“The property owner is proposing to construct an accessory dwelling unit as an addition to the existing detached garage. The proposed ADU is located 5 and a half ft from the rear yard property line uh where a 12 foot setback is required.”

“I'm a professional photographer who started dreaming of having a Edina based business when I first got my job at the Edina Chamber of Commerce back in 2002... we found the smallest house we could possibly find that I could afford... we bought this property 22 years ago, 400 square ft and we've been improving it ever since.”

“We went and hand delivered them to every single address that we received from the city and we only received personally one text from someone... saying we approve so excited for you this is great... we did meet in person with the two neighbors that we share the road with behind us and showed them the project... and they said they were in full support.”

“Even though only a portion of it is the two stories and over the 18 ft in height the whole structure is required to meet that greater setback. However the portion that is two stories and is over 18 ft in height is set back more than 12 feet. It is 16 feet set back from that rear property line.”

“When we were designing the ADU ordinance... we really wanted ADUs to be something that residents could build... over garage space and not have to uproot it and move it to meet the ordinance... if you have a garage space where that's 5 ft from the setback line you know to dig that up move it 12 ft to put a two-story thing it would be so costly and inefficient for homeowners... we came up with this whole concept of setback requirements if you want to go up... for every foot you go up above the one story you go back one foot... if those few inches above 18 ft were added onto the 5 ft this would totally make it right.”

“In your case right yes there's a road behind there but then there's also a train track and I don't see any homes being built anywhere on a train track right and so if I would have treated it as an alleyway you know just mentally then this again wouldn't really have an impact.”

“For me I think the fact that you adapted the design to make sure that the part that was infringing on the setback requirement um was a lower height was kind of the factor that tipped the scales... when you consider all the other factors the practical difficulties aspect has met.”

“This is just like such a beautiful piece that fits in a complicated puzzle... hopefully people you know going by can see it as such like a beautiful example of what you could do and get creative with your space.”

“I don't know the last time we updated our kind of work from home ordinance... the pandemic has happened since and the nature of work has changed a little bit... I started thinking about people who are getting together to work on like say a film and two people are kind of working on a project together... one isn't you know a resident of the home and one is... I think there's also certain like project kind of work or um and workers are different too... some people just kind of work on project by project so I'm thinking it might be good to update it a little bit.”

“I think it's something that staff also has wanted to take a look at.”

“Council did um approve the proposal from Opus for the office office building at 5100 Eden Um and I don't know if you saw the developers did incorporate uh the three conditions that you guys had recommended um for revising the building materials on the first level Um and then improving the pedestrian connectivity to like to the entrance on the east side and also to connect to that walkway Um and then they also approved the Lincoln and London small area plan.”

“It's going to be stone on that first level. So where they were showing kind of the wood looking metal panel is going to be a stone material.”