission by eliminating the apartment and moving the pond from the northwest corner into the center in order to preserve more trees in this northwest corner and provide the villa homes as a transition to the existing homes to the west the city has a high level of discretion in approving or denying a pud you need to find that the purpose and intent of the pud as outlined in the ordinance have been met and as we did last month we've drafted resolutions with conditions that could approve the plan with conditions included in order to comply with the ordinance requirements those are the conditions we add is making sure that the conditions bring it into compliance if it moves ahead and that does result in some significant site plan changes and the need for a land use guide plan amendment a comprehensive plan amendment but as we did last time we've also prepared a resolution for denial if the planning commission believes that the purpose and intent of the pud is still not met this is a public hearing and i want to note that in the packet were a number of public comments we forwarded all the comments we received about the march plan we did not actually receive any comments on the new public hearing notice related to the april plan but the commission does have all of the march comments that we received we should open the public hearing and take comments and then again you have two options the first option has four items included in it where you to recommend approval or if you recommend denial it's a single resolution that denies the request and provides draft findings of fact for your consideration so with that mr chair i i do know the applicant again has a presentation that they would like to do i don't know if you want them to do that before the public hearing or after the public hearing or how you want to handle that mr chair uh well i know last time they presented uh before and because i'm sure that there might be some points that might be brought out before we open it up to the public and as well for commission discussion it might be more advantageous to have them present now instead of at the end any commissioners disagree with that or have any other thoughts okay so um i would uh natalie if you could uh bring up whoever is representing the applicant yes perfect beth i see that you've unmuted yourself sofrida go ahead thanks natalie appreciate it uh good evening mr chair and and members of the planning commission and staff um kendra thanks i don't need to um reiterate all everything that you have said you did a pretty very thorough job i and if you could kendra just put up that uh the color rendering that just i will just refer to that but the one you used it it was the color it's i think it's the second one yeah the second slide thank you i'm sorry you know what uh could we have you state your name your full name yes just for the record bill yes no thank you i was going to say i am matthew said uh with uh track development and um thank you for um hearing hearing me out this this evening um we did listen uh we we we met with you and presented to you on the fourth as kendra said um i did i did listen to what the neighbors concerns were and i did listen to the commissioner's concerns so i do believe that we have made some significant changes and they were specifically in response to the concerns that were expressed on that on that evening march 4th and as a result of those changes as kendra said we will be um needing to make to request a comprehensive guide plan change from mixed residential to the medium density residential we have removed uh from the center of the site the three-story 84 unit multi-family apartment building and we replaced it with as kendra said eight single-family lots um the the we when we moved the the storm pond um from the northwest uh portion of the property um we we accomplished um several things uh the ability to to leave the property undisturbed uh to reduce the the grading significantly because there was a significantly a significant amount of grading that needed to be done in order to create that pond in that location and we did reduce some of the retaining walls and we also reduced the tree loss significantly and i i i sensed that from the last meeting that there was a concern about the calculations of the the tree preservation and i do believe that we provided a detailed tree survey that had been performed by uh an engineering firm so we are hopefully accurate on what we are saying we are preserving as far as tree cover um but it allows us the opportunity to provide and to dedicate park land and to preserve some of the natural area and allow for the community and the neighbors to to enjoy that area it's a beautiful piece of property after the planning commission i've walked the site and i've dealt with the site for three years now but i spent some time out on the site uh walking it i walked in the entire circumference of it and um and i think it is a nice opportunity and so we would like we have not met with parks and we will do that in two weeks but we would really like uh to have it dedicated as park because we feel that it will remain if it's dedicated it will remain open space and it will it will not potentially run the risk of ever being developed so that that would be something that we would like to do um and then kendra you mentioned the the flag lots and and the reason that we are requesting those two flag locks and i i have um i'm sure that you're familiar with flag lots and i'm sure that there have been other single-family subdivisions um they're fairly common they're not unusual but we needed to shift the cul-de-sac to the east in order to keep the trail where it is and in order to do that we just are requesting some flexibility on those two frontages of those lots so we would like to be able to keep uh what we were able to to fit there which is 20 20 lots those flag lots are actually and some of the lots along the cul-de-sac are actually larger nice you know larger lots they just have those narrow narrow uh flag entrances and frontages so the other the other item that i just wanted to mention is i've noted on this plan uh in red the easements that have been dedicated um the the schomer family dedicated along the north uh a storm or excuse me a sanitary an easement for sanitary and also for water coming from the north and coming from uh to from the west from bass lake crossing so it enabled bass lake crossings to have access to the lift station and get their utilities through that area and also uh from the south we have the easements that kendra mentioned which is the met council easement for both infrastructure and pipes and for access and then also the easement for infrastructure and pipes along the 15 feet east of that for the city i have not identified on here on the southern piece of the property we will be also required to dedicate an additional 20 feet so so a total of 60 feet for the improvement of bass lake crossing now most of the other property owners will be required to dedicate 40 feet along there but we were asked to help that apparently the original design had a safe has a safety issue with that curve and so uh by dedicating an additional 20 feet we're able to help them resolve a safety concern so then the the final uh comment that i'd like to make and kendra maybe i think you have them for the applewood alex hall from united properties and applewood is here this evening if you have any questions for him but we have they their architect prepared a perspective um this is looking north from uh kassadin county road 10 and brockton lane the new intersection this building sits about one and a half football fields away from the existing county road 10. so you can see the daycare there and then you can see in the distance the near distance of one and half football fields away would be the applewood so it does sit back on the site it is not up against the road and and is for that reason much less imposing um and that was intentional then from the applewood building is approximately two and a half football fields from the existing basslight crossings neighborhood and that is just the last few items that i wanted to to um to clarify but thank you i appreciate your time this evening and i hope that you feel that we have listened to you and we we um we do uh care about the area we care about the neighbors and and we care about developing a high quality project so thank you all right uh thank you beth and uh you get the award for trying in the quickest way i've ever seen um needless to say i was shocked but i looked at the packet and i saw you guys up there on it again and i had to call natalie and ask her why so um kudos to you and your team uh for responding uh as quickly as you did so um all right yeah i i apologize everybody um but i'm gonna have to step outside i i hear a noise out there like someone's banging a sledgehammer on my driveway um so i'm gonna just step away for a few minutes before we um open the public hearing i hope you don't mind this will just be very quick but i gotta go it's driving me nuts here so what that banging is so i will be right back if you don't mind natalie everybody else i've got noises outside my house but they're trumpeter swans so i i don't need i'm not concerned whatsoever very cool yeah that sounds a lot better than a sledgehammer yeah yeah it does be nice if the sun would stay up just a little bit longer so i could watch them a little bit more okay natalie note to self we need some music for some on hold music next time we take a break i like that idea that'll be my project tomorrow just kidding you see if i can crack a window and we can hear the trumpeters a little bit louder [Music] thank you everybody sorry about so i figured it out and i don't know it just sounded differently here tonight but we have a robin who for this whole week has been all day long flies into the windows all over around the house and we can't figure it out but he just over and over and over again all day it's the weirdest thing so if anybody has any idea why that's happening let me know but um okay uh thank you again for your patience all right let's move on then to um we'll open the public hearing and if uh beth um i know i'll i might i'll have some questions later on so um uh when we get to our commission discussion and stuff uh if you could hang around um we'll certainly direct those questions to you at that point so um at this point um public hearing is open and natalie will give you instructions as to what to do to uh to get the podium so to speak thank you mr chair for those of us or for those of you who have joined since the first public comment opportunity if you'd like to participate please raise your hand this can be done by pressing star 9 if you're joining us by phone on your computer it should be through the reactions button along the bottom toolbar of your screen but some tablets and mobile devices the raise hand function is found under the participants tab we do ask that all comments are kept at a five minute time limit and i will call on each speaker so you know when to speak and for starters we do have some hands raised already steve mueller go ahead i'm going to ask that you're unmuted and start with your name and address for the record can you hear me okay good evening and thank you to this chair and planning commission for the opportunity to speak my name is steve mueller 7474 fur lane north i'm a homeowner in bass lake crossing and can summarize the thoughts for the vast majority of our neighbors we are very concerned about cook lake highland and its impact on our homes our neighborhood and our home values so here we are with cook lake highlands for round three in the last eight months round one was a concept meeting with the city council in august 2020 and round two is a march 4th planning commission meeting so far beth husted trek development has not fully considered all the previous comments or suggestions that might help her move forward she could then develop cook lake highlands in an appropriate practical and environmental manner first however we do want to commend trek on the first part of the latest revision it is an excellent first step by eliminating departments and adding more single-family homes however there still remains the same concerns and objections we will start with the commercial memory care and commercial day care we have requested no rezoning to commercial at the last meeting kendra said that by putting a commercial memory care and a pud it can now be in residential zoning and a commercial day care could ironically also be in residential zoning however i think we should all comply with the vision of the 2040 comp plan page 46 clearly states an overview of all zoning classifications and gives examples read page 46 under mixed residential zoning i guarantee you will not see the previous apartments commercial day care or commercial memory care they are all designated in other zoning sites we requested no rezoning to commercial you can spin it any way you want but with 62 parking spaces these are commercial buildings conducting a business in a residential zone before we address a four-story applewood senior co-op we should probably look at the surrounding developments on cook lake there are two other very recent developments on cook lake both in the city of mesa grove the first development is called edgewater on cook lake and is right next to the proposed cook lake highlands it consists of 58 single-family homes maple grove's edgewater on cook lake did comply with the shoreland zoning single-family homes were built for the height requirement and they created large open spaces in the buffer zone to meet the environmental restrictions so now please keep this in mind cook lake highlands will be entirely surrounded by single-family homes bass lake crossing and corcoran to the west and edgewater on cook lake in maple grove to the east the second development was approved in 2018 and is right around the corner called cook lake maple grove ironically it is also 27 acres same as the proposed cook lake highlands they built 43 single family homes they not only complied with the shoreline zoning they embraced it environmentally they have 50 open space in the 27 acres they created a much larger than mandated buffer zone from the lake with four and a half acres left in its natural state and surpassed 190 over story trees councilor phil leath of the maple grove city council said and i quote i'd like to applaud the applicant for leaving that big space untouched end quote so let's recap these two recent maple grove developments on cook lake as you can see they both built single-family homes but equally important was their environmental appreciation they were not only in compliance but they embraced the shoreland district zoning for cook lake you know cook lake is a big deal it's one of only five named lakes in corcoran's entire 23 000 acres because it is designated an official environmental lake it has the strictest zoning standards in the entire shoreland ordinance so now let's go around the corner enter our growing city of corcoran and visit the proposed four-story applewood senior co-op the first requested variance was for impervious surface at 39 percent it is over one and a half times the sherlock shoreland district maximum commissioner wu even commented last time about too much hard surface thus creating challenges aesthetically and for the environmental runoff you know this is a huge building at 259 000 gross square feet it has a hundred and sixty nine percent more square footage than that maple grove high beyond the corner another requested variance was for the height of the applewood the four-story applewood height is not just a variance it would obliterate the shoreland height restriction to the top of the roof ridge it would be 62 feet high that is almost two and one half times the shoreland maximum height clearly this building is not appropriate for this site finally in the last meeting chair jacobs envisioned entering corcoran with a soft entrance rural in nature our city certainly does have many wonderful bucolic settings including parts such as cook lake highlands with acres of trees and water even mayor mcgee said in the spring 2021 newsletter and i quote as growth happens let's make sure it is thoughtfully guided in a way that preserves a rural character that defines corcoran end quote hook lake highlands will be the first development upon entering corporate so when you see two commercial businesses an enormous four-story building on a hill and a combined 137 parking spaces that soft entrance rural character is gone for all of us these two commercial businesses and a four-story senior co-op are certainly viable options for our city in the future this is just simply the wrong site and location so in summary please comply with the shoreline district zoning along with no other pud variances again we suggest the feasible practical and responsible development of cook lake highlands would be either all single-family homes or single-family homes followed by two-story townhouses thank you again to the chair and commissioners for letting me speak okay thank you mr mueller now as we have in the past with our public hearings [Music] i know commissioners and our professional staff take notes um at the end um if there are answers for them to provide to you on some of your questions or comments or clarifications uh we'll have that opportunity to provide that to you then if it's something that i you know we or our professional staff can't answer for you tonight um there most likely will be an effort to follow up with you uh sometime in the future um so we appreciate your patience and understanding uh for that would that be about the correct thing kendra and natalie yes okay great all right natalie um next on next on the docket yes we have and i apologize in advance for the mispronunciation of your last name but james comey i'm going to request that you be unmuted and then please restate your name and provide your address for the record okay thank you chair and planning commission for letting me speak my name is james comic that was pretty close natalie it's a tough one there you go i lived 7466 fur lane north and i just want to make a comment from a personal perspective um priorities where i live right now bass league crossings um definitely it's our home family um the neighborhood and the community and obviously we home values is a concern um you know i'm really really key on the current proposal because it proposes buildings that are both too large for the site and i feel they're in the wrong location so that really increases our awareness and concern about the development and it and its adverse effect on these things at the last meeting chair jacobs you even commented about how many neighbors were enjoying the trail many of the beautiful trees on cook lake highlands are are on that quick lake highland side of the trail so we appreciate any development that can preserve as many of those trees as possible at the last meeting kendra implied that the shoreline height restriction is only meant for navigable lakes she stated that the purpose was to minimize the structure and create a favorable view from the lake for people enjoying the water however in this case the shoreline height restriction is specifically applicable and relevant for this type of lake very strict zoning is meant to protect the aesthetic environmental beauty and not to make it more enjoyable for someone sitting on the lake so that's really important to me the wildlife the trees um and especially you know just just getting out there to see it all it's it's pretty impressive you know to leave to leave the trees and everything intact so cook lake is very important according to the national resources inventory map there are only five name lakes in corcoran's entire 23 000 acres and that's one of them so and it's also designated by the state of minnesota and and the dnr is an environmental lake that's why it has some restricted strictest zoning requirements possible and then attached to that lake and and the highest level of environmental protection in the entire shoreline ordinance so we should welcome that aesthetic and environmental vision in our city so we asked the planning commission to please develop hookland highlands in an appropriate practical environmental manner that will not affect our homes our neighborhood and our home values thank you very much for your time okay thank you mr nick all right natalie anybody else so no one else is raising their hand at this time uh i don't know if you want to give it a few more moments but i don't see anything we'll give it a few more moments then your chair yes sir commissioner bear camp uh request that we close the public hearing okay we have a motion to close the public hearing do i have a second second shulock i'll second that one okay all right roll call vote uh commissioner jacobs i commissioner sholek mr varenkamp aye commissioner wu okay um the public hearing is now closed thank you um all right we'll go to planning commission uh discussion um is there anybody that would like to lead uh out and again as we have since uh the covid and the zoom meeting format uh will go one at a time and then uh after you've had the floor to ask questions to professional staff uh of of each other and uh of our of our applicant uh we'll go through it one more time uh we'll go through it as many times as necessary but then uh we'll go we'll go so anybody dean jim meredith huh i can jump in if he wants to go all right thank you dean um lead us off please thank you dean um i want to reiterate what you said dean to beth um it's the quickest turnaround of uh another how can i say dimension of what we what what we could do in this property um so kudos beth and your team for that um i've got five things that are uh high on my list i've spent time on the trail i've talked to a few the neighbors as i've been walking and such um kendra the first one is for you um the one graph that you had um on the height of the building based off of the shoreland is could be 25 feet and they want to go to 55 feet is that correct the height of the the coop um you're muted kendra you're muted kendrick you're muted kendra i didn't know you could lip sync so well i got that stereo sorry about that yes i pulled it up on the screen uh yes our shoreland district standards do have a 25 foot height limit for the entire shoreline district i would just note for the record maple grove actually has adopted a different version of a shoreland ordinance but ours does have a 25 foot height in the shoreland district okay um so the items in red on this graph are showing the how can i say it the things that are in question that would put it into a pud status is that correct that's correct okay yeah i'm not that's probably my biggest thing is is the height of that uh co-op um i just i just it just doesn't seem to fit there but uh i'll i'll move on um the elevation change from the um walking path on the west side of that property how much will that change i can see the amount of trees that are going to be moved but will that greatly decrease in height on the east side of that walking path that's there now will the homes be lower than the walking path is that what you're asking well the homes that are on the west side of the walking path now are elevated above but the walking path and then the woods in the change in elevation i i assume many many of those woods are going to be removed um and then how much of the elevation is going to change to put in those town homes for those individual homes on the very west side of this development is that a big question um no i'm looking at the i got to look at it on my screen my eyes are not that good give me one minute mister um and i can zoom into it and give you the exact feet you know dean uh maybe let me chime in while she kind of looks at this so uh natalie was kind enough to send me the uh current elevation um stuff and uh again because it's so small i but i got it digitally so i could zoom in and it would appear that the walking trail um as you get down towards the the end the street on the south yeah um is about 500 it's the elevation 985 roughly okay now as you walk then east up the hillside the high point in that open field that's above there yes that's a thousand right so there's there's 15 feet of elevation change there um and so assuming that they grade that site down to somewhere equivalent to the walking path um you're looking you're yeah you're going to look at 15 to 20 feet of um of lowered elevation and then as i took a walk around it today in the back i think you could see in some portions there might be over 20 25 feet of elevation and mind you with the exception of that open field there in the front everything that is you know outside where they've said that they're going to keep it it'll all the trees will go yeah um so um for the majority of that walking path um that you walked and as you can see on there on their schematic there won't be i don't know that there will be a hillside anymore right but there won't be any trees either that's what i was envisioning i just wanted to confirm that thank you chair um and i was going to see if if if this if this was something to discuss further that maybe we could get you know someone from the developers uh side to you know try to give us a vision uh it's very difficult to read these maps um and you you see all these tight gradients so you know that there's a hill there but you don't know which way it's going is it going up from there or is it coming down you have no my opinion it's hard for me to see a lot of those large trees um be torn off that hill site but i understand the elevation and what the what the developer is asking um kendra real quick that northwest corner all of that open space that'll be completely left alone if this were to go to go to come to fruition um the walking path would be there um as you've got on the on the on the chart now or on the on the screen right now um you've asked us that you would like those two flag lots turned into a one conforming lot is that correct that is the staff recommendation yes and then my question there is is there a way if we were to do that and hopefully ask for that is there a way to put in a trail um from that cul-de-sac to that walking path from the end of that cul-de-sac along along the edge of that uh northern part of that property is that appropriate that is another one of staff's recommendations yes okay yes i think it excuse me commissioner you gotta promote it whether you want to take it pay increase too yeah i think if you removed one of the lots you could um wind a trail on the north side of the house given what's happening with the grading or between a couple of the lots people tend not to like it between the lots especially when it's sunny so my thought is if you eliminated this lot you could wind it through there and connect up with that trail and then another question related to a path for our friends in parks and stuff not only that way but is there is no plans to reconnect or to connect to what do i want to say it if if this were to go through the trail another trail that goes around the co-op um on that easement and such or were you saying something that like that would happen um there is the trail or a pedestrian route that that could follow the fire lane around the co-op but there's no longer a connection from the co-op west as you can see the grades with the ponds here and then again as i was saying folks in the villas don't like a trail coming between their units [Music] i understand that that's just uh my biggest uh it seems to be a loss if this were to go through that we wouldn't be able to have that and again my the biggest thing that sticks in my crawl is that 50 plus foot high senior co-op um while i understand where it is and what's going on and such it just it i i'd really like to to to step in um and work with beth and her team um with everything that they've she's done over the many many years not just the last three it would be nice to have something down there i do agree with a couple of the statements from the from the citizens to the west side off of fur lane and stuff about the commercial and those kind of things but uh it it's fitting a little bit more in my mind but again that co-op being 50 50 feet or 55 feet high or even higher i think one of the dimensions that the last person talked about um said it would actually be higher than that i'm trying to remember my notes just that height side is concerning to me and then i always have a hard time intruding in on shoreline setbacks um while some cases it's reasonable some cases i just can't find or justify it so those are my concerns commissioner mr chair and such and i'll yield the floor to someone else thank you kendra thank you commissioner um yeah we we i think we both shared some of the some of the same questions there uh anybody else otherwise i'll certainly take a swing at this i can um i have some questions okay go ahead meredith yeah um kendra i noticed that the um that the city has a 500 square foot unit size minimum and you know that when discussing the senior housing i'm wondering does that affect the memory care because those are sleeping units and they're usually in the 300 square foot range 300 350 square foot range usually for a memory care unit and how does that figure in with our minimum requirement of 500 square feet yeah it does not apply to the memory care units because the memory care units do not meet the hud definition of a living unit which is what we use to calculate density so we don't apply that same minimum to those types of units while people live there it doesn't have the full kitchen that is required to be classified as a living unit under the hud standards okay great and then the other thing i noticed was um the side yard setbacks looks like they're asking for five feet 10 foot total between units and uh council action has or opinion has been 15 feet so if we take into account that it would be 15 feet plus the removal of that one flag unit that's been discussed here i assume the number of units of villas would be quite a bit less than what the plan is showing yes if they did not get the same setbacks that bass lake crossing has which is five foot side yard setbacks and what they're requesting if the council denied that uh flexibility that certainly would result in a loss of units okay i also noticed that you mentioned that there's you didn't have information on the number of memory care beds yet the narrative discusses 32 units um was the narrative provided after the staff letter was written or or that or that's just an example of not exactly what's going to happen yeah i think the staff report was written and it probably just didn't get updated once we got the updated narrative but i apologize i'll make note of that for the council packet i don't think i have any other um questions for staff or comments thanks thank you meredith all right jim you all flip a coiner you want me to go okay um um okay you know to kind of go back uh to what meredith was just saying um under the under the current zoning the side yard setbacks are 10 feet um when we talk about giving flexibility we used to give five feet i know that that bass lake is uh is uh five feet um and meredith you're right uh through discussions with planning commission members in the community and with um met the uh the city council i think our new our new flexible standpoint is seven and a half feet um so just on that basis alone uh for that part of a variance for this um i'd have to i'd have to say i'm not in agreement and my recommendation to the city council would be to uh go to seven and a half feet um in terms of the of the uh uh the grading uh again i i i i to the best i could on certain parts i tried to look on this and and get some idea of what was going on with the final grade and um certainly the the grading as is that was done by sunday land surveying uh is much easier to read than these plans and so i guess you know i'd be interested in just asking a couple things of kendra and your team or beth and her team um just taking a look at just to use a point of reference that cul-de-sac if you stood in that cul-de-sac the the current i'm going to i'm going to take a guess at this but i would say that the current height of that might be somewhere around 900 and um as it would be developed can anybody give me what the what the elevation would be if you were standing in the center of the cul-de-sac mr chair the center of the cul-de-sac at finish grade is 9.74 but uh dave um the engineer for the project is was on the line i'm looking for him but i did see him earlier and he could probably very quickly give you the rest of the answers but i can see the finished grade is 974. okay chair commission members this is david knabley with civil site group i can't answer any questions you have about grading and you are correct that the proposed cul-de-sac grade is a 74. at the end of the cul-de-sac itself the grade is the existing grade is dropping pretty substantially on the south end of the cul-de-sac the grades at a 990 and the north end of the cul-de-sac in the existing condition the grades at a 9 68 or 969. okay so dropping quite a few feet it's and everything yeah drops towards the lake the lake is the lowest point on the site okay now uh uh dave uh dave can i call you dave or david dave's fine okay dave so give me just uh just give me a feel if if i'm if i'm standing up uh at the road you know the the future road and you know the trail comes in and i'm going to start walking north along the trail um will will the backyards for these town villas will you know it looks like there's some sort of grade uh from the back of of where the building pads are down to the trail so in general is is the is the building pads of the villas going to be higher or lower than than the trail grade as it is right now they are going to be higher there's a they're going to be a couple feet higher than the existing trail grade okay all right good um i i better um better look at this uh from a bigger map okay so uh answer for me if you could then this this retaining wall on the northwest corner of the senior apartment site do you see that okay so if i'm standing on the fire road okay that this thing goes around is that retaining wall holding up earth that's higher than the road or is it preventing you from sliding off the road going down into a hole correct it's the second one so the road is higher than the wetland so you're on top of the wall when you're on the road okay the bottom of the wall is on the other side the wetland cook lake side okay i'm sorry um okay and so the the uh the retaining walls that are kind of in the back of the cul-de-sac or uh lots uh 12 13 and 14. i would assume that those would also be keeping you propped up against so the retaining wall isn't going from the yard up it's going from the yard down correct um right now there aren't any retaining walls shown in the back of the those residential pads oh um okay yeah i'm not sure exactly what you're looking at what pdf you're looking at but we don't you know walls back through there it's just it might be in reference to the last model yeah the last plan did have retaining walls back there when we had the pond up in the north portion of the site there were some retaining walls but we eliminated all of those in the cul-de-sac um in this new layout okay um now okay so all of the tight gradient lines that i see on the north end of the that uh those bells that's a downhill gradient and fairly steep one at that correct yep those tight gradients are you know typical steep slope maintain steep slope with three to one okay is that a natural slope or is that something that you guys are going to create because you're filling in yeah we're yep the cul-de-sac sits higher the end of the call this exits higher than the existing grade so we'll be regrading to tie into the existing grade down close to the wetland edge but not you know obviously in the wetland not impacting the wetland okay and so you are going to remove the trees and then excavate down to a lower elevation because that's the only way you can get more units in there correct um i don't know about trying to get more units in there but it's just the way that you know the way the overall site works is you know there's a lot of grade change across the whole site yeah so we're keeping it flat where the units are and then catching up the grade change at the end you can't go too steep in the street otherwise you can't you know build the units right now um and and you might be able to help with this next question but i'm going to just say i i do have uh i share the same concerns about the flag lots um when you look at that cul-de-sac currently as it's laid out proposed there are eight driveways that enter into that culversack and if you look at the the the space between the driveways you might be able to get maybe one or two cars if they're small enough that could park in that cul-de-sac um you know for visitors uh outside of that if somebody's having a birthday party the only place they got to go because we all know these things aren't going to have big driveways um is they're going to have to start parking down the street so i'm not in favor of having eight driveways coming out of a cul-de-sac now with that being said dave if if a recommendation recommendation is made to the uh council that we think one of those lots need to be removed so a a a a a villa could be re-centered on there and take up i mean kind of give some relief to uh the whole back side of there is there any way then the trees that are there and and whatnot could they be saved there may be a means to tighten up the grating limits on that north side um but it would just be pushed pushing that grading limits a little closer to the cul-de-sac along that north edge so maybe a little bit of that that could be saved along that north north end i don't know the exact you know what the exact ramifications would be though yeah now um dave we are going to be hearing later on tonight a situation where a homeowner has a lot and they thought that they could build a deck and up and a porch off the back of their house but come to find out that the building setbacks um are in one corner only two feet away from the corner of the house and and as a result currently without a variance they wouldn't be able to build anything at all now as i look at these flag lots and i see then the gradients indicating a slope along that path you know you you see here where the lot lines for the actual lots are going well beyond the other side of the trail but if i look at this thing here i'm kind of thinking to myself you know how many of these homes are going to be able to build a deck or a patio or a porch off the back of those houses given the given their location either to the trail or because of the of the sloping grade down towards the trail mr chair this is beth can i address that would you be okay with that okay these pads are designed uh the same size as the pads for uh bass leg crossings so um and and they they are david how deep are the pads they're 70 feet deep all of the pads are 70 feet yeah and and the other the other issue that i wanted to address is the elevation of those pads in those homes will they be similar to the elevation of the homes in basslight crossing um yeah correct for the most part they'll be pretty close to the existing crossing elevations yeah that gives everybody a little bit better perspective as to where they'll be sitting when you stand out there they'll be sitting at a similar elevation as the homes um so they won't be sitting up significantly higher looking down or they won't be sitting below looking up but they're you know that was part of the design too is to think about that and be considerate of that too so um but those pads are are fairly deep pads a 70-foot pad is deep and that does typically allow for the the the ability to put a patio or a deck and then there's actually room and and the lot lines are deep um mr commissioner because um that is the property line and that's just how we you know the the trail was built on the shomer property so we just extend you know we just put that's just the real the actual property line so that's why there's they're signifi they're like they're large because they're so deep that's that's true okay well thank you bill but i i i understand why they are that way um but i'm so what let me see if if i understand data correct so the paths indicated right there are 70 feet deep so does that mean then that they are large enough where you can get your typical villa on there and then allow for say a 14 foot screen porch or a four season porch or a deck correct it's my understanding and we don't have you know final builder selected for these lots but they can get everything they need on that 40 by 70 foot pad that we're proposing so they can put a screen porch and some of the house plans similar to the bass like crossings have that included in that 70 foot depth okay that that's all i wanted to you know um so okay um you know uh beth to your comment there you know i know this is of my own personal uh preference but you know ideally i think what would be great um especially for helping with some of the you know the the the height maybe some of the height concerns of the senior co-op is that if you if you put in that cul-de-sac and built your your homes up there without changing that grade a whole lot um i think what disturbs you know me or what what concerns me the most or the i think the status part of all this is that all the you know the trees and the hills and whatnot are going to be you're completely eliminating them to bring that down to grade and uh with the other homes whereas if they could be built on their current grade or they're very close to that you know the people walking the trail um you know you might be able to preserve some more trees uh but at least you got that hillside uh for the trail and a little bit more isolation than walking along that trail with no trees and then looking into the backyard of of of more homes and again that's not the worst thing in the world but um i i see that that hillside and the elevation of that lot being an advantage for both developments if it can be preserved but that is not what is being uh proposed so i won't bring up any more of that um one question so we talked about this subdivision right to the east uh in maple grove is that um that looks like it's going to be kind of the same deal when does that look to get approved or what likelihood that that's going to be single family homes okay that i would like to clarify there is there are not two projects that were approved there was only one i can understand how they might think that there were two i was the developer that uh that designed that that project and that and i did sell that project to another developer and they came in so the first development that i got approved was with the open space and also 42 42 single family lots they were i believe 55 foot lots now the new developer is is fully approved final plot approval for um the 58 single-family 45-foot lots for rent luxury homes so they are a four-rent single family 45-foot lot and um and they um they have final platinum so but there there weren't two there's just one on that lake well i i was just you know curious in the in the the homes that are i don't know ghost planted or you know right you know connecting right to this right on the property line i just want to know what's the likelihood that those are going to turn into actual single-family units they are they are approved and and they are planning to build single family for rent uh homes and they are not opposed to our applewood well of course if they're you know what they say you know if you don't have an ownership stake in it maybe you don't care um and if they're going to be rental homes they obviously maybe have a different viewpoint on stuff than maybe say the people from bass lake because they understand yes understood um okay let me see if i have any other comments or questions here okay i that that's all i have so uh at this point so mr sholak um you have the floor please thank you sir um i believe that this uh this project is really not consistent with the city plan uh down the line i don't um i really don't like the height of the co-op and is it my understanding that uh the latest count is that 33 of the trees will be saved is that the number i heard i thought it was more like 30 or something but it's 30. the staff report says 30 correct okay okay um i keep coming back to that and i'm not going to chain myself to any of those trees but um if there's no construction 100 of the trees are saved so i just um 33 is not a consolation prize for me i have to agree with the residents that it's it's the wrong location for such such a project and in the commercial units being what they are will change the zoning there so that's all i have my comments okay thank you commissioner shellac okay um round robin two commissioner varenkamp uh any follow-up questions or comments yeah um i wanna just say i think one of the comments from the public hearing the the folks were talking about the properties to the east in maple grove and beth you are saying that you are the one that put all of that together uh i i was the developer that obtained the entitlements for the 42 single family lots on that um there but that they there's a new developer that just obtained um a new approvals final plat approval for the 58 actually it's 59 because they have a um another lot anyway for um for a pool and for a clubhouse uh so yes i did was the initial again as stated by the the resident they they commend you for what you've done to preserve the shoreline and those kind of things on that property and i want to i want i wanted to recognize that um so good job um again great job coming back with this um my biggest thing is the height of that co-op and i do agree with mr shulock too about the commercial side of this stuff is is kind of sticky to my crawl too um kendra the that mitigation pond in the center of this if this were to go through is that the homeowners association responsibility to take care of that mitigation upon and maintain that is correct as part of any development the stormwater ponds the city requires a storm water maintenance agreement with the developer so that they are responsible for maintenance of those ponds and if they fail to maintain them we have the ability to come in uh make the improvements and assess them and you said it's part of your presentation if that were part dedication then that becomes our responsibility then and we're not sure we want that right now and and parks is going to look at that in the middle of the month here correct okay um that's all i have mr chair thank you hey thank you commissioner uh commissioner wu your follow-up anything i i echo the kind of the um [Music] depreciation that the developer developers efforts that she has made to listen to us and um listen to the comments that she has received from the neighborhood uh try to i imagine it's very difficult to try and balance your pro forma for development with the requirements of um with the desires of a neighborhood in a city however having said that i i still maintain that this is not the right site for the proposed development i feel that um while it's not inconsistent with the comp plan i think that this site has some unique challenges which we also identify as valued characteristics of the site and i feel that the magnitude of the proposed buildings and its proximity to the residential areas that are both planned and existing make it incompatible and i feel that this four-story building is a very difficult thing to try and place on a site where you have height restrictions and pervious surface restrict impervious surface restrictions and for good reason we're trying to protect that natural environment of cook lake which everyone everyone wants to keep so at this point uh while still recognizing the efforts that the developer has made i i don't i still do not see this as a compatible um proposal for the site okay is uh thank you meredith um mr chair yes sir mr berenkamp i'm i'm just is it possible and it looks like kendra stepped away nope she's still there is it possible just to get the comp plan map put up on the screen real quick just so we know everybody that's on knows what our plan was if that makes sense thank you mr chair no problem excuse me i uh i had dean asked natalie if she could look up for us some of the public comments and the working sessions that related to because i know i said it in the last meeting about the entrance i know one of our speakers kind of credited me with the you know the soft you know country rolling hill entrance but that wasn't my that wasn't mine alone and and maybe um maybe that the comment wasn't intended that way um oh hold on you said it very you said it very well and and i think all of us on the on the planning commission are all in agreement with that but kendra i don't know if you can just move your pointer closer to this section and again it is set up as mixed residential is what we've planned between now and 2040 and it's kind of been that way for even 10 or 15 years before this time period right it has not changed from this as part of the 2030 plan this mixed residential district extended from the east boundary all the way over to maple hill and remember bassley crossings came in and asked to down zone down guide it from mixed residential to low density residential but that has been in place since the 2030 plan was adopted yeah thank you thank you kendra thank you mr chair i just i wanted that up just so people could see what our plan was um in response to what jim was saying too it's just not been our vision for quite some time to open it up to commercial and those kind of things and while the pud is all part of that and and opens things up and stuff i don't i don't want to crack that egg right now if that makes sense thanks richard's here mr chair this is beth could i just comment about that that guide plan um yes thank you um you you if you put the guide plan back up it is mixed residential you're right but just to the directly to the south at the entrance of corcoran where the lions park is is mixed use which allows commercial so i just felt that we would be directly across from mixed use commercial potentially at the on the south side of county road 10 and that was in part sort of my thought of transition from what potentially could be commercial across the street from the daycare and the memory care so that that is pink it's a and it looks to be commercial it's my understanding yeah and to that point that's the lions park in in no way in all of the conversations that i've had with everyone associated with that are there moving so that's why kendra is that why it's commercial i mean it's it's wide open for the lions park right now it's uh kind of a center of entertainment and many other things correct yeah the mixed use was adopted for the mix of uses that is lions park and then we did regard re-guide the corner next to it of course as industrial so there is commercial industrial to the south um to that end but but this mixed uses is on the north and the zoning as i said allows some non-residential uses in residential districts well when you look at lions park i mean you think i mean if you've seen some challenging lots to develop that's got a rank right up there with the top of them so at least the northern part of it um but anyway i i mean i i think most people in the community uh would love to see that remain in perpetuity uh because it is a fun asset um contribution to our community and and uh most of us have all been there for one event or another and so uh in looking towards gee what you know what would be a good transition at this point i i don't really see or hear any any uh possibility that that's going to happen anytime soon but thank you beth but mr chair i could i just have one more comment to make about adjacent to the lions park um bass lake crossing south was guided mixed residential and it was re-guide or re-zoned with single-family homes and an industrial building so uh um self-storage building is also acro going to be across the street from the daycare and the memory care and that's being i think they're starting construction on that now so again that is probably an appropriate transition to the lions park um but also i did consider that in my design and i i it is not rural and that was approved and so i thought that this i really wasn't trying to um uh offend the city of corcoran by these this design i really put a lot of thought into what was going on around it and i would just really appreciate that consideration thank you and beth you're right the discussions around the the uh the storage units were to provide a buffer between the park uh and a residential section um but in the debates of the first proposal from the ebert development group we had a lot of debate about the county road 10 the setbacks screening for all this and that obviously never came to fruition but the discussion that went on at that point was about this is the gate to our community what do we want it to look like uh obviously that was a long time ago and looking at looking at what you leave in in maple grove um i personally uh don't want to see a continuation of that in corcoran i i just don't see that as being something that we want to emulate right at our front door but i'll leave it at that i i would uh i would say the same things as my as my fellow commissioners removing the apartment building and adding these things didn't tip the scale for me from what i believe um and what uh i recall like i was trying to explain i tried to have natalie try to find us some of those notes um they're not available to see what the community insight was and and those from the people that were drafting uh the documents for our visions uh but as has been pointed out there are references to it uh throughout some of our uh comprehensive guide plan and um and so i'm gonna stick uh i'm gonna stick with the denial vote but i i do think that there are certainly it could be um you know a nice development up there that could do along a lot with preserving some of the natural characteristics of the site and maybe continuing a residential use you know from the east to a residential use on the west and eliminate uh the commercials uh down along 10 and by all means the shoreland i'll support the height restrictions on that and the uh the four-story co-op just doesn't fit here so that's um that's where i'm at on it as well so mr sholak i believe then um you are you are up next then any other further questions or follow-up thank you sir i have no other questions or comments okay all right if anybody else commissioners otherwise again the staff report gives us the options i don't think i'm hearing a lot to support the approval of the four or five items that we would have to to support furtherance of this if i'm wrong please let me know okay so um then we're going to be left with the uh the second version which was just one resolution and that would be a resolution to deny the request for rezoning preliminary plat and preliminary pud plan for 19 220 county road 10. um so before we vote on that does anybody have any proposals to change or recommendations from what's listed here as to what our recommendation to the city council will be mr chairman yeah commissioner um and and this is just if we can just have a discussion amongst the planner your their planning group and such would a excuse me a co-op type thing be appropriate with that height restriction and such um eliminate the commercial the uh the new horizon um daycare in the front there along with the um memory care there you know turn that into housing or something and what i'm trying to do is trying to give beth something to come come back with us something different i mean again i think her effort was very very good um do we have as a group in our mind any flexibility at all on including something like a co-op or something on this property or is that out of the question for her to come back with us do you know what do you know what i'm talking about oh yeah no and and you know uh dean i i thought about it i mean you know if if here's what i thought um try to the best you can keep that grade on the west side as much as you can you know there's nothing wrong with developing in hilly areas or where there's grade changes drive around the older communities they did it all the time um now is that the most feasible and the most uh profitable no but it can be done um and so i would say if there was anything to possibly uh save uh this uh in some form it would have to be you know maybe limiting the the co-op to um two stories i know again when i saw the apartment building removed i'm not a financer for developments like this but uh i know that that doesn't come without some financial the big hit you know uh to that to this whole this whole project um okay um mr chair can i just answer can i just put um provide uh some comment on the discussion that you're starting here sure absolutely yeah my position is this is that um you know beth is an experienced developer uh no doubt and she and and the people who are assisting in the design have listened to our comments but our job isn't to design the project for her or think that we can i think that the comments that we provide in our discussion guides her about our feeling about the appropriateness of the application for the city but since we're advisory to the city council i don't think that writing in comments about redesigning the project to specific uh design features is is what we should be doing and i'm not saying that in a bad way i'm just saying that i don't know that it goes anywhere is what i'm saying it's it's because she has heard our comments she's been part of it um but i'm certainly that that just occurred to me and i'm certainly open to hearing what the rest of you think about that notion well meredith i i would agree with you but i mean what if our only suggestion to the city council was well we're not gonna we we don't recommend approval of the variants for a five foot uh you know side yard setback we would recommend to you seven and a half feet that's no different than saying i think i could support this project and maybe we as a group recommend to the city council that approve it but you know we're going to limit it to we're recommending that you limit it to two stories i don't see that there's a big difference there from what our function is as far as making a recommendation to the city council whether it be big or small and that's all i think what dean was asking is what could we do with the current approval and what would we recommend to the city council and tell me dean of iran but what would we recommend to the city council that would make this viable for us um with what they've got and so that's all i was trying to say is yeah my my thing was just us talking about and such i think we all agree on the commercial we did not not not in favor of and stuff or being respectful of the shoreline um and all the ordinances related to that it does a 25 foot tall co-op fit in something like this i'm just i'm asking the the four of us what are our thoughts on that or are we just mixed residential and and there's some things that can go in mixed residential that you know some of us might not like i just yeah it's hard to say but and i i absolutely agree with meredith it's just us saying no and we've we've set our comments um we've been very strong about this just doesn't fit but uh hey again the commercial side i'm not crazy about um that height and the intrusion in on the shoreline and such i'm not crazy about but what what do i accept meredith you get a good point it's we've talked enough and uh it probably this probably isn't what we're accepting so good comments thank you very much for entertaining that okay all right so um if if if the commission is um going to take a vote on the resolution to deny the request for rezoning preliminary plat and preliminary pud does anybody have any suggestions for changing the said resolution as stated presented i personally do not have any um it's very short and to the point and i agree with i agree with it so so with that mr chair are you looking for a motion well if nobody has any any changes or questions i'll certainly take one um i'll go with the resolution um the suggestion of the resolution that's in her packet of denying the changes and such if i'm saying that right great if i'm not kendra i think you know what we're feeling so okay so we have a motion to deny the request i'll say i have a second hula okay we have a second so um we'll take a vote uh roll call vote uh chair jacobs i uh commissioner sherlock mr berenkamp aye mr woo hi okay all right um again uh our thanks and our appreciation to uh the applicant and to our professional staff for all the work that i know everybody puts into this um we know that this maybe isn't the result that everybody wanted to see but it was certainly a step in the right direction so maybe we'll see some revisions next month maybe the city council will have a completely different take and to that note as i told natalie i said um being that they came on this month i i was really looking forward to seeing what the city council uh our new city council had to say about this because all of the stuff all the work that went into this through the preliminary process of course was you know it's a different city council now and uh and unfortunately we didn't get the benefit from that so um those on the commission i i i'm going to be the liaison when when is this going to go before the city council then yes mr chair this goes to the parks and trails commission on april 15th and to the city council on april 22nd okay so um hopefully everybody will have a chance to sit in and listen to that because that'll be uh it'll be worthwhile okay thanks again everybody um we will move on to item 6b uh this is a public hearing for preliminary plat and variance application for friends and estates on the property located at 23020 streela road and kendra we await your presentation okay this is a public hearing uh it is a request for a three lot subdivision and that includes two variances a variance from the lot width requirements for frontage on a public street and from a lot with requirements and from the street frontage requirements the property is guided rural egg residential and zoned rural residential and in terms of background it's important to note that in 1993 the city approved a subdivision to carve a 10 acre lot from the friends and 40 acres to create the parcel at 223 105 larsen road and as part of that plot there was a 60 foot roadway easement that was granted the length of the new 10-acre parcel which is longer than was needed to serve that parcel at the time the city also acquired deeded right-of-way at the end of larson road to provide a 60-foot right-of-way extension from larson road so this is the property the friends and zone their house is here this is the 10-acre parcel that was carved off in 1993 that is served off of larson road with a private drive coming off the end of the cul-de-sac they've got a long driveway back to their house and the two new lots are proposed on the north side of the 40 acres directly to the east is straylor estates some of you will remember this was the development that convinced the council to create a private drive ordinance they wanted to do a private drive to serve this lot instead of a public street and so the council changed the ordinance to allow private drives instead of requiring a public street and so you can see that this is our first private drive in many years right here to serve these four lots that are directly east of the project strailer road is the south side of the property and that can i ask kendra a question quick yes dean kendra the reason for that private drive is because of the wetlands to the south on straightaway they could not put they could not gain access to that property because of the wetland there no it was simply that the public street would be expensive and they felt like this was an alternative that they weren't available the large wetland you might be thinking of is back here there's an enormous wetland back here no on the property the the private drive that's there now they would not have gained access for that 10 acres in that corner because of the wetland down there i'm sorry this 10 acres i apologize uh that's possible the the um file for the that 1993 subdivision is pretty thin but i think that's probably true the wetland conservation act was in place in 1993 so it would have been difficult to fill a wetland all right thank you for letting me interrupt sorry um so that's the context and again this is the site uh out in the western side of town and north of straylor road the subdivision is proposed on the left here um again north this is trailer on the south larsen coming in from the west you can see the private drive to serve the property here and here's the edge of that wetland that dean was just talking about that runs across the south half of the property at 23 105 larsen and dips in a little bit to the friends and property this is floodway as well and that was modified as part of that 1993 approval the plot would would preserve this 10 acre lot it's a little bit hard to see on my screen but there is a 60-foot easement that runs from this west property line to the east property line across the entirety of this lot i mentioned that the city acquired deeded right of way these two little triangles are on your plans but they're a little bit difficult to read so i tried to blow them up the city acquired these by deed meaning the city owns that property it is not an easement as opposed to this roadway easement which is an easement across the property at 230 105. this is actually right of way here that that was granted you saw several notes in your packet the homeowners did state that they did not realize they were deeding the property but in fact the city attorney has confirmed that's deeded land and those deeds were included in your packet as well the northern 20 acres of the franzen property does have some wetlands as you know wetland delineations can't be approved until spring so the wetland delineation is done but not yet approved but they have shown general boundaries for those wetlands on the parcel so the subdivision creates one lot one for the existing home and two new lots and i got turned around when i wrote the staff report so this is the correct table the table and the staff report had the wrong had these two dimensions flipped lot three is on the west and does have 200 feet of frontage along that roadway easement lot 2 is on the east and does not have the 200 feet of frontage only has 129 feet of frontage and then i highlighted the 50 foot setback variance simply because there's no front yard if there's no public street or public private drive we determine the front yard by by the street frontage and without the street they don't technically have a front we can work around that depending on what the council commission decides to do tonight and the council ultimately acts on so just so it was easier to read i kept this sideways strailer is on the right on this image north is on the left so the plan for the applicant has lot one from the applicant has lot one for the existing house lot two and lot three the private or the uh existing roadway easement extends here and it provides 200 feet of frontage here for lot three but as i said only 129 feet of frontage for lot two they've shown conceptually building pads and septic sites these would be sold for custom home lots so the the landowner is not building these homes you would just sell the lot so the home location would likely be different but it gives you a sense of what what could happen this plan shows three new private drives coming off adjacent to the existing private drive the applicant is requesting a variance to allow driveways only to not do a public street or a private drive to just have individual driveways coming off of this this is not allowed in our ordinance and that's why it requires a variance secondly again even if they did provide the private drive as required by ordinance lot 2 as shown would need a variance because they don't meet the lot with with frontage they would need to extend that private easement another 70 feet here across this parcel to provide that front edge and then provide that required turn around the code requires each lot to abut and have direct access onto an improved street or private drive there's no ambiguity in that language that's what the code requires and that's why the variance is required and the applicant could extend the existing easement 70 feet west to meet that lot width requirement and meet the frontage requirement the private drive would provide access to the two new homes and could provide access as as recommended by the engineer to the existing home on the south and it would provide emergency vehicle access that's one of the reasons we have private drive standards in the past we did not um pre-2000 we allowed private drives but there were no standards and there have been instant instances where public safety could not reach a home because the private drive was not built and maintained up to reasonable standards for even in a you know an ambulance type emergency vehicle let alone a fire truck um the existing driveways should be shared uh to limit access off the cul-de-sac the way it's drawn right now there's just feet between the two driveways and long term that would just be a real maintenance issue and as the chair noted on the last example we just really don't want driveways stacked up at the end of a cul-de-sac the individual lots would be served by well and septic and as i mentioned the delineation needs to be approved and once that's approved the plans would be updated to show wetland buffers setbacks and monuments on the plans there's no reason to think on a 10 acre lot that there's not room to have a very nice building site on each of those lots again this item is scheduled for park parks and trails review at that april 15th meeting and the reason is there is a open space park shown on the very very northwest corner of this site and so parks trails commission should review that and determine whether any park dedication should be taken in the terms of land from this applicant or simply cash for the two new lots so again the two uh variances we've talked a little bit about and as always variances are the largest hurdle that an applicant has those are the most difficult applications to receive because the burden of proof is on the applicant to show compliance with the five variant standards outlined in minnesota statute and our ordinance and um staff finds that in this case the variance standards have not been met there is no practical difficulty to complying with the zoning and subdivision ordinance standards it appears that that 60-foot roadway easement in fact was provided to do exactly this to provide a private driveway to allow future development for the north half of the friends and property and if that easement were extended 70.04 feet west it could provide the required lot width for lot 2 and adequate room to provide a private drive in compliance with the ordinance it appears that the request for the variance is primarily economic based on the owner's desire to avoid constructing the private drive however both minnesota statute 462 357 and the ordinance state that economic conditions alone do not constitute practical difficulties the second threshold is are the conditions unique to the parcel of land for which the variance is sought and not created by the landowner staff finds that it's not unique to the parcel as i mentioned the property directly to the east was approved for subdivision in 2016 and requested an ordinance amendment to allow private drives as an option to the public street requirement since that time two or three other small subdivisions have been allowed to build private drives rather than a public street to build these lots to meet these lot frontage and lot with requirements this is not different from those other small subdivisions where private drives have been approved again there's no physical reason that a private drive cannot be constructed to serve the two new lots however i do note that the planning commission could find that there are unique circumstances not related to the topography of the site but related to the fact that when the property was split in 1993 the roadway easement was provided presumably to allow a subdivision similar to what is being proposed today the third condition is the granting it may not alter the essential character of the locality and we agree with that but approval of a variance to not require either a public drive or a private street private drive to provide front end and access to lots certainly would encourage other developers to make the same request to save costs on future development and long term could change the character of the community the proposed variants would be in harmony with the general purposes and intent of the ordinance and and we think it's not because the ordinance is very clear about the need for each lot to have frontage and access onto a public street or a private drive but it is not inconsistent with the comprehensive plan policies to allow rural subdivisions very similar to this staff recommends approval of the plat but does recommend denial of the variance based on the findings of that the findings of fact have not been met denial of the variants would simply require the applicant to revise the plans to extend that easement and provide a private drive to serve the new lots within that easement area uh this is a bit of a unique circumstance again because of the actions that took place in 1993 it appears that some consideration was given to how this northern 20 acres would develop in the future and that's presumably why that roadway easement was granted as part of that plat or subdivision it does not benefit the property at 23105. it only benefits the friends and property if the planning commission agrees with staff assessment you should move to take action on what we call option a that denies the variance and approves the preliminary plat with conditions required to comply with the ordinance meaning construction of that private drive if the planning commission however finds that there are unique conditions because of the previous approvals and action taken to provide that easement they could recommend approval and again because this does have some unique characteristics i did provide an option b that approves the variance and the preliminary plan it still has some conditions that are attached in order to comply with the ordinance standards but because it is a little bit of a unique situation we have provided two options for your consideration as a starting point certainly planning commission can modify either of those this is a public hearing we recommend that you take comments a number of written comments were received and were shared with the commission either in the packet or via a separate email those are entered into the record as if the writer was speaking at tonight's public hearing so there's no need to repeat what's in those emails and then mr chair i did receive a call from city administrator martin's late in the day today that the applicant was trying to figure out how to get on to this but have some internet problems at his location and um i do have some comments if if he is not on the meeting i haven't seen if he's on the meeting but um i was asked to provide some comments at the end of the public hearing on behalf of the applicant if they are not on the line okay is that is that the end of the prison that is it mr chair i'm available for questions if you have any before we open the public hearing otherwise we can open the public hearing and take comments all right uh thanks kendra and and i i do have some questions for you uh but we'll wait till later um so um let's go ahead and uh open up the uh public hearing and um uh natalie if you would kindly give our audience the uh instructions once again if they would like to speak on on this in this particular item yes thank you mr chair if you'd like to participate in the public hearing please utilize the raise your hand function you can do this by pressing star 9 if you're joining us by phone on computer it will be the raise your hand function via the reactions button located on the toolbar along the bottom of your screen other devices may have the function under the participants tab we do ask that all comments are kept to a five minute time limit and i will call on each speaker and i do ask that you state your name and address for the record and we do have one caller already uh steve rixon go ahead and start when you're ready okay can you hear me yes okay thanks for for giving me this opportunity um i just wanted to um just state that um back in 1995 um we talked to the uh the attorney for mr rexton could you give your address please for the record well i'm sorry it's two three one one zero larson road thank you go ahead that's right okay but in 1995 we did talk to the city attorney they asked us to do an easement for a driveway and our conversations with him were all easement easement um and he he had told us that um by granting this this easement that it would only be one driveway for a single family and that we'd still own the property and that that was conveyed over and over to us and then when we got the paperworks we thought that the attorney was working in our favors as well as um everybody the builder who is building a house coming off of larson road and it wasn't until recently that we found out that it was a quit claim not a an easement i i've been to the the uh the city hall a number of times talking to a few different people and they said that it was a single family easement they told me that a number of times and um like i say it wasn't until recently that we found out it was a quick quick claim so anyway my point after all that is yeah when we we did sign an incorrect paper so um that it it is corcoran's property but i think they misum represents that represented themselves on what what they were actually doing um and and now it's you know it's changing our whole neighborhood because that opens up more traffic coming down our road um and it's it's a challenge for for all of us um so anyway i just wanted to state what actually did happen and you can take it from there i i just assumed that there weren't driveways coming in at the end of the road we were told when we bought the property that there would never be um driveways or an extension to larson road but obviously you know things change so anyway thank you very much and that's all i had to say okay thank you mr rickson um natalie before we go to the next one uh kendra just so that because i i made some notes uh today um i did go out to the site i've looked at this packet of information these legal documents and you know there was a comment in the report that um that this did exist [Music] for the purposes of the the variance was made to support a subdivision like it is today meaning that there was some sort of vision that this was going to go into two lots and i just want to clarify maybe i'm missing it but just for clarity um is there any document or anything i mean mr rixon said that you know years ago discussions were there was going to be one lot i find no evidence in any of this that when that when that easement was put in it was only put in for the use of one develop of one home do you can you yeah i think you're talking about under the variance standards i said the planning commission could find that this is a neat unique situation because this was provided to allow a subdivision like that i'm not saying that it is i'm saying you could find that i'm not sure why else they would have provided a 60-foot wide roadway easement across the top of three one oh 2323105 because two three one on five didn't need that easement yeah that's all i was trying to say no no no i i mean i understand that i i'm more going to mr rixon's comment that well we all thought that this was there was only going to be one home there is absolutely and i don't see anything in the record to say that that this was put in specifically with the idea that only one additional home would be built on that acreage am i right or am i wrong yeah that that's correct i will say that the city is in the midst of moving um and remodeling city hall and natal and i natalie and i dug through all of the files we could access and could not find anything specifically showing any concept plan or plat for this subdivision at all so the 1993 file was very thin so i have no evidence to say it either was or it was not um okay all right that's all i just wanted to just just bring it up to see if there was any evidence to support mr rixon that it was one house not two houses that were going to be futurely uh built there so thank you very much uh natalie um please um please continue with our next participant please so mr chair this will be up to your discretion i don't have any other hands raised but mr rixon has uh re-raised his hand so it's up to your discretion okay okay greg are you trying to speak are you trying to raise your hand greg i i'm not sure if i'm doing it right but yes okay all right i'll let you speak after mr rixon okay i'll call on you all right one second go ahead mr erickson my apologies actually this is marilyn rixon stephen is my husband i'm same address 23110 larson road back in 93 when that all happened we were never told about other lots and we were asked to grant an easement for one driver they never said anything about other driveways and now looking at the drawings it's so obvious that this was all planned back then but nothing was ever said to us and if that the neighbors will all verify the same thing and greg knows that and ray and eve ehrlich know that and we were lied to by corcoran and greg and somehow this was all put into the works and we were cheated and lied to we really feel that way we we just feel like we're really duped and that's our biggest complaint and in addition to that this road cannot handle that much more traffic thank you that's all i wanted to say okay thank you all right okay so greg was having problems with the raise your hand function but go ahead and uh get your full name and address for the record greg can you hear me we can hear you but it sounds like you might have a second device in the room we're getting some feedback so you might want to mute the second device if that's the case oh turn yourself i don't know oh no greg we we want you to speak so maybe turn but there we go how's that is that better much better thank you okay well let me just give you a little bit of background from our standpoint i'm sorry steve and marilyn feel that way because that just simply isn't true greg i'm so sorry can you provide your full name and address please greg franson 230 20 strailer road thank you and we've been residents uh of corcoran for close to 45 years and we've lived and farmed here my family has lived here in the area for well over 150 years we have two sons and four of our grandsons that live in corcoran and as noted the legal right to build has been since 1993 the road extension was put on there when those deeded conveyances because we thought that possibly one of our sons might want to build later on and there was no reason to do a subdivision there was no reason to do beyond what we did because there was no plan to build at that time well 20 some years later now the comp plan's been revised and we looked at it and we were granted not what we've always had one building right back there and now there's two building rights so we thought all the land around us except two lots are less than our 10 acre proposal they're all five acre lots we love corcoran we like the rural character we like the large lots and that's what we're proposing and it meets all the standards of the comp plan the reason that i applied for a variance was because we all like to have our own kind of private driveway where you pull into your drive you do your own plowing you do your own chair and i just looked at it and thought well if we have private drives everybody owns their own driveway and that's fine if the council mining commission decides that a shared driveway of two lots on two large ten acre parcels fits the character i'm perfectly okay with that our neighbors ray and eve ehrlich support our development of this area their lot is 10 acres we're proposing two two additional acre lots and if you have any questions i'd be certainly have to answer them and even marilyn didn't understand what they were doing but everybody else did that's why we have the 60-foot roadies up there it's been there for 25 years okay all right well i i appreciate your insight you you brought up uh you brought up a question that i'd like to direct to uh our professional staff kendra so kendra is it possible then that through review of the building rights map that there was an additional building right granted so that maybe it was only two at one time and not three um absolutely we did do an update to the development rights map in 2019 i think it was and i don't know what the situation was in 1993 because we've had some as you know development rights uh since the 80s and we've done a reset so i i couldn't tell you what it was but but it's but it's a possibility i i mean that that brings up a possibility that you know back in 93 if there were only two development rights i mean look at what they did originally they they split out one you know the the the the lot um i i don't know their name uh but the one with the easement you know um i i mean it's possible yeah i mean if they've lived on this property for 45 years it was possible at one time that they could have subdivided as small as larsen road too before we had the development rights program so okay yes in the last go around they did get an extra development right when we change that program from 1 in 30 on a gravel road to 1 in 10. okay so there was an additional right granted okay all right well that that goes to explain a lot of stuff so maybe it's not so much that people were misconceiving others it's just that back in 1993 there was only one right and then now there's two that could be you i don't know that you know there's three yeah okay all right thank you can i answer to that tour sure greg uh when that was done we had two building rights we we requested the city put the 60-foot easement on there and keep the one development right to the north for future development so they've always been there since 1993 and then it was changed to go one in 30 on gravel and now with the comp plan changed we were granted an additional building rate so there's nothing that wasn't there right from the beginning with the 60-foot road easement and our additional building rate no understandable understandable i i sure wish that i had the luck of getting a extra building right on some of my land when i don't have any um so anyway okay let me give you one more we looked at all of the five acre lots around us and we've been farmers and like i said lived here forever and we're squeezed all the way around us now with five acre lots and i i still like the idea of large rural lots and when we were granting an additional one i just felt it was time for us we're in our 70s that it's time for us to subdivide and do the two ten acre large lots yep yep okay well um again thank you very much and and if there's anything else that comes up here um you know please uh you know put your hand up for natalie um all right well let's continue on with the public hearing uh natalie do we have a another participant we do caleb i'm going to uh oh you already unmuted yourself so go ahead and state your full name and address for the record yep uh caleb crowman 7765 rancho lane north maple grove minnesota um i yeah as i said i'm caleb uh my wife lindsay um and our three children are our prospect buyers to lot number three and just wanted to just support um you know give our support to option option b but uh but really any option our growing up on a farm i was really afforded those opportunities and wanted and still want to provide my children those same opportunities we have spent and i have spent my whole entire life in the agriculture industry i'm still very involved uh within the agricultural industry and i want to provide those same opportunities to our our children as well growing up on a farm i lived on a gravel road and so i very much understand that perception of adding traffic um you know four additional cars if it's if those two lots um and you know the perception of deterioration of a roadway um so i i understand and i get that um that thought process i also have done a lot of research on on that as well and you know it and when you look at a low volume road local road according to a lot of the the us department of transportation federal highway administration standards a low volume road is anything that's under 400 vehicles on average per day so i i i also recognize um that larson road along with the roads that i grew up with in in on my farm you know they can support that additional for four vehicles um i just you know i i really i wanted just to just put my name and and uh response out there and you know i i agree with greg i you know i love that opportunity to have a 10 acre property out in corcoran it's been a dream of us i also recognize in the packet that there was a number of people that said there's additional cars on that road and so if you see a silver truck more likely that's that's that's our truck it's um you know i've taken my my uh family out there um um quite a few times because we're just really really excited about the opportunity um to build a um a place out there in corcoran so i yield the rest of my time all right great thank you caleb and uh you know um assuming everything goes through um you know we uh welcome to corcoran and and uh i hope everything works out for you um okay um natalie yeah we have uh do we have another we do ray ehrlich and eve knowles are raising their hand okay go ahead and provide your name and address for the record please sure this is ray ehrlich at 23105 larson road with my wife here eve knowles we own the property on this southwest corner of this you know this 40 acre 40 acres the original 40 acres um we were the ones that bought the property in 1993 and um you know since that time we were fully aware of the 60-foot easement and we were fully aware that at some point the property of the north would be developed and so we we do support um the development of this land that's all i wanted to say okay thank you sir okay all right yeah this time there are no more hands being raised so you can wait a couple more seconds if you'd like but i don't see anything further okay well we still have a lot to do tonight so um if there isn't anybody there i'll i'll entertain a motion to uh close the public hearing so move there second i'll second that one okay natalie take your pick um okay we have a motion to close the public hearing we'll do a roll call vote uh chair jacobs i uh commissioner shellack aye commissioner berenkamp aye commissioner wu hi okay the public hearing is now closed and we will go through uh planning commission uh discussion so what anybody like to lead off i can go if anyone wants to mr varrican thank you mr chair my biggest thing is is is no matter what happens if it's an easement if it's a road if it's two driveways my biggest thing that i'd really like to make sure were to happen is the property to the west it would be nice if we would not lose that windbreak of trees that full windrow from the north to south from larson road all the way up to the back of the property would be great um i was in there i was on the cul-de-sac this afternoon about six o'clock and a beautiful piece of property wide open two two big ten acre parcels um in in the in the in the grand scheme of the country and stuff two different homes on that property does make a lot of sense um for the present owners and such it sounds like everything was planned out very very well and it's nice to see if it can come to fruition with our recommendations tonight so again that windrow on the very western side of the property would be nice if that could be left alone to whoever buys that property to the west would be great that's all i have okay and you're talking about lot three yep the lot three i think the folks were on it would be nice if that windrow would be left alone um then i see no reason i think most of it is on the property two to the west but it'd be nice if if just that windrow would be left alone any any trees that are on that property line just be left alone okay is that uh is that it okay uh commissioner wu your questions comments discussion um i don't really have i think the questions i had were probably addressed by the speakers during the public hearing i had a little question about some of the comments that i had read um the unfortunate that there was um some differences in understanding about the existing right-of-way and the dedication of the land however i fully understand staff's discussion about safety and for emergency vehicles to access the proposed homes that are going to go in and so at the expense of adding more paved surface to this country area i think that um having a private drive is is what's required here i don't have any other further comments thanks okay um jim i i've got i got something in my head if i don't speak it now i might forget it so if you don't mind i'm i'm going to go ahead i had asked natalie today to go back i know that kendra mentioned it earlier the uh strailer preserve and i do remember that was instrumental in our formation or our are authoring up a a uh amendment to our our private roads um i drove that private road today went down to the cul-de-sac and everything looks fine uh natalie sent me the um she sent me the um the city council um approval of that subdivision um the resolution and kendra when you look at that lot on the north side i'm questioning when i looked at the resolution i did not see i mean it looks like that north lot has a 60-foot frontage but there was no variance that was required for that particular lot at least it was not in the in the information that natalie had sent to me can you explain to me why because the other lots certainly meet the truth but i wasn't in that conversation so i don't have the information you and natalie have and i don't recall off the top of my head but i i would be surprised uh because that was very much a part of the conversation to be fair what i sent him was the final flat so would that have been handled in the preliminary okay so that i maybe i didn't send you all the information chair i apologize and i apologize kendra oh i just i don't recall the specifics i could certainly get back to you on that i just it was a 2016 project and my memory is good but not that good okay well here here's kind of where i'm coming from so we we required or at their option maybe but they built a a fairly significantly long private drive um and not only do they have a nice yellow sign that says private drive but they also built a monument a brick monument with a nice a beautiful um uh laser metal sign it gives the addresses as required um it's got wildlife and you know and uh it gives um you know it says trailer preserve uh not that that was required but um we must have given a variance for them to build that northern lot with only a 60-foot frontage so to be consistent and fair um i think it would be i think it would be only fair in this situation to maybe uh extend that same that same benefit uh to lot like lot two um which certainly has a lot more frontage than than what happened over in strailer um and i believe that that would that would be allowed under option b uh is that correct kendra but let me be clear i am all for requiring the uh the private drive um putting three individual driveways at the end of that cul-de-sac is is i think uh i think that's a mistake um i um i'm for doing the uh the uh 60 foot wide or however wide it has to be down the center of that easement um and so i would have no problem and not require them to go another 70 feet but to to the staff's report they're absolutely right there's no reason whatsoever that they couldn't do that it would not be difficult um but uh um i i just don't think if we granted it you know 150 yards over to the to the east um i don't know why we wouldn't do that here um now here's the thing uh kendra in the in the um in the resolution um option a if we go to four b so this would be page two so the plants must comply with okay uh the 200 foot minimum lot you know that's a but here's b the applicant shall provide a draw a private drive access to lot two and lot three but there's been discussion both from the um from the engineer and i think in your report that said that all three driveways should be tied into that that easement so wouldn't 4b require or should it not say and 23 105 larson road um yes on option a it probably should say the same as a number six on option b and modify that related to the shared uh driveway the private driveway so one of the differences between a and b is the requirement for a private driveway as opposed to a single shared driveway um so yes you're correct that should have been modified once i got the city engineers memo which says the erlag lot and lots two and three should all be part of that shared private drive okay now um here's here's something i i would like you know commissioners to to think about so um with a private drive comes the hoa requirement and that that then involves everybody on that road to share in the maintenance um and the plowing and everything else now i will say that the people um on the that own the that own the land in which the easement is what is their last name again i'm sorry i don't er ehrlich or ehrlich i'm probably pronouncing yeah the the erlicks here um are going to have two things happen if if we recommend to the city council to require a private drive one they're going to have to realign their driveway to to connect then to that private drive now that's going to involve a little bit of cost i don't know how much but who is going to be responsible for that because this is something that isn't of their own doing this is something now that the city is going to require so that the other development could take place so i'd be interested in knowing who's going to be responsible for the cost of realigning their driveway to connect to the new private drive second of all um because they're almost right next to the road would it maybe be more fair in this in this situation could they be excluded from the hoa um because why you know then they wouldn't have to share in the cost of grading and snow plowing and everything else a road that goes you know uh well beyond their you know their their property kendra i mean what so basically somebody pays to realign their driveway and then they're excluded from the hoa requirement i think there are some options that the franzens can explore with the erlex between now and and council and between council and uh final plat depending what the council ultimately decides there are a a lot of ways to set up the shared or the private driveway and um i think they're um the city engineer um recommends that the driveways all come off a single curb cut at the end of the cul-de-sac for at least 80 feet that they're together and then can split off and so the developer can certainly come up with a program in how those costs are shared that's equitable as you know the lots 3 and the erlax property don't have as much of that private drive to use on a daily basis so they can certainly come up with different options and ultimately i think greg has expressed some concerns and i haven't talked to greg or the erlex but if they could not reach agreement with the ehrlichs about how to make that happen the council could certainly modify that with the final plot yeah well i i know i saw the 80 feet and you know um i paced it off and and you're not talking about just recreating maybe realigning a a just a different way to take that right hand turn you're talking to go 80 feet out you're talking a complete realignment i mean it's going to go out and then if they keep their existing drive it's going to have to cut back this way and then go back so that certainly will be much more cost uh to to them to do that and you know if that's something that we could say well you know we're willing to you know suggest to the city council maybe the city council will say no we're going to require you to do the the drive for all three entrances the private drive this will take off but we're going to give them we're going to give them leeway from not having to participate or not have to do that until 80 feet you know so that's kind of where i would go with that um kendra um okay so on that same uh page item c the applicant must comply with private drive standards now i i pulled that up so section 945 um subdivision 20 and it talks under design standards 2a a private drive shall not exceed 2640 feet i remember that conversation any such private drive with a terminus of 1320 feet or more from the nearest intersection will be required to provide a cul-de-sac at the closed end according to city engineering standards so in this in the staff report and the resolutions i see where uh well actually it doesn't say in the resolution so in the resolution it just says it has to comply but if i read 2a i would argue that that that this easement would not require a turnaround cul-de-sac at the end because it is shorter than 1320 feet now i didn't measure off what happened over there in strayler preserve but that would make sense that if that's you know 1300 feet that they would have to be required to do that but the way this raids i don't see where it's a requirement in addition if you look at the engineers report when you get to the section of driveways there's only two items the three driveways should be combined into a shared entrance on the larson road and centered within the roadway easement and then there's something about drainage but it doesn't say that it requires that he's not requiring a turnaround so i think whatever it is we're going to do we should probably maybe clarify whether or not the commission recommends to the city council or you know what i would say is i would keep it the way it is and i'll work with public safety and engineering before the council meeting a public safety has always required a turnaround at the end of anything longer than 150 feet long and i believe that's in the fire code okay so maybe what we have to do in the future is we have to redo that particular item and say if you have a private drive over 150 feet it is required to have the turn around because because you can understand that if we require you know this 60 foot easement to go another 70 feet but wouldn't you have to i mean would you be able to do that turn around within 60 feet or would it have to be somewhat enlarged at the end to accommodate a turnaround so if you recall uh nate kiranimi's house and care anemia edition uh are two examples that dealt with it differently than strailer preserved next door strailer preserve next door has a cul-de-sac kerine's home has a hammerhead the i believe kiranimi edition also has a hammerhead i can't remember off the top of my head so there's a lot of ways to meet that emergency vehicle turnaround and i think you're right the the 2a should probably be looked at i think it's looking at something trying to accomplish something different there but i think we can certainly leave the condition as it is and work with public safety before the council meeting i think what i hear you though wanting to do is kind of a combination of i from you mr square anyway a combination of a and b um denying the variance um requested for frontage on a private drive and requiring a private drive but approving the variance for the lot width so it'd be a hybrid of the two it sounded like you were going towards exactly yeah exactly that would be an option require that they put in the private drive the full 60 feet or you know the 60 feet all the way to the property line they have it staked out there i walked out there so you're required to go out there but you give them the variance for the front edge for lot two um and because we're going to require that they that they build that and then and then require that the lot that they drive the existing drive be tied into that um but i i'm you know i guess if i was in their shoes i'd be a little sensitive about what the cost is going to be to me for something that you know i i maybe shouldn't have been part of and i'd like to see if there's a way that they can be relieved of the hoa requirement to pay for a road that they really they're really not going to benefit from it just doesn't make logical sense to me that they that they pay for that um but that that's kind of where i'm going exactly kendra is is a hybrid uh for both of those um and again um the the um the inclusion of you know putting uh the 23 105 larson road in um i think you pointed out it it may have been omitted in option a but it's in somehow included in option b um you know that would be great so maybe you can help us out but at this point um i'll leave it to uh i think mr schulack i think you're up next so uh please um you have the floor i learned from others uh going last and uh so i'm i'm leaning uh towards you mr chair and your idea i i think uh any time that there's an issue like this there's a potential for conflict and i just like to see a peaceful resolution for everyone involved and and no hard feelings going forward so thank you sir okay all right mr varenkamp um do you have any follow-up questions or discussion points no i think uh you and kevin durant hammered it out really nice um just to clarify we are talking some hybrid type deal where larson road is still a cul-de-sac and then there would be a private drive off of that cul-de-sac essentially with three inlets to it from the three different properties exactly right so the the private drive would be kind of like a collector and there would be there'd be three yeah three properties that that went on to it and left uh on to franz and or on to um it's not extending larson as a major or not a major road but a gravel road further into the property it's a cul-de-sac with a private drive with three access points to it from the from the east you'll say it that way yeah but but again a technicality is that the um the engineer is suggesting that none of those driveways can take off of that private drive until 80 feet and so when you when you sit there at that property line and you pace out 80 feet it's a long ways that driveway to the south now it now it has to go farther east yeah you know and so that's going to be a whole new road bed i mean it's kind of built up a little bit but it's going to have to be totally realigned i think initially i think our engineers and staff can come up with the solution yeah i mean it's just you just don't require it for them the other the other places you know the other two people um you know i could see maybe requiring it for lot three um because they're kind of close too it matter of fact they'd be even closer according to this diagram then you know then uh then the existing driveway so that would have to go out and you know kind of come in a little bit more north and south if you will but that's again semantic this ain't what they're proposing but then certainly lot two will be far more than the 80 feet out so um you'd have to you know you'd have to look at that i i can see requiring it for lot three maybe um unless they seek a variance because of where they're going to put their house but as far as the property on the south i think i think they should deserve a variance from the 80-foot requirement i agree okay that's all you got yep okay great thank you um okay uh commissioner wu where'd she go yeah i i don't have any more questions um you didn't have any more no i didn't did i speak out of turn no no no i i didn't quite hear your answer so uh we're just going round two so you have no further comments or questions i i don't think so no thank you though okay uh commissioner you've been here thank you all right um okay has everybody had a chance to read uh the finer prints of the two resolutions does anybody does anybody have a preference to option a or option b mr chair i do think it's a hybrid and so the question probably is do you support um the requirement for a private drive and i think i'm hearing you uh yes so you would deny that and then you do you support the variance for the lot with and i think i hear you saying yes so it probably would be a hybrid of option a number two would change and number four would be modified more in line with number six out of option b and i could clean those up in the language before the council meeting if that in fact is the recommend the motion is to approve the lot width variance deny the private drive variance and modify number four and option a to align with option six option b number six okay um and and that would then it it would expressly uh require then that they build a a hammerhead or a cul-de-sac at the end of the variance or at the at the end of the private drive yes and i will confirm that with public safety in advance of the council meeting okay and as far now as part of the the resolutions of course they have to submit the hoa you know papers and and whatnot so whether or not there's relief or exclusion of the existing drive from that that is not something we have to put into the resolution at this point do we i think the applicant and um there were at least three council members on have heard that and i suspect that um i will be hearing from the applicant about options to move this forward between very shortly okay so just so that we're clear about the support then from the recommendation from the uh planning commission commissioners do you do you do you support that exclusion for the existing lot or do you do you not have a a preference i mean i don't want my opinion to be the one that goes to the city council for their consideration i think if if we're all supportive of it it can just be the planning commission would support relief for the existing drive for the 80-foot distance and for being included in the hoa to share in the cost of the maintenance of that drive which was not required for them to build their house since they've already been there for a long time mr chair yes sir i'll make the uh motion to adopt the hybrid resolution that kendra has with all of the appropriate comments we've talked does that do it for us i i think so i mean i mean kendra sorry okay i'll second that motion sir all right very good thank you um so to be clear then we are going to approve option a option a with a modified number two to approve the lot with variance but deny the frontage variance and modify number four and replace it with number six from a version of number six from option b okay but under so modified so what we're saying then is that lot 2 would have to comply with the 200 foot width no you're number number two and option a denies both variances and i think you want to approve the lot with variance for a lot too oh yeah i'm sorry okay you're right so i'll take part of number two from b and part of number two from a and and uh fix it up and that's okay that's the motion i gave dean so yeah yep well no and and okay yep all right so we have a uh a motion uh to approve um uh from uh commissioner varenkamp seconded by wu uh we'll take the uh we'll take the roll vote uh uh chair jacobs i uh chair shulock hi um chair uh varenkamp aye and chair or commissioner wu hi okay uh it passes uh four nothing so thank you once again everybody um and to uh those that joined us um uh if you have any follow-up questions or comments um you know our professional staff and um whatnot i would reach out to them if you need any clarification okay i'm sorry i got something in my throat i'm gonna have to mute myself here thank you kendra for uh crafting that ahead of time and natalie make sure you check our work [Laughter] is that a coors light in your handy no uh real quick has anybody been watching the the shelving trial so there's an attorney that gives commentary during their breaks and he was on the air they were questioning them and he's doing the same thing he's got zoom on the credenza right behind him he's got a bottle of jack daniels right and i'm laughing at this i'm going wow he's yeah he's got a full big bottle of jack daniels that's opened on the back and yeah so then the judge came back real quick so they went back to the courtroom and then they went back to him well somebody got on the phone and said hey you need to get the jack daniels out from behind you so it was gone well in the last two days he's no longer given commentary [Laughter] at least he hasn't for the last two days but uh i thought it was oh that's too bad you know that that happened to him and and so i suppose that might happen in zoom meetings is that maybe sometimes people see things that they didn't want to be seen okay um let's move on to um uh we are on six c uh right now for a uh public hearing on the site plan condition use permit variants for a new napa building on the property located 19905 75th avenue um i you know and i apologize i should have maybe just offered does does anybody want a quick break i mean we've been at it for three hours and 10 minutes now does anybody need uh yeah all right so should we um come back and say five or ten minutes is that long enough everybody five minutes okay so we'll uh we'll come back into order at uh at 10 15 so thanks everybody everybody back all right kendra please proceed all right thank you mr chair this is an application on behalf of napa for a conditional use permit site plan and variance for a new retail building at 199.05 75th avenue north that's the old corcoran liquor store the cup the conditional use permit is for automobile retail tires batteries etc no body worker repair that's a conditional use in the c1 district the property is guided c commercial and zone c1 which is neighborhood commercial the building includes uh majority of the building for the new napa space which the retail and warehouse components and then two retail bays on the north end of the building as i said this is the existing corcoran liquor store site county road 116 on the east 75th avenue on the south west side tire on the west and heidi's grow house on the north the property is the commercial property so this site and west side tire are c1 and then the rest of the businesses on 75th avenue are industrial guiding this is the current site plan so as noted in the staff report the original application from the applicant was a 10 foot setback from county road 116 which really with the curb ended up being a 9 foot parking setback with landscaping between 0 and 10 feet from the lot line and we have a 10 foot drainage utility easement adjacent to county road 16. so i reached out to the applicant and said you know variances on this site may be warranted but we really need to get everything out of the 10 foot drainage and utility easement and this was last week so they weren't able to fully update the plan set but they have agreed to this plan which does show a 10 foot utility easement remaining free of improvement so there's no landscaping or parking any longer in this 10 foot easement they accomplish that by shrinking the building depth six feet from 80 feet to 74 feet and that allowed everything to shift six feet north because they didn't have time to revise everything you'll note there's a couple notes in the pla in the planning report where we think they comply and we need some revisions but i'm very pleased that napa was able to work with us a 74 foot building bay is pretty deep for a retail bay retail bays tend to be between 60 and 80 feet deep we tend to see more on the 60 foot depth so i was glad they were able to modify that 80 foot bay down to 74 feet so the plan continues to have two curb cuts on 75th which it has today a much larger building than is there today a stormwater management pond on the north side of the site and a loop road this is a two-way entrance on the south and an exit only on the north and we'll talk more about that all of the existing trees on site will be removed but new landscaping will be provided with the project the site is in our southeast corcoran district it is however outside of the town center and architecture there is no specific material standards for architecture outside of the town center for non-residential buildings we still want to see some of that agrarian prairie style architecture incorporated into residential homes in the southeast district where possible but no standards beyond the zoning ordinance standards for a commercial so this building is a 27 foot tall building it's a precast concrete with two colors of tan a light tan and a dark tan that were in your packet it looks as though there is an accent band here there wasn't any information provided about this color band we've asked for that a little bit more information about that but we've got three colors proposed on the building the setback or excuse me the mechanical equipment is not shown i'm not sure if it will be rooftop equipment or ground equipment regardless the code does require that to be screened so the architectural plans will need to be updated to provide a little bit more information there is a trash enclosure in the northwest corner of the site detached from the building proposed with materials to match the building the original plans had as i mentioned a larger building and that required 44 parking stalls they've reduced the building and still are showing 41 parking stalls which i believe is going to meet the code requirements we need to get the breakdown of how the reduced space will get assigned to retail versus warehouse to confirm that but i think the parking is adequate for the proposed building we do want to see the snow storage areas we don't want snow storage to just be pushed into that storm water treatment pond there are some implications for that so we want to make sure we've got a snow storage area on the plants the loading dock is on the west side of the building and how that would work is trucks would come in that east entrance drive around the building and then back into that dock and exit out of the west entrance i understand from the applicant that they do get not only box truck deliveries which are a mid-sized truck but semi-truck truck deliveries uh on a regular basis and that's the need for the loading dock the architectural plans show a potential through on the north side of the building for a future tenant drive-throughs are a conditional use permit in the c1 district and we really need to have information about the business in order to review the details of the conditional use permit for that business so we are not granting a cup for that drive through at this time but simply noting that a future cup will be will be needed in the future our code requires six stacking spaces the architectural plans do show that although those stacking spaces back into the parking stalls and so it'll be important to determine what that user is and identify some of the peak parking times to try to make sure we don't have parking and drive through stacking in conflict but that's a issue for the future it leaves the option open for the owners of the building signage is shown on the architectural plans the code allows signage only on the elevation where the primary entrance is only on one elevation and so in this case that's only on the east elevation but we do allow up to 10 percent of the wall area so in this case 540 square feet of signage on that east elevation the plans are well below that as currently shown none of the signage on the other elevations is permitted however the freestanding sign is 64 square feet and 16 feet tall that complies with our ordinance requirements however our ordinance does have specific standards for the base of such a sign that it either be a monument or a pile on sign base that is wider than what's shown so we've included compliance with those sign standards in the draft resolution i just noted that again if a drive-thru were approved menu boards are allowed and we'd need to look though where those could fit on the site again that'd be evaluated as a future application landscaping complies with the ordnance standards for the commercial building and additionally because the building itself does not comply with the 100-foot setback from county road 116 they are rather than asking for a variance for the building adding additional landscaping as allowed by section 1060 of our ordinance that allows them to reduce the building setback to 60 feet by adding that landscaping it would also allow them to reduce the parking setback from 100 feet to 25 feet that would require however another reduction to the building depth the parking right now is at 16 feet so the building would need to be reduced another nine feet from the proposed 74 foot depth so that's why they're still asking for our parking setback periods access this orientation again here's 75th and 116. there are two accesses and the plans from the applicant show changes to those access locations and width and engineering has reviewed this and noted that these driveway curb cuts have to comply with our engineering detail standards which limits the driveway curb cut to 30 feet and these red lines sort of show that exhibit we are in fact recommending that this western curb cut be a one-way only and therefore be limited to 20 feet wide and it could flare out at the street though to accommodate turning radiuses for trucks the applicant was proposing sort of a strange angled access here in an effort to keep i believe in an effort to keep this access away from 116. and that's laudable but it's a difficult turning movement if i'm coming south on 116 coming in i almost make a u-turn to get into the parking lot and so engineering is actually recommending that they move that driveway closer to 116 which is an unusual recommendation from engineering which suggests how concerned they are about that strange angle so they are recommending that that driveway shift that would be a full access in and out of the site and the access on the west would be exit only so a vehicle a semi would be required to come from the west meaning come on 75th enter here loop around the building and then back up to the loading dock no semis will be allowed to enter from the east and come into the site and that is because the the distance between 116 and this is too narrow for a semi to be able to make that turning movement and if they try they would block traffic on 116. and so we want to be very careful about that so the resolution does include restrictions on those access points the uh county has reviewed this and their comments are both summarized in the staff report and attached they're very concerned about this plan the county plans are for a 60-foot half right-of-way there's a 40-foot half right away for 116 now and they would like 20 more feet for those of you who were involved in the southeast district design guidelines you'll remember that we had conversations with hennepin county during that process saying look we have an existing downtown on the west side of 116. if and when you widen 116 you need to acquire additional right-of-way on the east side where we don't have development so that we can center the road in there and please consider uh narrowing that road up and taking perhaps less right-of-way well they didn't agree to less right-of-way but our southeast district guidelines do include the language that says we'll look to shift 116 to the east in order to protect the existing businesses the county notes however that if um if we're required if they're required to acquire property as part of a county road expansion their current policy they say is to require a 50 50 cost split between the city and the county and staff continues to remind them that they paid for our southeast district design guidelines to be prepared so they're very well aware that we want to shift county road 116. so it's something to be aware of uh we feel like we've shifted this um you know an additional six feet from the original proposal but if the county were to take 20 feet as they proposed that would take four feet out of this existing row of parking stalls which essentially takes that existing royal parking cells on the east side of the lot so i want to make you aware of that but we still feel like that's a long-term issue and that the county's plans could be readjusted to a acquire more right-of-way on the east side of 116 and continue to allow the existing businesses to remain albeit perhaps with very minimal setbacks from that future county right-of-way um let's see the municipal utilities were provided as part of the downtown improvement so those are available to the site and as i said the storm water pond is on the north end of the site the applicant will need to make some modifications to to address the city engineer comments and will need to receive watershed approval of that plan so we do um want to make sure that the stormwater pond accommodates all of the treatment some small amendments there there is a [Music] a little bit of an impact on the on the 10 foot drainage utility easement in this north um east corner of the site um but all in all again this parking or this entrance would be shifted south uh the parking that is here some of that may have to shift um but in general this is the site plan with few changes staff finds that the conditional use permit standards outlined in the ordinance have been met for the auto retail use again we are deferring the conditional use permit for the drive through until a tenant is identified and then the applicant needs to submit a conditional use permit for the drive through business the auto retail is consistent with the types of uses that are anticipated in this c1 district the parking setback variants is challenging variances have a high threshold the applicant does need to show that the variance standards have been met all five variant standards must be met and the burden of proof is on the applicant again i appreciate their willingness to adjust their plan from a 10 to a 16 foot parking setback where 25 feet would be required with flexibility so i do note that if it was reduced another nine feet the building uh no variance would be required at all however in reviewing the variance staff does find um that with a reasonably sized building and a 15 000 square foot building in a commercial district on a one and a half acre lot is not um outsized it is a reasonable size building um that uh the size of the site with the two frontages does limit the developable area on the site um however the planning commission could find that a smaller building could be constructed that there is no hardship or practical difficulty because a 65-foot deep building could be accommodated on the site we do think that there are unique conditions on this corner lot adjacent to a county road which has significant right-of-way needs is an impact for the support in support of the variants if that was a side side lot line instead of a front lot line next to county road 116 a 10 foot setback would be required granting the variance will not alter the essential character of the locality if you look at the lots to the north of this they're all at zero setbacks so the parking setback for this will be significantly further from county road 116 than anything north of this between this site and county road 10. and uh it is consistent with the commercial uses anticipated in the building we do uh recommend that uh condition if the variance is approved that all plans be updated to reflect this new smaller building with a 16 foot setback so uh as summarized there but listed in the staff report we do find that this the standards for a site plan conditional use permit variants in the c1 district have been met and we do recommend approval of the variants with the conditions outlined in the staff report however we did not prepare a resolution for denial however we did provide potential findings of fact and staff report if the planning commission finds that the variance standards have not been met they should recommend denial of the variance you could recommend denial of the variance and approval of the site plan and conditional use permit and what that would mean is that the applicant would need to shrink that building an additional nine feet in depth which would pull the parking uh nine feet west and comply with setback requirements so with that mr chair i do recommend that you open the public hearing pick public comments and then move to recommend approval of the request okay great thank you kendra much appreciated as always um good job and i um yeah i certainly understand that the um the limitation i mean all the information that we had before wasn't of much value this this this of course that was sent you know pretty much drove all of my my analysis or thinking of it um but uh i think you did a a great job under the circumstances so thank you all right at this point um we will open the public hearing and again please raise your hand and natalie will give us instructions on how you can get you can get on the mic thank you mr chair so if you'd like to participate in the public hearing if you're joining us by phone please press star nine now to raise your hand on your computer you'll be able to access the raise your hand function either by the reactions button along the bottom toolbar of your screen or some devices it'll be within the participants tab we do ask comments are kept at a five minute time limit and i will call on you by name or the last four digits of your phone number if i see a hand raised but at this time i do not yet see a hand raised mr chair really really mr chair i would note that chuck uh edwards is here from king horn construction representing the applicant and i think he's probably here for questions okay um well uh mr edwards if there's anything you'd like to say um in the public hearing portion uh please let us know otherwise um we appreciate you sticking around if uh you're willing to answer questions once we begin our our own discussion and deliberations so so chuck is now raising his hand and no one else is so i'll go ahead and ask that he'd be unmuted okay and please start everybody can you hear me yes please provide uh for the record your full name and address please yeah chuck edwards uh 3334 207th lane in east bethel and i'm with kinghorn construction um i personally don't have any questions i think kendra kind of really uh worked hard on this and went with us to kind of get uh to the point where we're at um [Music] i don't have any questions but i would be more than happy to stick around and answer questions okay all right we appreciate that mr edwards um okay natalie um anyone else no i don't see any other activity okay um i you know what if if there isn't any i'll take a motion to uh close the public hearing so move fair cam okay i have a second second that would okay uh roll call vote uh commissioner jacobs i commissioner shellac aye uh commissioner varenkamp aye commissioner wu hi okay the public hearing is now closed thank you all right we'll go on to the planning commission discussion and questions want to jump in the water first how about you mr sherlock you got it i'm here okay um i'm referring to the the map drawing c3 first of all i will say that i think this is just a really good well thought out drawing and plan for moving the business from the corner there so on c3 the site and utility plan um one one of my comments was already addressed i believe and that is the movement the moving of the entrance and exit driveway on what would be the east side of the of the lot um my concern was that it appears that that the main entrance to that uh to the napa store would be really really close to that driveway and so you know maybe somebody coming out straight out the door quickly or a child or something would be just about right on the driveway so if if the driveway is moved then that's no longer a concern that i would have um secondly and and this is down the road a little bit i guess until they find a couple of stores to go in but um the the drive-through lane you know for the last year now so many more restaurants and coffee shops have been doing drive-through business and it's it's in some cases it's all of their business because they had no indoor seating um so if it's say a caribou or a subway um now some strip centers that i've seen that do have a caribou or a doughnut place or something um to alleviate some of the backlog of traffic they have the the actual payment and pickup windows on the on the far side of the building so that helps to alleviate some of the the bumper-to-bumper stuff my concern with the drive-through lane there is that if there is a backup and you know you look at some like this chicken place up in uh up in maple grove um you know there's 20 cars around the entire place um but you know if you only have maybe four or five cars here unfortunately the back up would be blocking the two uh handicapped stalls or assisted stalls and you know i i don't know if you'd hear horns beeping or or people not wanting to back up or whatever not being able to back up but that's something that may have to be rethought with uh with even assuming that the window for that one business would be about midway to that that would be the north side of the building uh it wouldn't take many cars to to block uh some of the cars from the parking lot there my third issue was as as a semi truck rolls in from the south and goes north and then west around the building if you notice the the loading dock area it's a bump out they show a couple of doors there on the north and the west sides so i'm guessing that that isn't where the the truck would back up to that the truck would go past the bump out of the house or the building and then it would back up to where the number 26 is on that map and i'm just wondering if i have that correct you do if if you look at sheet a2 i think you can see it a little more clearly but you're absolutely right it would drive uh west of the bump out and then back up into the south side of the bunko okay yeah because i was making a great point about that drive-through window the commission could certainly um you know make a condition that that be um shifted to the west side of the building or further on the west side of the north wall to maximize that stacking space right um thank you and then so then um yeah because i was thinking if if if the main garage door loading duct door we're near the the walk through doors on the north and west sides then that semi is going to have a very difficult time especially on that corner trying to back up but it makes a lot more sense than that it would go it would back up near the 26 the number and then there are a couple of parking spaces one two three four five and i'm guessing those would be for employees that is my understanding correct okay and so i i don't know to scale how long a um a semi truck and trailer would be but i'm i'm sure that they've taken that into i hope they've taken that into account uh that they would back up they would need a little bit of room to maneuver that back up there commissioner shulock uh mr chair the applicant does have his hand raised so i don't know if he really wants to address some of these points that you're bringing up if you'd like to have a chance to speak well you know what let's we'll get back to them okay not a problem okay mr schulich commissioner sholek is is talking so i i don't want to interrupt him okay and then the other thing is um for those minnesota snowstorms that we get um that loading dock has to be cleared of snow um and then uh i've seen them at their current location with um with forklift trucks and things like that needing to maneuver pallets of of of product around so um do we have any idea where the the snow would be cleared from that west side of the building mr chair i mean kendra i think that's a question you know i'm sorry yeah go ahead kendra if you if you can answer that please yeah we we don't know that is a condition of approval that they identify snow storage areas um and where that would be i i also want to note there is a turning radius exhibit in the packet um it's right after sheet c8 so you can see a little bit better that that movement it is tight but but i think those trap tractor trailer drivers are pretty amazing okay oh wow okay okay well that's all i have thank you very much i yield okay um um and um natalie as far as the applicant um you know unless a commissioner has a question for them right away um you know we'll we'll certainly give him a chance to respond af after we're done um but uh uh jim did you have a question specifically for the the applicant or were you well i don't think he did but i i just would you like him to respond to he obviously wants to offer up some sort of response to what you said well and i don't know how much um uh the the question that the builder is going to build the building according to the specs that is allowed by corcoran and is requested by napa so i don't know if um if my question would be more towards the napa ownership or the builder but i'm sure that he'll respond in some way when it's when uh when everybody has spoken okay well let's let's give him a chance right now so that we don't lose this um it might be more time efficient natalie does mr edwards want to answer that question quickly um sure um i guess i i just wanted to clarify that you know the doors on the back of those spaces are obviously just for people to go take trash out and maybe some employee entrances to the potential future retail spaces and also yeah once you saw the turnaround drawing for the trucks you not know that that that doctor is on the south side of that bump boat right good good point but yeah i i think jim may have known that or maybe not i don't know okay jim is that did that answer your questions yes sir thank you okay very good um uh commissioner wu do you uh do you have any questions or comments for discussion yeah i'm just um johnning some notes right now um kendra will we get a revised turning exhibit um that shows the maneuvering of a of the semi with an engineer's recommended entry drive relocation because i'm looking at the i'm looking at that exhibit and combined with the tighter radii that engineering recommends which i think has come up on other applications actually whether an applicant has wanted to do a wider turn and our city standard is a shallower turn like it's a tighter radii so when they relocate that east entrance drive based on engineering's recommendations will we get another or would you get another turning exhibit absolutely we will require all of these sheets to be updated to reflect the changes in the staff report okay i'm wondering because they are doing the reduced setback and adding more landscaping along the setback from county road 116 will that additional landscaping reduce the visibility for someone um you know they've you've got a truck now or or a car coming in off 116 they're going to be turning fairly quickly uh right into the site and i'm just you know i want to see the landscaping but i'm just wondering you're so close to 116 is is that a concern at all it is i think we want to take a look at it what's what's on the corner is a sugar maple i think they've done a pretty good job of pulling the the landscape back behind the sign at the entry and it's it's one sugar maple and then some low shrubs right now but i absolutely think when we move that driveway we need to be careful that we're looking at the site visibility triangle and making sure those those [Music] deciduous types of trees are continuing to be located in the back of the site which is where they mostly are now is on the north side of the site but that's a great point and we will continue to evaluate that and um just subsequent to commissioner shulac's uh discussion about you know a backlog of of cars waiting at a future driving window i noticed that the location of the accessible parking spaces and the loading the loading lane the van loading lane on landscape plan l1 it's got got those located more central part way between the proposed entrances to the different tenant spaces and then i think on the utility plan it shows them closer further north so they would be further home a sec maybe not i thought it showed them further north such that they would be impacted no it doesn't work okay it is on c3 it is wrong it needs to be shifted oh okay yes it is okay alrighty um and then just commenting about the um appearance of the building um i did not review our design guidelines before this meeting so i may be speaking out of turn in which case please stop me but um when i look at the building i notice that it has a very you have two bookends to the building which is where your entrance points to the tenant spaces are and then you have a long expanse of fairly flat a monotonous facade it's single playing it's similar color tones and there's not a lot there's hardly any articulation in that expanse and when i compare it to the strip building that we did that we reviewed uh some years ago where the vet expanded that building area that building remember they upgraded that building they really did a good job articulating the different tenants and we have a lot of signage and it just provides some interest as you drive along 116. now i know this is a different type of building because it's not going to have that number of tenants but i just look at that long expanse and the colors that are similar and it just looks really flat to me but you know i take your word for it that it it meets the design guidelines but in that case i would say maybe we need to look at the design guidelines and ask for something more um that's my comment take it for however um i don't have anything else thanks dean okay thank you meredith uh commissioner varenkamp would you like to mike sure mr chair thank you very much um i like meredith's comments as far as the facade facing 116 and such um kendra you had mentioned that the signage is only going to be on the 116th side of the building is that correct that is correct and the signage is way below the standards for what is allowed for all three tenants if there are three tenants in here correct correct okay um i want to i want to help out a little bit i uh obviously spend an awful lot of time at napa love the place julie and ron do a great job um thank you chuck for working with them very very much um i want to try and help out and kendra let me know if i overstep my boundaries and i know chair jacobs will also the um all of the the trees and such a long 116 and such they are going to be low um they aren't going to be tall or will they be tall i just i do let me go let me let me say this we're changing up everything from the napa store currently all the way to the grow house there's nothing along there right now and then all of a sudden this property is going to have a whole bunch of required plantings along 116. is is that what we're looking for mr chair your thoughts i mean obviously we might want to burn to hide the headlights flashing on 116 but to add um some pretty significant they say how low scape and such are they going to stay low and i'm concerned about um people leaving 75th there and being able to see traffic coming from the north off of 116. that's what i'm worried about i um you know uh i well i you know i i really didn't think i mean obviously looking at the landscape plan i kind of thought well um this is good um i uh the the view though was certainly but i i would imagine that these trees are far enough back where it shouldn't impact your view on 116. i just you know here's my comment about you know what i mean there there's the report says that you know there's this issue of setback is something that we have all up and down the you know north of this granted it's true um but here's i think what makes this different and something to think about um this is basically a redevelopment everything to the north of this um even you know if you look at the uh the randall construction there was probably some variances and things i know that we did there and why did we do it because it's an existing building and they had to deal with some of those things um the gas station you know corcoran crossroads uh we probably gave some variants there why because that's an existing build they're not redoing i mean they're not building new it's a redevelopment now this currently yeah it has a building on it but once you tear that down this is a new development i agree i agree if we're not going to uphold our standards i mean i don't see the hardship when you've got a brand new lot you got a brand new canvas to paint something on unfortunately i think in this case and i don't understand why and i was gonna dwell into it with mr edwards but you i think the problem here is that there they're just suggesting building more than what the site can handle given its uniqueness yeah having a corner lot having two entrances and and things like that um but here's the other point um and we we've been told uh over the years that i've been on the planning commission uh from some notable individuals in our community that one of the things we always need to strive for is that we be consistent and that we and then we concern ourselves with the the precedence we set and and i don't think anything could be more glaring then what are we going to do with the lot right across on the other side of 75th avenue when they develop no i agree with all of those things are we going to all of a sudden give them all this setback relief and everything else because there's a hardship um i don't see that here i think if you you know i mean it would seem to me um most most auto you know i've been looking at other auto you know napa sites and and the the new one up here in maple grove the autozone and stuff you know typically these are standalone buildings and and they're not part of the i mean this is basically a strip mall you know with these other tenants well i'd say i think what they're trying to do and chuck can answer that maybe is they're trying to add something more another amenity to the the the city other than just moving napa but bringing in whatever i don't want to put anything in anybody's mind a sandwich shop a coffee shop whatever they're going to put there i think it's the start of something new and i agree with you to not let up on the standards when it's when it's a fresh slate so no i agree with that um a couple other things so we can get going um a concern of mine is we've got all these uh pine trees on the north side of this property between the grow house and this property kendra you had mentioned they are all going to be removed correct okay and then the understanding i think i understand but why do we need a storm water mitigation here when when all of the other properties out there are all draining into the ditch and and the city just got done cleaning up all of this drainage through out all this industrial parkway and such is that absolutely needed per our requirements of that mitigation pond i'm thinking more towards snow storage and those kind of things we say we can't push snow into there and such but uh it just seems that's a little constricted too um and again to dean's point do we need the two added uh a sandwich or a coffee shop whatever is happening at the north end are those needed is that what's constricting it is a building too big those kind of things do we need that storm water mitigation on this one point some odd acre parcel we do need the stormwater treatment pond it's a requirement of our water rules as well as the watershed rules anytime an acre of land is disturbed um you're subject to those um i i just just trying to help i'll start the change on on our kind of i'm gonna call a commercial roll from 74th all the way up to to uh pass like roads and such and i i think this looks nice um i think the colors scheme and such added to this being two different shades i think you were saying sandstone and another color close to that and such i think it's it's nice along 116. i hope the county understands that it sounds like we've been crystal clear kendra that's saying they're going to need to get the easement from the east side of 116 and stop asking for it on the west because of all of the existing buildings so i just some things i i'm thinking about i just i see a tremendous amount of trees and it's it's kind of hard for me to understand why we've got to remove all of those pine trees on the north side of this property um they're already grown they're already in unless it's it's messing up the ability to put in the storm water pond so um oh that's what it was the storm water pond is that then in this case is that the city's responsibility to maintainer is that the property owners to maintain it is the property owner's responsibility to manage maintain the bond same thing as before thank you kendra very much thanks mr chair no problem are you done yes okay great uh jim uh you went dean you went now i guess uh i'm last um okay uh just a couple of questions uh kendra um you know it okay so the applicant has requested approval of a psych plan can you actually tell me who who is the applicant yes the applicant is i believe um it's an llc let me tell you i'll pull it up here and uh the the contact for the applicant is uh um chalk at king horn but the applicant is an llc one second the um oh actually i'm sorry the applicant is king horn construction and the owner is julie ray i might pronounce it wrong but julie who owns napa so king horn is the applicant okay so the applicant is the same as the developer then the uh they're the the general contractor i believe chuck can clarify that maybe but yes the applicant is king horn construction and i believe they are building the building for um julie okay so napa is going to own the property but um it's the developer who's making the application yes julie uh it says julie is the owner it may be an llc that owns it but julie is the owner of the property today okay um okay and and this is a no-brainer question i guess but it was the first thing that came to my mind when i saw you know future retail tenant spaces uh so i was unclear whether or not that was going to be something that might be added later but it looks like it's going to be added right away correct that is correct okay i also have extreme reservations about a drive-through for all the reasons previously listed can the planning commission recommend to the city council to prohibit a drive-through tenant on this building due to the configuration size and congestion everything else yes okay so for those planning commission members that had that same concern would we all be in agreement to maybe suggest recommend to the council in whatever you know the resolution the final resolution to prohibit a drive-through business or drive-through window on the north side of this building i'd support that you would not support that okay all right we'll let you know and the reason for me and i don't know if i talked over meredith the reason for me is is the owner if the building is also the tenant i don't think they're gonna put something in place there that's gonna constrict their ability to do business and such um jim's comment about the the place up on maple grove and stuff i stay away from there because of the traffic and such um love the food but oh my goodness but i just i i think the building owner and the tenant being of the same they're not going to put something there that's going to correct them if i'm saying that right i'm pretty sure i know a lot of their semi traffic and deliveries and such um many of them are after hours and such so um and after hours i mean by that at seven o'clock or eight o'clock at night they do drop offs they do those things there's there's standard work that happens during the day a little bit smaller trucks and such but julie and ron have been in our community for a long time running this napa and such and they've been a little constricted in the corner parcel that they have a lot of people in the town use that uh use their driveway as a cut through instead of hitting the intersection such i just it it's nice to get that napa building staying downtown but getting in a different place and i hope the new owners of that napa store are able to change that up a little bit um to improve the safety on that corner but uh i i couldn't prohibit um the flexibility for for chuck king horn julie and ron um and uh kendra you said the last name right is ray um i just i don't think they're gonna put something in there that's gonna strict constrict any of their main business which is an apple store i would say mr chair for the record as they're showing it the drive-thru does not comply with our ordinance standards so and i understand that they have to get a variance and things like that and you know everything is a variance in in this situation but i just i i've been stuck in a parking lot because of traffic of drive-throughs and and giving that we're already talking about a lot of constraints with the site i just i just think hey listen you know anything else but whatever i it's no big deal i guess in the long run um here i have a question actually actually dean i just wanted to speak to what you proposed i actually would support it because i feel that the the the proximity that the to county road 116 while it's it's somewhat dictated by the site it's furthering exacerbated by the size of building they're proposing i mean they're reducing the setback from 116 because they're building a bigger building if they could comply with the 25-foot setback and that would actually improve the situation of the turning onto 116 from that east entrance so in some ways i do support what you're proposing what you state about prohibiting a drive through because some of the constrictions that are presented with this site are of their making some of it isn't but some of it is they could build a smaller building and it would actually improve that situation okay seeking a variance not to do that right i couldn't agree with you more meredith um thank you mr edwards can you tell me what now what do you know what the average size of a napa retail store is that i don't know um i'm gonna say i think we're on that 10 uh 10 to 11 000 square foot just shooting from the hip and i think uh ron and julie's goal for this for their their space is about 12 000 is ideally what they want yeah so um see if you can you would agree with this and so i according to i i mean i know the building was the width of it or the depth of it was decreased by six feet but so if i take the 74 feet and in the original plan it was 150 that would bring it in at about 11 100 square feet right i have to do the math on it no i already did it okay okay so um and and so right now the building is at 15 200 feet correct now hypothetically um give me your best opinion on this so if if the if the development here proposal were to um eliminate the two the two um tenant spaces i mean i i would assume that most most uh auto parts stores in this i won't even gonna ask the question if the two retail spaces were were eliminated would it be possible then to put the loading dock on the north side and shift some of the parking i mean you you wouldn't have to have as much parking but you'd be able to move some of that parking maybe to the backside or the west side but would it be possible to put the loading dock say in the north east corner of the building do you think that semi truck would be able to to pull up uh along the north side yeah and if you don't know you don't know i just you know i i don't and so you're saying if we eliminate the lease spaces what's that are you saying if we would eliminate the lease spaces the tenant spaces right yeah i think that's more of a question for civil or okay all right okay um um you know as i went through um i guess my my general consensus is you know there's comments about the building size and whatnot um on page 8 of the staff report you know when we talk about the parking setback variants um uh the last sentence you know however the smaller a smaller building could be constructed which would require less parking it could comply um uh industry standards suggest 50 60 foot deep et cetera again i keep coming back to the same thing and i love napa i nothing would please me more to see them in a new store in a better location um i you know i i just think that in this particular situation they're biting off more store than maybe what they they only need and and at the you know just to have a couple of retail spots we'd all love to see more retail but i think that the the overriding questions that that concern me as a planning commission member here is whether or not we're going to with undeveloped sites if we're going to start enforcing some of our setbacks to the best extent that we can and to be consistent with things that we know that are going to come forward development and most namely that that site right across the street whatever it is we do here i you know i wouldn't be surprised if the site across the street doesn't try to do the same thing so that's that's all i have so with that i was the last person um i think uh mr schulack didn't we go with you first yes sir i have no other questions or comments okay how about you mr varenkamp nothing thanks okay um mr wu no i have no comments thank you okay um all right so we have uh we have a a resolution a resolution for approval of a site plan conditional use permit and variance for the property located at 19905 75th avenue north does anybody have any suggestions or comments for changes to the ordinance or the resolution as it is written no okay uh with that then uh would somebody like to put forth a motion to uh approve the uh the conditional yeast permit make the motion to approve this site plan as uh noted in our report here quick to recommend approval please excuse me okay do i have a second all right i'll make a second to take a vote all right um we'll do a roll call vote uh chair jacobs i vote nay uh commissioner sholak nate commissioner varenkamp yay please and commissioner wu okay so um kendra so there's three nays in one yay um is there anything that we need to provide as part of that since we did not approve the the resolution yes so the the motion failed on the three to one vote um and so you would typically then uh make a motion for the one of the folks who voted no would make a different motion uh and take action on that you mean make so what talk about how what we would recommend so um you voted nay and there was a reason um and so if you could modify this resolution um and vote yes for it what would you do to this resolution and so that's what i would say for example i think i heard you say um you would not recommend approval of the variance so you would modify uh six to deny the variance and require the 25 foot front yard setback has allowed with the flexibility in section 1060 and then you could crib some of my notes or make your own and then if there were other changes that made you vote no you could do that so you would make a motion to approve the resolution to approve the site plan conditional use permit and deny the very setback variance modifying condition six to say blah blah blah for example i don't know that that's you okay well you know without getting into the weeds about you know i mean i i think the staffs you know uh and the engineers comments about the drives and stuff are fine i you know i'm not gonna go either way i i guess if if if i had to say you know why i did yeah i think we should keep the the setback standards um because i think uh the only way they could meet that then would be to make it downsize the building and i guess that's what i have an issue with here is that i think that these are the requests of the variants is only because they're they're asking to build a bigger building and if they if they reduce the size of the building i think most of these variances could be handled as was i think noted in your staff report several times that's the way i feel about it so so you should or so one of the other commissioners that could talk about why they voted no and then someone should make a resolution that you could approve that you could get a majority to approve if okay does anybody else have a reason or a change that they could put in that would that they could vote for as as a change to the resolution if i may um i agree with you mr chair um i i don't think that there's there's any issue of hardship here um i i love them as neighbors and as as being part of the business of corcoran um but i think that like you said we're setting a dangerous precedent if if we uh don't adhere to the the words that are on the books already and um and i don't want to see them i want to see this succeed and i know that i'm guessing that the two retail other retail places would be for revenue for uh rental or something um but i just um i think we're setting a dangerous standard if um if we if we don't hold our own citizens to um i mean the fact is is that it could be a smaller building i think yeah well and you know again i uh you can go look at what others as long as napa has done all over the twin cities i i don't think this is normally part of their their mo but if these are you know if these are you know individuals own these buildings outside of napa corporate you know i yeah okay you want to put on a couple of extra income producing things but um that's that's a business issue and we're not here to discuss business issues so i'm going to leave that one alone but i think that reducing the building size will take care of the the variance and i want to be i want to be consistent and and fair so all right meredith um well how about you do you have uh anything that you want to bring forth on um on a change i i agree with i'm sorry i i agree with both of what you've said i feel that a reduction in the building size and keeping the 25-foot setback would also assist in alleviating the location of that east drive in proximity to county road 116 not by a lot but it's still going to help some and i think that uh i just have some real concerns with their proximity of that east entrance to 116 so i think that going to the 25 feet they don't have to do extra landscaping which i have a concern about the sight lines um they don't need a larger building and and importantly they haven't proved a hardship for the variants which is the basis of it so i'm in agreement okay all right mr varenkamp how about yourself i'm i'm just keeping an open mind and such i i like you guys mindset as far as uh if we do something here we do something across the street um there is no hardship or anything i would i would go along i i just i want to assist our local uh business people um i know this this business does an awful lot for our uh our commerce in town here and i want to help them get to where they want to go um i know there was talk of trying to get another parcel um that wouldn't be quite as small that they'd be able to do some of these things um over the past few years but uh it wasn't um it wasn't in our plan then i know council is looking at re-looking at our uh our corridor along 116 and such i'm i'm i've spent a lot of time with julian and ron understanding what they want and such and uh this was a second um choice of theirs was purchase this property and make it happen um to the comments about adding a couple more retail places or whatever they're they're trying to help the community i'm sure it's revenue but they're they're trying to get a a coffee shop or a sandwich shop something going on on our downtown um and uh they're just trying to be good stewards good owners of a business here in town and uh i want to support them any way i can um i know they're they're almost a regional spot as far as napa goes i know uh a lot of pickups from many other napa stores the way nappa works and such um they shuttle parts off from the distribution center to other stores they rely on other stores for some of their parts and stuff there'd be a quicker response to our our commerce um at west side tire at lithgow at phil's automotive at pro-tech at scott and in tony's repair down there um a lot more availability for parts if if they have the extra space and stuff um that's something that chuck's gonna have to take back to ron and julie and talk about if if we make the recommendation that they're gonna have to conform with building size and setbacks and stuff that's a decision they're going to have to make but i do know they're trying to be good stewards and good business people and support our community um and i i thought this was a neat thing to do and yeah it's a little cramped and stuff but uh um you guys are right we we do have to kind of uh put our foot down so to speak so thanks yeah well you know dean again i you totally agree with everything you just said and not trying to be uh um you know as negative here you know and you know as the planning commission we yeah we need to try to stick up for some of these things of course the city council uh they get to maybe move themselves a little bit more on pure emotion and on that on that basis alone i'd love to vote for this every day of the weekend twice on sunday yeah but unfortunately i i just can't see i just can't on this particular plan um with the building that size uh do that in good conscience without seeing some of the dangers so okay well and so i guess the point is is that so between jim uh myself and meredith we would all be supportive of of making a suggesting to the city council approval of the conditional use permit site plan and variants um uh but no um denying the variance yeah but we're going to change it so that we can all vote to to agree with it or to give it to the city council i think the motion is to recommend approval of a site plan and conditional use permit and denial of the setback variants for the property located at 19905 blah blah blah as drafted except that item number six should say the variance for the 16-foot setback is denied based on the finding that the variance standards have not been met and then i think you kind of i'm guessing you kind of want to take my second paragraph from each of the findings in the staff report on pages eight and nine to use as the basis for your findings for denial specifically that a smaller building could be constructed to comply with setback requirements this is a new development site and the hardship is created by the developer so i think we could if you made that motion to say what kendra said and then voted on that i could bring that to the council okay yeah it's it's yeah okay i i mean i know it's getting late we've all been here a long time but i don't want to get sloppy with you know making sure this gets done right and we're conveying to the city council exactly what our recommendation is so is everybody in agreement with what kendra just laid out for us okay all right so um the resolution then we're going to vote to approve the site plan condition use permit but deny the variance okay uh do i have a motion i'll move okay do i have a second i'll make the second second okay um all right all those in favor again um will go down through a roll call vote um commissioner jacobs yay commissioner schulack a okay commissioner varenkamp yes and commissioner wu yay okay good all right um and you know um i i can't be more appreciative of the fact that um our city council our members take an interest in us and they are sitting here putting in the same hours we are so none of what we're talking about will go lost uh to them when they they think about this and and i i'm you know we're all hopeful that you know napa doesn't walk away from this um because of our recommendation but it's ultimately to the city council and i'm sure they'll use good wisdom and fair judgment in their decision so thank you everybody that was involved um mr edwards thank you very much and uh we will move on have a great night um okay uh item 6d table to the may 6th meeting kendra you are going to present the item and then we're going to take a boat to table the meeting to may 6th yes i received a call from the applicant yesterday and they asked that this item be tabled so that they can work with engineering uh to address to better understand the conditions that engineering attached approval and ask that it simply be tabled to the may 6th meeting okay great thank you um okay so we don't need to open anything up i'll take a motion to table this to may 6th okay do i have a saga i'll second it okay uh roll call vote uh commissioner jacobs yay uh commissioner sholak yay uh commissioner berenkamp and commissioner wu mr chair excuse me yes sir obviously kendra we're not they're not running up against any timelines or anything no deadlines no issues there no we extended their 60-day review period and that goes uh through the end of june or beginning of july i forget we have plenty of time to work through the process thanks okay let's move on to item 6e variance request for domingo property located at 6433 blue stem circle um before we start um i would like is do we know if they're even online anymore yes um brian conrad messaged me that he was the neighbor wanting to speak and he is online okay well um i i i was out there today and and i spoke um with pamela uh the owner and uh she has a couple of um they have young toddlers uh young kids and i know that they were going to try to stay up but it's now 11 35 and unfortunately i should have maybe thought ahead of this and oh there they are hi i thank you for staying with us i should have maybe recommended that we put you at the at the front of the line here but um obviously uh you're still here and i thank you for that so uh with that being said uh kendra um you have the floor and we'll uh anxiously await your presentation please thank you mr chair this is a variance request for a rear yard setback for a four season porch house edition and a deck the properties guided low density residential and zoned pud planned unit development this is a new home in the rivinia third edition the home is on a cul-de-sac and a butt's wetland and that homeowners are requesting a variance to allow approximately 15 foot rear yard setback where 25 feet is required this is the site and wetland in the rear yard that the lot overlooks again in raviniya you're all familiar with rivenia the applicant is requesting approval for a 14 by 14 four season porch which is a building edition we call it a porch but it's just a building edition um because it's an enclosed space as opposed to a deck which is treated differently in the building code and in some portions of our code so it's a 14 by 14 four season porch and a 14 by 24 foot deck the setback varies from 15 feet at the porch and to 22.4 feet a setback for the deck again where 2 5 feet is required and you can't say north and south because it's a bit at the angle so it's a little bit confusing so um just for a point of reference because it gets hard to see on here the blue is the porch and the yellow is the deck this is the cul-de-sac at blue stem circle the pink lines are the building setback lines you can see that the house is shifted back further from the front yard setback than is required so when it was built it was shifted back i think in part because it's a fairly steep driveway but in any case it was shifted back to that setback line pretty close to that setback line there is a drainage and utility easement in the backyard but the deck and and porch as proposed do remain outside of that 10 foot drainage and utility easement here this was in your packet this is an example provided by the applicant of the addition they would like to add on to the house and the again we've this was our our big night for variances i don't know we've ever had this many variances on one evening um but again the the variance is difficult to get because the city has a high level of discretion and the burden of proof is on the applicant to show compliance with the five ordinance standards or five variant standards in the ordinance that uh there are practical difficulties that the and practical difficulties is is sort of a three-pronged test about um reasonableness and uniqueness and um essential character that's being tested by these five standards that are in our ordinance so are there practical difficulties in complying with the ordinance the applicant built this home [Music] and the home was built with a sliding glass door on the rear of the home which does seem to require some exit in order to utilize the backyard but the home was selected by the applicants as one of the many hundreds of possible approved home plans in the ravinia development setbacks were established in ravinia and as as the chair and and uh and commissioner wuno there's a lot of discussions about setbacks as part of the ravinia development and they were established to protect natural resources and ensure uniform and safe development and so the developer in particular but the developer and the landowner have some responsibility to ensure that the home selected fits on the lot the design selected by this applicant for this lot does not allow a deck off of the sliding glass doors and it is a self-created situation however there is some practical difficulty if we were to say there's nothing that could happen off of that sliding glass door certainly a smaller deck could be built to provide access to the backyard in staff's opinion that a four season porch is a home addition and should meet the required setbacks that the porch is a different circumstance than the deck and we do have a different section of our code that that agrees with that in our wetland ordinance we do allow decks and patios to encroach into the wetland setback structures cannot but they can and so if the council planning commission excuse me felt that there was some practical difficulty the commission could find that a deck encroachment uh might be a reasonable alternative to address a practical difficulty if you so find that there is a practical difficulty the wetland buffer standards allow decks to encroach six feet into the required wetland buffer [Music] second you need to find that the conditions for which the variants are based are unique to this parcel of land and were not created by the landowner again like our previous discussions landowner selected this lot and selected this home [Music] and so it is very much a situation that yes it's a wedge-shaped lot that backs up to the wetland but there's a lot of lots like that in ravinia and this is not unique to this lot part of the applicant's argument is that lennar did not do a good job of explaining what the survey was showing and they weren't aware that they had a setback in the rear yard but again the applicant selected this site in the house and it is in fact the very definition of a self-created hardship three you need to find that the variance will not alter the essential character of the locality certainly it's true that there are decks and four season porches in the backyards uh but staff argues that it granting the variance will alter the essential character if it allows encroachments into the setback that are not consistent with the pud and as the chair mentioned before opens the door to a variety of other setback variants requests in this development the proposed variance you need to find would be in harmony with the purposes and intent of the ordinance and the purpose of the pud is to allow specific flexibility in exchange for benefits and the setbacks were very much negotiated with the developer as part of this pud there were reduced setbacks for a number of situations within this development and compliance with that seems reasonable the setbacks are established in the rear yard to ensure that homeowners do have usable rare yards and maintaining green space for the development and the community as a whole lastly you need to find that the variance is consistent with the comprehensive plan and certainly these types of additions onto homes are consistent with the comprehensive plan it's a difficult circumstance because um there really are no practical difficulties and there is absolutely nothing that's unique about this site but certainly there's a situation where there is some challenges if in fact lennar is not doing a very good job of providing information to applicants as the landowner you certainly bear that responsibility but if you look in your packet you can see correspondence where they were talking about a future deck and at no time did lennar say that there wasn't room for a deck in the backyard the setback is clearly shown i think clearly shown on the plan but to a novice who doesn't deal with construction plans perhaps that wasn't as legible as one would like so while i generally tell you not to negotiate a variance at the public meeting i do think that this is an uh a unique circumstance in that sense in that i think lennar um did not necessarily provide all of the information that they should have to the applicant [Music] in that this variant standards are not met but we do note that the code allows decks to encroach six feet into a wetland buffer and while that doesn't specifically apply here i would say that it would not be unreasonable if the planning commission was sympathetic to the landowner's flight to allow a deck to encroach into that setback a similar amount and so for example that would allow an 11 foot by 20 some foot deck 34 11 by 34 foot deck on the back of the house it would not allow the four season porch but an 11 foot deep deck is a very reasonably sized deck we approve a lot of decks that are less deep than that and and would meet a 19-foot setback from the property line and at least would be consistent with um what is in the wetland buffer ordinance again the challenge is the commission needs to find that the five variant standards have been met if all five are not met you cannot recommend approval of the variants again i'm i'm sympathetic to the unique challenges for this homeowner and i have reviewed it with the city attorney we feel that the variance standards are not met but if the commission felt that the wetland encroachment was a reasonable consideration in this case they could recommend an alternative for the applicant to consider which would be approval to allow six foot deck encroachment into the required setback so i do have and of course thirdly i did not provide this resolution if you truly believe that the various standards have been met you could modify the draft resolution for approval what staff has provided is a resolution for denial of the variants and a resolution for approval to allow a deck to encroach six feet into the required uh 25 foot uh rear yard setback so with that um uh mr chair i'd be happy to answer questions and as you said i know the applicant is on the line um at this late time this is not a public hearing though okay great thank you kendra um well i um um yes i think what happened is unfortunate um i don't want to get into you know the but the emails i think are pretty telling that that the owners um obviously had talked about decks and um regardless of um picking a house that was too big i mean i think there are certainly some issues with saying well they they could have picked another floor plan but in a cul-de-sac do you want to be the smallest house um you know those lot widths um were designed and most of the stuff we were doing when it came to negotiating with lennar really didn't have anything to do with depth it had everything to do with with and setbacks and um because the wider the lot the bigger the house that was just the standard train of thought so in this situation they they they bought into um in addition that okay in this cul-de-sac we have these kinds of lot widths and therefore um these homes will fit when it came to the depth i think it should have been incumbent upon them i did talk with the owner today pamela who seemed to to imply that they did everything they can to be informed when they bought this they thought that you know they saw the line back there and they thought okay there's room but when those emails came out talking about you know headers and things like this and and lennar did not bring this up i mean you're two feet away at the corner um i think that was that that that was really truly a shame so i have a lot of sympathy for this situation and i only hope that maybe we as a planning commission lennar is a developer that and and the city council that we all you know maybe come to address this in future um development problems which is kind of why i asked the question of of trek today because i just couldn't make sense of it thinking well are we going to be talking about the same situation but uh with that being said um kendra um i kind of agree with with the idea that we allow them to build a deck that we grant the variance so that they could go six feet into it and and i thought when i went there that we were talking about a wetland you know a setback from a wetland when in fact this is not because when you look at the property it looks all like the same wetland but actually that little triangle that's a that's a storm wastewater retention pond so most of their yard there's only one corner where they actually touch the the uh the wetland delineation otherwise everything else is it has nothing to do with the wetland as far as encroaching upon it so kendra from a technical standpoint now the the um when you look at the uh plan that they had drawn up i noticed that the six by six posts are all at the perimeter edge of the deck so you know when they say they were going to come out 14 feet that's because the deck the flooring did come out 14 feet as did the popes so the post would be the physical attachment to the land that would be 14 feet your recommendation or an option for the planning commission to recommend to the city council is that we allow 11 feet is that correct roughly the idea would be to allow yes let's just use that for for all practical purposes here so we're going to allow them 11 feet so in the way this deck was designed that would mean that they would put a six by six post no further than 11 feet correct the structure of the deck would need to be 19 feet from the lot line yes okay here's where here's here's kind of what i'm thinking um the the code may or may not but i know that it is with my deck um the code you know my deck has a two foot overhang from the six by six posts that support it from underneath so in this situation if we're going to say that you know you can't you can't put a structural post any greater distance than 11 feet from the house but code will allow you to have up to a two foot overhang so basically they're going to put deck boards in air that is not going to have a physical attachment directly beneath so if if they could go 13 feet out but the but the deck supports are only 11 feet would that be would that be permissible it would give them at least a little bit more to the area that they were thinking i don't believe though but i will need to confirm with the building official i think setbacks are measured from the structure i don't believe we allow an overhang but i will confirm that before the city council i am not certain okay all right so um i i might offer that up uh as a way for again to try to comply and still allow uh that to happen okay so my next question is so you know here we have a deck and you know the the here's here's kind of what it might come down to you know we we have outbuildings right and we require a two foot eve on an outbuilding correct yeah okay so when we talk about when we talk about when we talk about the setback of a building that means that the structural the structural point of the wall or the posts that create that wall that's where we measure the setback from we don't measure it from eve above well that's true but if you're standing on a deck it's not an eve that's why i think a deck is different you are correct we measure the building from the foundation but i actually believe we measure the deck from the railing from the okay all right i just wanted to point that out you're right so so here's the thing so if we say you can build a deck regardless if it's 11 feet or 13 feet so that you can utilize your patio door and yeah it would make sense that they would run it down to the end and then put their stairs you know kind of in a thing like they've got designed um and i agree 100 that that a four season porch is nothing more than a building addition then that would be wrong i i don't think um i don't think that is something that we want to venture into however what um you're going to have a deck um i recently have a i have a friend who ran into a situation with a neighbor up on the lake place where they wanted to build a four season porch on top of an existing deck tear off the deck put a four season porch in but as a landowner on a lake kendra you know that something you can't encroach upon this right right so but in this particular instance what they said was you can't put a you can't put a a four season because that would be a building edition um however you could put a three season porch and that was identified then as being different um now this guy because i know him uh and because he's my friend my neighbor and it's a relative i can already tell it's gonna get shady dean oh yeah well he already said well i you know i can build a you know the the community is going to allow me or the they're going to allow me to do the three season porch but i'm certainly going to plumb in the heat as soon as it's done and it'll be four season all right that's about as shady as it gets but i'll get to the point what would be the issue with them being able to put on a screened porch because one of the things that they wanted to do here as part of the original plan was then put a patio down below this and they were talking about stringing down those those screens to make a screen porch and so now i'm thinking you know it's not a livable area so does it really matter if we allow you to build a deck this far out whether or not you got posts up and you just simply put a roof on it and screen around the windows would we allow them to put a screen porch off that and not just the deck well i mean you're asking for a variance you can decide what you want to do but if you agreed that a deck is using that wetland buffer encroachment as the reason for the variants a deck is an uncovered platform unenclosed uncovered platform with no roof and that's a pretty typical definition for exactly the reason you're saying if i allow a three season per porch i just better assume it's a four season porch because it will be soon yeah well but what i'm talking about is a is a screen porch not a three season porch but this i've seen many of those turn so in our in our code we do treat them differently a deck is treated differently than because it prohibits uh roof and if it has a roof it's treated as a structure in terms of the setbacks okay all right well i you know maybe that's maybe that's uh an issue that if the applicant wants to bring up with the city council you know um it'll be interesting since you know three of our our city councilors live in this neighborhood um but again maybe just in this one particular case um it might be a concession that maybe we could all live with given that i really don't think this was entirely of their own doing and because you know we we allowed that lot to be developed as it was or um but um but i would fully support the option to allow them to at least build a deck and encroach upon that so let me see i don't think i have any other questions um so i will turn the floor over to uh commissioner sholak uh mr chair i i do hate to interrupt just a reminder that we had reserved the public comment opportunity at the beginning of new items to after kendra's presentation and ryan conrad has been on the call the entire time to make that comment he is raising his hand if we could get allow him a chance to speak okay very good thank you mr conrad good evening uh appreciate you guys doing this it's been a long night that's for sure so i'm ryan conrad 64 21 blue stem circle i am the neighbors directly to the south of uh pam and andy um and uh yeah as far as who would be affected um we would probably be the neighbors most affected by this um if the variance was granted because our view would look northwest into their deck um and i'm in favor of allowing the variants uh and allowing them to do what they want to do um you know when you talk about the lot depth and that lennar has hundreds of homes um their home is one of the depth-wise one of the shortest depth-wise homes compared to the rest of the homes in the cul-de-sac it's not like they could have picked a home that was two-thirds the depth there's just not those floor plans available so um that and then i didn't see the email from lennar until uh tonight when i was looking at the commission notes but um i mean it's pretty clear they were asking about a deck and at no point didn't understand anything that you can't have it uh or let's put your door on the side of the house so you can have an exit on the side of the house instead of the back of the house where you can't even put a four foot landing to get out and have stairs um i mean that's a that's pretty code wise it's a pretty clear thing that they should be talking about right if it's an exit um so anyways uh my point is is um we're their neighbors who would be most directly visually impacted by this situation and we are all in favor of uh the city of proving um this variance for panamani thank you okay mr conrad thank you very much for your comments and again the commission apologizes for the length of of this meeting and uh thank you for your patience not a problem we got we have little girls just like they do too so we're uh time for me to go to bed all right um is there anyone else natalie um i you know at this point um i i don't think it'd be i think it's only fair to allow the um uh would the applicants uh like to uh address the commission here before we get too far there you are hello pamela and uh sir you were you were working you were working hard today she i guess she works out of the house but uh so i didn't get a chance to meet you but uh welcome so um you do you have anything you'd like to say to the commission at this point um so initially just wanted to say thank you i know uh really appreciate support from kendra throughout the process i've been emailing back and forth with her for like six months so uh trying to learn about the variance process so really appreciate the support from kendra and obviously uh really appreciate yourself dean coming out and looking at our lot and the situation that we have and the rest of the planning commission of reviewing and looking at this and giving us some recommendations for how we can move forward so so appreciate that and i think daniel's gonna maybe yeah i'll keep it pretty brief because um having been very new to this topic and process this is my first time and i didn't know it would be so long so i don't want to keep anyone up much later than um where we're currently sitting but i did want to emphasize that our our perspective is that we you know we genuinely love our home and our community and we want to protect the integrity of it um we understand now very clearly that our lot has challenges and we want to work within those challenges in a way that unlocks value for our young family um i i think it's also just worth clarifying that um and i think this was mentioned the the map makes it look uh like the storm pond is the wetland and that the the actual wetland buffer is a the really tiny corner of the lot um and when we originally actually went down the path of proposing you know the four season in the deck we wanted to go the opposite direction and um realize that uh it'd be better to go the opposite and so all this to say we want to be flexible and do what's right for the community um and for our lot um clearly you've laid out some of the the pieces that um i wanted to emphasize earlier which is just that we signed a purchase agreement without a clear understanding of this of this challenge um and if you were to look at the survey that we received at our closing even it didn't have that really clear red line where the where the building setback line was and so i mean hindsight being 2020 i i think i would ask a lot of different questions if i were to ever to move i hope i never do um because we love where we're at but um i thought i would just highlight a handful of those things we're obviously open to continued dialogue we stayed on this call because we wanted to hear um the conversation be here to answer any questions and so i would just close by saying thank you for your time and consideration um we'll absolutely be engaging with the city with kendra and whoever also has questions after this as we pursue whatever the appropriate next steps are okay well thank you um and if you want to hang on the line in case there's any other questions that the commission would have we'd be uh glad to have you join us and answer that so um natalie anyone else uh no no one else notified me and i don't see anyone trying to raise their hands i think we are good to go all right so let's continue then with uh the commission discussion and questions um mr varenkamp do you have any questions or comments um mr commissioner shulock was uh first in line there oh i'm sorry jim floor's yours thank you um in a previous life uh before the planning commission uh even though i've been a couple of time uh two three time home buyer home owner i i don't i wouldn't have known what a variance was or what a a setback or um setback lines so i can understand if someone isn't uh really knowledgeable about those things i'm looking at the the last map in the in the 6e packet and it shows the lot um and where the where the setbacks were would have been uh so there's there's the two lines out by the street or between the house and the street um if the house were to have been put in what i'm i'm guessing was the original plan for the original setback which would be the one closer to blue stem circle that would also affect the distance between the corners of the house and those lot lines what what is the minimum that those that those distances could be and still be okay all right mr mr chair is the question the what's the side yard setback yes yeah it's ten and and five so 15 feet between buildings so right now it's showing a 15 foot setback to the what i'll call the east and uh 18 foot setback to the west but on the front of the house if if the house were moved closer to the circle then those 18 feet from each corner would also get smaller correct and so the minimum there would be what uh on the west side i would say 10 and on the other side say 5 or flip it it could be either way but five on one side and ten on the other i'm thinking that if the building would have been built the way that the setbacks are drawn here that that they would have had enough space off the back of their house to build the proposed deck and even apply for a four season porch variance i'm guessing so if and again i i don't consider myself um naive or anything but i wouldn't have thought to ask when i bought this property in corcoran what's my setback from county road 10 or or anything like that so i'm saying that if they were uninformed or duped or ill-informed about where the placement of their house was um and and to make matters worse the builder uh had even talked to them about the potential of putting a deck on and didn't say anything then i i could consider that a major hardship on behalf of the applicants for not knowing everything about the house and the property that they were bombing i would agree with you jim is that uh you have anything else no that's fine thank you sir okay uh commissioner varenkamp yeah just in the interest of time i'll try and get a couple questions in quick um kendra this is probably the million dollar question how many other parcels in the ravinia are going to be like this have you had a chance to look or not you know i hesitate to guess um i would i would hope that this was a one-off and that generally lennar works with homeowners to make sure that they're planning appropriately um but i i talked to paul to bone today and and i happened to be at the city of rogers planning commission meeting last year where or two years ago where they needed an amendment to that subdivision just north of corcoran because they had a lot of deck variances that were not getting approved so they had to ask for a pud amendment so um i don't know this is the first one in raviniya and ravini is almost built so i feel like usually the system must be working i hope it means the system's been working but i just just one thing that i look at kendra if and i'm i'm looking at the the um satellite view of this cul-de-sac and i did drive by and look at it um the folks kind of on the same or not kind of but on the same cul-de-sac at 64 30. um blue stem circle so two houses to the right of um it looks like that property um has the same constraint in the back but there's kind of an offset patio um kind of behind the garages and such so i see that as conforming um i don't i obviously i don't have the dimensions and such but then when i when i really scan ravinia and the overview and stuff i just see a whole bunch of things that can happen um so again in the interest of time we should probably research that but i like what care jacobs was talking about as far as planting or giving them the ability to put a deck out back and and going into that setback uh to 19 feet so an 11 foot patio is that what we were talking about 11 foot deck deep and such i i have no problem with that um but we just got to be prepared i mean we've been talking about not giving variances and stuff all night and such and and we're gonna do it on one i'm i'm was very nervous about trevenia when that came in front of us and uh we're gonna be real careful as we approve all of those parcels what are the setbacks what's it's gonna get what is it going to get us when people start wanting to put decks and and four season porches out of their back yard we're going to have to note this but how many homes are in rivenia 400 and some 500 some if i remember right i mean i can i can see just a general 50 of them are going to come for variances for doing something like this so yeah come on yeah well and and but i i think you know uh kendra and and uh jim you know it's uh as i was out there today i'm thinking the exact same thing i'm thinking you know if you do this once you know everybody might come piling in but kendra's right i i couldn't think of another time when this has happened but if if you if you don't stand up and say yeah we're just not going to grant these are you giving developers an incentive then to continue to short so let's just call it short sell the lots right and just say yeah you know if you go and get a variance from the city they'll give it to you because they always do and and that's i think what we have to guard against um so you know and i think the applicant you know as i talked with her today you know she i think she understood that and certainly i think they expressed that they just want to do what's right for the community um and and i appreciate that but you know we gotta let's hope it doesn't happen again and maybe we need to be just a little bit more diligent about you know those things if i may interject this part um you know looking again at the emails about the dec ledger boards okay the the people the buyers knew that they wanted to have a deck ledger board they obviously talked to the builder about it the builder said that we don't install those now how much did the builder know at that point that they couldn't have a deck on their house and so the people obviously brought it to the builder builders attention and maybe that's i i don't know but maybe that's the reason why they don't put deck ledger boards on um because they um they know that they can't have a deck there but they don't tell the people that i don't know well i i think jim that the the answer that the reason that the the sales rep for lennar gave was that they don't do it because they don't know exactly where the location or the size of it is going to be it didn't have anything to do with well maybe you can't i think it was their answer was it was just because they don't know where you know they don't know where and what size which makes sense and i can again argue that they they know exactly where the uh patio door was going for the sliding door the deck ledger a standard one to go on two foot either side i mean it's gonna come out there and and i would ask the same thing and it just i i really think and i think kendra you said you've been talking with the folks at lennar did you say that um i did okay so are they are they doing anything to help out this this property owner and such um yeah my conversation was more so lennar's national builder and they have silos like any big corporation so we i work mostly with the development team paul tabone and joe jablonski on the front end you've met them once the project gets approved there's a construction crew who's in charge of making sure the site stays clean and the houses get built and a sales crew there's probably more than that but i've talked with paul and he is certainly the development team is not responsible they don't deal with the sales people that's a different group but i've shared our concern that when we approve a plan you know we think it's the developer's responsibility to make sure that if we have a sliding glass door it's not at the setback line right and um paul understands that he shared that he tells me he shared that with his team um so um i'm not sure what what more we can do beyond that again i tried to come up with a compromise because i think the email suggesting a dac is compelling and so i looked for something in our code that might allow us to do that i do think decks in our code are different than four season porches um and we need to continue to work with lennar and other developers to make sure we're planning [Music] lots that are big enough for how people live so the other question i was having was is there a possibility of of out the sliding glass door some type of area and then stairways down to a patio and then there's that patio limited in size and two if there's no footings no mornings no nothing put in is is that limited or they could they could do something ground level out there um yeah at grade we're a little more flexible for patios they still technically are supposed to meet the setback but for example we know there's a lot of fire pits that are out there that are hard surfaces that don't need it so we tend to be a little more flexible because those don't always require building permits that's all i had thank you okay commissioner wu i am i'm open to the idea of allowing the the deck to be constructed in the six foot uh to encroach six foot into the setback um understanding that it's not it's it's kind of applying a a similar situation but it's not something that i would want it to be made clear that this is not something that is an easy substitution for other homeowners to to try and another avenue for other homeowners to try i think that this is this is i i can see that the that that they have not met the variance standards the owners have not met it but there's more to it than that and and we've heard about it and we we don't know the circumstances firsthand because we weren't there but but here we are so i'm open to that um but i also have the same reservations that other homeowners may try and seek the same avenues to build something and i would say that this decision applies to this situation only and uh and that it's not going to start a trend okay all right wonderful well let me um does anybody else have any follow-up second round jim okay please um i i guess i just would like to know because i just measured it here why this building wasn't built on the very first setback uh because if that i would like to find out from lennar why this particular house on this particular lot was not built properly um i would as a homeowner homebuyer i would not have thought to look at this and i don't know maybe the homeowners right now uh maybe this on this particular map maybe this is the first time that they're seeing these other setbacks and so it it comes out to 5 16 on uh map scale that if it were moved closer to the house to the very first setback line the entire deck that they have planned of of uh 14 feet would fit perfectly in this on this lot and uh with them with the builders having knowledge that the the people wanted to have a deck uh and and presumably the builder knowing knowing that they can't have a deck i i just think things aren't adding up right now but thank you for your time okay thank you jim um uh commissioner varenkamp any follow-up okay no thanks all right so we have um the the professional staff recommends denial of the rear setback variants for a 6433 bloom stem bloom bluestem circle however in the conclusions uh up above their sympathetic or the you know i think as we we most all are um and uh you know using the the deck and patio encroachment to six feet is a way to justify allowing them a at least an 11 by 24 deck before i say another word kendra if they want to put a patio a concrete patio on the walkout level so let's assume this summer they build this deck or they want to put in that concrete patio are they going to have to go through all this again or do they should they maybe amend their application to include a deck and a pad group um you could um well patios and decks are treated the same but you could change if you approve to the second recommended approval of the second resolution you could say an item three the variance to allow an uncovered deck slash patio to encroach six feet in and that would just grant that without question okay does anybody have an objection to doing that so we can save them the hassle of going through this next time mr chair are you talking about the walkout level being landscaped no just uh putting a a concrete patio underneath the deck okay with the same constraint of of 11 feet but then yet they would still they could still do landscaping and such shrubs and those kind of things to border it without questions absolutely yeah i'm for that yeah i support that okay so kendra um let's let's include that so let me go on so the the alternative resolution to approve a variance for the property located at you know 64 33 blues blue stem circle i'm sorry that's okay okay um uh let's um let's go ahead and add that uh does everybody feel comfortable in um recommending to the city council this resolution would this resolution grant them the variance yes for deck and patio only for for the deck only right kendra this is written to allow them to build a deck with a six foot encroachment into the rear yard setback yeah me personally um i support this but i might ask the city council for at least a screen porch i i don't i don't draw the difference between a covered and an uncovered deck um that's like saying well then you you can't put out you know um maybe a trellis or something i i don't i don't understand it you know living space is living space but a screen porch is not living space um but let's let's let them handle that if they wish to pursue that at this point um we'll agree with the staff to allow the deck does anybody want to add any other changes other than adding the concrete patio to this [Music] resolution any other anything else okay so uh a resolution to approve a variance for the property um if we're ready to take a vote kendra you've got the alteration for the city council uh i'll take a uh i'll make a motion to uh to uh approve this variance do i have a second i'll second as long as kendra smiles or something she just has a concerned look on her face all right it's her dog sitting at home wondering where's my food yeah good morning mom um um well i'll tell you okay here we go i'm on the right one here now um okay so we have a first one we have a second roll call vote uh chair jacobs i all right commissioner