##VIDEO ID:l6D_qwGb7nM## all right next we have the approval of tonight's meeting agenda if there's no proposed changes I'd welcome a motion motion to approve the meeting minutes all those in favor say I I I so moved next we have the approval of the prior meetings minutes from October 30th same same deal motion to approve the October 30th minutes second all those in favor say I I I so moved okay next we're on to what I mentioned the community comment period of the agenda this is chance for any Resident who is here in person to speak about a matter not on tonight's agenda you have three minutes to do so please State your full name and address after you approach either Podium and you have three minutes so the light will turn green for your time to start Amber when you got 30 seconds and red when your time's up and we'll ask you to wrap up your comments is anyone here that I'd like to participate in community comment please come forward see none we will close that portion of our agenda and move right to our public hearings so we have two the first one is for 5605 Maguire Road there's a variance request at play uh as with any public hearing what you can expect is an applicant uh either a resident or developer uh puts in for a formal application to do something not currently Allowed by our laws and the Edina and what happens is Staff will review that consult all the different commissions and departments uh put together a staff Report with a bunch of findings and then what you see tonight is a presentation base off of that report presented by staff Planning Commission will then have some back and forth qu questions answers comments then we open it to the applicant to do the same provide their own presentation if they'd like to do so but more importantly stand for questions after that we open it to our public hearing and similar to the community comment you'd have three minutes to testify about the matter but we also open that opportunity to those tuning in remotely and so for those who are tuning in remotely um I'd like you to just please call the following number and you can get in the queue and and then just wait till it's your time but uh the number is 312 535 8110 and enter access code 2633 784 7383 and then the password is 5454 and come this point in the the meeting we ask you to press star three on your keypad to jump in the cutest speak but right now you you can hold on after the public hearing closes then we bring it back to the commission where we deliberate and make a recommendation for approval or denial and without further Ado planner Aker take it away thank you uh chair members of the Planning Commission the request is for a 2.8% 627.736 5 Maguire Road the subject property is located along Maguire Road is located right here the 22581 square foot property is located south of mcquire road is immediately adjacent to single family homes and has an shared asphalt driveway along the souths side of the property in fact it goes all the way out to Tracy so it um goes along the back of quite a few of the homes the maximum impervious surface coverage allowed in the R1 zoning district is 50% of the lot area the current property has 11,258 square feet of surface coverage for a total of 49.9% the homeowner is proposing to increase surface coverage by 660 Square ft totaling 11,9 918 Square ft of coverage or 52.8% of the lot area so this is the front of the house the house fronts Maguire you can see that it accesses off of Maguire as well there the driveway um comes off of Maguire and the uh garage doors face Maguire this is the back driveway area as you are coming from Tracy this would be the back of the house the back yard currently has a shed an inground pool patio area around the pool a deck here's another photo of the back of the house continuing on this is the house that's adjacent directly to the East and that house has a driveway that accesses onto that Shar driveway and then across from that house is is um another house that has access off or onto that driveway and the front of that house faces the opposite direction and then looking towards Tracy or to the West um you can see there's one more access point um on that shared driveway access and that's uh this property here the front of the house faces the opposite direction so the subject property currently has has an inground pool patio shed deck uh hard surface area um is the driveway area adjacent to the side of the garage and then also sidewalk and this you can see a little closer um aerial view of that this is the area that's proposed for improvement and it is a little deceptive the photographs I think help you uh appreciate that the lot is much larger than what you see um that is within that backyard area that is inside of that fence most of the lot there's additional lot area that is that goes beyond uh the fence over the drive area and then actually on the other side of the driveway so all of this area is included in the lot so this is what is proposed for the improvements they are proposing to put patio area Stepping Stones uh additional sidewalk area that will actually be adjacent to the inground pool there's a currently the shed is over on the West Side that'll be relocated to the east side uh this is a color version of the landscape plan giving you a little idea of what um surface areas they're proposing so in terms of a compliance table um 50% is the city standard the existing coverage including that drive way along the back of the property is 49.9% the proposal is for 52.8% or 2.8% beyond what the current code requires or allows uh surface coverage without the driveway access if if we if they didn't have that driveway um the city standard still 50% the existing coverage with not including that drive access drive would be at 38.4% and then with the additions it would be at 41379 71 square feet so the driveway really does work against this property in terms of um being able to accomplish any additional coverage so staff did do find findings for both approval and denial uh staff is recommending denial uh given that um um the ordinance was recently changed at uh the beginning of 2023 um prior to that the city did not have any standards for uh hard surface coverage um and now uh there is it's that 50% um staff does recommend denial of the 2.8% 62 27.5 square foot variance uh denial is based on following findings The Proposal does not meet the standards for a variance with no circumstances unique to the specific lot there are other properties that also have driveway access crossing their Lots um having similar circumstances as the subject property due to the proposed increase in coverage with the patio plan totaling now 11,918 square feet of coverage or 52.8% of the lot area the lot area conflicts conflicts with the goal to limit coverage on properties and the policy change made to protect half the lot area for open and uncovered space the property owner situation is not unique and may set a precedent um it's not self-imposed um they didn't create the driveway however uh that precedent could um affect four other properties with the same driveway circumstance that may require similar variances for improvements sted um also findings for approval approval of the request is based on the following findings that the Practical difficulty is caused by the existing driveway access that does not benefit the property at all and only Services other properties uh the unique circumstance includes the amount of access driveway coverage that does not benefit the subject lot as compared with nearby property so there are less opportunities for improvements on the subject property um without the there's more driveway on this particular property um the length of it than other um properties that have the driveway across it I can't tell you exactly what the square footage is it's just you know looking at it you can see that um they are probably um more impacted by that without the driveway the lot could support an additional 971 squ feet of heart surface Improvement it really does the the fact that the driveway um bisex the lot really does uh impact any sort of opportunities the prop proposal would not alter the essential character of the neighborhood the new improvements will be behind a fenon yard rear yard will not be visible from The Front Street and are at grade surface improvements that will not contribute to additional building coverage um it will just be uh covering surface area any approval should be subject to the plans stated October 15 2024 and the engineer staff report or staff memo uh that was included in the pack uh Josh Kohler is present at the meeting and available for questions and is the landscape designer of the project for South View design and with that I will stop and try to answer any questions you may have thank you Chris commissioner Pia yeah a couple of questions this house looks as though it was remodeled um was there ever access from the driveway in the back to this house or did they always have access through through Maguire to the gar question I don't know that I'm assuming that it was always through Maguire I but I don't know that for sure okay and then another question when you do when you change a standard like you did in 2023 or when the city does to to um 50% is there notice given or does that just happen and everyone is expected to know about that or how does that work um there is notice given it's published in the paper there's public hearings that occur both at the Planning Commission level and at the city council level okay thank you commissioner um you mentioned in the staff report that there may be creating a a precedent um I wondered if you were when you were making that comment if that was specific to other homes or just the four properties along this sort of back alley well specifically regarding four but um when you talk about overbuilding on a lot or coverage it's really difficult to justify I mean the shape of the lot doesn't matter uh the location of whatever it is doesn't matter it's just a percentage of the lot and it's very difficult to try to justify one percentage over and do you have any history on how that alley for lack of a better word sort of came to be because it seems like it's not everybody who uses that as the access to their home yeah actually very few that are adjacent to it because there's a lot of fencing off um it's it's a private Drive I never knew it was there and it's been there for I don't know longer than I've been here and um I'm assuming when some of the property was developed after subdivision um but it has to be a private easement agreement that would be Ed with the county it's not anything that the city has any record of in terms of uh how it came to be an easement agreement so all right thanks would you ever I was kind of going through this because it does mean that other lots have the ability like the [Music] one uh just behind it has the ability to do you know much more coverage because they don't have a portion of the drive on their lot and yeah 5604 right and 5600 um because that's totally outside their lot lines they don't have that kind of negative piece on their Lots would you ever consider just a portioning um splitting the area of that road up among those 10 houses that are along it because reason I'm asking is because on some you know for constructing this um deck and patio it would be very easy to kind of use that alley for construction access and take out down portion of a fence so that so they will get some benefit from using that road and it doesn't seem fair to kind of um take all that Road off of this lot so I'm wondering if you would ever consider like the doing a precedent like just dividing the total area up among those I guess from a staff standpoint I have to look at the ordinance yeah wait against what's there um and it would be up to Planning Commission to decide that okay thank you uh commissioner Fel I'm not following the your suggestion can you say that a different way maybe you know um city is worried about setting a precedent but it also seems like this lot is um burdened by the fact that it has an alley that is used by four houses but they aren't getting any use of it but anybody could potentially use it in the future I mean this is a new house and it'll be there for a long time but if the house next to it um you know rebuilt it could continue to kind of use the driveway along the back the 5601 I don't know if it was 5601 or 5609 that had the driveway along the back that you showed the one story house 5601 okay access yeah but it could have access to McGuire because I looked on the right it has but it' be yeah right so in the future it could possibly be that everybody decides to build a second garage or an Adu on the back of their land and then they all use it right so there's still that possibility so I'm wondering if you just apportion that driveway among the properties and then they get some benefit of their land because it seems like it's an undue burden on 567 5613 5609 5605 and 5601 and not 5604 which does use use um the drive in 5600 uses it yes and again we don't have a copy of the Cross easement agrees agreement or the access agreement yeah I don't know who has legal access to this private drive right I don't know if you know and I can ask the yeah Cent yeah that question too but it just feels like it would be more fair and also the 50% is like an overall average I mean we don't want we want each property to abide by that but if two properties essentially abide by the 50% you know one is at 49 and the others at 51 it's still a conglomerate of 50 does that make sense it just so make sure I'm tracking so it looks like 5604 whatever street that is to the South is using the shared alley so would they get part of it too it it's really part of the variant findings that would be part of the finding for an approval the fact that they have this practical difficulty um in meeting the impervious surface because of that driveway that's located on their site I see what you mean yeah so you're not actually talking about trading land say between 5605 and 5604 you just say reflect that in our decision today got it thank you commissioner Miranda so the impervious surface regulations were based on a study done in morning side right partially yes yeah which and the average lot size there is about 10,000 square feet yeah I mean mean it varies of course but but the the the main streets um and this is how how big is this slot it is 22581 square ft it's a large lot it's twice the size okay thank you any other questions for Chris okay all right well thank you question for the applicant yeah uh now now is the time for the applicant uh if there's a separate presentation or if you can just stand for questions introduce yourself name and address you're good you're good up front Josh caller with souie design so we're doing the work on this property we've been working on this since probably May did a couple uh surveys but to me this is the perfect reason to have a variance we do a lot of variances all the time all throughout the Twin Cities in this particular lot is very much subject to something that they don't use this this driveway is being accessed by two houses 5601 and 5600 are the only two that need this driveway to get get there and the other if you look at 5604 they have a driveway from the main street that just actually goes all the way through to the alley right and so my clients um you know what we're trying to do is just put a small patio in there you know at the beginning we said well we could easily just cut you know 600 square foot out of this driveway that is on your property that you don't use let's just cut that out of there and then you're going to be we won't even have to be here at this meeting um the driveway is obviously quite a bit larger than this little patio that we're putting in or this you know this this driveway and it's all on their property but the home owners didn't want to do that they said well I want to you know we love our neighbors you know we want to make sure they're the ones that need this driveway they maintain it they shovel it you know it's going to be really difficult if we just cut 600 foot of this out and put grass in there to shovel it in the winter months and whatever so so you know to me this is the reason to have a variance I I absolutely get the 50% we do a ton of work here in udina but the enti like all of that like they actually their their backyard seems really small because they put this pool in and they couldn't put the fence where their property goes they had to put it right to the edge of the pool because they obviously we can't block the road for the other people so I mean to me this is a I mean we're taking up a ton of square footage for this road for this whatever you want if you want to call it a road or just driveway that they don't use they don't have a gate to it they don't access it whatsoever so I mean again we've discussed just taking a section of it out or taking the whole piece of it out and then just driving over grass to get to those other two properties they just don't want to do that for their neighbors right so I don't know it's just kind of a goofy situation of all the variances that that we do every year I kind of felt like this was the one that made the most sense to for a reason to do it so I don't know that's kind of and I went through a few different things too just going through this even if you and I've got the survey here even if we cut their property off and I'm not saying to do this like but if they sold their property at where the fence goes and just cut that off and sold it to the neighbors behind them let's just say and you ended their property their square footage right at where they're lenses so before that road even happens we would be under 50% even if we just eliminated that amount of square footage and get rid because the whole thing is hard cover right there so it's just kind of a goofy situation it doesn't it doesn't make sense to me and again they want to be very you know cordial with all their neighbors they don't want to cut out this little asphalt section so that they can do a patio but that's kind of the next step and we weren't even going to use this road for construction in fact that's kind of um who these people are they're like well I don't want to damage the road if we're going to have equipment and stuff in there so we actually propos doing this project all by hand and coming in from the front so because it's they don't use that road at all so they're very what do I want to say they're very conscious of making sure that they don't you know being friendly to everybody in the in the neighborhood so it's just kind of a goofy situation that it doesn't I don't know that's kind of what we've got going on so there's yeah two things we could cut a section out and make it under 50% real easy we could cut the whole thing out and make it the property under 50% um or if we didn't even just for the variance didn't even count that whole square footage of their property took the whole property away and the hard cover of that road away we would still be we would be under 50% Thank you very much you said you had a question commissioner El yeah just just a couple thanks for coming in tonight Y is there an easement uh the easement I've got another survey here if you want no the easement that they have is just again the typical 5 foot easement from the can I use your mouse like back so the easement is actually off their property line 5 foot towards the road so it's just a utility easement per the survey that's pretty interesting did the um did the owners consider uh three things one reducing impermeable on the north side of the house two reducing the impermeable on the west side of the house and three reducing oh actually four three reducing the impermeable on the pool deck on the southeast part of the house and whatever I'm up to four I think uh getting rid of the shed seems like you could find 600 square F feet there yeah so the shed is kind of where they put the pool equipment stuff it's it's a portable shed I mean it sits on a on a I don't even think it's on a slab I think it's just on a classi base or whatever so um it so we were just going to move that because they kind of put a lot of their pool toys and whatever in that um the pool deck's actually not very large it might look a little deceiving on this but if you walk it once you start getting any little bit of furniture on there or a grill on there whatsoever um there's not much room on there you've got a walkway going around the the far end of it towards the alley and and towards where the existing shed is now and a little bump up by the time you if you were to put in a lot of furniture on the it just gets it gets pretty tight and so the reason this is this area where they're looking at doing this it's kind of shady with some of the the trees and what not it's just kind of Mucky underneath there and they wanted away an area for the adults to get away from the pool when the kids are jumping in and swimming so again we at the very beginning we were just you know I just propos well let's it's on your property let's just cut some of that driveway I don't remember how big it is 2,000 some square feet or whatever it is you know and they just said well I just I feel bad if we did that because other people tend to use the road so all right thank you yep as far as you yeah as far as you understand there's no private easement in place from not anything that I know of No usually that is like the onus on the surveyor to incorporate that into a certified survey we get and Chris had us get um a whole new surve they had a new survey done when did the pool I think it was 2 years ago and then uh when we submitted this we had another survey done as well the the survey notes uh that no title search was done that yeah I don't think there I don't think there was anything and the homeowners didn't know of anything as well so okay and I don't think there's anything with the city either anything that we could find yeah I guess I'm just curious we have 10 homes here uh impacted by this road sort of one way or another the homes on the North side they're all paying property taxes because that land is part of their parcel and the beneficiaries are 5600 and 5601 but if 5605 doesn't have anything recorded against their title and wanted to make the road disappear because they grew up you know woke up one morning and were wanted to be bad neighbors 5601 and 5600 are then landlocked they have no access to a public RightWay is that correct be I was just out there again today because we again we've been working on this since May um I I didn't pay I think 5601 if they had to they could get a driveway in to the other road to mire yeah 5600 I think would be really difficult I think it gets really steep right there so I don't know if they would even be able to and there's no existing curb Cuts so they don't necessar to do that that's correct so um to me this seems like a problem just from Life Safety and Security that we have Parcels that don't have protected rights for Access for an ambulance or a fir Tru and I guess just I don't know how as a city we handle that but to your point 5605 could reduce the width of that road oh for sure yeah and it would if there's nothing recorded against title and there's no cross easement agreement they would be I think I'm not a lawyer but they would be within their right to do that so um I think whether we approve it or don't approve it I think there should be some guidance that we don't create a precedent or a situation for these 10 homes in the future that um could end up being um negatively impacting other residents thanks commissioner Bon you got something do you happen to know I just can't tell from here how wide that drive area is oh good question I have a I don't think I have a scale with me sorry I want to say it's it's got to be close to it's got to be close to 10 foot wide at least yeah 10 to 12 for one okay and how wide does something need to be for someone to be able to use it for vehicle well it depends on how you want to use it I mean we've done properties where just to make it look nice where we done just two paths you know down down the side and had grass in the middle uh but we generally don't ever do that on on properties that's usually if it's a secondary road because if you get a shovel I mean you know how our winners get if we're shoveling or whatever and you've got sood or asro turf or even gravel in the middle it makes it you know pretty difficult to do so um you could do something like that probably 10 foots usually I would say 10 foots usually the minimum I don't think we do a lot of driveways where we are ever much less than 10t wide did you when you thought about taking from this driveway to just fine 600 sare that's yeah that's what I presented originally how much width did did you figure you needed to take uh I didn't do it that way I just figured let's just cut a section out in the middle okay so to come up with the 625 or whatever it was 625 s feet or whatever okay but I mean we could certainly do that but you'd probably have to narrow it by I bet you'd probably have to narrow by at least two feet on both Sid you know probably something like that um it's a good question I could scale it out I mean you're just thinking could you shave one side of it and make it really narrow or something like that I mean it it cost money and it'd be a fair amount of work but yeah you probably could come up with something that way too okay be easier just to cut a section out or just eliminate the driveway and its entirety you know just on their property um okay and then commissioner alakar asked if if you guys considered you know trying to shave or take something from anything on the North or west side of the property what was your thought about that we just didn't it you have to have a long driveway to get to Maguire Road anyway it's quite a quite a ways there the house is set back um and it's it's it's hard it's deceiving when you see the pictures if you were to go in the backyard it's tight the way it is I mean there's not a lot of patio space and because that fence is on that side of the property and not on the other side of the road that backyard seems is really small so it's just it's tight there okay we didn't really look at that thanks I appreciate it any other questions for the applicant move to the public hearing all right thank you as mentioned this is a public hearing so again there's an opportunity for those who are here in person to participate and those tuning in remotely I'll repeat the info again and then we'll give an opportunity to people who are here first but uh for those tuning in remotely uh the reminder is to call the number 312 535 8110 enter access code 2633 784 7383 and the password is 5454 and now you may press star three on your keypad to get in the Quee to speak this should all be on the screen for you because that would be difficult to remember and uh in the meantime while people jump into the queue if they happen to want to I we'll give an opportunity for those who are here in person to testify so like Community comment you have three minutes to do so State your full name your address and you got three minutes is anyone here in person I'd like to testify see no one russing Let's uh rushing I should say someone might be Russian but uh we can tune to the the I guess the virtual waiting room is there anyone in it nobody's in the virtual waiting room maybe we'll give it like 30 more seconds and then if we got no one we'll welcome motion to close the public hearing seeing nobody has joined I think it's safe to proceed we have a motion to close the public hearing move to close the public hearing second all those in favor say I I so moved public hearings close and now it's back to the Planning Commission to deliberate and maybe before we do so I just have a quick question for staff either Chris or Carrie um what would be the process for say these 11 houses to try to turn that driveway into an alley that's owned by the city they'd have to petition for it wouldn't they yeah they they would um and for the city to maintain also yeah yeah yeah it would have to meet certain widths it may have to get expanded to a wider um wider than 10 or 12 feet in order to get plows through there City plows there isn't a call the saac at the end it just it ends right that would have to get bigger too yeah certainly yeah maybe it's just a a city road but yeah just curious cuz most of the time we see things like this a road behind houses it's an Alleyway that isn't owned by any of the property owners so this is definitely unique for anything we typically see so just curious all right I mean for that reason I'm really uncomfortable kind of voting because it feels like we don't know fully the extent of the situation of who has rights to that and you know I'm sympathetic to the land owner that if it wasn't part of their property they wouldn't have to be here but it is part of their property for it appears benefits of others but that's not recorded So they aren't obligated to I mean I just feel like it's a messy situation and to make a decision about such a small amount of land that if circumstances were clearer we may not even have had to make decision I I don't know how other Commissioners feel how do other Commissioners feel go commissioner pH yeah let's just go down the line I agree with commissioner um Hanan I think it's a messy situation I think there probably should be an agreement among the neighbors because there could be some uh tough times and but the other thing is you know any one of these people if they had the room could build an Adu or a second garage and then use the alleyway so I mean I think there could be additional drives off of it right you don't know what's going to happen in 20 years um so I think because there is that potential of people being able to use drive down it and access the back of their houses or do an addition or do a garage um that I I see some leeway with kind of a portioning the area among the houses but I doo feel a little anxious about not knowing the legal status of that land among all these owners yeah I don't you know we get a lot of these overbuild patio type of requests I think this is the third one we've had in the last year right um the first one was a guy a folks in morning side here had kind of done this built a nice home had a nice uh backyard space that had been paved at a large driveway and then wanted to add a patio and go beyond the the limits and that variance was denied because it was an elective project um that didn't need to be done and um then there was another one recently somewhere in the southern part of udina there were someone wanted to build a Hardscape patio closer to the lake and that was also going to exceed I think some coverage requirements after building a nice beautiful new home and and covering the lot in other ways that that benefited them and we Deni that is not meeting the variance requirements and this seem similar to me I know there's always a wrinkle every there's always a wrinkle it's the lake or it's the shared driveway or something and the there's always a little bit of a wrinkle but from a president perspective I think this commission's been pretty consistent that when it's just an elective project like wanting to build a bigger patio um we find those those situations to not meet the criteria for a variance um we don't find there to be practical difficulties and we don't find the circumstances to be imposed by external factors so here I mean they have a a beautiful property big driveway large house pool patio and I think I'm just going to find it difficult to find that that those variance criteria met in this instance especially given that you know I know it sounds a little awkward everybody's trying to be diplomatic and totally appreciate that but it does sound like there is a is a way to actually take take sufficient square footage out of that um area in the back which these land owners do own uh to to make the project go forward so for all those reasons I I just don't think all the factors from Smith sure you know uh this is an interesting setup for sure no doubts about it uh I was really thinking hard about this one just listening to everybody and listening to all the feedback um trying to project this 20 years out what would most likely happen 20 years out um What would most likely happen I think is that 5601 and 5600 would eventually build some type of driveway to the main roads which would then give all the other homes the other eight homes or the other four homes a reason to reclaim that area so that it's now part of their property and if that does happen then the patio that they're proposing would meet the requirements right so it doesn't meet right now because of that driveway and essentially the practicalness of their property is is cut off by that driveway so I feel like this one might be a little bit unique I'm kind of leaning right now positive to approve this only because of this unique setup here and if we project this down the road um they will be able to reclaim that those those spaces um I think the applicant made a pretty compelling case that this is kind of reasons why variance happens and I think commissioner Bornstein made some good cases of Precedence that we've done in the past right and they're all unique and they're all different you have to make a judgment call um and I think this one seems reasonable to me when I project the long term of this space and so I'm leaning towards a an an an approv vote on this one just knowing that eventually those homes would reclaim that driveway and it's not going to be an issue anymore thanks commissioner Pia um I don't um believe it's um her view of this commission to be looking at to be conjecturing about what could be happening five or 10 or 20 years in the future I think we need to be making a decision based upon um the facts um however slim they might be um for what we have in front of us and make a decision based upon that and um I think the guideline or the standard is clear that um it's 50% there is um they have a lot of um it's beautifully designed home um on a large lot so they um I don't think that they practical difficulties some of the times when we when we have granted variances it's because um there's a lot of dynamic things going on whether it's the Eline or a a building or or a neighborhood changing or something like that and that's not the case here this is all very static kind of set of circumstances so um I don't feel that um a variance um uh needs to be approved this is this is all given this is what the the law has been for the last couple of years and if the Practical and a practical solution just like uh commissioner Bornstein mentioned when we had a situation like this before is we said okay well if you don't need Hardscape you want to you know have some privacy and you want to put chairs down you can do that without um um requiring a variance and still getting what you're looking for out of that space so I am uh agree with the uh staff on this and for denial M Miranda so part of the reason for this ordinance is dealing with water in the city and you know that doesn't change regardless of whether um something is intentional or not we we have more and more water problems with the city and um we have to deal with them now if this were a project where we were debating whether to add this road and this house already was at its maximum and we wanted to add another unit of housing or something um and adding this road would put it over the minimum that I could see going forward because then you're you're adding additional housing or improving the city in some way in this case the question we're asking is you know does this house which has quite a large driveway that's very wide and that goes around the side of the house and then the the pool and the deck in the backyard I mean it's got a considerable amount of Hardscape and the question is does this property need a variance I mean should we approve a variance to add additional Hardscape to this and uh I keep coming to the conclusion that we don't so just really quickly I think we do know the legal status of this lot the the shared driveway is pretty clearly on their land and you know many lots have some baggage that come along with them um sometimes that creates constraints my house has a easement across it so my neighbor's driveway goes right across my lot and that's just that's a constraint for for me for impermeable surface and I knew that when I moved in it's not like it was a surprise um I think the the EAS or excuse me the shared driveway does have value does provide benefit it's an option for the owners of 5605 to do something different in the future that they wouldn't have otherwise to commissioner ph's point about an Adu if they chose to do that someday that b a great way to access and they couldn't do that that way if the driveway wasn't there so it has some value whether or not it's being taken advantage of today and finally I I just think there are so many options available to the applicant to find 600 square F feet take a foot off the alley take some more off the massive amount of concrete on the North and the west and on the deck find it on the way place to put the pool toys instead of the shed and I can't believe you couldn't find a way to to get to 600 that's my two cents I'm uh leaning against all right I guess how I approach this one still still seems simple in my way in in my interpretation of like there's a practical difficulty with complying with the code because of this driveway that is on their side providing access to others that otherwise doesn't have to be there so could we require them to take out a section of it or could they elect to do that and then comply sure that that seems like there's a practical difficulty to comply and it's definitely a unique circumstance this is not something we see across Edina with driveways going across people's property so and they didn't create that that was part of the condition is this imposed by the homeowner they didn't impose it so I mean I I can see this both ways like but I think taking a strip out of the middle of that driveway just actually removes the character of the neighborhood more than maintains it so that's kind of what makes me more favorable to letting this happen um and again if yeah if this were to like become an alley and it's not our purview but to their point if you didn't count any of this and the property was smaller it complies even with what they want to do and that that is unique and so I it's do we want them to cut out a section 4 feet 3 feet wide down the middle of the driveway and then they could comply that just seems like a lot of unnecessary stuff to do to achieve the same results so I think I'm leaning more in favor of approving the or recommending approval over denial just from that simple fact any other comments or motions I'm not sure which way to go but I can start a motion and see what happens um a motion to to deny the variance request for 5605 Maguire Road second let's just do a roll roll call Vote for This onean commissioner Aly I commissioner Miranda I so just to be clear I is voting to deny correct yes commissioner podo I commissioner Smith nay commissioner barnstein I commissioner felt I commissioner hman nay chair Bennett nay so that is five in favor three opposed so the motion has been denied so good luck on next steps and uh wish you the best on until our next public hearing can I make a comment before we move on just I'm um just considering what would have made me vote differently and one of the things that might have made me vote that likely would have made me vote differently is if the applicant had made an effort to get to the number for example I might have perceived the application differently if they'd um come up with 100 square feet here and 100 squ ft there by making some compromises and choices on their existing infrastructure and said wow we tried hard but we're still a couple hundred square 100 square feet short that that would have made me think differently about it for what it's worth can I add a comment too sure I think if that alley was clear if there was an agreement and some understanding about that alley that would make a difference for me as well all right planner Tague take it away with the next public hearing thank you chair members of the commission this is a site the vast majority of you are pretty familiar with we've had this will be the third comprehensive plan Amendment proposed here in the last three years so the site is in the Northwest quarter of the city on Vernon Avenue just west of Highwood Drive it's the old Keys auto repair and it was a gas station at one time some of those previous requests we did have a restaurant proposed back in 2022 and a comp plan amendment to regu this to Neighborhood node that was denied unanimously recommended for denial by the Planning Commission and the city council denied it as well then last year you recall the green drop proposal for the donation center that again was recommended for denial by the Planning Commission and denied by the city council so this a little bit smaller of a restaurant this time so here's a look at the existing building so the issue that we've struggled with on this one is that it's guided in the comprehensive plan for medium density residential that designation goes back to 1980 likely was added because of the medium density residential uses to the West however the site has been zoned for for well over 50 years um for commercial uses pcd4 planned commercial District that would allow gas stations car washes um and auto repair so the proposal before you this evening is to remodel and expand the building for Station Pizza um the ex the total square footage of the building with the expansion would be uh, 1600 square ft and there would be a 20 seat restaurant inside for indoor dining and there would be takeout and delivery as a comparison that previous restaurant that was proposed that was 2400 square ft² but was a a 59 seat restaurant and it had rooftop dining and also a patio proposed I'll show a site plan here toward the end so here's a look at the proposal on the left is the existing garage Lobby space so they would remodel that existing space for a kitchen and A8 seat counter uh there would be what they're label labeling a party room there' be 12 seats here and then the expansion would be to the west and that would be coolers dry storage somewhat similar to the um uh Town Hall Station where that gas station was remodeled they did a little expansion off the back uh for coolers and dry storage uh you probably recall the sketch plan they went through some of the revisions that they've made since that sketch plan this past summer creating that indoor seating space for 20 people adding that addition uh to the west side of the building they've created a bike paved area on the north side of the building and added tandem parking for employees so here's a look at the proposed site plan so you can see the addition located here this is that patio area they would install a six- foot new cedar fence along the lot line to provide screening and Landscaping um also that cedar fence would extend to the South and add this uh Landscaping the tandem parking stalls that I was referring to would be right here that would be for employee parking based on city code they're required 24 parking stalls there proposing 24 these three tandem stalls would U bring the total to 27 here is a look at the proposed elevation and I'll let the architect get into this in a little more detail but the addition basically would match the existing building and they would Spruce it up a bit so this there's a lot requested here similar to our past requests comprehensive plan Amendment to regu the site from medium density residential to Neighborhood commercial that would be a new uh land use designation the restaurant that was proposed previously um The Proposal was for designating that site for neighborhood node and as we talked about 16,000 square foot lot really isn't a neighborhood node but that was the the um smallest commercial designation that we had at the time so the proposal here is to create a new a new designation and then a rezoning from pcd4 to pcd1 and in the pcd1 district restaurants are limited to one acre in size um just over 43,000 Square F feet and this site is just 16,000 Square fet there are a number of variances also proposed uh sidey setback variance for the addition 25 to 13 ft setback variances toward Eden Prairie Road to 20 ft for that building expansion 9 ft for that bike area along the north and parking lot setback variants from 10 ft I'll show where these are located here on my next slide um and uh well we'll just skip to the next slide so the the parking the existing pavement uh is located here so they would just resurface this area but they would expand in order to get this extra parking space here so this is that zero foot uh variance that's requested along the north lot line the 9 foot setback for this bike rack area the 20 foot setback to Eden Prairie Road so what they would do is just match the existing non-conforming setback that current setback 20 ft and the West lot line variance would be from 25 ft to 133 that previous request for the restaurant uh the proposal there was for five foot setback and the zero setback is a separation between parking space in the building that's an existing condition out there so with this one the city has complete discretion somewhat similar to the variants but this one even more so um discretion to approve or deny because of the comprehensive plan Amendment so that requires a four fifths vote of the city council so primary issue ues um is that comprehensive plan Amendment reasonable is the resoning reasonable and are the variances Justified so again want to emphasize you have complete discretion to approve or denial staff has prepared findings for both approval and denial that are outlined in your staff report so first to go through the comprehensive plan Amendment so again you see it's guided medium density residential and the proposal would be for a new designation for neighborhood commercial and that would be described as smallscale retail and Commercial uses building Footprints less than 2,000 square fet and the floor area ratio per zoning code so again the the existing comprehensive plan allows medium density residential so the maximum number of units that could be built on the site would be four that would require several variant expences um in order to get four structures on that site and I'll show you the buildable area here in a minute but it's we've made this comparison before with the um the Valley View and Wooddale development that site is 11,000 square feet and there were four town homes built on that site this one is 16,000 square feet so it is a little bit larger so with the comprehensive plan Amendment um staff is recommending approval and really the basis for staff's thinking on approval on this is that this has been a commercial site for over 50 years um it's reasonable with given the change in use from auto repair to a small scale restaurant the small scale being the key um so the rezoning or the comprehensive plan Amendment would be generally consistent with the existing commercial zoning on the site um as I mentioned gas stations car washes and um repair stations are currently a permitted use this would create a smaller scale category in the comprehensive plan like I had mentioned before the traffic generated from the site would be slightly higher um than the the previous uh Auto Repair um they would be providing Landscaping along that West West lot line to minimize impacts better than the previous request um and it would be an improvement um to current conditions traffic study was traffic and parking study was done Ed terhar with stantech did that study he's online with us um this evening should you have any questions uh but the traffic study concluded that the existing roadways can support the project and while the parking is code compliant their conclusion on the parking was that 22 stalls would be adequate um to support the use in terms of the rezoning so this on the screen are the criteria that the uh Planning Commission and councel consider is the is it consistent with the comprehensive plan so again we wouldn't support the rezoning if the comprehensive plan is not amended um would not be detrimental to surrounding properties wouldn't result in an overly intensive land use result in undue traffic congestion um conforms to the provision Visions excuse me battling a cold a little bit um Provisions to the code and again they're asking for variances um and provides a proper relationship between buildings between uses so again staff is recommending approval here um subject to the the comprehensive plan being amended again the site's been a commercial use for over 50 years um in terms of regulations on the site so again if the site is properly regulated that some of those conditions that we can add include hours of operation they're proposing um that the business be open from 11:00 a.m. to 900 p.m. Sunday through Thursday 11: P 11:00 a.m. to 10: p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays you can put further restrictions on that if you so choose to to help mitigate impacts to the neighborhood that could also be regulated through a liquor license in the future uh the parking setbacks are met um there's a lot of feedback on Better Together in regard to if we rezone this to plant commercial District it just opens the door for more intensive uses so the safeg guards that would be in place should the site be rezoned would be the setback requirements and any expansion of this building is going to require variances any expansion in the footprints going to require more parking spaces so anything um to expand the use um would have to come back before the Planning Commission and city council so the site would be separated it's about a 100 foot separation between the addition and the use to the West um across the street from single family homes to the north so this is that buildable area given the restrictive setbacks having two Street frontages 35 ft on both sides and the 25 foot setback on the west and the odd shape of the lot the Triangular shape and small size so that leads into the variance criteria and meeting our our um reasonable use the Practical difficulty test that being that the property owner proposes to use the property in a reasonable manner not permitted by the zoning ordinance the plight of the land owner is due to circumstances unique to the property and wouldn't alter the essential character excuse me of the of the neighborhood so again staff is supporting the variances um again the existing use on the site been commercial for over 50 years closest structure to the West closest adjacent structure being over 100 100 ft away um practical difficulties include that small lot size irregular shape and the restrictive setbacks with two Street frontages really couldn't build anything on this site without needing variances and that cedar fencing and Landscaping um on both the North and the west side will help minimize those impacts so again here's the variances that were requested so I thought it might be useful to to show the planning commission that previous restaurant um proposal and and how it Compares so there's roughly five variances here in addition to the lot size variants that previous request uh they were going to reconfigure and expand the parking so they were proposing a three-foot setback the trash area uh was to the rear of the building that had a 16t setback so variance was needed there the addition to the building extended a little closer to Eden Prairie Road uh they're proposing 20 ft tonight 12T was the request previously you can see the five foot setback on the west lot line they were also expanding the parking area to have a zero foot setback so there was virtually no screening along that West lot line there was also a patio proposed that extended basically to the lot line and with that patio there was the separation of the parking areas uh there was some concern by the traffic consultant at that time about um cutting off that having that um the flow through yes thank you and also to look at the number of seats so you can see it was a much larger restaurant with uh 59 seats and they also were proposing rooftop dining as well so with that again staff has outlined um findings for both approval and denial in your staff report but we are supportive of The Proposal tonight with that I can stand for questions and the applicants are here for a presentation as well thank you Carrie any questions fellow Commissioners commissioner Haman uh do you know how big that buildable square footage area is inside that triangle I don't if I um it's probably about the size of the existing footprint of that building so ft or something uh for a floor plate and uh can you compare uh for art edification the setback variances on this site versus the Valley View site are they somewhat similar there were setbacks um I believe on all sides on that one and there were quite a few of them I'd have to go back and and take a look but that one was kind of triangular shaped as well any other questions for Carrie yeah yeah all right to monopolize the microphone um thank you Mr Teague the a couple things so there was there's a lot of concern in Better Together about um the number of variances suggesting an improper use so while we're on this chart here um it seems like any use would require a number of variances does that Mak is that fair I think that's fair and in fact the existing building which we have become comfortable with over 50 years would need variances on three out of four sides correct okay um on the comprehensive plan if we change it to Neighborhood commercial uh would and then somebody came along in 20 years wanted to build town houses would we have to change it back in the comprehensive plan yes okay on the patio spa or excuse me on the bike racks on the North side I noticed that that has access to the kitchen as well as to the dining room hypothetically if the owner decided to put a couple of tables out there could he do that yeah that was one of the first question I thought that was a patio when I first saw that um they have indicated that they don't intend to do that that would be a reasonable condition that you could place on this to say there would be no outside seating if if you desire okay and hypothetically if we said if we agreed to a patio there would that change the parking it would not we don't include outdoor seating in the parking requirements okay um if if I wanted to well if someone wanted to build a 24-hour Car Wash using the existing building could they do that using the existing building with no expansion they could okay so I could do that today yeah or tomorrow it's probably too late today okay um sidewalks can you just spend a few minutes talking about the sidewalk plan yeah um sorry I didn't touch on that they're showing this um along the curb in the engineering memo one of the conditions of approval would be to do a Boulevard style sidewalk there rather than that back of curb Arrangement it is in our sidewalk plan to have a sidewalk on that side so while it may not connect to the West immediately um we would like to see that put in when when we if we were to Pro proceed with this does the fact of this project going ahead influence timing of adjacent sidewalk building potentially could yes yeah okay uh uh one more thing um I have a question for the traffic study consultant are you there and are you there I am here can you hear me yes again thanks for joining us um I just want to make sure I was understanding the uh exhibit in the packet from the traffic study so it's showing the peak hour PM peak hour details and if I'm understanding this right it looks like there's about uh approximately just use round numbers in the 20 26 build scenario something like 700 cars going east and 300 cars going west during the peak hour does that is that approximately correct yes that is correct okay and this business is going to drive 15 trips during that hour during that PM peak hour C so that's something like a one and a half% increase in the traffic flow during the peak hour it's a very small percentage yes very small percent um and do you this wasn't in the deck I was looking for it do you know the daily total daily traffic trips on this segment for for a full day I don't off the top of my head but I could look it up fairly quickly take me a couple minutes here so a lot right I'm guessing it's a lot but I'm just curious to know what the number is since we know we since we can know that it is approximately 8,900 V was pretty on that was in 2021 great thank you very much that's all I have any other questions for car commissioner felt director T can you um there are also some questions together on Better Together about a through lot and I'm assuming if it was residential that access for those four Town Homes would be on the north side on the on the quieter Street and um but for a commercial you'd want those access on Vernon and not on the correct okay and um Kei has sat empty for a while now right in the time that has been um in the comp plan is residential have you had anybody reach out to you and talk about the possibilities I have not and we've never seen any sketch plans for nothing for residential yeah um you know and there have been other smaller Lots where there has been interest the 44 valy view um you know so right so it just feels like this law is sitting there without anybody coming forward to use it as we've um had it in the comp plan okay and then another question um along with a sidewalk can we recommend that that sidewalk be built as part of this or recommend that it's built at the early as possible convenience that portion of it yeah so it wouldn't be a condition that the developer would be respons for that but you could make the suggestion that the city that we'd like to see it that you'd like to see the city build that Y and that and funds for the sidewalks come out of a an opset of utility fee the tax fund the Pax fund so it wouldn't it be taxpayer money doing that um potentially well know right okay thank you um and I also noticed some on Better Together about people kind of suggesting that it' be a park and right and suggesting it would be a park that wouldn't mean the city would have to purchase it and that would that's correct yeah um so it'd be tough to kind of recommend that because that would be recommending the city does not control the property correct yeah yeah um and there are are I mean there's breson park there there's Highland Park y there's Walnut Ridge yansy there's a yansy park there's a lot of wonderful parks there already there was one there was one um small property that a group of neighbors purchased and the city financed and they're paying the city back over 20 years I don't know if anybody wants to do this this would be a pretty hefty so I so I the the park question seems like a tough lift for the city to do yeah to compare that say to those resident commercial property probably three to four times the value okay and another question that was another idea that was suggested to me was um under its existing categorization the PCD for the auto could this lot be used as a um electric charging station yes in fact we did have an inquiry about that you did yeah was well over a year ago okay but they decided not to pursue it okay um so it's a possibility but only one question and it's not the plan in front of us so we're looking at this one okay um and you talked about the small scale and kind of um you know this parking and these setbacks are would be a condition of this and nobody would be able to kind of add on to it without any existing variances and there's and there's a lot of uses that can be used in that PCD one but I suspect of all those uses that could be in there I was looking through them you know umy right there's there's only a few of them that would do a oneoff they'd all want to be next to um other commercial areas so they can have traffic from additional building so um can you kind of talk about that again about how these variances would limit the ability to add on or do anything kind of larger in the future yes so the required setbacks are the red line here so any addition to the building would have to take place within within that that red triangle anything outside of that would require a variance even if they went up it's still an expansion and and so if they're expanding the square footage of a restaurant then they're not going to have enough parking they would come back for a parking variance if it were to change to retail or office type use restaurant is going to generate the most um parking stalls required so potentially um that type of a use would meet our parking standards but they would likely hard to say whether an office building would want an office use would want to move into that existing use existing space but they could okay thank you one of uh some of the comments on Better Together talked about access onto Vernon since it's uh a County Road and that this already violates sort of best practices for a County Road and I guess if if you can educate me on if this was to change in any way I mean if they want to move the curb cut even two feet does that sort of take it off the table as an option uh widening widening the access may require a permit through the county um I don't think they could take an access away um but that if there were expanding that would likely require a permit through the county and does the county have any um say I guess in a change of use with access onto their Road they haven't indicated any issues with this with this project at this time or any of the previous ones as well okay thank you maybe just to further clarify that Carrie right it's it's if there we were create creating an entirely new access onto Vernon would they then Aline and make conditions right yes yeah they couldn't deny access if there were um you know if there were just one there today and proposing we're proposing another one they could have some say in that yes any other questions commissioner Smith uh thank you director Teague for the presentation uh just a couple of questions um regarding the hours of operation so I think you mentioned that the applicant was seeking a 11 to 9 during the week and then a 11 to 10 Friday and Saturday um what is like the standard business hours allowed in the city today yeah I would I don't believe we have standard um business hours there are in regard to the liquor license um but we don't have any at least that I'm aware of um standard hours that we would recommend but with this with the resoning and the variances that are proposed here we would have the ability to restrict the hours for this use gotcha what what's the background of like what are you I guess trying to learn about just see if there is a consistent standard and or reason for it just yeah just thinking how much control or uh could be decide on the hours of operation you know if the concern from Neighbors would be noise for example um busyness and if in the city let's just say it's 10: p.m. in most places then this since it's embedded in in the in the neighborhood we could consider shortening the hours from I think you know 11: to 7:00 p.m. or something like that just because it's more embedded in the neighborhood so I just wasn't sure if we had like a standard set of hours that would be like what we would measure from and then we could pull it back from um this new rezoning so I kind of be thinking behind it and then um neighborhood commercial right that's going to be a new tool for us cuz I don't think we have that today and so we could potentially apply that new tool to different parts of the city where we have maybe similar kind of situation uh spot that's too small to be a node um we could apply there do you have any sense of other areas in a city where a neighborhood commercial could be applied uh not specifically you know we did the the exercise about where we want to look at Future small area plans that's prob that's probably the best um source of information that we have right now so we'll consider that as part of the comprehensive plan that will start sooner a couple years gotcha and then I saw in the pocket to um that if we do uh rezoning the the Metropolitan Council has to approve can you just talk about what that process would look like yeah that's the comprehensive plan Amendment so what we would have to do first is notify all of our adjacent cities of the comprehensive plan Amendment and they can weigh in and we send that to the Metropolitan Council and ultimately they approve or deny something as small as this I can't imagine that they would deny it but it is a process that that we have to have to go through and that takes a few months gotcha just regarding alcohol uh talk more about you know a lior license right like if the applicant we do say yeah this neighborhood commercial looks good and they start the pizza business and if let's just say that we don't want to have alcohol to be sold here could we make that a requirement of the neighborhood node uh you know uh criteria and or or could they apply for it separately and it could potentially be approved yeah it's a separate process through the city council I um I'm thinking of again the town hall station that has a similar zoning pcd1 um so not sure whether we can say no to a the city code that the the liquor ordinance um allows it in pcd1 District so that one we might need some legal advice on yeah you thank you that's it for now any questions for Carrie commiss Miranda which if any PCD zoning allow housing uh yeah so to to build on to that um yeah so a pcd1 Zone does allow housing as a conditionally permitted use as long as you have retail on the first level so I guess housing technically would still be um allowed here although in a neighborhood commercial Zone well well they' need a lot of variances because they need retail on the on the main level um they need to park the housing above so it' be pretty it would be a pretty tough one to I'm just asking thank you well I guess thanks for asking any other questions see none we thank you Carrie welcome the applicant team forward to give a presentation rundown of what we're seeing tonight and then also if you could just State your full name address and um stand for questions after that my name is Kess HR I'm with momentum Design Group the architect was working on the project uh with the applicant uh so obviously we you've seen this all before you've discussed this all before we were here this summer and had talked about these things uh we really sort of took your feedback to Heart uh we got a lot of comments both here and at the city council level about wanting to add wanting to add a place where neighbors could actually meet and and and and gather and and uh uh and so we did unlike the original proposal or at least the proposal in the sketch plan uh we did decide to to add in some seats um like I said not our original comment not original proposal rather uh but it is something I think you know gives that neighborhood sort of gathering space an opportunity to occur um it requires us naturally to do add some more variances um we had to you know obviously add more parking there was some changes that had to be made in order to accommodate that um but I think it's you know in the end it it it creates a a better experience uh for the for the for for the neighborhood um and it's it's less of a you know uh just a delivery and and you know pickup sort of place but an actual place where people would want to meet and come so that was kind of the feedback that we took uh along with a number of the other sort of smaller items of adjusting some of the parking and the and the fencing and all that kind of stuff so I think uh yeah I mean we'll stand for any questions the applicant is here as well if there any questions for him specifically but thank you very much I guess yeah questions may just go down the line you got any no let's start over there commissioner El you got any questions sure all right there we go uh actually just one question for you so it's a a cedar fence I'm not a fence expert are there fence options which would provide more noise and light uh protection from the our or from the residential neighbors to the north no the the a cedar fence will will provide a fully opaque sort of uh coverage you know there won't be gaps sort of in the fencing it'll be a staggered fence that you can't really see through uh so it it would be a a a fairly solid visual sort of uh penetration in terms of the the noise you know the the difference between a wood cedar fence and you know we could build a brick wall that was 6 feet tall there it's not going to make as much much difference in terms of the actual sort of audio sort of uh sound uh Crossing through that that that space I mean we don't have any outdoor patio seating uh the the patio to the to the north of the of this place of of the building is for that um uh the the bike parking the racks that we've added on on that side there's an existing patio there we would actually be tearing that patio up and replacing it with a new one it just it's weirdly shaped and it doesn't have the right height levels that we would have to adjust the the grading to so um that's the the purpose of that patio not not for for for seating okay thanks I was just reacting I think to the image where I can see the tree through the front through the fence so I wasn't sure what how opaque it actually was but it sounds like it's going to be perfect P seater fence okay thank you good question full of transparency there uh commissioner Pilla um welcome again thank you um just a couple questions so let's see there's still be enough room for the uh trucks the trash truck and the delivery truck Cisco or food uh US Foods to come in and yeah we've maintained that flow we've redirected it so it makes for a more consistent uh circular pattern uh but yeah there there won't be any problems getting the trucks in there and no thought or you've dispensed with any thought about building up even if it's not for seeding for storage no longer consideration no we've never discussed building up it wouldn't it doesn't really do much it's not much use to us on the second level um looking at my notes from last time from June um you would I assume that um being in a smaller space you're going to um have less production right less Revenue produ uh projections and things or not or you think you're going to make up ter well the the the real difference uh in terms of the plan is that the the addition that we've added on the west side is larger now than it would have been if we had not added the seating on the inside uh so so essentially the the kitchen facilities remain the same uh as the previous plan uh but we needed to make some adjustments in order to accommodate that seating area so your um production capability is the same correct your seating capacity is less well the seating cap capacity is more now because previously there was Zero seating capacity okay sorry um no my mistake um so then you are anticipating with the same production and more seating fewer deliveries and Pickups right the the actual seating is not very l i me 20 people is not a very large number of people relative to the amount of of uh deliveries and Pickups that likely occur here um so we don't really consider that to be a big effect on the overall production uh uh capacity of the the of the restaurant okay so you consider that to be negligible it's negligible yeah I mean obviously it has an effect but it's not it's not enough that we're that they're concerned about it and and um I had written down last time that um in your in the Big Willow Park location um 80% of um your business was at dinner and 20% was at lunch and are you anticipating same thing I would have to confirm with with my uh client but I I believe that's what he said last time and I that would remain the truth I'm just concerned if you could address that 80% of dinner 80% of the business is dinner but we're only seeing I think 15 additional um trips during peak hours um if you could address if if your business is not during peak hours or how that kind of jives with the traffic study well I guess he'd have to ask the traffic consultant that the the numbers that he generated is doesn't really that's not something we get involved in that's not something he's generating uh and so so yeah it may be that the peak hours are actually not the peak times for us uh I imagine the peak times for us will be a little bit later in the evening what is your time so I hello I'm Jake schaer 6024 Hansen Road Edina um yeah I'm not sure what the traffic report refers to as peak hours but when I say dinner hours I mean four till close so it is a five hours you know time period there um I'm not sure what what the traffic study calls for for peak hours I'm assuming that's like rush hour time which would be 4 and five I'm assuming which is not our busiest time I think the reference there is to the peak hours of traffic on the roadways not the peak hours of their operation right I just assumed that there was some overlap and one number was way high and one was way low so that's the reason for the question um and um we talked about this last time too um you are not considering um an any kind of a pedestrian entrance in the from in the gate in Cedar gate in the back or in the north I mean that was uh generally when we sort of started this process the idea was to to um screen uh the the property from the neighborhood to the back as much as possible um you know you can still walk around the sort of the you know it's the long walk around the the the sharp corner of of the triangle right now uh but I mean it's not that we would be opposed to a gate there it just it I think the idea was that we wanted to discourage uh sort of people from parking back in the neighborhood and and walking into onto the site more directly uh again it's not from from our standpoint uh a cedar you know putting putting a gate in the cedar fence would would be acceptable if it was something you guys thought was was useful and necessary um but to date we haven't uh we haven't considered that it seems um less of a neighborhood place to go if you've got to walk the perimeter of the property um but that's just a comment um that said I appreciate your tenacity though coming back thanks other questions for the is that yes or a no yeah okay commissioner felt welcome back thank you and thank you for listening to us last time and the city council and um doing all the work you've done you have one other existing restaurant this is is suppos for the owner in minetonka that's correct and it's kind of a very similar situation to this one there's a few more commercial properties but it's kind of out on its own in a residential area there's a a small commercial node there I would call it and it's a larger footprint than this okay and um it's in an area where the lots are larger residen I mean it's a residential area it's a cany Roden resid it's a residential area in minanga Boulevard yeah and how long have you operated that business uh nine it'll be I think we're at nine years here in January nine years okay um and that has been doing well well enough that you want to expand in your backyard y right um can we I don't know can we talk about the Landscaping plan a little bit you've got um a plan to kind of aggressively plant the edges yes mhm yeah the plan is to uh uh basically to to to plant and and enhance what's already there uh in terms of that North on the North side um any plantings we do on the North side would technically be in the right of way and therefore subject to removal or or change by the city if they ever decide to do anything there um but then on the west side that would be on our property and so we that Landscaping would be uh would be secure okay at that point there's some additional Landscaping in the front that would we do for just for aesthetic reasons okay and and the Landscaping in front would be all on your property line so the city can put their sidewalk wherever they want and the city could I mean I think we drew the sidewalk based on what's kind of there on the rest of the street but if you want a Boulevard then obviously you can put a Boulevard I think I think Boulevard sidewalks are much more pedestrian friendly absolutely yeah um and I do think to commissioner aly's um point about the the trees do help I think mitigate sound um and kind of visual any kind of lighting as well absolutely yeah okay thank you any other question well good I have a ton I'm kidding uh I just got one uh from the image that's on the screen uh kind of lose this sometimes happens but just basic wave finding I appreciate kind of the traffic changes you made and Design This is great but when I look at this building it kind of feels like the front door is into that party room are you going to make is you going to make it more clear it's that north side yeah the you're looking at just the way the the the the space functions I we want to be able to open up that party room so it could directly be you know directly access from the from the outside um but no the primary primary route would be on the North side it's not shown in this image but there is a um a canopy that will'll be extending out of that'll have some color to it and some pop and you know cuz when we uh approve the Caribou right next to here it that was a a common question what's the front door because just from that pedestrian exper experience too or like your parking just like making it easier and safer for people to just get where they need to go so just that was just a basic question I had that's all I had for you guys so far thank you very much so this is a public hearing we've gone through the first two steps staff presentation applicant presentation questions so now we open it to the public for their chance to testify about this matter uh similarly to the last one uh for those tuning in remotely please call the following number 312 535 8110 enter access code 2633 784 7383 enter password 5454 and then press star three on your keypad to get into the que to speak while you do that and while we wait for everything to buffer and catch up we are going to open it to those who are here in person first to testify same situation you have three minutes to do so State your full name your address uh when the lights green go when it's read I'll ask you to wrap it up you can come to either Podium starting now welcome hi there my name is James Allen 6105 Eden Prairie Road Edina and due to the time limits I'm going to read this the 60616 Vernon Avenue site is Guided by the comprehensive plan for medium density residential surrounding land use are low and medium density residential the nearest commercial plan district is approximately one mile away from this small isolated property parcel in the middle of an extensive established residential Community with children pets and adults using the quiet streets this proposal does not align with some concept expressed during past Council discussions that within the goal of establishing beneficial viable commercial areas the concept of node areas with expansion opportunity should be a priority this site is clearly not a node this site is nowhere the size of suitable commercial nodes despite the 74e usage for automotive gas and repair originally and ration placed on the old road to mano commercializing this site appears to be contradictory to section 36-2 of the zaz zoning ordinance quote to control the use development and expansion of certain non-residential uses in the single dwelling unit district in order to reduce or eliminate undesirable impacts on such nonresidential uses by nonset residential uses examples of reasonable given by the commission report do not appear to actually be reasonable with the convention grill and hello pizza being in a much larger established commercial area of 44th in France the Town Hall Station being in the established strip mall area of Valley View and Wooddale I'm confused a little bit by the continuing effort to assist an investor who may have made a poor investment in an overpriced property as you said earlier no one is has come forward for town homes or other uses well the property value has a direct impact on that and just to add another thing I am totally in support of the Planning Commission and the city council's efforts to take Edina into the future I know there are some people that are not but I am I happen to be the founder and still leading a 30-year-old management consulting firm that does business in 21 Industries in 13 countries and I've been a lot of places I visited 34 countries now albe at some of that was as a weapons officer of a naval Destroyer but I've still been there and I've seen a lot of plans I appreciate what you're doing to keep Edina up to me this is not one of those things that helps keep Edina up when it's a residential neighborhood with kids playing in the street thank you very much thank you hi good evening uh Commissioners Matthew pepper 604 Eden pre Road directly behind Kevin Keys um just want to Echo one of the significant well first let me speak that uh this has been less contentious than the last one I think the applicant for that um three three big points I wanted to make um one of the significant barriers is that the owners are asking for 1.25 million and that's uh 2.25 more than what they paid for it so uh I think if I'd submit to you that that's one of the big reasons the barriers to residential um I also think it's unfair to show the buildable area without the expected variances in as somebody who owns property to the north into the West I would be the first one up here saying I'll give you any variance you want except on height if you want to come and build residential to the South and to the West um second changing um uh this to pcd1 opens the door to other uses a larger restaurant can come in right right behind cannabis could be another option that that that could come so um the owners of this site purchased a site zone for auto medium medium dead density residential it is not the Planning Commission commission's role to make them whole so uh and finally that the danger is not on Vernon it's coming off of Vernon so your question about the percentages I don't think is the accurate one and commissioner Pia you caught that math issue it says 181 additional ones but only 15 per hour there's something off there I went back I called I said where have we been the past 50 years so I called Kevin and Mr Keys told me he had about 20 people per day that's what we've been dealing with and they were spread out from 8 to 5 so now we're saying we're going to put 181 or the reports says 75% of that will be in in the in the evening hours and so 75% of that 181 is going to be coming in the evening hours when we have 40 40 50 m hour folks accidents happen when the Swiss the holes of the Swiss cheese line up if you look at this parking lot about half of the spots back up where people pull in and so that's what we're going to be dealing with we're going to have folks coming in off busy Vernon people backing up bicycles coming there's a lot of hole swiss cheese holes in this plan and in this parking lot specifically thanks for your time thank you hello my name is is Barbara Bender I live at 6105 Eden Ferry Road um when I moved there in 1998 from uh Indian Hills I knew there was an auto repair shop there it was pretty obvious I also knew when I bought my condo that the property was guided toward medium density housing so I bought with confidence that the the Integrity of the neighborhood would remain as it was and so here we are a number of years later and it feels like that rug is being pulled right out we have been fighting this for about three years we're going into year number four I'm going to try not to repeat what has been said but I think a large part of this problem is due to failure of due diligence on the part of the current owners and we are being asked as homeowners to to accept substantial offsets rezoning amending the comprehensive plan and ignoring a long-term neighborhood expectations of medium density housing I've watched over my 27 years there owners who have put millions of dollars into the purchase of their home there has been a lot of renovation major renovation improvements to the interiors and the exteriors of this home that make the current owner's $900,000 investment pale into insignificance compared to what the owners have done so I'm asking you do we really want a oneoff commercial venture to detract from what all these homeowners have put into their property uh I would start losing confidence in my ability to purchase property if we could have these oneoff situations and I ask you not to approve this proposal and this has nothing to do with my view of the quality of of the pizzeria it has to do with expectations of owners in Idina to make investments in their own properties and hope that they will hold thank you very much for your time thank you hi uh I'm Mary Mander 6105 Eden Prairie Road Ina uh been an adult resident of Edina for 38 years I actually grew up here and uh went to high school here raised our kids here um my husband and I feel that this property should not be a restaurant let lone Pizza uh we did a little driving today there is a pizza place called olives 2.1 miles from the Kevin key site there's a Devan 1.5 miles from the Kevin Keys site there's um about eight more either D in restaurants where you can get a pizza or take out any Dina and then not too far out of the range are some other places where you can get a pizza um we would like to see this property return to either Automotive which we've dealt with for a long time like I said I lived actually four blocks from where I live now and it was always Kevin Key's Auto um or we would like to see it residential I could see Town Homes like they've built in other parts of the city uh it's a residential neighborhood and we have our family and our friends come to visit us they need to park on E Prairie Road and if like the architect said they can scoot around the fence and you know come around if there's not enough parking they will use Eden Prairie Road to park on and then what happen happens to our friends and our family when they come to visit so thank you for your time I really would like to see this property not become a restaurant thank you good evening I'm Pam Allen 6105 Eden Prairie Road in spite of the way it looks we didn't hire a bus to bring us all over here tonight but we are very concerned about this I'd like to direct your attention to the picture this was not in my in my notes but we're talking about how the light would affect the neighborhood you know you've got a six- foot fence okay that's me if you look at the signage on the building and the light coming out of the inside of the building this is going to be readily apparent to the Condominiums directly to the west and to the neighbors to the north so it will not Shield them from that it'll Shield them from maybe a car but it will not Shield them from the light coming out of the building when the developer approached the neighborhood and we had a meet and greet at the gas station last summer he said he would not proceed if the neighborhood did not want it and a cursory review of the last three years which you've all heard over the years would certainly let him know that the neighborhood does not want this originally it was a takeout location that we were presented with and now it's a 20 seat restaurant and a patio and I I hate to sound dubious but I've got to imagine they're going to couple chairs and tables are going to find their way out to the patio and the hours are subject to the conditions of a liquor license which will surely follow and for this we're considering making a new land use designation in the comp plan the Valley View um site has already been cited as uh 5,000 square ft less than this unit over at or this lot at uh keys and it does have condominiums on it or tow houses on it so it can be done this is a viable site for tow houses again as as Mr pepper said it's a question of that the owner paid too much for the lot and now he has to suffer the consequences of that but I don't think the city of Edina should have to suffer those consequences there's the question of would it be detrimental to the family neighborhood when you can consider hours of 11:00 a.m. to 10: p.m. and as other people have mentioned with kids and parking and so forth um liquor license will inevitably bring some crime to the uh area and more people parking on the residential streets breaking into the cars the congestion on Vernon which is a parking lot now at rush hour so if you add to that the uh the trucks coming and going and the noise and the trash trucks coming and going and for all of this we have to ask for eight variances and resoning considerations for this it seems a very heavy load to ask for getting a a pizza parlor in a a residential neighborhood it indicates to me that this really is inconsistent with the best use of the property then the question was or the position was made that it's an improvement to an exist the existing site to me that's a very low bar indeed considering this is an abandon and a deteriorating building so anything would you know you could put a tent up it would be an improvement uh there's a statement of philosophy from the Planning Commission on page 10 that says to preserve and enhance the high residential quality in the city I'd suggest you that trees in a six-foot fence do not diminish the adverse effects to our neighborhood our real estate values and our safety this will alter the essential character of the locality this is not an amenity is an unwanted intrusion Gathering spots are already exist and all are in biking and walking distance as mentioned before Olives Pizza deanis Caribou Coffee and Starbucks are two miles away my finally I would just say the 50 years of a grandfathered in limited commercial use is no reason to perpetuate that designation it's time to adhere to the comprehensive plan and consider the reality of this residential area the neighbors do not want a restaurant here and will not support it I thank you for listening to me and please do not approve this project with its many variances and inappropriate use in our family neighborhood thank you so much for your time thank you good evening as much as I would really love a cute little Neighborhood Restaurant like what's over in 50th in France um I just would have to encourage you to oppose this and it breaks my heart because I have kids with food allergies and I know your previous restaurant has the nut-free environment which would really benefit me and my family and many other friends who have a nut allergy also that we know of I'm very involved in the food allergy Network anyhow um I live at 60 6116 inen Prairie Road we've lived there for almost two years in December and we bought it knowing that the Kevin Keys property was there and knowing what the uh zoning was Etc as this other um lovely lady pointed out um I would really like you not to change the zoning um I have concerns about the street traffic and the foot traffic because people will want to park on Dean Prairie Road if it gets busy and I would only want them to be successful so the traffic probably will increase because it'll be a lovely restaurant um but we our road is so hard to back out of our driveway right now I cannot tell you I have to go so slow to get out of my driveway right now so any increase in the uh traffic there would be an additional you know problem for us in our particular home um because you know people are going to want to park behind there and they're going to want to walk around uh excuse me sorry I'm trying to be the other thing that I am very concerned about is them possibly getting a liquor license I'm kind of a nerd in terms of variables and I think anytime you access alcohol there's always someone who's going to probably not handle it well and so we're increasing the variables of having potential alcohol abuse you know coming down our road and Vernon is already a very busy intersection there's many people in my neighborhood even people because I walk every day Vernon and bis Park and and the little path that goes behind this and we would not want to have people drinking and driving I mean I'm very much against that so and I know they would want to get a liquor license if I wanted if that was my restaurant I would want it too so um I can unfortunately concur with many people that that have already stood up here and said they're really opposed to it and it breaks my heart for them but at the same time I live in that neighborhood I love that neighborhood I love walking there with my dog and I love walking with friends and family and I just hope you can hear our concerns thank you so much have a good evening thank you it's all good hello hey there my name is Tom cryy we live at 6004 came our Drive about two doors away from Matthew um I think there's been a great detailed story of why we we in the residential neighborhood here don't want this to change um the traffic the possibility for parking on needen Prairie Road the concerns with people drink too much and gets into your little neighborhood I mean you'd have to see how many people of all ages there's a lady on our street that has had a stroke and she walks about six blocks every day very slowly and painfully on Eden Prairie Road and up in Kmart and there's kidss and wagons and the whole deal this is not a place that we need in our neighborhood we don't need a place to go right here in this little neighborhood when there's nothing else and my other big concern is what happens if you Zone this to a new commercial thing and then like many businesses do it fails or decides to sell and whatever and then a new person comes in to put something new in there who knows what's going to go in there and I don't think it's unreasonable as a residential owner in that neighborhood to be fearful of what comes in there and what that could do to our neighborhood and one of the things on your list that Carri talked about in terms of you know what would make you not want to do this was if it would change the nature of the neighborhood and going from from an auto body shop that had 20 people a day maybe to having a restaurant coming in and out from 11: to 10 o'clock at night maybe with that is going to change the neighborhood we're at the point where in a few years we're probably going to have to downsize from a single family home to something else it will be in Idina and I hope it'll be close and even if it were close say I got to move in with all my neighbors here I'm not not going to want a pizza place there either and it's going to kill me I think on a resale value if this goes in so I would add my voice to everybody else and ask you to please put something not um commercial in that site thank you thank you good evening uh my name is Mary can bres and I um live on 6020 kmar drive I'm born and raised in Idina and I think the biggest thing and I Tom just said it was I stole this from your slide that one of the major cons considerations is and it was glossed over that this would not essentially change the character of the neighborhood it absolutely abely would change the essential character of the neighborhood I've raised my kids and now I'm raising my grandkids well I'm not raising them but they're there all the time they're with my husband tonight um and I think that's really important I mean the neighborhood itself um I know that one of the residents Julie was mentioned who has a stroke who has had a stroke and walks every day when we first moved there 20 some years ago my kids said they should call this kmar Trail because at any given moment starting even before light there are people walking with headlamps and people walking their dogs and people on bikes and all of the above um I think another big concern I I'm just agreeing with what everyone has said is that um Kevin Keys has been there before was Kevin keys I'm so old I remember it was a Clark station and um Kevin Keys was never open in the evening and he wasn't never even open on the weekends we try to get them to work on things sometimes like could you could we just pick it up at 8:00 on Saturday morning that wasn't going to happen so he was prettyy strict with his his hours and that is completely different than a commercial situation where people are going to be coming and going all the time and know if you just look at the specific residences just to the West it's all condos it's seniors who are going to have to be looking down on this whether it's light noise smell whatever I just don't think it's fair to all those people that have bought those Condominiums the people just I guess you'd call it North of the north side have small children that are playing in their front yards it's the neighborhood that people do bike in the street my kids are my grandkids are and they're learning how to ride a bike at the moment and they're in the street so it is that kind of neighborhood that's very I guess oldfashioned in the midst of Edina it's a pretty oldfashioned neighborhood pretty mixed from Seniors to kids to grandkids you know the whole nine yards I think the other big concern I have with the traffic is that um we don't park on Eden prey Road once it starts to curve because you can't get by in the winter and after this was um like any commercial anything can hardly make that turn we have multiple buses that go down the street and so people do park down where the condos are because they have to to visit their family or friends but the bus traffic just the school bus traffic is another whole issue and I guess my bigger con another concern is just that the Planning Commission has already searched researched all the things for the past um Adventures or I'm not sure what you'd call them that's not the word I'm thinking of Ventures you know to explore and all of these things haven't changed because the building is a little smaller or there's few less variances it doesn't matter the all of those things that were concerned that the neighbors and everyone else in the Planning Commission was concerned about three years ago are still there they haven't gone away and it is the only Only commercial site really anywhere so I would request that you vote now and preserve our neighborhood because this would drastically change the characteristic of that neighborhood or character of that of our neighborhood and we don't want that to happen so thank you thank you anyone else here in person I'd like to come forward or wouldn't really like to come forward but probably still want wants to maybe or we good all right I'm not saying saying that um it's come to my attention through a text that the um online or the no the virtual queue yes may not be working so just as you get to that section okay yeah we'll go through it again thank you and see no one else coming forward do we have anyone in the virtual queue yes we do okay so then I guess the reminder for people that would like to speak press star three on your star three on your keypad to speak but we do have people in the queue and we will go to them now yep and I'm GNA unmute this right now um caller two um if you could please start with your first name and last name and then your address including unit number please you are live good evening my name is John well thank you my name is John wellborne 608 Eden Prairie Road 86 fet from the property directly across from my house I want to go back in history a little bit and remind the group this was a restaurant you were unanimous you said no those parking issues those traffic issues given 181 hits minimum on site takeout and delivery and you said no lighting the smell alcohol late hours you said no people say well it's an isore it's not the commission the council or the neighbor issues to solve that issue we planning on the owner's part does not constitute an emergency on any of ours let's go back and look at some of your quotes you said too many variances too extreme and you said no too much traffic doesn't fit the neighborhood you said no it will specifically change the neighborhood you said no it's an awkward site that won't be safe for a restaurant you said no it's the wrong site for a restaurant you said no you said one lot does not a node make and you said no the comprehensive plan and the zoning change that you would approve to accomplish this opens a door that we cannot close anything in the future would require three people on the council to change it stick with the comprehensive plan that's why we have a comprehensive plan to deal with these unique situations that require this you have said no unanimously nothing has changed this is your plan this is your zoning these are your setbacks these are your committees your Council your commission your words you have said all everything that has come up you have said no it's not your task to solve the owner's problem as a homeowner we moved in we knew what that Kevin key site was we knew what the comprehensive plan was and we banked on as one of our commissioners has very clearly said and articulated multiple times on the record the comprehensive plan is a promis made and should be a promise kept you that was the only person in our queue to speak so we are safe to proceed okay yeah have a motion to close a public hearing motion to close second all those in favor say I all so move public hearing is closed thank you everyone in person primarily and those tuning in for being here and testifying it's not a comfortable situation to do so so appreciate you doing that now it's a time where we turn back to us and we deliberate as a commission and make a recommendation for approval or denial of these various requests so open it to discussion here and if there's further questions for staff or the applicant fair game still they're here commissioner anaman all right I'll start [Music] um like many things this site is uh controversial and there are uh lots of folks who have strong opinions on on both sides of of the fence um I loved the caller's last comment that the comp plan is a promise made and is should be a promise kept and I think it's interesting because it's the opposite side of the coin of many projects that come before us where the comp plan directs a higher density and we listen to the neighbors who would prefer not to have the higher density I'm thinking of Lincoln and London Dairy and um the site there and some of the sites adjacent to the Cornelia neighborhood and they very those neighbors feel very strongly that the thing that has always been there is what should continue to stay there or in that category um I completely agree that the comp plan is a a directional promise but if this site I don't I wasn't here on the commission when the original restaurant proposal came I don't know all of the details about the changes of hands and how the current owner has it and that's not really my purview but people call the city staff all the time with ideas to get a pulse on if a development is possible and if no one is calling to ask if a development of housing is possible regardless of the price that is a little bit of an indication of what the market thinks is is is viable on this site and I don't know uh the Valley View project at Valley View and Wooddale aside I don't know how you get four houses on this parcel that aren't twostory at least which will create the lighting issues those houses are going to have to open onto their driveways are going to have to open on Eden Prairie Road and and they're going to likely be rentals because condo ising and town homes are really hard to develop in this point in time so I'm really struggling with how do we as a as a Planning Commission and how does the city council think about in in situations where the market isn't clearly indicating that the current use or the comp plan use is what people want how do we think about that because it feels like we're talking out of both sides of our mouth depending on what the circumstance is um and I I've said before and I'll say again our job is to think about the greater land use into the future and and how we think about the social goods that come with a diverse amount of and kind of land use um I am sympathetic to the developer who came and asked us back in June for direction we gave them Direction on how we thought we could get comfortable um I don't love the plan I would have loved a restaurant but the neighborhood doesn't so there's this push and pull but but I think we have to be transparent and and work on being more consistent for both the residents and the homeowners but also for people who want to move to our community and have an economic impact and be a part of what makes a dinos so fabulous and right now it's hard to be an owner of a home and it's hard to be a developer because you don't know on any given day which way the wind is blow glowing and and I'm just struggling with that I am sure that if a car wash appeared tomorrow that the neighbors would also dislike that because of the traffic on Vernon and I am I am sure that there are good uses in the retail space and I'm sure there's bad uses in the retail space so I don't think this is easy but I think what I'm struggling with most is our lack of consistency and I think that's that's hard for everyone involved yeah let's just go down the line maybe that's easy or if there is any questions you have for others good discussion too yeah I um I went through better together I think after lunch today and I think there were about I counted 17 for and 17 against in support so it was pretty even across better together um you know and and that is public input too I think there's a lot of people who would love to be able to walk with their kids on a lovely evening um and pick up pizza come straight down that road and come in on that sharp corner and pick something up um I feel like this is I mean this is very a fairly similar situation of the existing um pizza restaurant in minetonka which I think is pretty successful um and I I understand this is a little bit of an odd duck piece of land and it is you know the cost of the land or not when I when I um heard the cost of the land I actually said oh you know somebody could make some money building four nice condos with that so I don't and I and I think this has been in the comprehensive plan for about 20 years now and in that 20 years before this was purchased nobody's ever come forward to build residential so it's not the past couple of years it's the past 20 and um and it's abandoned um and all we've been getting is kind of restaurant proposals or the the green drop um this is a third of the size a third of the seating of the previous restaurant um it's there's no second floor I'm but I do have I'm wondering if we could make some um additional recomm recommendations about putting up it' be a city thing no parking for the restaurant no parking signs for the restaurant on Eden is it Eden Prairie and um you know if the lights on the north side of the restaurant could be shielded so they're not shining off the property you're indicating yes okay um and you know the bicycle parking area I appreciate that it's kind of a good size and you're doing extra parking there um I think if there's 20 bicycles there and they're kind of moving around it'd be it'd be nice to be able to bike and have a place that's large enough to kind of Park multiple bikes without a lot of hassle so I I see that area as being um parking for bikes and I also see it as a place for um teenagers to kind of go hang out um can and and then can we make any recommendations about a liquor license director teag I'm sorry about what can we make any recommendations about a elor license or no sorry I still didn't cat it can we make a recommendation about a liquor license liquor license yeah whether they can or cannot have them yeah um you could make a recommendation for the City attorney to look at it to take a look at it yeah okay thank you th those are my thoughts thank you Comm Boron well thanks everyone for coming um I look I wasn't on the commission for when the first restaurant was proposed so I don't really know why that was objectionable although understand it was a little bit different than this one I do remember the dry clean whatever that what was that green drop or whatever that was that that was kind of a non-starter for everybody [Music] um so just kind of coming at it with less of a history I guess I guess this is what stands out to me uh it's kind of a unique culture it seems like in the neighborhood where um this is like a commercial site it's had a history of being a commercial site but but it seems like the people who live right by it really don't want anything commercial anywhere close to them which is just an interesting Dynamic Ina I I don't know if that's true throughout the city or not but but you know these are it anyway um so I think we need to hear that and and try to respect it but at the same time know that people are pretty divided on this one actually in this area and a lot of people view it as an amenity as well um and so just trying I think you both have kind of accurately touched on trying to respect and reconcile the diversity of views about about what a neighborhood is and um but I guess what St what what comes through the comments and the presentation is the site's always been commercial um hasn't been residential it's a commercial site it's been a commercial site forever and in because of that it seems a little bit less problematic to me to reconcile that with the comprehensive plan by modifying that to recogniz a neighborhood commercial designation it something's got to come in line with something else and when the site has been commercial forever um it doesn't feel like a drastic a drastic change to me to make that type of tweak it's a very unique site without a lot of precedent elsewhere um it is striking that no one has come forward with any residential plans I mean been around for a while there's a lot of res interest in building residential and apartments in um including on small sites folks haven't come forward with this one I'm not exactly sure why maybe it's because nothing seems buildable um without Varian as everybody's talked about um because nothing can be built without a sign ific Vari nothing of any sight of any nature can be built the fact that it requires variances also doesn't really bother me it seems almost necessary for anything and so I'm not particularly hung up on the variance as as being you know unjustified or problematic in this case from a planning perspective and um and for those reasons I you know I I I I do feel the opposition to it in in the neighborhood neighhood I really people want this to be more like maybe an Eden Prairie type of neighborhood or like Hugo maybe or something I'm trying to think of like really quiet places where there's kids but um but then there's this kind of Comm commercial use and it's in Idina and it just doesn't seem extreme this just doesn't seem like an extreme proposal to me so there's some tension there so for all those reasons I think that an amendment to the plan for this this is unique site and nothing has nothing has worked and so an amendment to bring this in line with its commercial nature isn't crazy um and the variances aren't aren't crazy either you know I do commend the the folks who put the project together you guys actually listened to the feedback that was given and dramatically improved I mean folks you're never going to get people to love the project who who really don't want anything there but at least you improved it dramatically over where it was before so it's better now than it was before and I think that's noted and just you know for the residents I mean look no one's going to persuade anybody who's forward against it to really change their mind I don't think I know what it's like when you really don't want something in your neighborhood or when you really do but I was listening to kind of the parade of of things that might go wrong if a pizza place opened you know trash noise crime dangerous danger to kids in the streets uh friends can't park anymore light people walking around who come from other parts of the neighborhood more parking I mean um plummeting investment value and things like that I live near 44th in France and we've got two Pizza a pizza place and a burger place there and like those things just aren't happening near near me and um there are still kidss in the street there are people riding bikes there are people with disabilities walking outside my home to the businesses people are building massive homes I mean that's the proba like investing too much money to be near some of these things they consider them amenities the parking overflowing really isn't happening that much and this is a much denser commercial area uh the likes we were talking about earlier with with ground level commercial and some things on top so so I get hear it and I I really do believe the folks here who who say they really don't want this um but just kind of like stepping back and looking at it objectively I also don't think it's outrageous or extreme and I do think some of the previous proposals went too far I think they were too far to be acceptable this is closer to the middle and I'd be just interested in knowing what the other Commissioners think about those different factors and how they tip the scales commissioner Smith thanks yeah you know uh I would agree with some of the comments by commissioner Bornstein I'm just you know as I sit on this commission and as I get more experience working on different projects and engaging with residents um I could recall when when we worked on the Adu project the fear was that Edina is just going to turn into this massive multi-housing City that's just going to go crazy right and I think you know cast catastrophy iing uh is kind of where we go when change happens quite a bit but we still have to be sensitive to Residents con concerns right and since we passed that ordinance you know there's been a trickle right and no one's really out there redeveloping the city in a in a in a major way um a couple points um yeah no matter what goes on the site there will be variances required just the the uh shape of it the layout of it is going to have some kind of variance that's going to be required even if we want to put in housing and so the variance question you know to say that the comprehensive plan and we have all these variances it's going to have to happen no matter what happens here so I think that's not really a a huge um thing that I'm going to um push back against because I think variances will happen uh I think about the Alternatives that could go here right if we have um uh and if we bring back the auto shop if we bring back the laundry Mart if we bring back um what could be built here and I compare that to what's being asked to build here and I look at those two I'm like this is a way better idea um an auto shop has noise it has gas smells um there's cars coming in right and so when I compare that now to a a a a reason ably sized restaurant and I compare the to which one would I want to be more excited about and I and I see this one as being a bit more exciting um right now that site hasn't had anything on it for some time right um it's just kind of been growing grass looking like a blight essentially and you know developers have come um their have interest in doing something uh different here and so I think we should seize the opportunity right but of course putting us some safeguards around the concerns of the neighbors I see the world kind of more of a half a glass half full perspective than a glass half empty so when someone says you know um this nice old lady who had a stroke is walking around I'm like well she's going to meet her friend in the pizzeria they're going to have a nice Pizza they're going to have a chat with some coffee that's how I'm thinking right I could see them just being a place where the neighborhood could gather around and be together I see it as that kind of possibility right versus uh a place that's going to attract a lot of uh you know undesirables for example this could be a place for the neighbors to be excited and to get together those same kids who are riding bikes on that street could say hey guys let's go get a pizza and they go over they get a pizza with their friends it builds community so that's how I see the world as an opportunity to do something positive so I'm not super uh changes hard I you know we have to be smart about it but I'm not fearful of it I see possibilities um so my next Point really is just you know how do we assuage you know some of these concerns by by residents right so I think here's where we could work with the developer work with the city and try to talk through things like parking and traffic right we had the traffic study they looked at it they seem like it's reasonable we could push and inquire more about that to see if we could assage any concerns there the alcohol question which you know if we talk about a slippery slope you know that's a thought that people get how do we address that legally right with the city attorney to say Hey you know alcohol may not be the greatest thing to have in this location and so if we ever have that request come up we could try to limit that that might be something a developer would be open to so I think we should talk about that noise um and you know parking and fencing uh fencing to limit folks from parking on neighborhood street and walking across and that kind of stuff we could we could talk through that so maybe not a fence or a door in the fence that connects Eden to the restaurant right just keep it as a fence prevent people from parking on that street and walking over those the kind of things that could help reduce the impacts essentially um now with guys comprehensive plan Amendment you know and I think I heard comments on promise kept right so yes right this was a an item that was since the 1980s that's over 40 years ago right we all know change happens the world has moved on there's so much things that are different now today than it was back then and so as a commission right we have full discretion over trying to think through this and then the city council ultimately makes that decision so I think we're deliberating right of how much of an impact this is going to have on a community realistically right not it's just going to be a catastrophe but what's realistically going to happen here and what's the possibility here for the city so I'm I'm a little bit more positive with this idea when we compared it to what came first and then we didn't you know with the first restaurant iide did that was too much I think we felt that when the green drop idea came I was like N I don't think we want that either this one kind of comes in the middle right it's a little bit better but how could we now take this idea and approve it in such a way that it limits the concerns for neighbors that it's more palatable and I and I and I want us to think more positively and more half glass full on this one than half glass empty and that's kind of how my thinking is on this thank you commissioner Padia I'll I'll start with the obvious which is this is a very difficult parcel and um um there's no easy solution and there's no perfect solution so we have to go into this decision being well aware of the fact that there's no there's no perfect solution um and also well aware of the fact that the comp plan does contradict some of the other things that we want to do and is not always aligned with um what we are trying to get accomplished um I do want to address um The Gentle citizens that spent their whole evening here tonight and I I fully respect um what they said and it brings to mind my first interaction with the Planning Commission back in the 90s when um there was a church that wanted to sell their land to um an establishment that was going to put up senior living with memory care and it was a very large parcel and the it was a city hall was a different building then and um but we packed um the the gallery and the um public hearing went on for hours with everybody speaking out against having building this senior facility um and when on for the longest time and they went ahead and um in spite of probably hundreds of people's um protests they went ahead and um the church sold the property and they built the senior living facility um much to the neighborhoods shrin fast forward five maybe 10 years it took the neighborhood to accept it and they were afraid of too many cars too many parking you know people ambulances coming people walking around particularly since it had a memory care facility Well what what has happened in in the years since is it's become an integral part of the neighborhood it is where everybody in the neighborhood gets their first job all the teenagers work there as servers and cleaners and they can walk there and it and um people end up putting um or or um having um relatives or friends there and it's conven venient and um it is well maintained and well kept up and it has become a very um very important operational and proud part of the neighborhood so that is the context that I would bring and that I and that I would hope is something that we would see in neighborhoods as they change throughout throughout the city so having said all of that and having lived through that context and that experience um I you know we keep hearing about how um parents and families are so stressed now they're all burning the candles there's no time you see how in the supermarkets um everything is to go everything is prepackaged and part of that is pizza I think pizza place is just becoming ubiquitous in every neighborhood there are two that I can walk to in my neighborhood um so I think um to commissioner burn Point commissioner Smith's point this is something that we have to look upon as a positive thing and it will be nice to um be able to walk just a few blocks to get a pizza and make dinner rather than have to um get in the car and drive um and as far as the comprehensive plan amendment I think it is warranted uh as I think the variances are as well thank you commissioner Miranda so uh I uh I won't repeat what commissioner Bornstein and commissioner Pilla said because I think they made some really good points um about how non-scary this really will be um I'm a little disappointed that the developer actually said that the kitchen size is the same because I was a little worried about there being too much traffic here um but again as commissioner Padia pointed out and others point out this is not an ideal spot my one of my big concerns from the very beginning was that I was against the original restaurant not because of its size or because it was a restaurant was because um you know the idea that we're still using we're still building single story single use buildings with surface parking lot is something that should absolutely not happen anymore but I guess come around to the fact that this is a very tiny very weird lot um and I just don't think this is going to be anything horrible what I my big concern however is the land use designation and I think this city council is pushing for commercial rather than mixed use which is what we've historically done and I think that's a very big problem and I would not vote for that we I think the land use designation should be mixed use and pcd1 as I asked uh director Teague allows both commercial and housing and those match together can you yeah can you elaborate further with Carrie just about why I I know you're just kind of being succinct about it but just so everyone can understand maybe more the context about why that is your biggest concern and well with so and maybe the the other one's a better opportunity I I don't know commercial okay so if you you know this is this is we're going back to and this is a problem that I'm dealing with which I'll get into in commissioner comments about the Lincoln and londondary um plan is that it seems that the city is pushing us back into the 1970s and pushing for single use zoning which is something that the city for 10 or 20 years ever since I've lived here has been getting away from and now it seems like the tide is turning and we're pushing for things that we haven't pushed for in the past so a mixed use uh guidance of land use would allow because the thing is you know we don't want it to be just this property right so one of the things we talked about at a previous meeting a few months ago was the uh which we studied which was um you know areas of change within the city and this is a county road it's a major road um Transit has decreased on it um or been eliminated on it recently um but eventually it's going to come back and much like the e-line on France Avenue um you know on the on the from connect it it basically connects what what's going to be the green line extension to um uh yeah yeah the light ra it's going to connect to the light rail so so it's going to be it's a major County Road there should be more development on it than there is it's already guided multif family right so lot may be too small or too awkward to be multif family but if we're going to change you know things set precedences so if we change it to commercial then there's going to be pressure to change everything along there commercial and I think that's a mistake we don't want people to live in one part of the city and you know work in another part of the city and Shop in another part of the city you know that is the past and that's not the way you know that's climate change denial if you think that's the way the cities are going to exist in the future and so it's it's imperative that we have this as mixed use and then that would match with pcd1 which allows mixed uses so that's my concern so so that's my main concern otherwise I think I agree with most Commissioners here that or all potentially that uh as a project um I'm sort of reluctant but I I think I would go ahead with this project just elaborating on that a little bit I mean what would that look like Carrie if if we pivoted or if there was enough support to go for say pcd1 over neighborhood commercial is that is there is there any different requests at play is there different restrictions I think I may have an idea for you to consider as a condition to address lose issue you know our mixed you our existing mixed use categories in the comprehensive plan they're all big areas so that wouldn't be appropriate for this site but with this amendment the neighborhood commercial designation you could recommend adding for primary uses small scale retail commercial uses that's what it reads as proposed small scale retail commercial and residential uses that could turn it to mixed use because the zoning allows that sure Lou would that make you comfortable that adding and housing to I mean I'm really excited about this neighborhood commercial option so I'm just trying to understand if if it was modified to have that would that make you comfortable or is there still something that we're missing no I mean it needs to have well I mean so we can't require you know retails become so problematic that you can't require it and housing in every project right so so we know that so that's okay but as long as it allows either or both I mean it doesn't it can't say one or the other is is my concern it should allow both I guess why I was asking about restriction because it came up and we clarified it for pcd1 is like you know we would want if there is retail that like or if there is residential that wouldn't occupy the first floor and then take over that potential for mixed use right so that's how PT pcd1 operates allowing right a condition permitted use for housing as long as it's not on the first level and kind of makes the site mixed use are you more right just about the whole Corridor being mixed use or this particular site as a precedent I that's just what I'm trying to understand well this will set a precedent right so because this is the first lot that we're going to be changing so I think it's important to get it right to make sure they do both so if if you have a lot of apartment complex nowadays have all sorts of stuff on the first floor that's not housing but is related to the apartment complex the community rooms and gyms and all that sort of stuff would that still be allowed that wouldn't I believe our language that we put in the coda was pretty clear that it had to be a retail use on that first level okay is this going to prevent things from being built in the city if we th this would only apply to this one site it's the only site that that would have this designation well we're trying to get away from that right we're going to update our comprehensive plan in two years this is this gives another option we could I mean are are you trying to get to the like 44th in France like the burgers bagels in the Caribou with one office or one apartment above it like that old school kind of zoning option that we don't really have short of a PUD currently I mean yeah that's the Direction the city's been going in for 15 years since I've been here is mixed use so yeah then one pcd1 be more appropriate for supporting what you're saying versus just adding and housing because then it's just maybe too open are you okay with it being open I just know we had issues with just allowing it to be any variation of the two and we're I'm not catching the Nuance there I'm not sure what's what would be so different it was as if in a pcd1 say like this was a restaurant someone could then come in and just build Town Homes there that's what it would allow for with neighborhood commercial with the and housing but if it's pcd1 you'd have to have retail on the ground level with housing above so that that's the Nuance between the two as far as future options go which again we're not there and what we're talking about but and the issue is that I'm remembering it more as we talk about it there was an ambiguity there's actually a contradiction in some of the statutory language around what could be built in a pcd1 and when we looked at what was in pcd1 it was basically just 50th in France 44th in France in other commercial nodes all of which are currently having you know that highly desirable commercial use underneath something maybe residential and the fear was that developers would start moving into these areas knocking down all buildings and putting exclusively residential options in this in that zoning District you know and so the ground floor would be like the staffing office or just like the the dumb stuff that we don't really like seeing fronting fronting streets we want to protect the Integrity of those districts that like Define you DIN and make it special and that's how that ambiguity got resolved it it had to either go you could build everything down like residential from the ground floor up or you need to keep a commercial use in the ground floor and you can build residential above it and that's how that got resolved so I think that's what you're referring to right so pcd1 allows for that yeah if we modified this it it could say be if you say Andor housing it could then turn into only housing I don't know I don't believe it would this is just the comprehensive plan designation I think this makes it clear that you could do the housing in a pcd1 scenario as long as there's retail on the first okay yeah that's the thing but and the question I think was for you commissioner Miranda whether that yeah raises a concern you know because because the land use I mean yeah because I was trying to distinguish land use from from zoning and so uh as the land use designation it seemed okay to me right that's what we're talking about okay good we're clear you okay y sorry for muddying it up but just looking through my notes Here see if there's anything I can say that hasn't already been said the I guess generically or at the highest level um this isn't necessarily the project I wanted but the the market has been stubbornly resistant to what I want for decades now so I'm I'm uh interested in moving ahead uh I think the Commissioners have done a great job of describing the good reasons to to do this uh so rather than rehash all that um 94% of which I agree with I think we should just spend some time talking about what conditions or changes we want to make thanks uh as far as uh I guess yeah I I pretty much agree with a lot of the the things shared tonight you know it's anything different like this is going to be tough especially if you move in a place and you expect something to kind of remain the same and something changes it's just going to be difficult and I I definitely see this um and that's res like and what the ask is Is Res resembles that right we have a comprehensive plan Amendment and rezoning we have full discretion and when we have full discretion we have the full breadth of our opinion as well as residents so we're just we're naturally going to disagree on some fundamental aspects of what this project is and why it can make sense or it doesn't make sense so I think fundamentally for me just starting at the root is since this was first appro approved I think commissioner Miranda I think this might have been the one the restaurant you're like this is a kernel of a great idea but then everything else is bad about it or whatever something um to me it wasn't as extreme I've always I've always liked the idea of a restaurant here and I've always thought someone said you know it opens a door to this and I guess I see that in a similar way of like if this turns to residential that door is closed this allows a foot to kind of hold the door open to allow for other types of change along Vernon over time where it might make sense and why might make sense for me more than others is like how I would approach just like where the ideal place to live is and I know a gentleman here has been all around the world and I think of the best places I've been in the world there places you walk everywhere you know or you maybe bike but you have options wherever you're at to kind of satisfy all these different needs and desires it's not to just be very remote in a in a particular spot and even though you have a pizza joint 2 miles away that's not something you can comfortably and safely walk to or quickly do so um as far as like prior context I grew up in a spot in a neighborhood just like this where we had a retail node about a mile and a half away but there was this weird oneoff like auto body shop that used to be an old little tiny City that still had this res like this remnant of like its Old Main Street crossing as Just One auto body shop they ended up turning it into like a little Panini beastro and like it got a lot of people in the neighborhood to just walk there and bike there that would otherwise drive that mile and a half farther to that node and it didn't create such a huge stir and currently my grandma lives in very similar housing that is nearby this one but where she lives is you know Ford Parkway and the streets near it the streets near it our streets kids are playing on safely because Ford Parkway is the busy Road Vernon here is the busy road and going to remain the busy road that's where the that's where the traffic is the volume the pull and so like like I could see this happening I mean she has a Dairy Queen literally or it used to be a Dairy Queen right next to order her building and so like residents you know go down there and get ice cream you know they walk farther and it's kept my grandma and all of her friends active walking around the neighborhood those are the kinds of things fundamentally I want to see in our city so like with my full discretion at stake I want this kind of thing in more places um where I currently live the street car 70 years ago stopped running service if it were still running a half a block away from me people would use it but that chance is gone so I see this as kind of like this last opportunity to kind of preserve something that has always kind of been commercial but like enhancing in a different way where instead of just having cars getting worked on it's a place for people to come to and gather so like fundamentally the why and like that's why I'm behind this I think the how B commissioner Bor kind of hit it it's like we're bringing the the comprehensive plan in line with the zoning that it's always been kind of those fundamental House of like the variances the rezoning comprehensive plan that makes sense and I'd like to thank the the applicant team for some of the other details of the how because you have changed what we've seen before um one thing that I definitely liked cuz it was a specific item I was thinking about and this came up from a council member too about the two points of access into this through lot and how it should only be one unless for safety reasons maintained two I think if you thought if you eliminated one and just had one entrance here then you're going to need some way to turn around in the site and you're going to further constrain what you can do in the site but you had the entrance and exit the other way around and we discussed that because if someone pulls in and can find a spot or they're leaving but if they can't find a spot and they want to Circle back you know then you're turning right instead of turning left across traffic so there's like these subtle how details that you guys have calibrated here that I feel like are just really making it a sweeter deal so I appreciate that uh safety wise I think I think we're fine and we're bringing a sidewalk into this mix and it's the only stretch of Vernon that doesn't have it on that North Side so like by doing this we're prompting that change with the city and I also would just um second kind of commissioner felt's opport like I guess suggestion to the city of just adding like no restaurant parking signs on Eden Prairie Road um I think that's just like a small favor like it it doesn't stop someone that wants to park there and risk whatever that means but at least it' be a gesture and a signal to those neighbors that like people ought not to park there to use a restaurant if it starts to become full um let kind of segueing into the some of the details but so far I think condition wise I I'd approve it or support approval like as it's written with the modification of the housing piece added to the neighborhood commercial and what you got I'd hate to open a can of worms but the no parking signs concerned me a little bit just because inevitably you end up with a problem of where to stop because if you have 100 yards or no parking signs that's just going to push if there is a problem which I personally don't think there will be but if there is a problem it just moves a problem 50 yards up the street each way so then you go oh we better go 75 yards I just don't seems like a can of worms to me I'm not sure that's something I'd want to I can be accurate or precise about sure yeah and I I don't see that as a condition for approval maybe more of like a discussion point with the city I mean we've seen it in like I mean when Red Cow started having a spill over in a Minneapolis they started putting the signs and it just helped yeah but they did that after it became clear it was a problem I mean and that and I think that could guide where you put that signage okay that's a good point like with some guidance room transportation I say let's not consider I think overwhelmingly some of the negative responses the effects it has in that neighborhood that I just I see these as two very separate and there was the one comment about that corner being dangerous about not people not parking on the corner because the buses had a hard time going around it and nobody parked on that ins on the inside or the outside Corner as the Eden per Road turns into the adjacent one so I think there was some con safety concerns about that corner I I glad you brought that up any other like discussion points yeah commissioner Miranda yeah you brought up the sidewalk and I think um the city doesn't always do this and I don't know why actually the county doesn't either um it's important that the city build the sidewalk at the very edge of city property or the RightWay or whatever so the city tends not to do that which you know land owners like because um you know they have more property or whatever but um really for future uses of the road or whatever you want to build a bike lane or whatever if the if the sidewalks aren't at the very edge if they're closer to the street then um it makes it harder to put in infrastructure like like bikeways and stuff so I think it's I think we take farthest away from the street yes away from the street closest to the property line at the property line basically yeah and I know uh it was noted in the staff report right to instead of what shown but to have a Boulevard sidewalk so I guess what do we want to just condition more specific yeah more specifically yeah at the property line because the city just redid Blake or let's see is it Blake or interlock it's uh Blake Road yeah because it goes right to Blake and they put it way they put they even put you know multi-use path and they put it away from the property line and so I just think it's a bad idea it's a really good idea I think it's a really good idea and a really good point to make especially since it's a it's a commercial Pro it's a commercial Pro now you're not offending a resident you're not in encroaching on their space to do it and it set a nice precedent for the like so I just really appreciate you calling that out yeah didn't think about that one at all so add that as a condition or to0 n any any um thoughts about hours of operation anything that we want to I was just going to ask do we typically put hours of operation as a condition for a business I mean I would be in favor of I know it's an unpopular opinion striking that I just I feel like that's the wrong way to address that concern it I know we haven't it's just come before us for like putt cheack because of it was because they had outdoor they had a outdoor p uh rooftop dining and because they had a different time frame and we wrote that into the code for out for rooftop dining only otherwise it doesn't ever touch us like that's never something we I think with pack it was they were Al 11 or 12 and that everybody felt was kind of a little a little bit late whereas I think you're talking 9 and 10 right um that's more in line with kind of standard restaurant hours yeah and I don't think it's our job either yeah I don't know if it's like a concern we need to speak to but like the deanis right here has been open to like 9 and 10 if you go in there around 9 or 10 it's it's quiet you know it's not what you expect it's going to be this raging party till 10 p.m. every night um but I don't yeah like that's not in our purview and I would recommend to the city council not to further restrict that and allow the the property owner that freedom so that would be removing condition 10 then condition 10 just just deals with construction I mean it might be different originally they talked about maybe putting a patio where where people would dine remember we talked about that but that's been removed um I think respecting the neighbor's concern about noise if if we did a large patio where people were going to be out dining to 10: p.m. it it might be worth talking about more but because it's all going to be enclosed and inside I just don't think people are going to hear that um I just checked the hours of the convention grill and hella Pizza those close at 9: I think and I I can just tell you anecdotally I hear nothing from them um because they're enclosed they were outside I think I think we'd want to reconsider so okay that sounds good um just to go back to the alcohol question I know the City attorney would look at it but what exactly are we asking about that is it that the City attorney is going to think about a restriction when it comes to alcohol licenses or the applicant would apply for it and the city council decide at that time yeah would um I guess the question was if you wanted to prohibit alcohol from being served that would be the question they have the ability to ask for a liquor license and that decision ultimately is made by the city council and I'm starting to think that's not a land use question and maybe not in our perview too yeah I agree with that almost like our role here is to just kind of try to be a little bit neutral and objective and and just weigh in on this from a planning perspective and then let folks take their concerns to the council and let the council make the final decision Guided by our perspective so I think on these issues it's best to stay out of the liquor license but if folks have concerns about that but that would be separate matter Beyond these approvals regardless right I think people here are engaged they're going to raise those concerns and they're going to find the right form to do it so yeah it's similar to the um Town Hall Station where they applied for the liquor license and there were some objections to that but that one didn't get approved a little further away from single family homes but I think it's scope creep on our part Creed no okay agreed is that you agree with that or do you have any other questions with that no I think this is just good feedback it's just to kind of put it out there so residents that we're thinking about these kind of things and here's how we're going to handle it thank you um but overall um I think it's a a glass half full kind of guy so I um I'm very positive to this guess regarding Just One Last Detail I brought it up and I just encourage when design goes final to make it very apparent where the front door is um like if it even makes sense if there's somehow room to even turn that door to face you know the whole parking lot so when it opens all that sounds not spilling out either just just a thought we just saw like we've seen when it's not clear just it creates issues okay that's no no condition but friendly suggestion welcome emotion with any conditions if there is one so are we um the motion to approve with the comprehensive yeah I might recommend that you split them out a comprehensive plan be the first motion and then the rezoning with the variances okay so with two separate votes then too okay does that make sense someone have a motion for the comprehensive plan Amendment first uh I'll make a motion to approve the comprehensive plan Amendment second with uh with the changes to add uh housing yes with with the changes to add the word and housing great I second that sensing where this is okay I guess sensing where this is going I don't know if we need a roll call for this uh just all those in favor say I I opposed motion carries unanimously okay next would be The Zing site plan and variances that can all be done in one in one okay so motion to approve rezoning site plan and variances subject to the the finding stipulating and staff report second and then was there a condition to be specific with the sidewalk oh push to the property line adding a recommendation to um have the sidewalk as close to the property line as possible next to the property line is there a second second any further discussion on that yes seen none all those in favor say I I opposed motion carries unanimously thank you to applicant team and for all the residents coming in wish you the best luck in the process and wish the the immediate neighborhood the best transition to um a different type of community there thank you all right so that concludes our public hearings for the evening and we're on to chair and member comments sure not thank you for your thoughtfulness the council does approve this we haven't given up yet but if the council does approve it um hope that if there are incumbrances oh I know I'm not supposed to schedule but uh we hope that we do have the privilege to come back and do two things compliment you on what will work what does work and confront you on problems I've been down this drill before I've been a res in a Parkwood noes for about 40 years before I came into the condo and that was always open matter of fact the stop lines on stop signs on doy Drive coming in in those two locations was our doing and that what happened is the state supported it because the downside of do was built illegally as too great a grade and the city council not the mayor at the time he threatened me but the city council took it to heart said we'll solve that two weeks later it was solved so I have confidence I really appreciate allowing me to talk whether I'm not supposed to talk well we appreciate your involvement thank you just it's part of our chair and member comments and we we try to hold time at this moment also to just get insight from ourselves and you you on way ways to improve the process so like I mean I'm thinking like Community comment period if we could be more intentional with like checking in on projects every two five years 10 years whatever just to see compliment confront I I like the like the approach here we definitely want the accountability and the best fora as well as you I I have a international reputation for being a pain in the neck change advocate with that comes new information flexibility love that thank you thank you thank you thank you appreciate it on that note chair other chair and member comments I know commissioner Miranda had something he he's going to discuss yeah so I was planning on coming here and getting all excited and saying that the Lincoln lary um not the final plan but progress report is going to be reported to city council um next week and um but some weird things happened in the past couple weeks so the the Consultants who I've been praising just incessantly for the whole uh entirety of the thing presented um kind of a rough draft of what they were going to present city council um at a at a what do you call it the uh it wasn't the whole committee it was just the the steering committee I guess the the the U Consultants the cons just no no just the consultants and City staff and the chair so just so just us okay um and you know towards the end of that I had a number of comment I mean some of the things they proposed just seemed bizarre and so um and some just weren't justified by any of the input received from the public um it kind of like went too far so um so that was fine so I gave my feedback and then we're supposed to present next week and so in the first meeting and this meeting I've pushed to make sure that we have a finished document to give to council before the meeting so that Council can't say oh we didn't know about this or whatever so so apparently they finalized or they came up with a almost final version at the end of last week and sent it out to City staff but forgot me the chair of the committee and then they I found out yesterday and today it's like okay well you have until end of today to give us your feedback and it's not like a 100 page document or anything but you know I'm working on I'm a citizen volunteer I'm not paid to do this and I was working on the Planning Commission tonight which is equally important if not more important well equally important um so I just find it really odd that I was forgotten and that I was suddenly given this very so I said I'm not going to um I don't want to delay this because I'm sure that's what the city council wants I don't want to delay it so this should go through and presented to council but I'm not giving my prematur to it because I didn't have enough time and there wasn't enough time to giveing feedback to change it because I needed to know Friday so I had the weekend to work on it so that's a little bit friction I'm having with the the steering Group whatever um I you know the two of the thing and I just looked at it quickly I haven't gone through with the fine Toth C or anything but the two things that I mentioned were not addressed you know one of which is putting a park on a intersection which makes absolutely no sense an intersection like a block away from the highway offramp so that's a no-o for me I don't know how anyone would conceive of something like that and when when the business people that we interviewed said you know traffic and getting out of the coffee shop and stuff is an issue people drive too fast and you're going to put a park on the corner of an intersection that makes no sense the second thing was that you know personally I think we should have you know apartment buildings and mixed use there um the neighbors were pushing very heavily for something no taller than a town home right so so you know I worked with that or whatever and the the Consultants came back with like 1970 style Town Homes you know three little groups of of town homes um separated by a lot of Green Space whatever kind of like which is across the the uh the the uh stream there and um the creek and it's like okay well they don't want residents don't want height I get it right because they don't because it's right next to it you know a a low density or medium density housing area um but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have a continuous row of them um and again that wasn't addressed maybe there's two versions I again I I haven't had time to really look at it so um and and then one reason I picked on the whole commercial distri thing here in tonight's thing was because now they're proposing that for um cuz you know we can't build because of of uh we can't build housing because of uh the sewer capacity or whatever and so they wanted to Zone that you know commercial only you know small you know lowdensity commercial or whatever um these things all need to be talked about and we're having a meeting next week you know our our group meeting is going to going to be next week after the city council presentation um so those things can be discussed but I'm just a little concerned that why this is what's being presented why are you hesitant to delay sorry I missed that because delaying the project just I mean delaying two weeks is no no because this is this this is a city council work session so they very hard to get it takes weeks or months to get one of these things that it was a work session right right and the other thing is that and the city council's already tried or city I'm not sure it was Council or the or the city manager has already tried not to get me reapproved for this position so if it gets delayed then I won't be presenting it I won't be chair anymore when we present it to the city council so there's a lot of stuff going on Yeah couple questions I have so one you mentioned the sewer thing is a smaller are plan not thinking longer range pass that's thing we're going to have a short-term and a longterm plan right I mean like other one like Grand View I know how to short medium and long term whatever okay and then I know this is you but what about consensus among the rest of the working group I know we used to have co-chairs and they got reduced you know whatever and then but I mean is there similar consensus to some of these well we have as a group right to discuss these things I mean there have been some emails back and forth but um so again I'm not saying it needs to be the way that I want it to be that's not the point but that I didn't have the time you know to review it yeah and so and that none of my you know nothing was changed at all which I found surprising so and I and I think the other issue is instead of having we went down to one chair and it's Lou that's been in all of these core meetings I mean the rest of us show up to the monthly meetings but we don't uh check in on a regular basis and so you're all of the the bra you're the Brain Trust yeah for this yeah right so and I don't you know it's mostly City staff and Consultants I mean I'm just kind of in the background because it's really a meeting between them right I'm just there to listen occasionally contribute you know and so in this case I thought it was something that was important enough to be you know like whoa this where is this coming from you know so uh so yeah it's not like I'm imposing you know I'm not like saying I'm chair and you have to do what I say but um I thought I brought up some pretty good points and I think it needs to be discussed more well I don't it should have been discussed more before presenting to the city council but now I don't think we have the time I'm just curious about process and I just from experience rewinding back to 44th in France BR um like our small area plan working group like rarely interfaced with staff it was pretty much us and the consultant most of the time oh really okay I mean we had staff but it's like those updates it's like we were all reviewing the documentation and having meetings and so like there was this natural consensus in the group it was tough because you know we didn't have any like it seems like what you're showing is something that most people can like everyone could agree on like this is a bare minimum type of effort versus like this is pushing any envelope whatsoever I'm just curious about the process of that and maybe this is different because of the sewer capacity and all these other like kind of City constraints that so well I you know I don't know again I have not participated I participated in 44th in France as a res I wasn't on the commission yet so I don't know how app to comparon this is whatever but I don't I assumed that this was just a normal thing that the city did with consultants and that um you know and originally all three of us were going to attend and then there was some regulation where we couldn't so um so it was just me at this point why could it be the whole group I guess I'm just well we do meet we we meet twice as often I think part of the deal is to make sure sure the Consultants are on the right Trail you know it's staff making sure that you're you know meeting deadlines and going where you're going to do I mean correct me if I'm wrong but you know I think it's you know status meetings you know so it's not like we're generally there making a bunch of decisions right it's talking about how things are going and whatever but in this case we're presenting you know the holiday season and City's you know City Council meetings work sessions whatever tough to get to so it's it's tough and trying I'm trying to get this done before I'm done but um so we're just in a in a tough situation that way yeah I was just curious about it's interesting to hear though that it worked very differently for other I was just thinking because we had like rough drafts that like just kept coming back and forth to the working group and we all would review it so like there was just never there was never this like surprise element of like here's something right before a deadline that you're about to propose and like it doesn't quite match right how often did you meet remember no I mean I I think it was like twice a month oh it was okay like early morning maybe like an hour at a time that's interesting because it seems to have changed I don't know yeah well like we had two Commissioners as coachers so there's some other changes too that I don't quite follow why but I mean we we all care about the process and making it better for you the rest of the commission and the residents too that that seems disappointing right so I mean you know the residents I mean the our statement does say you know we want you know a you know a park-like atmosphere or whatever but you can put a lot of trees in you know in front of this the Space is really deep because there there isn't a road there that's another thing we're talking about is potentially having either a road road or just a pedestrian Road you know I mean lots of good creative ideas and lots of feedback and the meetings I think have been very good with everybody involved um but we're coming down to crunch time you know sort of thing and I just don't wanted to fade out complete that this is the plan that we're going ahead with got it so that's all I'm saying is there anything you need from the rest of us to support or assist in any of that um well we're meeting with city council at a work session on Tuesday so yeah anyone who can appear is good thank you great any other comments all right staff comments do have one update on the the Cannabis ordinance after you had made your recommendation it was kind of on hold a little bit but the the city council did hold the public hearing at their last meeting and they'll make a decision uh next week I think the the issue was going to be the the buffers and yeah yeah it seemed like some just didn't see a value in them and others did for different reasons kind of like we talked about so we'll see where that goes yeah uh all right motion to adjourn second all those in favor I I so moved oh no no the meeting has been adjourned thank you everybody e