This transcript is for the **Hastings Planning Commission** meeting held on August 25, 2025. Based on the context provided, the meeting is presided over by **Chair Melanie Peters**, with staff support from Community Development Director **John Hinzman** and a presentation by a staff member named **Amelia**. [0:01] **John Hinzman**: I thought this microphone was off. [0:03] **Unknown Staff**: It's your fault. [0:05] **John Hinzman**: The what? [0:06] **Unknown Staff**: The computer's putting out sound that's being picked up by the microphone. [0:11] **John Hinzman**: Oh, now we're good. All right. [0:18] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: Okay. I noticed the on-air sign isn't lit up. Are we set over there? All set, Lindsay? All right. Cool. All right. Good evening, everyone. This is the Hastings Plan Commission meeting for August 25th, 2025. The regular meeting. Call the meeting to order. [0:37] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: And first up is oath of office for our newest commissioner. Welcome, Nicole De Palma. And administering the oath will be John Hinzman. Turn over to you. [0:47] **John Hinzman**: Thank you, Madam Chair. Planning commissioners, we're happy to welcome Nicole De Palma to the planning commission tonight, serving as our newest member. And so I would like to administer the oath of office. Nicole, do you have a copy of this? I'll give you one here. That way it might be more difficult to follow along. If you could raise your right hand, Nicole, repeat after me. I, Nicole De Palma... [1:13] **Nicole De Palma**: I, Nicole De Palma... [1:15] **John Hinzman**: ...do affirm... [1:16] **Nicole De Palma**: ...do affirm... [1:17] **John Hinzman**: ...that I will support... [1:18] **Nicole De Palma**: ...that I will support... [1:19] **John Hinzman**: ...the Constitution of the United States of America... [1:22] **Nicole De Palma**: ...the Constitution of the United States of America... [1:25] **John Hinzman**: ...the Constitution of the State of Minnesota... [1:28] **Nicole De Palma**: ...the Constitution of the State of Minnesota... [1:31] **John Hinzman**: ...and the charter and ordinances... [1:33] **Nicole De Palma**: ...and the charter and ordinances... [1:35] **John Hinzman**: ...of the city of Hastings... [1:37] **Nicole De Palma**: ...of the city of Hastings... [1:39] **John Hinzman**: ...and that I will faithfully discharge... [1:41] **Nicole De Palma**: ...and that I will faithfully discharge... [1:43] **John Hinzman**: ...the duties of a planning commissioner... [1:46] **Nicole De Palma**: ...the duties of a planning commissioner... [1:48] **John Hinzman**: ...for the city of Hastings... [1:50] **Nicole De Palma**: ...for the city of Hastings... [1:52] **John Hinzman**: ...counties of Dakota and Washington... [1:55] **Nicole De Palma**: ...counties of Dakota and Washington... [1:59] **John Hinzman**: ...and state of Minnesota... [2:00] **Nicole De Palma**: ...and state of Minnesota... [2:02] **John Hinzman**: ...according to the best of my ability and understanding. [2:05] **Nicole De Palma**: According to the best—excuse me—of my ability and understanding. [2:11] **John Hinzman**: Well, congratulations, Commissioner. [2:13] **Nicole De Palma**: Thank you. [2:15] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: All right. Thank you, John. Perfect. Well, welcome. We're excited to have you. Um, let's see. Next up on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from August 11, 2025, regular meeting. Commissioners, any comments, questions? Seeing none, we'll consider those to be approved. Uh, we have no public hearing. So, other actions: downtown parking study. Take it away, Amelia. [2:45] **Amelia (Staff)**: Good evening, commissioners. So, this summer I had the pleasure of producing this parking study for the planning commission, and then next week I'll also go to city council. For this parking study, the purpose is to make sure we have an updated inventory of both available public and private parking in our downtown area to count parking usage during various periods and days of the week. Understand areas of higher concentration of use. Understand our recent downtown development's effect on parking utilization and changes in utilization in the study area since the previous downtown parking studies. We've had four previous parking studies that have been completed in 2017, 2021, 2023, and 2024. [3:19] **Amelia (Staff)**: So, this is the study area within itself. Understanding that we're really focused on our downtown area basically with the train tracks to the east ending on Eddy/Spring on the west. So we incorporate the confluence's parking lot and then going north towards the river and south to Fifth for this area. It's a mix of different zoning areas. Most C3, so community regional commerce or DC, which is our downtown core. That's in purple with our C3 being in that kind of orangey-red. Kind of shows up differently on everyone's screens. Um, with a few residential areas zoned R2 and then a few R4 and there's also a small area of industrial. [4:33] **Amelia (Staff)**: So, for our current parking availability, there's 1,549 parking spots within the study area. This includes on and off-street parking as well as parking lots. Our public parking supply is just over 1,003 and private at 546. A few changes have been made since this study was done last year. We stopped counting Tyler Street from Third to Fourth Street; there were 16 spots there. We've since stopped counting them. They haven't been utilized very much and it's a further walk. [5:20] **Amelia (Staff)**: The big spot that has been added this year: the Block Four alley has been adjusted, but they're not striped spots. Basically, what started to happen is behind the substation behind the Block Four alley—this blue square between the Highway 61 under-bridge parking and then Block Three parking—that area is just gravel and people have really started to park back there in a considerable amount. It's currently unstriped so we can't necessarily say how many spots there are, but we've counted up to 20 spots being filled in that area. So, just for the purposes of math, we put in 11. The averages were going up to like 200% being full, so just trying to make the math work a little bit, but it's not striped for 20. So, that's kind of where that math ended up being. [6:00] **Amelia (Staff)**: For parking utilization, we had 13 surveys between May 13th and August 13th. Three surveys conducted Monday to Friday before 12:00 p.m., nine surveys conducted weekdays after 12, and two done on the weekends. For the weekdays, most of which were actually not conducted on Monday itself. Most of our downtown businesses are closed on Mondays, so those numbers were really skewing that data. The average percentage utilized was 37% on weekdays before 12, 36% weekdays after 12, and 40% on the weekends for an average about 37.8%. [7:10] **Amelia (Staff)**: The map on your screen is just an example of what I was looking at while I was doing these studies. I go around and I follow the little red line and I count how many spots are there. Usually took anywhere from 35 to 45 minutes to do the downtown walk. Obviously, people move and change their spots within those 45 minutes, but the second I see it, I count how many are there. If someone's pulling in, I count that spot. This is the overall parking utilization map. White spots are 0 to 25% utilization, yellow 25 to 50, orange 50 to 75, and that dark red being 75 to 100. These are all of the spots that had an average of over 50% utilization between any of the days and any of the times. I've separated it into public and private because it started to get a little bit more interesting to look at public spots specifically because we have more control over what we can do within the public realm. [8:19] **Amelia (Staff)**: Then we start to look at weekdays before 12. Most of what I was seeing at least is that the same areas are having high concentrations; that just number slightly changes throughout the day. Our downtown core parking spots under the bridge, the Block Four alley, the Block Three large parking spot, and then also all of the spots between Eddy and Tyler on Second—those are our most used spots, which makes a lot of sense. Those are where our businesses are. This is the weekdays after 12. Again, if you kind of just look between these two maps, there are very subtle changes. But again, just seeing that dark red and orange concentration on our large downtown core. [9:28] **Amelia (Staff)**: This is the weekend. Again, now you can see a lot of those orange spots have become red near the downtown. Where we're not seeing a ton of utilization is the yellow depot parking lot (Block 16); it almost consistently had about 35% utilization no matter when I looked at it. That also goes to show that both Art Space and the Lake Isabel Flats also were staying around 25 to 50% utilization. So those new residential developments have not had a significant impact on parking availability downtown. Both within their own lots and the largest lot between the two are still pretty consistently being utilized but not to their highest potential. [10:35] **Amelia (Staff)**: After those few pages in your packet, then you have your "Top 10 Most Utilized Public Parking Area" table. This goes through the Block Four alley and the gravel being our most used based on averages. Sibly Street north of Second, the parking lot under Highway 61 bridge, Second Street (Eddy to Vermillion), Second Street (Sibly to Ramsey), Sibly Street (Second to Third), the Block Three parking lot, Ramsey north of Second, Fourth Street (Vermillion to Sibly), and Second Street (Vermillion to Sibly). [11:35] **Amelia (Staff)**: Those are our top 10 most utilized public parking areas downtown. What is interesting is that these are all, besides the lot under the bridge and the Block Three parking lot, very small areas. Our double-decker parking lot for the Confluence across the street almost rarely hit a large number of parking utilization. The top deck of that barely got over 30. It's a full deck of parking and it's very rarely utilized despite being in such close proximity to these other highly utilized areas. And then also again with the Block 16 depot parking lot also not appearing on this top 10 list. Those are key big parking lot areas that could be getting more use and they're just not. [12:27] **John Moes**: I have a question, Amelia. On the weekend day, are you looking in the middle of the day or is it in the evening? Because that two-decker one is packed on a Saturday night usually when there's a wedding. Are you looking then ever or no? [12:43] **Amelia (Staff)**: So weekends got a little tricky because I don't work on the weekends. John did both of our weekend studies. I don't remember off the top of my head when those were conducted. [12:56] **John Hinzman**: Commissioner, we did those in the middle of the afternoon. So we didn't get the nighttime traffic that may be from the Confluence there. [13:04] **John Moes**: That's when that gets busy is like Friday, Saturday night when there's a wedding. [13:07] **Amelia (Staff)**: Okay. Thank you. So, here is our 2017 to 2025 analysis. These blue bars are the total number of parking spots with the orange being the total average being utilized. What's interesting here is that it's consistently been staying around 30 to 38% utilization these past nine years. Where we have been seeing an increase are these past two years. Our parking supply has stayed relatively the same, but we have seen a pretty dramatic increase in terms of utilization. We had about a 5% increase this year, which is really exciting because that means more people are coming downtown. [14:17] **Amelia (Staff)**: This is a comparison to a Walmart building and also a Walmart parking lot. This is a really interesting perception of where you're going and how far away you need to park to get there. When you're looking for parking downtown, it's very typical to just try to find a spot right in front of where you're going. When you are shopping at a Walmart, that's typically not what happens. You have a huge parking lot. Hopefully, you can get a spot close, but not everyone is prioritizing getting that first front spot. When you compare how far you're walking from your spot to the building itself and then walking around the building, it takes up most of our downtown. Yet, we see the concentration of parking right in those main spots. [15:08] **Amelia (Staff)**: When we hear complaints that there isn't enough parking, it's very much focused on those very close proximity spots when there's a ton of parking if you just zoom out even just a block or two. There's been a lot of research starting to happen in the planning realm about this and understanding sightlines and perception of distances and why it makes people feel that there isn't enough parking unless there are mobility issues or access issues. One of the things I was looking into is understanding how many handicap parking spots we have and if those need to be increased. [16:02] **Amelia (Staff)**: The big takeaways I would love for everyone to take away from this is that an average utilization of 38% means downtown Hastings has enough parking to support our current businesses and future development. Parking utilization has been increasing, but this is a great thing; it means more people are visiting. While parking can be tight during major downtown events, our current parking stock is more than enough to handle day-to-day parking needs. The Block Four alley and gravel area has significantly increased. Lake Isabel Flats and Art Space have not strained the surrounding parking areas. [16:50] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: All right. Thank you, Amelia. Very nice report. Very comprehensive, very easy to follow. Commissioners, I will open it up to anyone that wishes to make any comments or discussion. [17:11] **John Moes**: I did one other comment. I know you talked about weddings Saturday nights at the Confluence, but also I know during the car shows, too, a lot of those spots are taken up by the people that are exhibiting. I don't know if those times were studied at all? [17:34] **Amelia (Staff)**: No, because again, those are such special circumstances. It's kind of tricky to pick and choose events when you do study it and then affect parking for the other 364 days of the year based on one event's availability. [17:59] **John Moes**: I agree with that. But also, if weddings are going out for dinner every Friday, Saturday and Sundays, those are busier times and maybe should at least be part of the study at some point, I would think. [18:24] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: All right, we're just going to go right down the line. Commissioner McGrath? [18:28] **Missy McGrath**: Thank you for the report. It was interesting and very fact-filled. Thank you so much. I had a question: the gravel area that you're referencing, that's the area behind the old Onion and the Legion, right? That gravel alleyway? And is that permitted parking? Are people supposed to be parking there? They must have to parallel park back there, right? [18:59] **John Hinzman**: As far as if they're permitted to park there or not, I'm unsure. I believe we own the property or Excel owns the property, one of the two. In the past, we had a couple of cars there, but there's just been more utilization lately. They park in a somewhat orderly manner, but it's not striped or anything. [19:13] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: Sure. And you mentioned, you know, you referenced accessibility and accessible parking spots. Was that part of the study? And would it be in the future just to determine if there are enough accessible parking spots downtown? [19:29] **Amelia (Staff)**: Yeah, so it is not looked at specifically in the study. It was more something I just started to notice. Just understanding if there's concerns about accessible parking spots downtown versus just having access to parking. Just trying to understand that balance. Also, just—I forgot to point it out—because this was also done during the summer, it takes away a lot of the downtown parking spots for all of the outdoor dining also. On average, each parklet takes about three to four spots away. [20:40] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: Just a follow-up question about the accessible parking in that downtown area. Are there accessible parking spots where you could have, like, the extra space for a wheelchair lift? Do we have any spots designated like that downtown? [21:12] **Amelia (Staff)**: We do. I think what we've done is right on the corner where you can exit to a curb that has the bump out, we've typically had those areas be handicapped just for those mobility purposes. [21:19] **John Moes**: Amelia, thank you very much. This is great. And you answered about the parklets. That was my question. So, does that increase our number of parking spots then in the non-summertime months and how does that skew the utilization percentage? I think looking at the accessibility piece would be good with our next downtown study. As our population continues to age, I worry that we just don't have enough accessibility downtown. That's one of the big complaints that I hear at the Senior Center. [22:34] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: Commissioner Swedin? Nope. All right. Commissioner De Palma, do you have any? [22:40] **Nicole De Palma**: Um, kind of following up on your question. It was kind of interesting to me, you know, perception is everything a lot of times. Did you happen to find, when you got feedback from the community, were there categories like perception of being close or the age issue of not being able to walk to where you want to go? [23:12] **Amelia (Staff)**: I don't specifically talk to community members for this parking study, but I've been working the Music and Market events on Thursday nights. I've heard people tell me they "had to park far away," and then they tell me that they parked on like Third Street. Like, okay, that's not... it's not like you're being forced out of downtown. It's a good example of just hearing what people's complaints are. I asked a few people if they had parked in the parking garage across from the Confluence and they were like, "No, that's so far." But it's a dual-level parking deck that could have been a great space to use for that event. [24:23] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: I will say, I usually attend a lot of the Thursday night events downtown and I usually park in the Depot lot and that's probably only 75% full. Maybe people don't realize it's there or they don't want to drive all the way through town. But for that event, it's a perfect spot to park because it's not far at all to walk. Having worked several events in my time as a reserve officer, I have received lots of feedback about parking, especially accessible parking during the events when we shut roads down. We're shutting downtown off and that leaves virtually little accessible parking outside of that. So that's something to consider too in the future studies. [26:13] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: Other business? John? [26:16] **John Hinzman**: Looking at City Council actions: the last meeting there were a couple extensions that were granted. One of them for the Sweet Living complex that we gave approval to in 2022. This is a 32-unit senior facility. They just submitted plans; engineering and building plans should be coming shortly. They may try to break ground this fall. With Heritage Ridge Fourth Edition, there was an extension granted for that, and we're working on the development agreement. Our next meeting would be September 8th. I have one public hearing scheduled for that at this point for a special use permit for boat sales at 624 Spiral. [27:46] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: All right. Thanks, John. Appreciate it. Commissioners, any other business? [27:51] **Missy McGrath**: I will not be here on September 8th. [27:55] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: All right. [27:57] **Rachel Swedin**: I'll be in Barcelona. [28:01] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: Okay. So we have two absences confirmed. All right. Thank you. If not, we will take a motion to adjourn. [28:03] **John Moes**: Madam Chair, I'll make the motion to adjourn. [28:07] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: Motion to adjourn. Second? [28:08] **Rachel Swedin**: I'll second. [28:10] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: Commissioner Moes, all in favor say Aye. [28:12] **Commissioners**: Aye. [28:15] **Melanie Peters (Chair)**: We are adjourned.