Welcome to the June 1st, 2026 meeting ofthe Wisa Planning Commission. I hereby call this meeting to order. My name isBlake Cameron. I am chair of the Wisetta Planning Commission. First on the agendais roll call. Um I would note that all commissioners are present as well asDirector Sharp and City Attorney Schzel. Um next on the agenda tonight isapproval of the tonight's agenda. Does anyone have any questions or proposedchanges for tonight's agenda? Hearing none. May I have a motion toapprove the agenda as presented? >> So moved.>> Thank you, Severson. Uh second, >> I'll second.>> Thank you, Commissioner Vanl. Further discussion.>> All those in favor? >> I>> opposed. The eyes have it. The motion passes and the approval is the agenda isapproved. Um next on the agenda tonight is approval of tonight's consent agenda.Tonight's consent agenda consists of three items.Uh the meeting minutes from May 18th. Uh a planning commission report andrecommendation of approval for a zoning text amendment to chapter 950 andanother one for to chapter 936 which is the tree preservation and general zoningdistrict provisions. Uh does any commissioner have anyquestions or comments on any of the item on the consent agenda? Hearing none. May I have a motion toapprove the consent agenda as presented? >> So moved.>> Thank you, Commissioner Als. Second. >> Second.>> Thank you, Commissioner Plant. Further discussion.All those in favor? >> I opposed. The eyes have it. The motionpasses and the content consent agenda is approved as presented.Um, next on the um item agenda tonight is old business and public hearing andthere are none. So with that, we will move right into number seven, otheritems. Director Sharp, take it away. >> Thank you, Chair Cameron. As the memofor this item states, uh, traditionally in the past, the planning commission hadseen a yearly report going through the significant work that the commissionputs in each year, reviewing the projects, the deliberations you have,and giving a high level outline. This practice was actually suspended aroundthe 2017 2018 time frame largely in concert with a larger citywide report.Um, however, as I'm really getting my uh sea legs here, getting used to Weisetta,I'm uh yes, that was a pun. I am trying to uh bring forward some of this becauseI do want to celebrate what and recognize what the planning commissionhas done over the year, what uh how that compares to past years and recognize theamount of work and deliberations and how city council takes those deliberationsand uses them when they make their final decisions on these projects because Ithink it's a really important thing for the planning commission to see. Umyou've got a copy of the report in the packet. I'm going to be going through itrelatively quickly here, sticking to some of the higher level commercialprojects. um every once in a while delving into some of the more uhin-depth uh residential projects that you've done, but generally sticking tothat commercial side. So, if you do have questions or want to uh additionaldetails on some of the residential stuff, happy to do so.So, the first piece is that I really want to highlight this was our firstcrack at this in six, seven, eight years kind of thing. And so, some of theterminology we want to refine a little bit closer to better reflect. Um, forexample, development applications may be uh uh refined into what the individualactions within an application might be. So when I when we say that we received12 total applications, there might be 29 different actions, a variance, a PUDamendment, a PUD uh general plan, a etc. within that. So you might need a avariance and a conditional use permit and etc. within the same application.There are some applications uh such as the Excel Energy monopole that we wentthrough that was simply a single application conditional use permit forthe use. Uh there may be design deviations that need to be baked intothat. Some of the more complex projects that you've seen 200 lake uh WalerLamborghini as examples have quite a few actions within them sometimes as much asup to six seven eight. In 2025, the planning commission saw 29development applications or development uh uh review is what I think I'm goingto uh start trying to refer to it for the remainder of this presentation. Uhyou reviewed 29 individual actions that needed to be uh under the planningcommission's perview and had different criteria for each of them. Those werecontained within 12 different full applications or 12 different sites.They're broken out in this table here with variances being uh by and far thelargest that you see forward coming forward. That's because a lot of timesour single family properties are applying just for variances of which wehad three or four just for fences last year. And then you're also gettingvariances on things like walls or Lamborghini or other larger projects aswell. So they compound and it's why you're seeing that one is probably themost significant one that the planning commission reviews and why you're sofamiliar with those criteria. Um, as we go down, we see conditionaluse permits, uh, design deviations, and then we have tried to bring forward sometext amendments to help clean up like you had, uh, previously on the agenda.Um, obviously those were not the ones considered because this is just for2025. Um, but the city has brought forward amendments and we bring thoseforward whenever we can uh, have a relatively non-controversialuh, easy cleanup of code. And so you'll start seeing that more and morefrequently when I see that I have the opportunity to bring something forward.I've got projects staged working for them and waiting for thoseopportunities, particularly on nights like tonight where there's limitedamounts on the agenda and I want to make sure that I'm using your timeeffectively. Additionally, the one piece that I wantto call out is that staff often uh and in prior years have had a lot more ofthese in 2025 uh gets withdrawn applications. So, we've completedsignificant parts of our review. Often the planning commission has reviewed thefull uh review of that project and then sometimes due to your recommendation,they withdraw before they get final action on city council. So, that doesoccur. It can uh affect the total number stats when you start seeing approvals.So, don't think that the our math is that poor just because we're planners. So uh this helps summarize a little bituh more generally uh what happened with those requests the approvals versusdenials. So on the lefth hand column the total number of requests there were 24that went forward to full recommendation of approval and this is just at planningcommission. This is not at the city council level to be clear. This isplanning commission's report and it would reflect differently. The numberswould shift if we went to city council. Um the number of recommendations fordenial was uh total five. So we are uh at a a pretty good level of we'recertainly approving more of the individual application requests than weare uh moving forward with recommendations of denial.In terms of some of our key commercial projects that you saw, probably thebiggest of 2025, as you're all aware, was the 200 Lake Street T former TCFheadquarters. Um this one uh has a a some odd nomenclature but as you can seethe number of requests behind this one was significant. it made up a lot ofyour individual uh numbers of that 24 to 29 that we werereferring to uh simply because of the complexity of that project and as we'relooking at prior years of which we looked at 2024 and have within thisreport but as I look at 23 22 21 what we found is uh we had some prettysignificant requests between uh with lots of complex reviews in this year uhbetween 200 lake and then the Waler Lamborghini being some of the biggerones, but even some of the smaller ones had multiple different steps to it. Inthis one, the nomenclature where uh we wanted to make special uhmake the commission specifically aware of is that city council uh supported therecommendation of denial for the massing breaks, even if they did so in aslightly different manner than the planning commission did. So, if yourecall, staff had helped guide what our interpretation of the massing breakswere going to be. Uh, we had staff had had three massing breaks versus two, andthen council said they needed to be full massing breaks. Well, as it as it worksout, uh, council still supported the action that planning commission took. Sowhile I know that some concern had been expressed for a little while on whethercity council was utilizing a lot of the work from the planning commission, Ithink that it was foundational in their decision making and I think theserecords will help show it. As I've mentioned, uh we also had WalerLamborghini and the redevelopment of 1022 and 1042 Weisetta Boulevard East.This actually only came forward as a concept plan. Uh so single action in2025, well it was one of your more complex reviews because of the number ofindividual items that it would take. Their formal application for PUB generalplan didn't come forward until 2026. And so you'll see in next year's report, butthis review uh really set up city council and helped guide the removal ofthe malberries from that site that was overly packed and in my opinion led to asignificantly better development. And I think that a lot of that was heard fromthe planning commission and city councils that went through. So your workwas essential in bringing forward an application that I think was ultimatelysuccessful and a much better product. And it's one of the reasons why I wantto highlight that our concept plan allows for that type of work. 401 Lake Street East brick and linen wasa uh variance for the amount of retail. This was the second variance applied foron this property for the same use, wanting to go down from 50% retail orcommercial uh service commercial uses and uh the planning commission umunanimously actually recommended denial on this one and city council alsofollowed suit. One of the larger projects and kind offun projects that we got to see right upon my start was the retreat. Um andnow we've moved into institutional developments. just so you're aware.These are no longer commercial as we drift out of those. Um, and what uh thedesign deviations were specifically for is where HVAC could be located. So, theywere very cognizant of what the requirements were. However, olderbuildings, new design, tighter sites, not wanting to take out trees led tosome design deviations to allow for some rooftop mechanical, but they were fullyscreened. I'm not going to go through a lot of ourresidential developments. I do want to highlight 565 because there was asignificant amount of work on both city council and planning commission side.Um, and the other reason is I wanted to be able to explain the denial approvalpiece of this one. Once uh planning commission had brought forward theirrecommendation of approval that was under the current code standards andwhere city council had expressed concern was, do our current code standards meetwhat we're wanting to see? And so we brought back some of those textamendments you saw and uh revised the code. And then once that had been done,city council saw the project again and uh was able to approve that final plat.So the text amendments were in between that though, but your work and yourconcerns and the uh concerns being expressed by the commission help guidethe city council through that process and decision-making. Um they referred toit quite often. Everybody's going to be wondering whyExcel Energy ended up in residential. Um, I was debating putting this up inthe commercial projects, but the property is technically zoned forresidential and this is a permitted use within residential zones uh for anelectrical substation with monopoles being a conditional use. Um, ultimatelythis was what the withdrawn application, one of the reasons why I wanted tohighlight it. They brought this forward more than once to the planningcommission and ultimately withdrew on both occasions uh due to yourrecommendation. So you were able to uh through your guidance say we don't feellike this use fits and by the time city council was at reviewuh that did not proceed forward uh based upon your recommendation. And I I wantedto make sure that I highlighted this project because it really highlights howvalued your opinion is, not only by the city council and staff, but I think it'sfoundational to those applicants that listen. [snorts]>> Do you know did they go to Plymouth with that same request?>> Chair, uh I I >> for a different site>> that I know they went to a different site where they ended up landing on uh Idid not follow up on communication. it wasn't Weisetta and uh>> fair enough. >> I knew they needed to find a differenthome. >> I now want to go into kind of thecomparison from year to year and I'll be able to elaborate a little bit more onsome of the prior years. Um but those years we don't have full assessment onin here. So actually I'm going to skip right downto the table here. Um because I while I'm a visual uh learner I I really likethis figure three um or I'm sorry figure four table and it shows that we had uhslightly more applications not very many in terms of the 10 12 but in those 12 wehad a lot of the development application requests and that's what we're seeing in2026 as well. One of the real oddities to 2025 is that when you look at whenthe applications came in, the first third of our year saw all but like fourapplications. So we were heavily loaded from January till about uh April Maytime frame. We got a few in June and then they started to trickle off. Um andI think that's what we saw into the uh beginning of 2026 as well. So we metsemi-frequently because staff brought forward some of the text amendments andthings of that nature. And we saw some of the same projects more than one time,but the actual applications were very front-loaded into 2020 or in 2025. In2024, they were spread out uh largely evenly throughout the year. And as yougo back to 2023, this is where it makes it puts us a little bit to shame in thatwe had uh 24 applications at 2023. And that's that's the full application withall the actions that is actually standard for the metro region when youlook around. There was so much pent-up demand from 2122and these projects take time to come forward that 23 was a bumper year formost communities and in those years planning commission is going to be busyand you guys did great work. Um, we will look at trying to provide some of thatcompilation in uh future years uh for greater detail, but it'll likely be in atable like this rather than going through the individual projects of thatnature. 2022 only saw 12 applications. So again, we went back down to a morestandard application level and 2020 and 2021 were very, very odd years that bythe tail end of 2020, we had very few applications. So that's where that onebecomes an outlier and not very useful in the measuring of the planningcommission's workload. I do like this table as it shows that wehave a fair amount of residential projects come forward. Um that trend isgoing to continue with plats actually coming forward. You'regoing to see residential plat applications more and more right now andthey are going to be some of the more difficult ones in some cases that you'vealready seen in 2026. They are infill developments and theyare spurred by the property values that you're seeing in Weisetta. If you canmeet minimum lat standards, people are going to want to subdivide. Uh, and Ithink that trend is going to continue and you're going to start seeing more ofit. Additionally, what you're going to start seeing, um, and I actually justsaid to a neighborhood group that we were meeting with prior to this meeting,you're going to start seeing some infill developments that may not need to comebefore planning commission and city council. your difficult lots with weirdgrades or uh odd configurations of wetland, shoreland, etc. are going tostart coming forward. Those lots that have sat for sale for just slightly toolong, you're going to see the demo and a building permit issued on. And some ofthat disruption to the neighborhood is difficult and we understand it. And Iencourage the planning commission and the public to in general reach out tous, let us know where there are issues so that we can uh respond to them and uhtry to correct any behaviors that we need to. That's slightly out of theplanning commission perview, but I do want to make sure because I've I hearyou that a lot of the public comes to you as uh a comfortable person to speakwith about city concerns. And so feel free to refer those to us in thecommunity development department. We'll take it from there. If a codeenforcement complaint is found, we open a case. The piece that I want to makesure you're all aware of is once a code enforcement case is open, we are notreporting on status. We just move forward with a code enforcement caseuntil uh completion. In terms of the platting and things ofthat nature, some of the projects will be easier than others. Um but I do thinkwe are going to see more of those as you go forward. I've reached my end. So, with that, anyquestions, any comments, anything you want me to highlight? I want to keep itrelatively short for you if you want to get moving. >> Questions? Anyone?>> I have one actually. >> Mhm.>> Um, have have you and the rest of staff looked at um 91801, which is the fenceordinance? because it seems like and I know, right?But I was thinking as you as you were talking through it and as I was readingthrough the packet, I was like, we had two fence variances request, right? Wehad two property owners have to come through the process and pay a fee and doall this work through something that was really no fault of their own, right?They they happened to own a corner lot instead of a inline lot. And in order todo the fence that seemed reasonable and they wanted to do, they actually had toget a variance, which doesn't really seem fair to them as a property owner.So anyways, I that I figured I'd ask the question. Chair, excellent point. Thoseare the types of cases that I love to bring forward when we have a trackrecord of variances that are regularly granted when an application comesforward. That is the type that then staff would bring forward a potentiallywork session or or workshop from city council, see whether they want usworking on that. Is this something pressing? And then if so, we would startthat work and bring it forward when it would be convenient for a cleanup. Thereare cases and I'm I'm going to uh try to stay out of bringing up a specific case,but when they're in the front yard, that is going to be a different uh casethan what it would just be the sideyard that's street side. Um there aresignificant number of properties in Weisetta where it would be applicablefor a variance for a taller fence in the front yard. However, I don't know thatwe would want to allow a taller fence in the front yard when there isn'tsomething special like the highway or other types of things. And I thinkthat's an excellent case for a variance versus the opacity between the front ofthe house and the back of the house which is where we currently haverequirements. So that the commission is where we have opacity requirements andheight requirement for when you're in front of the house. We have requirementsfrom the front of the house to the back of the house and then the back of thehouse to the rear yard. It is one of the more unique aspects of our code.However, it was something that city council spent some pretty considerabletime discussing in years past. Um without a significant number of casescoming forward where variances are routinely granted, staff is not going toproactively bring that forward. But we've got a couple now that we couldstart looking at the front yard ones, of which there were two last year.I think we would need to be careful because otherwise people could put in100% opaque sixyard or six foot tall fences in the front yard and that startsto look more less residential and more uminstitutional or other commercial in nature. So great question. as we seetrends moving forward with that planner nerd in me loves bringing thoseforward. Don't worry, I will find them. >> Cool. Um, thank you. Anyone else?>> No, but thank you for that. It was a good summary. Appreciate it.>> Very good. Okay. So, next item.>> Next item, uh, meeting schedule and development activities.>> U meeting schedule. We've got city council tomorrow night, June 2nd. Nextplanning commission June 15th. Right now, I don't have something set up forthe agenda. So, we may be cancelling that meeting. We have had fourapplications declared incomplete. So, we have a backlog coming forward. be aware.Um it means summer meetings may end up being a thing towards the tail end. Umbut for the moment uh we want to make sure you have all the material materialsyou need for your review when they come forward.>> I have one question. >> Yes.>> Is anything um more going on with the Wisetta Barn Grill with the MUN? I knowthat you know they did a study and it seemed to me there was more stuff thatwas more imminent that was coming up. Uh, Chair Cameron, Commissioner, whydon't I get you something on the side for that? That is a great item ofdiscussion. Um, all of it would be interior though, so it's kind ofsomething that I can update outside of the planning commission.>> Okay. >> But we definitely have some updates foryou. In terms of development activities,there isn't significant uh difference from the last meeting. I just want tomake a couple of uh corrections. So, Haley was doing her best from my notes.My handwriting is poor. Uh essentially she uh had reported that the harbors ofWeisetta or Cantisimo, that property on the northeast side right up against theborder uh was uh had extensions out to late July. They do have uh extensioninto July, but they need to apply uh essentially in early June here in orderto bring that forward. and they need to come forward to city council to explainwhy they would need an additional extension or they need to move forwardwith their application and building permit and uh uh signed developmentagreement. So they're right on the cusp of their approvals lapsing. The otherone that was mentioned was moments and she had thought that that was also inJuly. That was actually late September. So it's September 26th. So they havesome time. However, that property has gone into receiverhip. I don'tanticipate that we're going to be seeing anything on it. It would be another onethat since we don't have a code enforcement case currently, I can speakto the fact that we will have code enforcement on that property. We'vegotten a number of reports. So, we we've done our assessment. We will moveforward and any violations would be noted, but as I noted earlier, we won'thave updates on what those code enforcement pieces would be. Other thanthat, there aren't significant changes. I would like to note that while peopleare moving into Wells Fargo, they're also at 90% leased already. So, that's apretty significant feat for that site. The town homes are anticipated to openuh or be available as they come online late June, early July. You'll startseeing final site work hopefully by the end of the summer.>> The 90% lease is the apartments. >> Yes.>> Not the not the not the town homes. >> The town homes, I don't have any data onthe town homes. Um, those were not ready for CO yet.>> Right. Okay. >> Thank you, Dr. Sharp. Anything else?Anybody? All right. Well, that uh concludes allthe items on our agenda this evening. >> Well, I I'll do one quick touchup thenum that I meant to mention before. In front of you are brand spanking newbylaws. I can we will be emailing these out to you as well, but I know some ofyou still love physical copy. Uh so these are your new bylaws. Uh citycouncil did approve them with the amendments recommended by planningcommission. >> Cool. Excellent.>> Thank you, chair. >> Thank you.>> Tangible paper. [laughter]>> Thank you. Bish. Um [laughter] all right. May I have amotion to adjurnn, please? >> So moved.>> Thank you, Commissioner Plant. May I have a second?Second. >> Thank you, Commissioner Elg. Furtherdiscussion. >> All those in favor? I>> opposed. >> The eyes have it. The motion is approvedand tonight's meeting, the sorry, the June 1st, 2026 meeting of the WestPlanning Commission is hereby adjourned.