Uh, welcome to the April 15, 2025 city council meeting. I hereby call the meeting to order. Uh, judging by the men and women in blue and our canine staff, you are officially in the safest place in Wisetta tonight. So, welcome. Uh members of the public may attend the city council meeting in person or may watch and listen remotely by viewing the meeting on channel 8 WCTV and at the city's website at www.wisetta.orgwv. Public comment during the public forum and or public hearing portion of the meeting may be provided in person at the meeting in advance or by logging into the team's call and raising your hand during the public hearing. When your name is called in the meeting, you will be seen and heard in our council chambers and the cable channel. You'll be asked to unmute and then you may begin your comments. All public comments must include your full name and address. Next, I am going to uh call the pledge of allegiance and uh if you would ask everyone to stand if you are able to follow along. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Uh, next on our agenda is roll call. I will note that the entire council is present. Uh, also for the public, earlier today, the council participated in a workshop and discussed the following. Consideration of a code amendment request from Cove for a change to their outdoor patio as it relates to city rightaway and a discussion of the 2026 budget process and council budget priorities. The next item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. I need a motion to approve the agenda as is or with any changes uh requested. I'll make that motion, Mr. Mayor. Okay. Second. Second. Any further [Music] discussion? All in favor say I. I. That passes. Uh, next uh on our agenda is the public forum. Um, and just as a reminder for those uh in the public uh attending tonight and you're interested in speaking, uh you need to state your name, address, and indicate if you're representing a group and try to limit your comments to three minutes. If your if your um item is on the agenda, you need to fill out one of these blue cards and hand it to staff. If you want to speak at the public uh forum, you need to fill out a white card. Um for those of you who are watching online via Teams, please send a note via chat to our staff and let them know what agenda item you wish to speak about. And we also require that your camera be on. The first item on the public forum is recognition of retiring of Jason Garman sergeant and search and rescue dog Loki. Uh Jason is a sergeant with the city of Wisetta. Um Loki is uh Sergeant Garman's K9 partner. I believe he's a four and a halfyear-old uh Belgian Malwa. Um Loki is specially trained in search and rescue, specifically tracking and trailing individuals based on scent. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to the city manager and I believe uh Chief Baker. Thank you, Mayor Mullen, and good evening, council members. Just a couple things, and maybe while I'm talking, uh, uh, interim Chief Baker can go up to the podium. Uh, bittersweet night tonight. We've been blessed to have Sergeant German's leadership within our department for the past five years, and Roseville benefit benefited uh, of his tenure for much longer than that. Uh, Sergeant German exemplifies what it means to be a public safety officer in a town like Weisetta. He works his tail off, maybe to a fault. Sometimes um he provides a small town level of service. Uh for example, when teens get in trouble in our town and there a lot of them and we all have seen that uh he will go above and beyond to form a relationship with them and their parents and in order to mitigate future issues. He's also brought, as the mayor indicated, Loki to the department and with his own investment really uh has led an award-winning search and rescue team that has helped to save people and kids not only in Wisetta but all over the region, which uh uh is pretty remarkable. Um so that's just the tip of the iceberg. Uh Chief Baker is going to um say a few more things. Thank you, Mayor, Council members, and City Manager Dah. I'd like to take this time to thank you for letting me recognize Sergeant German. Sergeant German has been a cornerstone of our department. A steady hand, a courageous leader, and has a compassionate presence. His calm demeanor under pressure, unwavering sense of duty, and his genuine care for those around him has earned him the deepest respect of his peers and gratitude of countless citizens. Sergeant Germ started his career in law enforcement in 2002 at Golden Valley Police Department, volunteering his time as a reserve officer. In April of 2006, Sergeant Kerman started as a patrol officer with the Roseville Police Department. During his time with the Roseville Police Department, Sergeant Kerman took on numerous roles. Explore adviser, East Metro SWAT operator, sniper team leader, traffic officer, EVOC, which is emergency vehicle training officer, use of force instructor, impact officer/ street crimes officer. Jason was among the best of the best for his undercover work. There's days where I question if he should be in public service or in Hollywood. Sergeant German made the transition to W uh Weisetta from Roseville in 2019 and in 2021 was promoted to sergeant. Jason has carried many roles and responsibilities while at Weisetta, too many to list. One of the most impactful and instrumental has been the addition of the K9 program. Sergeant German and Loki were the first and search first search and rescue team embedded within a police department. Loki started his career with the Weisetta Police Department in March of 2022. And the reason why I know that is because Loki and I started at the same time. And so all the pressure was taken off of me because nobody was interested in me and everybody wanted to talk about Loki. In 2024, Sergeant German and Loki received the excellence and innovation award at the Minnesota from the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association. Jason's compassion and love for animals has always been in the forefront of his career. He has been known to take on many stray animals, most notably the cat that was thrown from a moving vehicle and got injured. Jason was able to gather money for a reward and became the spokesperson for the media. During the media coverage, it was mentioned that Jason was considering adopting the cat, which we all took as code for he hadn't convinced his wife yet. Jason's immediate and extended family has put in countless volunteer hours from softball games, toys for tots drive, light up the lake. Though there are rumors that Jason has a direct connection to the Grinch that shows up to light up the lake. I would like to thank Jason's family for all the sacrifices they have made with late calls, long hours, working on days when he was supposed to be off. He would not have been able to have a successful career without your support. What I'm going to miss most about Jason is his quick wit and sense of humor. Jason has a great comedic timing and knows when it is appropriate. If I had to pick my top four, I would say the QR code that Rick rolled employees. The one uh this one is going to date myself and Jason, but the tumbler that he created with the original online state accident reports template with animals. The plastic rose. The plastic rose with the plastic dome that lights up. And number one, by far my favorite was when Jason still denies it is the one that he was supposed to go get a burner phone for an undercover detail and didn't listen to any of the instructions and it took the investigative lieutenant numerous days, if not weeks, to undo that account. Jason continues to have a lasting impact. You serve not just with skills, but with heart. On behalf of the department, the city, and those that lives you've touched, we thank you. We are better because of your service. [Applause] We'll find out. Okay. It's been an emotional day, so this is going to be short and sweet. Um, it's been an honor to work for the department, the city for the last six years and Loki and I aren't going to be a stranger. We'll be around here to help if anything anybody goes missing. Um, just want to thank you all the council members, past and present, mayors, Jeff, Aurora, everybody in the city. It's been been a fun ride. Thank you. Would anyone on council like to offer any words uh to Sergeant Garvin? Just a word of thank you, Jason. It's really been a pleasure getting to know you and your dog's beautiful, all the work he's done, and it's quite a feat to train a dog and quite an enjoyable feat. Yeah, same echoing council member Parkill. Thank you so much and thanks for bringing canines to the force. Um it's been really exciting to watch you guys and watch um the dogs work too and you'll be missed. Don't be a stranger. Anyone else? I'll just thank you for your service. I'll say it's it's been a pleasure. I mean all all the guys out there in blue uh Wisetta is a unique community. We love our cops. I think the cops do well by us and we are going to miss you and the dog of course. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Just quick comment, Jason. So, uh, thank you again for your service. Very impressive. Um, not sure what you have in mind now, but I have a couple dogs at home I could use your help with if you have some time. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll just take a pause because I know your fan club is going to want to visit with you out in the in the lobby. So, we'll give you a little bit of time to uh sign autographs and take pictures uh out in the hallway. And thanks for everyone for being here tonight to honor you, Jason, and and Loki. So, thank you. So, we'll just pause for two seconds [Applause] and Okay. Uh, so next on the public forum is a certificate of appreciation for Wendy Hitch and Northstar therapy animals. Um, I'll just pause for a second because I think it'll be hard to hear just to uh let folks uh move to the lobby. We're dogs. Yeah, more dogs. Never have too many dogs. We're just going to pause for one second to let Yeah, that's great. I'd give him all the time in the world. The dog is beautiful. That's for sure. Absolutely. Okay. Um, the next item on the public forum is a certificate of appreciation for Wendy Hitch and Northstar Therapy Animals uh group. So, Northstar Therapy Animals members, which number over 200, are collectively focused on a common purpose that drives their organization to improve the lives of the many individuals in our communities uh by providing highquality therapy, animal teams, and service to a wide variety of facilities. Um, this group currently visits over 95 locations including hospitals, elder care, assisted living residences, hospice, and specially care facilities. Um, such as those serving individuals with autism, eating disorders, or developmental disabilities. And many of their volunteers also visit libraries or schools as part of Northstar Readers uh program, and several visit families at the Ronald McDonald House. So, I'm going to turn it over to our city manager to um honor uh this organization with a certificate of appreciation. Mr. City Manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First, I'm going to ask uh Director Sharp to pull up um in our meeting. A dog theme tonight, I think. Uh so, we've got some uh images to go with this brief presentation. So, just dovetailing off what uh Mayor Mullen had indicated. Um this recognition tonight is really three-fold. It's for uh and to celebrate and support April 30th as being Minnesota's therapy animal dog day. Uh in honor of, as the mayor mentioned, uh the thousands of therapy animals serving in communities across the US. Uh the governor recognized this day specifically last year and will be doing it this year. Uh secondly, it also recognizes this this recognition tonight as the mayor mentioned, Northstar Therapy Animals and Pet Partners team who make millions of visits every year uh for the purposes that the mayor mentioned. Lastly, it also recognizes specifically Wendy Hitch and her dog uh Getty and all the dogs that you've worked with and pets that you've worked with in the past. Um, you've uh uh if if you don't know Wendy, she's volunteered hundreds, probably more like thousands of hours uh volunteer hours of her time and her dog to make people feel comfortable, welcomed, belonged um all throughout the region um this area and specifically Weisetta. And you can see some of the examples uh there on the screen. Most of those in in Weisetta are very close by. COVID years. There's a great there's just great examples of all the different kind of circumstances and and and um life environments that Wendy and Getty and others have uh provided their service. So with that, uh Wendy, we have a certificate of appreciation for you for Northstar Therapy Animals and Pet Partners, as well as the recognition of April 30th as Minnesota Therapy Animal Day. and I'm gonna um walk over and bring that to you and then if you'd like to say anything as well. Oh, great. Thank you. Of course, I have something to say. The apple doesn't fall too far. So, this is the uh uh certificate of appreciation for Wendy for uh April 30th and for Northstar Partners. Congratulations, Wendy. Thank you so much. if you want to come around here. Oh, sure. Oh, that's very sweet. I don't know. Has it does anybody know Getty? Have you met her? Well, she recently passed. She was 14 years old. She'd been my partner for a little over 10 years as a nationally, internationally registered pet partner team. And we were also a crisis response team. So my local nonprofit group, Carcootherapy Animals, we have over 300 teams. Everything from llamas, alpacas down to rats. Wendy, if you didn't mind, just step up to the mic because the mass viewing audience on TV wants to hear from you. So we are the largest pet partner organization in the country with over 300 teams. Um, Getty and I did a lot in Weisetta. Some of the photo here, this is James J. Hill Day. She was the mascot for the parables disability ministry at Weisetta Community Church for 10 years. And so we did everything. Um everything they did we did. Um that was Jame Hill. This is at Weisetta Senior High. It was distress for um finals week and that was her little plastic bag with treats as a thank you. We were out at the airport. We were one of the teams that started the program at the airport. It's called animal ambassadors and Getty and I were specific to the uh to the main airport in terminal 2, but also this navigating MSP which is a program that is unique to our airport in the whole world. We offer a monthly program for families who have children or family members with disabilities and it's a dry run. They do a practice run. It's first Saturday of each month and so it's very popular and Getty was the therapy dog for that. We worked a lot with young people who had disabilities from many of the schools in the Weisetta district. Um we did this is at Courage Center actually where she worked with the rehab therapists at Courage uh center in Golden Valley and also at Abbott Northwestern. We visited in several hospitals. We were part of the reading education assistance dogs northstar reader. So the the one picture was of us said in the uh was that a library that was during COVID that's at courage center where we visited through windows uh because we couldn't go in and that little sign says sending love to you. So, um, they would bring the patients one by one to the window to be able to greet Getty. And we did a little tricks thing outside. And this was the g the, uh, Getty on the stick because there were times when you couldn't have the dog, but you were doing like a parade where people would come by and say hi. And so if you couldn't have your dog, you always had your your animal on the stick. This is a presentation. I did a lot of presentation in the schools on the difference between service dogs and therapy dogs. So, um, this is, uh, at a the intermediate school. It's actually, that one's actually Delano. We've been out at Delano for eight years. Um, so it's a wide variety of things. It's not just going Actually, I never went to assisted living because a lot of those people have their own dogs. I went where there was crisis. My dog was uh, very mature. She was a beautiful animal. She also was a champion show dog. Did agility with me as well. Um, and our mission was to settle down people who were in crisis. So, even at the airport, we would go to the gates that had delays or had problems and be with those people and offer support and comfort for them in because they're mad. They get pretty angry. Um, so thank you so much. Oh, and also she was Annie in the play Annie. I don't know if any of you went to it, but she was the Sandy Dog. So that she was in three plays with the Good Works Community Theater, which is out of Wisetta Community Church. Um, but she had a star role as the dog Annie or Sandy. So, um, thanks very much for this. I appreciate it for myself and the work that we did as a team. Um, I am in the process of training another dog, so you'll see us around. Um, and for my my Northstar Therapy Pet Partner group, we appreciate your support on April 30th. Okay. Thank you. Maybe support for city council members might be something that can be thought about in future. Uh uh staff, do we have anyone on teams that wanted to offer comments during this section of the public forum? Not at this time, mayor. Okay. So, next is new agenda items. Uh does anyone have councel on have any new agenda items that they would like to bring up? Okay, hearing none, we'll move on to the consent agenda. Uh on the consent agenda this evening is approval of city council workshop and regular meeting minutes of March 25th and April 1st, 2025. Approval of the checked register, municipal licenses, police activity report, building activity report, approval of professional technical services contracts with CCX media for city meeting AV services, approval of amendment to professional services agreement with Fred Miller for video production services. Approval of special event permits for the 2025 Weisetta Art Experience and James J. Hild's events put on by the Weisetta West Metro Chamber of Commerce. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented or do any items need to be pulled for further discussion? I'll move to uh approve the agenda as outlined. Mayor, do I have a second? Second. Any further discussion? All in favor say I. I. That passes. Uh next is uh item 8, old business. So this is consider adoption of resolution 062025 approving the preliminary plat at 565 Ferndale Road West known as Ferndale Bluff. Um so what we'll go through is uh a presentation by staff followed by questions from council presentation by the applicant questions from council and bring it back for discussion. Just for context um why this is on old business. This item was tabled at our last meeting to both have the full council present and a dialogue between staff and the applicant on options for reducing adverse impacts of the public roadway into the subdivision. The staff and applicant have met since uh that last meeting and discussed alternative plans and that will be presented and discussed tonight and we have a deadline for council action this evening on the 120day clock. With that, I will turn it over to staff to begin their presentation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Director Sharp is going to walk us through this presentation. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, similar with the work session, you've taken some of my slides, so I'll be able to move through them a little bit faster. As stated, this is a preliminary plat to subdivide property at 565 Ferndale Road West. Because of the nature of this application, I'm going to move through it a little bit differently than perhaps standard. I'm going to present the prior presentation uh more briefly than it was presented at the March 25th council agenda. Then we'll go into planning commission recap, public comment recap, uh the council direction that was provided, and then um the applicant's proposal to mitigate those concerns and the outline of our meeting and then what the potential council actions could be this evening, including a staff recommendation. As you can see, the site is located in the west side of uh Weisetta almost um just west of PV pond. The next area will zoom in a little bit further showing some of the significant features in the area. It is excuse me just north of Lake Minnetonka and as noted has direct access onto Pave Pond. This is a view from Ferndale Road uh into the site with the existing driveway both from uh Google Maps and from a uh more up-to-date photo looking into the site or I shouldn't say up to date but a more spring photo when the foliage is there on the left hand side. The site is zoned or I'm sorry uh guided for uh estate single family 0.25 25 uh units per acre up to 0.5 units an acre and zoned R1A lowdensity single family. The existing conditions include a home, a garage, and a guest house on the property and significant driveway that is both patuminous and gravel. As you can see on the eastern side of the site is where PV pond is located and there is significant marsh as well. Uh the graphic can be a little bit difficult to see on here, but we'll go into further detail later. There is significant grade on this site. The existing conditions uh include bluffs and protected features with steep slopes. As you can see on the right hand graphic, there are three bluff areas. Each of these presents uh code restrictions on where development can occur that I'll go into greater detail when I'm going over the proposal. There are this is a heavily wooded site with over 700 significant trees uh noted on the property. Some of these are uh dead, dying or diseased. So they are not counted towards the overall replacement requirements out of city code. The application seeks to subdivide by preliminary plat a 11.87 acre lot into three single family properties of varying size that I will go through uh independently. They seek to keep the same zoning of R1A. Within the R1A district, there are a number of provisions for lot size, uh minimum width, depth, uh roadway frontage, etc. All of these are met under the current proposal. The density is within the comprehensive plan guiding at 26 units per acre. Within R1A, there are uh additional provisions for lot coverage, buildable area, and uh ensuring that you were that the applicant is staying outside of those bluff areas. That will be a future slide. To uh essentially document that this could be done, we'd ask the applicant to provide demonstrate uh a demonstrative area of where the homes could be developed. That's within the green areas. And then demonstration lot pads are shown in the blue outlines along with demonstration driveways showing that the proposed development does have developable lots that would be in conformance with city ordinance. As I noted before, there are the three bluff areas. Uh through the review process, staff had asked that those demonstration lot pads and driveways be presented uh so that the planning commission and city council would be able to see that uh they would not infringe on those steeper bluff designated areas. One of the primary reasons why I retain this slide within the presentation is to note the division or the difference between where development can occur and cannot occur on slopes over 18%. So for a slope over 18% homes uh driveways etc are not allowed within that slope. City streets are a permitted provision within that 18% slope area and the city of Weisetta does have other streets that are at or above this provision. Uh it if you have additional questions on where those might be. I'm not as well versed in the community as some others are yet. So I would rely on their institutional knowledge. I'm sure many of you already have that. The proposal would require the removal of a number of significant trees. One of the items that we will go into a little bit later is how that might be able to be reduced. Uh however, there are not heritage trees planned for removal as part of this plan. Um and the replacement may vary based upon the where the actual homes are built and the actual lot pads and if council moves forward with any amendments to the ordinance uh that will be presented in just a few slides. The uh proposed roadway is set to be 526 feet in total length uh to center of culde-sac and there was a significant grade change that you can see in the road profile there. One item of note in that road profile is that is for the street center line not for the edges. So the height does vary on either side of the road. You'll see a future slide on the uh retaining walls that this pertains to in a moment. There are two retaining walls proposed as part of this development in effort to not encumber the city with the cost for maintenance of those retaining walls. Two outlots are being created or are proposed and they are tied to lots three and lot two. So that those lots are responsible for the future maintenance of those retaining walls depending upon where they are located. The two retaining walls that I've noted are in red on the graphic on the right. The total height of these walls was a topic of discussion at the prior council and varied between 8t tall and 7 feet tall at their max height. This will be important for future discussion pieces coming up. Recapping what the planning commission saw and did was much of this same presentation as the council had seen at the last meeting or I'm sorry the prior meeting as well. They did have a number of topics of discussion uh that were similar to the city council on disc discussions of dimensions, slope, height, location impact of the retaining walls, storm water infrastructure, uh tree removal impacts, and the con potential construction and impacts on the neighborhood. Ultimately, the planning commission did recommend approval uh via a 60 vote. It's a standard slide within the presentation, but all public notice was provided for this project, including mailing property owners within 500 ft of the property. Since the planning commission, we received numerous promis public public comments, apologies. Um, so 39 were received before the prior council meeting and then there are a number that have sitting on your dis and have been included and sent out today. Uh, as the I'm sorry, on this one there aren't several. I'm uh recounting the uh another application. My sincere apologies. Um all of these summed up. Uh there were some positive, there were some negative uh namely highlighting the same items that council and planning commission had concerns on and then some commenters did submit multiple messages. So that can contribute towards that overall number. On the March 25th council meeting, uh council reviewed this item and discussed they uh you chose to table the action as there was not a vote that was able to be taken one way or the other on a deciding vote and you tabled the action to this evening when a full uh when the full council would be present and additionally you directed staff and the applicant to meet and discuss ways where the roadway impacts could be mitigated. staff and the applicant have met. And one other f item of note that the mayor already touched on is that we are up against the 120day review period which would be technically on April 17th and therefore the council uh if not granted an extension would need to provide some form of action this evening. Staff and the applicant had an excellent meeting. uh I believe that we were able to come to a a number of ideas or concepts that would be able to potentially reduce the impact of the roadway on the surrounding properties. By and far the biggest impact would be increasing the roadway grade. Uh so 8% is what is required by our current code. 10% could be allowed by the fire code. But there were other ways that uh were discussed as well including roadway width, the right ofway width c and a culde-sac versus hammerhead configuration which you will see shortly. To sum up the meeting, we went through the final processes of how each one of these could be evaluated or brought forward by the applicant. A PUD is an option, a variance to the subdivision code would be an option, or a text amendment suggested by the applicant that the city council directs staff to make, which is ultimately what the applicant uh chose to pursue and what their proposal is. This is the direct copy from a letter to the mayor and city council from the applicant. Uh essentially summing up what it is requesting is that the preliminary plat uh be approved by the city council with an additional condition that the that a text amendment be performed by the city that amends the current subdivision ordinance to allow for additional provisions within the uh width of the road, the grade of the road, and other um factors that would allow it to perhaps have less of an impact. One of the things I would like to note on this is that uh there are specific zoning districts noted in this suggested text language that staff would want to further evaluate before being able to fully determine whether these would have greater impacts upon the full community. But in large part, uh staff is supportive of evaluating this if council directed. I'm going to linger a little bit longer with these. I've been moving through kind of quickly uh for the prior items, but now we're getting into the kind of new section and want to make sure that uh I cover items so that council doesn't need to ask too many questions. I'll start with what the current provisions out of code require, which are an 8% maximum roadway grade, 26 backtoback curb. Uh just to clarify, all of the dimensions that I'm going to be providing for roadway is from back of curb to back of curb. Uh, I'm not an engineer and I will defer to the engineer before trying to answer that. Uh, a 50-foot rightway and a culde-sac rather than a hammerhead configuration are required by code. The applicant has put forward two potential concepts. Uh, I'll leave it to them on whether they want to state a preference for one versus another. However, they did want to demonstrate that they had gone through the effort of evaluating multiple concepts for the council and staff. So, exhibit A has a 10% roadway grade, a 21 foot uh roadway width, retains the original 50- foot ride of way, and has a hammerhead configuration. Uh, and you can see that in that in the graphic on the left. And then exhibit B is a 10% roadway grade, a 24 foot roadway width. Again, the 50- foot ride right ofway and a culde-sac configuration. One of the things we were able to do out of our discussion after meeting with the applicant was determine where those the greatest impacts would be. And as I already noted, the greatest impact uh to the site is likely due to the grade or the uh roadway grade changing from 8% to 10%. So the original is on top there and you can see again this is street center line. You can see there's a significant amount of reduction of the amount of cut that would need to occur in the new project. What this results in is the retaining walls going from 8t at maximum height, 7 foot for one, eight for the other down to a maximum height of 4 feet. It would reduce the length of that retaining wall. So that uh 8ft section would be for a shorter distance and the overall length would be for a shorter distance down to a 4ft height and from 405 ft long down to 293t long or 112t reduction in the total length of the wall. The actual impact to the surrounding trees and landscape would be reduced. Uh at this time the applicant hasn't been able to provide by how much. They're interested in working with the city to see how that can be evaluated as they go through for their final plat. Uh the same stays true for the anticipated tree retention and that that would increase out of this proposal. Uh likely with less impacts to trees, the exact trees and the amount saved would need to be studied at a future date when they submitted their final plat. And then because there would be less roadway, there would be less storm water requirements that uh the graphics that have been presented don't have the amended storm water as that is a another item that would need to be further updated in their final plan application. After review, staff uh would support exhibit B uh if council directed staff to make the uh required text amendments. Uh the city engineer and public works director and fire chief have spoken, apologies, have spoken with the state fire marshall and uh obtained their advice and could speak a little bit further about uh what that how that discussion went if council has additional questions. But the preference would be for a 10% max grade. the 24 foot roadway width 50- foot rightway remains unchanged and then a strong preference for the culde-sac to ensure uh health and human safety in case there were an emergency at one of the homes particularly towards the end of the culde-sac as a hammerhead configuration wouldn't allow as many vehicles to stack within the culde-sac there staff foresees that there would be approximately three council actions that could be taken obviously The council could direct in other ways than this, but these are the three most prominent. The first could be to adopt the original resolution of 062025 approving the preliminary plat at 565 Ferndale. Alternatively, council may also adopt resolution 062025 with the additional condition noted. uh you can see it there on your screen, but it's essentially that um has a secondary provision where council also directs staff to prepare a code amendment consistent with exhibit B or if uh the council wished either of the exhibits. And then the third option would be a motion to deny the application and state findings of deny. With that, I would stand for questions and can certainly uh or sit for questions and can certainly go back to any slides as needed. Sure. Questions of staff from council. I've got some questions here for the staff initially. So, um I'm just curious, why did this project go down the path of a subdivision application with a city putting in a street with the uh the code provisions for that versus a pod? I'll take a uh my best estimate of that. Um my understanding is that that is a permitted uh activity for the applicant to apply for. Um I do not know I I believe that uh the applicant has stated that there was discussions of a PUD. I do not know what uh advice had been provided on that in the past. Mayor Mullen and Council Member Pleish. Uh just to add a little bit more color, we've staff has met uh with the applicant, you know, probably dozens of times over the past couple years. Uh we give suggestions, recommendations. Ultimately, they've got a great team, experienced team. They know what the options are and so they ultimately uh went moved forward. Uh they thought it was, you know, the best for them to move forward with the subdivision option. Okay. A follow-up question to that. So if this had gone down the PUD path and the plan came before us looking just like this with the roadway cutting through the steep grade and the width that it is either in the original or the one that's before us today in a PUD format. Would that have been approved? Uh council member Plush, no way to know that. Uh a PUD is a different process, different type of decision. And so it's really hard to say. Okay. Uh other questions of staff? That kind of follows up. Go ahead. Thank you. Um in this period of uh council member Pleish's question, uh why at this most recent meeting with the applicant, why do you think they picked um text ordinance text amendment to the ordinance versus variance? It seemed like variance was an option as well. Maybe we could direct that to the city attorney because that's kind of a legal um procedural um Sure. Mayor, council member, I mean I I don't know all of the applicants reasons, but uh as the city manager said about the last question, you know, it's a different process, a different standard for the request. Frankly, it's more difficult. Requires a four or five votes and a different types of findings related to practical difficulties of the lots. I mean, we certainly talked about it as an option. We highlighted it for them. They chose the text amendment route. I will say the text amendment route does give the city council more discretion in crafting an amendment that works citywide. to the extent you have uh uh to you would like to have that tool in smaller subdivisions to have uh the ability to look at something that's smaller with less impacts. This the zoning ordinance amendment route would give you that option whereas the variance would be very specific to this property. It's just hard to look at this property and not see practical difficulty. Yeah. Um further questions. Councilman McDonald. Uh No. Okay. Thank you. Uh, council member Sorenson, did you have a question? U, yeah, the question of staff. um understood that um exhibit B was presented along with another exhibit A from the applicant and it was reviewed by I think our public works people and maybe the fire chief and others and there was the recommendation was to go with exhibit B. But um I guess I'd be curious in discussion about uh more about that um exhibit A versus exhibit B. I guess they're looking at me. Mikey, take it. Yeah. Uh, couple different things. Um, I think the biggest benefit, as Alex had mentioned, uh, to the modified plans, either one of them, is the grade change. We have to look to our fire code uh, to kind of address public safety. Fire code allows up to no more than a 10% grade. The other alternative is road width. Road width according to the fire code allows a minimum width of 20 ft. Those are typically for through streets. This is a deadend street or culde-sac street. There is some guidance. It's not part of their requirements. They have an appendix that talks about their uh road widths and they're actually wider than this in that guidance. Um, so with discussion with the fire chief, he was comfortable with a narrower street than we allow per code. And because it's not a through street, he would prefer that it be 24 ft in width with a larger turnaround. As Alex mentioned, primarily it the the hammerhead would be difficult for their larger vehicles to be able to turn around in, and it just doesn't provide capacity for public safety vehicles. So is um so 20 foot is a minimum uh but the preference is 24 at this point. That's correct. And and a hammerhead versus the culaac. So the hammerhead would function it sounds like not as well as the as as a cultac. Correct. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Sure. U further questions. Uh council member. Well, I can lend a little bit of um insight to that, too. Having been a firefighter here for many years and retiring a couple years ago and a driver, it it would be diff more difficult to do the hammerhead, but I'm curious as to why that was thrown in as an option versus the culde-sac. Uh that might be the applicant to answer. I don't know. Uh but the other thing is that as a firefighter, many times we had to go on driveways that were m way narrower than these streets and we were able to get in and out. is just a little tricky and you need some some help. But um just want to throw that out there. Further questions of staff. I have a followup, Council Member, um on that exact question. Thank you for bringing that up, Council Member Pleish, is um are there safety standards that apply to driveways? Because I look at these and they're very long driveways. So, if there was a a large a very urgent emergency, um would the emergency vehicle actually prefer to just drive up to the house instead of parking on the street? Never thought about it before. I can't answer that specifically, but typically in the case of a fire, unless the house is far back from the street, they're going to fight the fire from the street. police vehicles and ambulance are going to pull up as close as they can. We allow up to a 24 foot wide driveway, which is we have some of those in town. Um, we like to see them so that longer driveways have the ability for cars to somewhat pass each other, which could be as narrow as 16. But if you have a driveway that is 200 f feet, can you fight a fire from the street or do you have to I'll answer that. Yes, you can. Okay. There are things called hoses that can be strung together. Okay. Um but a an ambulance might be a little different. You want to get as close as you can for pulling people out and so on. I know how much hose was able to be We have a lot. Okay. We have a lot of hose. I'm glad to hear it. Okay. Thank you. Any uh further questions? And just from a process perspective, um if you just one and then I'll turn it over to you. If you do have a member of the public do want to speak about this, you need to fill out a blue card or uh initiate a chat session with staff and then sorry, council member Park, please proceed with your questions. So, we there are fire codes for the city. There are fire codes probably for the county and I know there are state fire codes and there also um rightaway guidelines and drainage and retention guidelines uh road width guidelines all these things. If we were to if this were a PUD or a variance, do we have more discretion with those items than we do with uh a text amendment? And this might be a question for city manager for attorney Shelzel. I think this is an attorney level question personally. Uh, mayor, council member. Well, um, so any text amendment we make to city code can't be inconsistent with state law. So I don't think we could adopt something that would conflict with a a state fire code regulation, for example. Um, but in terms of flexibility on the rules, I mean, as long as it's uh rational and it promotes health, safety, welfare, we could we could look at just about any change that that promotes those things and doesn't conflict with state law or other legal principle. So, I don't know if that answers your question. Um, let's take the um I've heard the fire code, the width of the road for uh for the state is 20 ft. So, we're kind of limited by that. Are we still limited by that with a PUD and the variance or in a PUD can we do lanes and private roads and things like that that aren't 20 ft? It's a challenging question because it I think it affects in our code several different places that we would need to look at. Um we have a separate provision that doesn't allow for private roads. Um so we'd have to consider that as well. Um I I think we would be looking at the fire code as our guidance as a minimum standard if that were the case. in in any case from what I my the research I've done and the conversations I've had with cheap cla um that seems to be the tightest standard. Okay. So I I guess then I have two questions then. One is with a PUD and a variance, would we have been able to not have a city road? Um, I guess that's the first question. And then how my second question is how do we get these nice little private roads, roads without curbon gutter, um small smaller long driveways. How do we get those in the city? Um are they grandfathered in? Are they not allowed anymore by any kind of flexibility? I'm just wondering because I think everybody would appreciate this not having a big road except maybe the fireman when he comes in, you know, and it's like um is there a method to get that if the applicant so wanted to? I'm just going to respond real quick and say I I think our uh community development director has laid out a couple of the different options that have been presented there. We've spoken to the applicant about the PUD process, the variance process, and the code amendment process. I think those are the three alternatives to talk a little bit about history of streets and why the they are the way they are. Our code was created at some point to kind of guide how our streets were created. A lot of the examples that were given at our last uh council meeting are a combination of approvals that have been made by our councils in the past. Locust Hills, for example, 24 foot wide street is a PUD project. Stone Crest, which is another Bushway Road project. I believe that was either a variance or conditional use of some sort. Um that did allow for a private drive. Those are the most recent projects that we've had with new streets. We haven't had any new streets in quite a while. This happens to be a new one and we start we and the applicant started with trying to conform with our code. Go ahead, David. Yeah, Mayor and uh uh Council Member Parkhill, to answer the first part of your question, uh a PUD does allow for private streets. Um in general, that's prohibited in the subdivision ordinance. uh you can get a variance from provisions of the subdivision ordinance and from the zoning ordinance, but you can't get a variance from state fire code. So the variance is a tool for varying from the zoning ordinance and the subdivision ordinance as long as it doesn't but it doesn't get you a variance from another state law or federal regulation or something like that if that helps. Okay. Yeah. And I would just note in the packet there are references to the length width of several roads that were referenced by Mike. I don't know the page number. I can look it up, but it's in there that gives parameters of, you know, different, uh, paths with with with a PUD. Um, so, uh, further questions of staff, otherwise, we're going to turn it over to the applicant for a presentation, then we will take public comments. So, uh, any other questions of staff? Go ahead. Just one quick one. I have this one on my desk or we all do. Yeah. And it to me, this doesn't look like it tells me who submitted this. Uh, that was from Mr. He Hemsley. Okay. Yeah. So, um and he is um on deck to speak to it um in in the public comments. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Yep. Uh okay. So, with no further questions of staff at this time, we'll turn it over to the applicant for their presentation and then we'll take public input. Apologies for No, take your time. I mean, you got to don't don't rush. Just get it right. We were asked by the staff to bring in some graphics that can show what things look like. So, yeah, no problem. Take your take your time. Just so you know, uh, Mr. Mayor, we have not seen these, so this will be, uh, first time debuting. Sure. Graphic. Yeah, they go I don't know how to do this. And [Applause] then I have just for the city members, I have close closeups of the street section just It's over there. Yeah. Take a breath and we'll let these be passed out and then and then you can go. I left my water when I was here two weeks ago. Oh, there you go. Hi, my name is Samantha Capen Moldun. I am the owner of the property at 565 West Ferndale. And just first want to thank you so much for having me back. I really appreciate the time and energy um all of the council members bring to the city as a whole and the city staff and of course my team who've been amazing. Um Meredith How is here, Mike Steenman. Because of the switch in date, we are missing a few people from our team. So I apologize, but our environmental planner, um Bruce Malerson, Mike Steedman, who else? The guy from Rachel Construct, we had a lot of people who couldn't be here tonight. So, we will do our best to answer the questions um your questions with the experts that we do have. Uh so, just I'm going to breeze through as much as I can on the presentation, but there are some parts that are sort of detailed and I want to spend time on them. So, you all heard us introduce ourselves last time. I'm Samantha Capen Moldun. My sisters Allison Capen and Heather Capen Cox are dialing in on Zoom and watching. Um and we are the owners of the property. I'm just going to talk about um why we're here, what the results of our collaboration were from a design perspective and also from a um process perspective, our request for an approval, the benefits of that, and then take any questions you have. So, we're here because on February 24th, we submitted a um application to the planning commission for a three lot subdivision on almost 12 acres. Um that was unanimously recommended for approval 6 and so we brought it to the city council as you know on March 25th. So at that meeting uh people there was a lot of discussion and people generally agreed that while objectively compliant it raised concerns surrounding the impact of the road and we were directed to work with the um city staff to try and come up with some creative ways to mitigate those concerns. So the applicant and the staff collaborated. We had a really great meeting um several hours, a team of you know 15 people I think um lots of really good discussions and we identified a bunch of different opportunities to respond to the council's concerns. We discussed designs, engineering process impacts, legal opinions and what I'm going to do today is show you where we net it out. Um, the really great thing about this collaborative process is it became very clear from both our engineering staff and the city engineering staff that some very small engineering changes to the road could have a really big impact and specifically um the slope and the width would really impact the hardscaping, the grading, the retaining walls, the southern rain garden and the tree removals. And that was sort of where we started focusing our efforts was on those two changes. We also talked a lot about the process and where we netted out was um the city council if they amend their code to allow for more flexibility going forward for the council with regard to small roads. Um and we are hopeful that this will bring benefits to the city beyond our project. Um it allows for more discretion in small subdivisions and I think is something that we sense that that might be of advantage going forward. um and the city staff and the applicant both appro um approve this approach of a code amendment. If that code amendment is made, we would then be able to modify our application as a condition of approval within this new minor local road standard, which is what we are proposing the city consider. We would be able to increase the grade of the road to 10% from eight and we would be able to narrow the width of the road. So what would that look like? What would that do for the plan that we presented? What we brought into the meeting on April 2nd were two plans. Um, both of which had a 20 foot paved road, both of which had a 10% grade. Oh, and I should say, um, and I'm so sorry, Alex, and I didn't talk about this earlier. We're talking front to front, not back to back. So, all of the numbers we are using are from the inside curb to the inside curb. And the city is using outside curb to outside curb. They are the same numbers. um a 20 foot paved road has a 21.3 backto back. So, it's going to be confusing and I'll revisit it as we go through, but unfortunately we just they're the same thing, just different language. Either way, the 20 foot minimum is the smallest permitted by the state. So, we said, what if we could take it down to be as small as we could? What if we could raise it up to the the highest grade that we could under the state fire code? And that was sort of our main focus. But then we also thought, well gosh, you know, that culde-sac, what if we could make that smaller, less impervious surface, maybe that would have an impact. So we brought in two proposals. And the city preferred, after several days after the meeting, they got back to us and said, "We prefer the 10% grade with the 22.67 paved road with a culde-sac turn." We had already started working on our preferred version, which was the hammerhead. So we had both and we thought we'd bring both in and show them to you so you could understand the impacts of both. So on this slide I've highlighted in orange the differences between the two. Um the culde-sac proposal 10% grade 22.6% paved road with a culde-sac turn would regroup reduce the grading on this project from the proposal we presented on the 25th of March 35%. On the hammerhead proposal, it would reduce it 45%. So there is a significant difference on the grading but 10%. The walls are reduced no matter which proposal you prefer. The walls go down 50%. Um, Alex mentioned and and uh Val before talked about the retaining walls on the March 25th plan peak at 8 feet on one side and peak at seven feet on the other. And these walls, you know, slope up from one foot and then slope back down again. The walls on both of these proposals do not change whichever one you were talking about. They both peak at 4t tall and they slope down to one foot tall. So there's that's a substantial difference I think visually, structurally. It would not need to be engineered and that actually makes for less grading in general because you don't have to put and and Mark Gronberg can speak to this more eloquently than I can if you have questions. You don't have to do engineering behind the walls. So your right of way um you're it's less grading. Um both plans would save some trees. The plan with the hammerhead would save um 25% more trees than the proposal on March 25th. Um, and that's largely due to the trees that are around where the culdesac is. The culde-sac proposal doesn't save as many trees because that's a very heavily wooded area, but it would save at least five trees and maybe more. The rain gardens are reduced in both scenarios by at least 20%. Um, we did do that um calculations after we turned in the deadline for the city materials. Um, the impervious surface would go down 31% on the Hammerhead proposal and 8% on the culde-sac proposal from the March 25th plan. Um, the visual impact on both of these is um much less from Ferndale. The walls on either start further up the hill, so they aren't visual visible from the road. Um but the road length itself is obviously six feet smaller on the 20 foot road and 3.67 ft smaller on the uh 22.6 f foot road. So just if you're thinking about visual impacts the width of the road might be of concern to some of the neighbors and that's would those are that's how that plays out. So the reason we really like the process, the small code amendment is there are several reasons. Um it's very clean, but the bigger ongoing thing that it addresses is the Ferndale Bro, it felt like it brought to light an issue which is that the code right now is one-sizefits-all when it comes to roads. that in the past there was historical smaller roads, but now that we've our current code doesn't allow for that flexibility and that charm. Um, and especially in smaller subdivisions, this one would only have three houses. Having a traditional 26 foot wide city street, the large culde-sac, it just seems like it would be nice for the city council to have that flexibility when they evaluate projects going forward. And it basically the current code impacts your ability to do less and this process of addressing it will give you more flexibility to do less. So, we looked at um and and I'm sorry for everyone, this is a little bit of an eyebleleed, but we looked at the surrounding communities of, you know, Orno, Minnotonka Beach. We looked at the state fire code and uh in Minnitankka Beach, you can have a rightaway of 40 feet and a road of 20. In Orno, you can have a grade of 10 for a public residential street. They allow grades of 12 for private residential streets, but again, Orno um Weisetta does not allow private streets. Uh the state fire code um is 10% is the limit. And then there's a graphic in there with a variety of different turnarounds that the state allows at the end of a dead-end street. Um right now, Weisetta only allows a culde-sac. So, our proposal would be consistent with other cities nearby. It would give the city staff and the city council an alternative approach to future small subdivisions and we are proposing that the city create a new category of city road. What that looks like would be a amendment to the code um to insert minor local streets. And the thing I want to point out about this, and I don't know if you can see the red, but the city may allow a minor local street if the city council concludes that doing so would reduce the environmental impact of constructing the street or would otherwise advance the public health, safety, and welfare. So what this amendment does is give you the discretion to decide across these different elements which where you would like an application to go. It doesn't mandate it. And I think that's an important distinction for you all to know going forward is that you're not creating a blessing for everyone to go to the smaller standard if they want to. it would come from the city council that they would be able to decide yes in this case we are going to suggest that they look at this um for perspective in the neighborhood and I have um some slides later that I can show you of retaining walls in the neighborhood uh but Ferndale Road is 19 ft um front to front again across the street from this house it's 17.5 ft wide west of the property where it gets close to Oro and it's 26 ft wide side east of the property. In some places, it reaches a maximum of 26. The original slope of Ferndale was 18% and it was graded down to put the road in just like what we're proposing on this particular road. There are a lot of different subdivisions in the area that have road widths that go from um down to 14 feet on the Pillsbury Drive, which is the former Bell property um up to 26 feet on Ferndale Woods. Um, there are a lot in the 19208 area and I've listed them here along with the number of lots each road serves and whether they're public or private. I will note that Harrington Gates has a 12 foot wide gate bottleneck and that's stone to stone. So that includes any um rear view mirrors or side mirrors. Uh so that serves more than 20 lots versus this that serves three. Um so the benefit of this proposal is it aligns the subdivision code with the city's objectives. It increases the flexibilities for very small subdivisions and gets away from a one-sizefits-all approach. It um has it it continues objective standards for approval and that's an important thing that it gives you a way to look at this with clear objective guidelines and it makes the approval process predictable. It's responsive this approach to this project is responsive to constituent concerns. we as applicants and constituents and residents are treated lawfully and we can proceed with our compliant application and the neighborhood constituents their concerns would be addressed without crossing the code. It's also very responsive to the environment and that's something obviously I know in the background we've talked a lot about my background in conservation and my sister's um a susta sustainability expert that the environment is really important to us. respecting the environmental concerns long term is something we're always going to be in support of. Um, so some questions that came up today and that I've answered them. Did you consider a private road? And yes, we explored this with the city staff multiple times and we were told repeatedly and I want to be very clear. We asked and were told no because the Wisetta City subdivision code prohibits private roads unless they're within a PUB. and the state fire mandates. I do to what um council member Parkill was asking, a private road doesn't really give you much here because you still have to maintain the state fire code minimums. So a 20 foot private road with a 10% grade versus a public private road or public road with a 20t wide with a 10% grade tomato tomato. It's there with the exception of the maintenance would then go to the homeowners if it was private, but it doesn't change the impacts to the environment or the project or the neighborhood. Did you consider a PUB? Yes, we did. We asked about it many times. We've been working with the city for many years and we brought this up with them many times. Um, I remember Emily Golner telling me very clearly, this is not an option for this pro property. the subdivision code is the most appropriate vehicle for this project and she actually said that on the record in the original planning commission meeting in May 2024 when we brought our project in um that was the four lot project. So this is I want to be very clear um that obviously Alex wasn't here at that time and Jeff hasn't been in every meeting we have been in but we were definitively told that we could not consider either of those options. We were also told that we did not qualify for a variance and that's because in your variance standards there is a uh category that says um can this be completed without a variance? And our March 25th application proves that yes it can. So we would not qualify for a variance under the code and you can't give a variance to go beyond fire code anyway. So it's not like we could get a variance to do a 15oot road in a PUB. That's just not an option. we would still have to do at um minimum a 20 foot road and at minimum a 10% grade. So the other question people have asked me is well why didn't you talk about this in the last meeting and we couldn't. These options are not available to us unless you change your code. They were not in the code then. So they weren't available options um and they still aren't available to us if the city council does not amend the code. We um we liked our proposal that we presented the compliant one on March 25th. We like both of these proposals, the hammerhead or the culde-sac at whatever width. We are very comfortable with all three of them. So, our repro approval request is to um respectfully request a speedy approval of our compliant plan presented on um March 25th to the city council with conditions on the following change. That we will revise that plan to conform with new anticipated elements of the minor local road amendments to the city subdivision code if the city council adopts those amendments prior to final plat submission. Uh in deference to the city staff, I said we are happy with all three of the proposals you've seen from us. In deference to the city staff, we are asking here for exhibit B, which is the culde-sac proposal with a 22.67 fronttofront road um with an increased slope to a maximum of 10. Um one of the questions that also came up was, well, what about a 40% rightway? That would be in this code amendment. So, why aren't you doing that? From an engineering perspective, and Mark can speak to this if he if you have further questions, that doesn't change anything on the project except for that it makes the walls taller by at least a foot and a half. Um, because of the way the rightway slopes and because of the amount of grading, you don't have to grade all 50 feet of the rightway. Um, because of the way the project is, it wouldn't decrease grading. It wouldn't save it might save one tree and that's a strong might. It wouldn't do anything else to change the project. So again, because this is um up to the city council discretion as to how they grant the um terms of this minor local street, we don't we aren't asking for a 40 foot rightway and we don't think it would behoove the project. Um let's see. So all along we have been trying to work on this win-win. I think Alex will agree with me that we had a really good meeting and I I would argue that I think it would be something that going forward the city staff and applicants could should consider. It was very productive and it was very collaborative. Um our initial proposal was compliant and it was dictated by the city staff's direction and by the city code. These newer options today were not available to us and are still not available to us, but we are supportive of them. And specifically, we're supportive of the code revision by the city. We have already reduced, as you know, in our um proposal we brought in on the 25th substantially by reducing the number of lots, reducing the number of docks, um reducing the number of tree removals, and a lot of other elements proactively. And we are happy to do any of the three. We are very sympathetic to the concerns of the council and the concerns of the neighbors and we are very willing to work with the city to revise this plan as long as it's within legal boundaries set by the subdivision code which will potentially be revised and as long as it's under a reasonable development timeline. We have been working on this for five years for a three lot subdivision which seems like a pretty long time to me. we'd like to move things along and we are willing to agree to a conditional approval um today with the conditions we wrote out in our proposal and I we really wish for a win-win solution. It it would be terrific. I think what we presented here today gives that opportunity and I'm open for your questions. Questions of the applicant from council. Oh. Um. Oh, you wanted to make reference. You're talking about this. No, I have slides if you ask questions about other Oh, gotcha. Index. Gotcha. So, so who would like to start? Questions of the applicant. Go ahead, Council Member McDonald. Okay. Um, you mentioned the 20 I think I know the answer to this one, so I apologize, but the 22.6 foot road option. Is that is that your calculation? The inside to inside or is that staff? That's staff's calculation. It that is a 24 back to back 22 point 228 in or 22.67 curb to curb. If you look on that um sheet that you have, it's the inside bit versus the Got it. Thank you. Yeah. And we took the numbers from the staff. We just went with one. No, I get it. I I even when I said I thought I think that's um will the retaining walls run the entire length of the road? Oh, absolutely not. They are in factund at least 112 feet smaller in length. Um, so if you look actually I think I believe I wrote down 293 at best right and then before they were four oh shoot I 405 405 they start further up and they run for a shorter amount and they also keep in mind they do start at one foot on each side if a big understand the graduation so 405 um out of 526 right is the road it was well 526 is the length of the entire road and 405 was split between two sides okay so and that's the 325 plan this plan is 295 293 293 293 sorry I'm no a lot of numbers um so that 293 is split between the two sides and I don't have the exact number but I can no no you don't have to I that's very helpful information to know that it's not 405 ft on Oh, no. It says just half. Okay. Thank you. Um, was the rain garden reduction part of the text amendment that was sort of breezed over? That's an impact versus a that's a that's a benefit of what this happens. If we reduce the width of the road, the um impervious surface goes down. So, more rain is absorbed into the ground. So, that's a natural occurrence that happens if you make the road smaller, but that's none. Sorry, that's that's a benefit, not a feature. Got it. Um, and I do have pictures of rain gardens up here. One of the things the city staff suggested was that we bring in Oh, sorry. One of the things that the city staff suggested was that we bring in some visuals to show you what rain gardens look like um and what retaining walls could look like. And so so the the I called them ponds when I was reading through the application. They will function as storm ponds. So what a rain garden is is it's a garden that's built on a sort of a a pole shape. We've reviewed those before. So I I understand what a rain garden is. Maybe if you want to it' probably be beneficial for the public. So I apologize if you want to. No, that's okay. It's they they would function as storm ponds if we have a very large rain which um according to the weather channel happens at like twice a year at the level two to three times a year at the level where they would be have water in them. So what you do is you plant plants in them in this sort of a a bowl-shaped garden or a slightly concave garden that can tolerate water if it comes in, but they're designed to be attractive. And this is for both storm water ponds. Yes. property or you know and they'll have different plants in them based on the amount of sunlight and etc etc and then I have a couple more questions but I think they're more geared towards staff so I think I'm going to take those for now um yeah other questions of the applicant got one go ahead council I had a question also about the width of the road so in one of your um exhibits you indicated the width of various roads in the area but One of them, of course, was Ferndale Road right there at the exit to this purported new road. Um, so as I understand it, the preferred road here would be 22.8 in front to front in using your words, staff's endorsed preferred and the road width that you indicate on Ferndale is 19 ft. Is that apples to apples? Yes, that's apples to apples. So visually what we have is the main road Ferndale actually being narrower by a fair amount than the new road going into a subdivision. If the subdivision road was narrowed to 20 it would be pretty in indistinguishable but if you go with the 22.67 it is slightly larger right across the street. It is um Ferndale varies in width as you go up and down. Obviously when it goes over the bridge it it narrows again. So yeah. Yeah. It just seems visually stunning to go from a main road that is narrower than the side road to be put in. I don't think it would be stunning because the road goes up a hill. So you only see the the curb going in. You won't you aren't unless you walk up the road, you're not going to be looking at the whole thing. But um I think that's a subjective call as to whether a foot or two is stunning or whether a foot or two is consistent. Other questions of the applicant. Okay. So we'll move forward now to public con comment. We have several people that would like to speak tonight. Um and if there's anybody on teams if they could uh notify our staff via chat. Um so please uh try to be uh concise in your comments. Uh try to keep them to three minutes. We've received calls, emails, met with folks. Um, so we've had a lot of testimony on this. So, um, I I'll start with, uh, Sue Schwabach. Uh, will go first, please. And if you just, um, introduce yourself, name, and address and, and provide your comments. Can I ask a question before? Yeah, go ahead. Well, wait, wait till you get to the mic because otherwise people uh, won't be able to hear you in our vast viewing audience. So, hi, I'm Sue Schwabbach. I live at 510 Ferndale Road West. Uh this is a question before I start. I think um I wanted to be clear about I think last time there was a question about um whether it was allowable for the right of ways to slope or if they had to be flat so that so that you the service work could be done etc. Mike, do you remember that conversation? Let's just ask your question. We're going to park it. You're gonna offer your comments and then we'll bring it back to staff for questions at the end. Okay. So, go ahead and and make your comments. We noted your question. We will allow staff to respond to that when we bring it back for discussion. Yes. Thank you. Okay. So, um hello everyone. Enough has been said from past meetings about the massive disruption of the landscape that will occur if you approve this uh application with a city road. Yes, the pavement is now 2 feet narrower and the grade is is at 10% instead of eight. But those concessions really only make a minimum diff difference in the grading and the cut in the hundreds of truckloads of soil that are going to get removed or disturbed or repositioned. This road is over 500 ft long. It is 24 feet wide with additional uh 10 feet or more on each side for the rightway. The culde-sac has a radius of 60 feet and a diameter of 120 ft which is the code. A hammerhead idea is not allowed by the staff. The road position remains right next to the lot line of the neighbor to the west. Hundreds of feet of retaining wall and their and their footings must be excavated and finished and a finished width to a finish width of 44 feet. Holding ponds must be built to handle the road runoff. The loss of trees and their canopy um uh just for the initial infrastructure here will be astounding. This city road is going to result in a full intersection with Ferndale Road with a stop sign right in front of homes that already exist. If the road is allowed to be built as as is being discussed here, it's going to completely change the character of Lower Ferndale Road West as well as affect the values of those roads or those homes nearby. The idea that you should consider accepting the applicant's suggestion of an amendment to chapter 106 of the city subdivision ordinance feels inappropriate. First of all, where else in the city do we have property that's going to even remotely require this kind of an amendment? A minor local street no less than 40t wide with pavement of 20 feet is still a 60 foot wide cut into the landscape. The amendment also asks for it to be applicable for a subdivision of four or less single family lots. And with that, the amendment could easily allow the applicant to come back with the original four lot proposal. Onward with interpreting the city uh the municipal code 106. If you go to part 5B 05B, it states she streets should be lo excuse me streets shall be logically related to the topography. Part 505C states access streets shall be given to all lots unless the topography clearly indicates that such connection is not feasible. Part 05H partial or half half or partial streets are not permitted. Thus, the slightly narrower street is not allowed. We are a wonderful town with 4,500 people. That's it. We should not be allowing a city street to be added to a quiet neighborhood just to accommodate the building out of a parcel of land that is seriously compromised by a widely varied landscape with top with complicated topography. And just because this application meets a list of objective standards for a subdivision does not mean that you as a city council have to accept it. There are very many obvious, very obvious subjective subjective standards here that are not being met with this application. They've been repeated over and over again in letters and meetings and you know exactly what they are. These should be the determining factors for uh for a simple um for the a simple um proposal without a city road that is sensitively integrated into existing trees and does not adversely impact the scale or the pattern or the character of this neighborhood. I urge you please do not accept this amendment and the city road and come back please with a rep a proposal that is not a city road. Thank you. Uh thank you Miss Swabach. Um next I would like to call Jeff Marta to the dis please. Welcome and state your name and address please. And uh Jeff Martha 520 Ferndale Road West uh right across the street from the property. I think the picture Alex showed at the beginning he said it was taken from Google. That's like taken from my driveway. So, right across the street. Um, I'm not going to repeat everything Sue said. I I think, look, Ferndale Road is a very unique road in Minnesota. People come from all over the state to drive through that road or jog or walk because of its beauty. Uh, and, uh, as the applicant mentioned, as you get to where this property is, the road narrows quite a bit. And you know, now we're talking about basically hanging a subdivision off of that part of the road. Stunning. I think that, you know, that's conservative word in this case. I mean, it's it's it just doesn't fit the plan. And you know, all the the neighbors uh you know, on the street that live there across the street from this, you know, they're all in violent opposition of this. So, I I just um yeah, I think Sue said it, you know, well, she went through a lot of the the stats, so I'm not going to repeat those. Um I just hope that we can find a better path. It's I'm not sure how we got here with the the planning uh group here. I And it was kind of confusing where where you know, the planning uh team was saying, you know, they don't know why we went down this path and the applicant saying, "No, we were directed down this path. not a good look. Uh, and I just hope we can find a resolution. I I just I believe we're trying to cram too much uh into one property. You know, three homes starting with four now to three. It's still it's too much. So, I hope you can consider that. Um, I'll be living right across the street. I I still haven't heard how long this would take to build this uh and what that would mean uh for the residents. Uh, you know, whether you're a walker, a jogger, or you like us live right across the street. I really don't know how we're going to be able to get in and out of our driveway for is it a year? Is it two year? I don't know how long this would take. Um so that's another question I'd ask uh under any circumstances. So thank you. Yes. Thank you uh for your comments. Uh next I'd like to call uh Kathy Jones. Please um just state your name and address and and welcome. Thank you. I'm going to read this very briefly and quickly. Okay. I'm Kathy Jones. I have lived at 469 Ferndale Woods Road for nearly 45 years in a house built in 1929. I also owned the 479 Ferndale Woods Road lot on Pey Pond. I submitted a public comment before the planning commission which has been said before was approved by 6 to zero. To my knowledge, only one lot owner on PV Pond has submitted a public comment in opposition. Several public comments were made by people living blocks away. I appreciate their concern, but I think there have been misrepresentations of the project due to not living on PV pond or even near it. There have been concerns about the public road. It is my understanding that it is addressed in the new plan before the council tonight. It will make the retaining walls four feet high at the tallest part instead of 8 feet high, avoiding the tunnel effect and requiring less grading and less tree and and soil removal. As an owner of two lots having a dense woods, I'd like to address my tree situation which I think is applicable to the proposal. I have had to have had four diseased ash trees removed and more to come. The tops of three mature maples fell on my fence and garden, all revealing a rotting trunk core. And there are more trees needing attention. Our native maple basswood forest is special to all of us. We don't need to sweep our woods for fire prevention, but we do need sustainable removal, which this plan has. Also very important to me and others is the EAW, the environmental assessment work worksheet report that wildlife would not be disturbed in the wetlands. The applicants have had other environmental impact studies done and require not required by the city. I know Samantha personally and I have worked with her in a partnership with Lake Minnitanka Garden Club and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to remove invasive garlic mustard from the state's designated area, Wolsffold Woods, which is west of Wisetta. I know she and her sisters are committed to sustainable development. From the beginning, they have hired qualified, experienced professionals to work on a very comprehensive plan. I believe the proposal was 138 pages reflecting the detail needed for such a project. It has been said that beauty and aesthetics are in the eye of the bholder, a very subjective opinion. If the new proposal meets Weisetta's codes, regulations, comprehensive plan, and environmental reports, I hope the council will move forward with this project tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Jones. Um, next I'd like to call uh Gretchen Piper, please. We'll give you time with your your bum leg there. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, uh, Mr. Mayor and council members. I'm Gretchen Piper and I live at 463 Highraftoft Road and my family and I have lived there for over 21 years. So, um I guess we've lived through the construction of um a lot of the homes along Ferndale and the reconstruction of many of the homes in our neighborhood and it is disruptive and it's part of living in a community is that homes are uh replaced, homes are remodeled, and we um pull over and we let the trucks go by. And I just think all the construction that's taken place on Ferndale and um I just found it kind of ironic that that you know over 21 years we have accommodated a lot of construction and this is a proposal for um one additional structure on a property that um or one additional home. It already has two. Certainly, it'll have um impacts um some of them to Kathy's point um good in taking care of the forest there. Um, I've read through um all of the proposals all along and am impressed with the way that the applicant and the staff have worked together. Not only to be completely compliant with the code, but to be responsive to the neighborhood concerns and the council's concerns about the impact of putting in a a road, a big, you know, wide road with right of way and retaining walls. And I just this proposal that they've come up with in concert working with one another um it just it seems like as such a elegant solution to less engineering lower retaining walls walls that can't be seen from Ferndale. um narrower taking into consideration could we have a different sort of turnaround that's still compliant with the state fire code um that has such a tremendous less impact on the bluff and the amount of fill that would be required to make the road compliant. I just um I guess what I'm concerned about is that if the council members are not able to proceed with approval of three, one fully compliant proposal and then two that are would be compliant with the adjustment to the code for a minor local road. Where does that leave us? Where does that leave us as a community with a responsibility to have consistent code that uh we can count on and rely on um when we have our projects that we'd like to do or other projects come before the city. Um, and I I just would urge us as a community to think about us um having a code that we can follow and that those who come before us can count on and uh I would urge approval for any of the proposals that have been put forth tonight. Uh thank you, Miss Piper. Um last uh public comment on this unless we have something on teams is from Steve Hemsley and and just for reference and thank you for pointing this out. Um in our packet was was a submitt from Mr. Hamsley and I'm sure he'll be making reference to that in his comments and welcome. Thank you sir. I'm noting thematic response if you will. Um, a lot has been said, so I'm not going to If you could just state your name and address for the record, I I'm Steve Hemsley. I live at 622 Firmdale. Um, and lived there for nearly 20 years. Um, and um participated in this process uh throughout and uh it is unfortunate that we're basically uh debating uh code at this point in time. But the 565, a lot has been said about um that property and its uh impact on the community and that whole side of the street. Um it is um significant. It is uh it's a rare piece of habitat. The topography uh is unique. Um and apparently it has been born non-compliant uh with what we're um dealing with with the code. Um, and the applicant really just wants to put one additional property on it. It already has access and has had access for years for two residential uh, properties and um, they should be allowed to move forward with development. But there's other considerations in this in terms of what affects actually the aesthetics of the community, the amount of disruption to the habitat and the environment. And is very difficult to look at those two images up there and uh believe that you're not going to have uh a major disruptive impact uh on those themes. Um, and to my view, while you have made and appreciate the modifications, you are still inserting a very significant public road in a community setting that really doesn't warrant that. You're adding just one more property and there is already access there. Why is it and this proposal uh which is again would need to be is to use the access that exists there enlarge it to the extent that you need to accommodate the three properties that you're intending to put there and it provides uh I had an architect provide an accurate rendition of what that might look like. you'd remove somewhat less. There would be about 120 more trees that would exist on the property. So, you'd be taking far less trees out. You'd be providing far less disruption, no curbs, uh no runoff ponds. Um it is so it seems so obvious and uh that's what I would ask the council and the city to consider some approach to expedite for um for this property and for all the parties of interest there so that they can move forward and do something that is just seems so much more practical. lower cost, a lower cost to build, lower cost going forward and uh would accommodate three uh residential properties uh very effectively. And as I listen to this, what risks what additional risks are we taking on? There will be one more property there. You already have a road. You already would have to get vehicles in. We talk a great deal about getting vehicles out. What's most important is getting vehicles in. And if the grading issues around that community on the western side must have issues all over the place, are we going to ultimately regrade the entire side of uh Fernandale and uh the the town to some kind of 10%. It makes no sense to me. I'm really asking for you to consider a very practical way forward to use the what exists there today to introduce the residential properties that they're interested in and then to act in a in a realistic and reasonable way uh around your codes. uh which are obviously meant for much broader things than the unique property that has um characteristics that don't um would require significant modifications for your code. Thank you. Um thank you sir. Um so I think uh we'll bring it back to council for deliberations, but I do want to just give staff a chance to respond to the two questions that were brought up by the public. One by Miss Schwabach and and one by uh Mr. Mr. Marta. Um, one was about the duration, anticipated duration of the project and the other, Mike, I think you were writing it down from Miss Schwab about her question. So, can we just take those two down now and then we'll bring it back for deliberation? The question from Miss Schwabach was, "Does the rightway have to be flat?" Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Uh, mayor, I'll probably refer the rightway comment to our public works director. But in terms of the duration uh for the individual homes, that's not known at this time, but I believe the applicant did state that they would be able to proceed in a shorter period of time than the multiple years mentioned by an applicant. I would defer to them for actual timing of contractors getting PE pieces in. I know that I think they said in months uh at the prior council meeting, but would defer to them for the final piece of that because our permits wouldn't require them to be able to respond in a set period of time. Okay. I think the next one goes to Mr. Kelly. Yeah. To answer the question about uh right away and whether it needs to be flat or not. Ideally, it would be, but it does not need to be. We're we usually look for an area to be able to push snow readily. If it's flatter, it's easier, but we have areas around town where it's not flat. Okay. And I see that Miss Milune would wanted to make a comment if you just come to the dis. Sorry. Um sorry, I don't have our um grading construction the contractor here, but he's estimated it would be between one to two months to build the road. Okay. Thank you for answering that. Um, so now we're going to bring it back to the council for deliberations. Um, so who would like to start? Maybe Molly or Alex, who would like to weigh in first? I'll go first if you'd like. Molly, appreciate that. Um, actually, the reason why I wanted to go first, I have a c couple more clarifying questions first. That's fine. Um, go ahead. There's just a few things I heard from the applicant and also in public comment that I would appreciate some clarification on. Um, does Wisetta not allow private streets? That was said pretty definitively and I'm just curious if that's actually accurate. In the code, there is a provision that states that private streets are not permitted. However, the PD PUB process does allow for that process to occur. Okay. And um leads me into another question which is it seems like uh Miss Maldun's team is very capable and um quite uh has a quite a bit of expertise. So, does it to me it felt a little um for lack of a better words, hard to believe that they were operating under the the assumption that a PUD was not available to them. And then the same goes for a a variance. Can you just comment on that for me? Uh, Council Member Mcdow, Mayor Mullen, I'm happy to respond to that. Um, yeah, I think, you know, no matter what, staff doesn't have the authority to say you can't do this when it's in the city code. And I I know their team knows that. Okay. Um, that doesn't mean staff based on the comp plan, based on our zoning code, based on the collaboration didn't strongly suggest a certain pathway based on the times and conditions during that process. And the process that Miss Mulun alluded to was the previous process which the big issue I for my recollection was four lots versus the road. Um so completely different but certainly we we we try to serve and we try to get to a be a best u pathway for uh an applicant and I'm sure we suggested that and maybe strongly but we don't have the authority to say you can't do that. Great. Thank you for clarifying that. And then one more quick question and then I'm on to some thoughts. So um in this um exhibit A and exhibit B for these new amended asks um does this road include curbon gutter? Would it? Council McDonald mayor. Yes, it would include curbon gutter. And in fact, the curbon gutter uh would be a storm water benefit over a uh ditch system because that would actually require additional disturbance. The curb gutter would funnel the water down towards storm water ponds. Okay. Or rain gardens as they because Ferndale West doesn't have curb gutter. Is that correct? It does have curb. Oh, it does. Okay. Okay. Appreciate that. appreciate um the applicant and uh the public and everyone bearing with us as we're all wrapping around our heads around um such a big project. Um just I've been hearing a lot of comment from the public saying that this application is completely compliant and I think what they're missing is that in my opinion it's not completely compliant. It complies with those objective rec or requirements but I think it's missing the subjective requirements and that's our role to look at those all of those criteria and importantly I think it's missing three um as I said last meeting I think the character that that word I know is challenging this lot is so challenging. The topography um I mean the bluffs, the the grade changes, all of that. I think the fact that you have 13 acres and you can if you can't get three lots that are just four acres each, that's how just kind of shows how complicated this this topography is and this lot. And um so there's that challenge. I think the the proposal really would have an adverse effect on the community and the neighborhood. And it's really mostly about that grading that's required from the public street. It's going to change that nature of the lot, that very complicated, tricky lot. Um, it's going to change the character of the neighborhood with tree loss, changes to grade uh drainage, um, dramatic increases in imperous surface and and it just isn't respecting that natural topography. And I do believe that there's a potential impact to some of the the neighboring property valuewise. Um while I like the willingness to work with staff and on a side note, maybe a a mid mid road uh what do we call them? Minor minor road. Minor road. you know, maybe that is a hole in our code. The four years I've uh been serving in this role, it's never come across um this dis or in any of the committees I've been a part of and even chaired, which are at this point really quite several. And um I've never heard that come up in a planning commission. So yes, I think that's something uh that could be looked at, but I also don't want to minimize the hard work that's come before us. You know, the zoning task force, the planning commission, those places is usually where that comes from and it usually comes from um a a particular need that is missing. Now, this I think is you have a fair point that this might be a particular need. Um I think it's something we're studying, but looking at it in the context of this just makes me feel more comfortable going back and relying on whether or not this application is compliant to the code following the criteria that I outlined earlier. and I just don't think it is minor road or major road, whatever we call the regular roads um aside. So that's um that's how I feel tonight. That's how I felt a couple weeks ago. And um again, just appreciate all the hard work from the staff, from our colleagues up here. This has been a lot of work on us as well, uh the public, the applicant, staff, everyone. So, thank you. And those are my thoughts. Council member Plecers, would you be willing to go next? Sure. Thank you, sir. So, um, first I'd like to say that there have been some very impassioned and elegant arguments made by all sides, including council member McDonald. Thank you for those comments. Uh, we have a very engaged community here in Weisetta. So, uh, as we were going through this, I was making notes here on pros and cons. And so, if you can bear with me, I will go through what I think are the pros for this plan. Uh, the new roadway plan, I think, is certainly a step in the right direction. And I was happy to see that. Uh, the text amendments we're considering tonight does give the city some future flexibility, and it lessens the impact on the lot. Uh, it's a very thoughtful plan with a whole lot of collaboration over many years. Uh, the reduction of from four to three lots was certainly a step in the right direction. Uh great care was taken over environmental concerns that was in all of our packet and was repeatedly said up here uh at the podium. Uh I understand that the plan is considered to be compliant by and promoted by the staff. That's a positive there. Uh not sure it would affect the value of nearby properties notwithstanding council member McDonald's views. But then I'm not a realtor. We have one in the audience here. I don't know if it would or wouldn't, but I'm not sure about that. Um and it's a very thoughtful new development uh that I think is um desired by most people in the sense of having something there to be developed. Now list of cons. Uh listing the width of Ferndale and this was part of my question but le listing the width of Ferndale being 19 ft actually argues against this new street because the new street would be wider than the main street. And to me that's a bit of an issue. Uh the long-term disruption, although we're all used to that here in Weisetta, especially in in my neighborhood, is still significant. Uh now, I heard the term compliant over and over, not only at the podium, but in our packet. I circled them all. There were very many there. I think you're making a point. Um but, uh that doesn't really hit on everything. Uh again with council member McDonald as well, it does not include a consideration of the effects on the character of the neighborhood. Uh standing on Ferndale Road and imagining the effect of this road was quite impactful to me. I have the documents with me and standing there. Uh it's not a small matter. Uh although the new design is a big step in the right direction, it really does not go far enough for me. uh the new road will have a material effect on the neighborhood and to me that is the pivotal issue here before us tonight. So I will be voting against it. Okay. Thank you council member Plugers. Council member Sornson would you be willing to weigh in? Um well, those of you who were here um last time as council met, we all pontificated considerably about our concerns u mainly pertaining to to the road and um I still think that what um the applicant does meet the objective criteria for the subdivision. Um but the road is uh still really the uh one and only issue that uh sounds like we all have uh some opinions about um the um I will give credit to the applicant to um come with ideas and suggestions. It sounds like and the feedback I got it was a very good productive meeting with staff and consultants and lawyers uh to discuss these issues. So um I'll give you some credit for coming here and trying to uh do the right thing and respond to some of the opinions um that we heard. Um, you know, the goal all along, I think, was to, um, address the best we could the concerns we had with with the road and it cut through the hill and potential adverse um, conditions that we had. And to the to a major extent, I think it's been mission accomplished. I think what we've come up with together with the staff and the applicant has been creative. It's been collaborative. it's gone significantly uh down the path of meeting the objectives of trying to deal with the adverse conditions um that we saw in the road. Um this um this motion, this resolution, uh I think is is pretty creative in that it now um would allow um and it's based on exhibit B, which we talked about. Um so I'm in favor of trying to move this ahead. Uh, mayor, I also have some thoughts and opinions about exhibit A and I don't know if now might be the time or you want to we we do that later, but um, well, I think I think it would be helpful uh, to in because of it sort of gives your rationale of why you're headed that direction. So, um, in in hearing the discussion and the, um, how we got to this exhibit A and the reaction to it, it seems like we're trying to balance a preference for, um, a cul-de-sac versus a hammerhead uh, truck turnaround situation and a smaller road. Um, and it sounds like it is a preference. Uh, the hammerhead is allowed by um, state fire code. Um we need to keep in mind in this discussion that we're talking about three lots. Um and exhibit A um goes um quite a bit f further and even reducing the cut into the hill. Um and it and uh uh significant difference and advantages in in the trees we save um and in the impervious surface. So, um, that to me makes a lot of sense that if we simply swap exhibit B for exhibit A, we're going as far as we can and to try to make this road as non-intrusive as possible. You know, regarding the PUD and the private road, you know, it it it's likely a very good option here. Uh, however, it's not before us now. And here in the conversation, I guess I'm not totally convinced that even if we went that route given the regulations we have to comply with fire code that it's going to be a lot different than it is now. So, um I guess with all that said, I'm I'm in favor of us of of moving this ahead and I think uh exhibit A uh is something that would be um to uh the best advantage of all of us who have an interest in doing the best thing for this property in the neighborhood. Uh, thank you, council member. Council member Park Hill. Well, I have not seen so much passion on both sides, but I wanted to compliment the applicant for four or five years of incredible energy and focus and care and um uh just the amount of work that you've done is amazing. I um um and I've really appreciated getting to know you through this process. Um I've heard from all of you um either written or calls. I have heard many opinions on how this should be play out. Um I have I was not here for the last meeting and I watched both the planning commission meeting and the last council meeting given a great deal of consideration. Um, some will not be happy with the outcome tonight. I represent constituents at odds, the land owners and the neighbors. And at the same time, I represent the city and the need to protect the city from adverse outcomes. So, question one, is it reasonable to subdivide 12 acres parcel into three lots? Um, in that neighborhood there are very small lots, less than half an acre. There are very large lots, 12 plus acres. It does not seem unreasonable if you want to consider lots at the size. But question two, should we put a large swath of road through this property in order to divide these lots? In my mind, this gets trickier because the topography and the impact on the environment and the neighbors. Why can't we use what exists? As Mr. Hemsley said, these are special sensitive areas. It will certainly change in the character of the neighborhood. The lot will be changed. Um, I I worry sometimes about the homogenization of our communities. Um, and I think that's what very strict codes allow. I think we can do better. I think there's a better path forward. I agree with Councilwoman uh McDonald. Council Council is it woman or man? Do we is it member? Thank you. Council Member McDonald and Councilman Black Pleish on the subjectivity of this um project. I I think we can do better. The reality is there are fire codes in reference to the uh code um changes. There are fire codes, rightway guidelines, drainage and retention guides that will prevent us from achieving the private road that many envision using uh using the current path. We cannot get there to where some want to be with code modifications and city road. In my mind and consistent with my voting record in the past, I believe that putting a 40 or 50 foot swath or even a minor local road through this environment zone is not sensitive to the topography, the tree canopy, or the surrounding neighborhoods. Returning to my original question above, after analyzing the consequences of this action, it no longer seems reasonable to subdivide this property. It's subdivision. If subdivision is the goal, let's work as a team to find a better, more sensitive way forward. Thank you. I will not be supporting this project. Uh, thank you, Council Member Parkill. Um I I just have a question of city attorney before I offer my commentary. So So this is on the 100 20-day clock. If if we don't move forward, which application prevails if if if this stalls out uh the current application without the conditions. Okay. Yeah. Or without this new condition. Thank you for that clarification. Uh, Alex, if you could pull up the applicant's presentation and and move to the slide where they reference uh the other properties and projects um with different roads. That's okay. So, take your time. We've been here a long time. We can wait another 30 seconds. Okay. Thank you. So, so the motion that's teed up tonight to adopt the draft approval resolution with the additional condition that the street has modified in the final plat as shown in the alternative plan whether that be exhibit A or B um that allows it is is actually I think the best path forward not only for this project but for every future project and and having experience like everybody else up here in the eight years that I sat here as a council member I went through at minimum three um private road consideration uh application process or public road consideration process with subdivisions in the estate community. First one ended up in litigation where where uh the council uh forced the applicant into a public road. The applicant did not want a public road. Uh we pushed that uh condition on them. They sued the city and they prevailed in court for us to come back and actually go through a a PUD process to allow a private road. Even also forcing us to find a compromise with our public street and an adjoining neighbor to get another fire road access to that property to to solve it. Um there's a very distinct reason why people go down this private road path. And when when I look at this and and and try to elevate the conversation above what's in front of us, which is part of our responsibility, uh there's a reason that the estate community prefers private roads. They want something smaller. They want something less impactful. Um the applicant wanted or or it doesn't matter whether they chose to go one or the other. Our code forces this. This is not the applicant's problem. This is a city problem. And I can't tell you the number of times um you know on project A or C you know somebody in the community just gets so upset and says how could you possibly approve that? I'm not prodevelopment. I'm pro property rights and our code is what guides our decisions and we need to follow our code because it exists for a reason to guide consistency etc. And I think the solution before us is very creative and I agree with council member Sorenson. By providing a text amendment, not only do we solve a problem here, we elevate it to future uh estate subdivisions that will give greater flexibility to get the outcome that the community clearly has told us not only this project but every one of the projects on this screen that you know they want a smaller road, they want less impact. And what I am genuinely fearful of if this goes down with a denial is we'll end up right back in court. will end up right back in a situation where this is pressed and guess what will happen as an outcome? A public road will prevail. A public load road will have to be built. The neighborhood loses, the applicant loses, the city loses. And I just don't see the the logic in in pursuing that under, you know, some sort of standard of, you know, principle or whatever, whatever it is. Um, what I hear from from my colleagues is a desire to get less impact, right? That's very clear whether you're supporting it or denying it as presented. The desire is to get less impact. So I'm going to propose the following. Staff and the applicant have given their best cut at what they consider the right exhibits A, B, or C. We do not have to follow A, B, or C. We have the authority as long as it doesn't trip the state standard of fire code. as long as it doesn't uh you know violate anything at the state level, we have complete authority to drive a solution for an option C that would hopefully address the majority of the neighbors concerns, allow the applicant to move forward and holistically address this for future applications. And from my chair, I think that's the best option for all parties. So, uh, I'm just going to introduce this as a concept, and if no one wants to go there, uh, I understand and respect that. Um, but is there an option C that we could craft together collaboratively that puts a standard for a road that we think would benefit this application and benefit more holistically the future applications that might come before us? And so, I'm just asking as a as a thought process. So, I'll I'll start the conversation. If there's interest in in having that discussion, we can have it. If there isn't, then we'll move forward to a motion to deny or a motion to approve. Does that okay with everyone? So, I'm going to make a proposal. An option C to me would be um 20 foot, right? You can increase the grade from 10 to 11. You can have a hammerhead uh option. Um you can um uh what else would I put on there? 20 foot road, 11% grade, 12% grade, um a hammerhead. Uh and so what does this accomplish? It accomplishes a narrow road. It reduces the number of trees being cut down. It uh reduces the visual impact. It reduces every subjective criteria that I can think of um in the application. And so what I'm asking is there anyone that would like to go uh and and collaborate with me on an option C as a path to try to move this along? question mark and I would need someone to come with me on it and we'd start that process. If there's no interest, then we'll move to a different uh review of approval or denial. I am not willing to try to come up with something on the fly like this. I I I don't think I have the expertise. I wouldn't be comfortable doing it. I apologize. Fair enough. That's fine. So, mayor, just understand what you're proposing that we would pass something that would acknowledge an amendment to the city code somewhat like the path it correct we have here, but put put additional additional parameters on it, right? Take it further to try to address the neighborhood's concerns. Um, let me think about that. Okay. Anyone else? Well, I'll say I'm not in favor of that whatsoever, but this sure sure seems like there's a lot of legal implications here. I'm not sure we can even consider what you're suggesting. Uh maybe the city attorney can weigh in on that. Well, before city attorney weighs in, I think I'm asking. Well, I I will, but hold on. Let me clarify what I mean by my proposal. We would direct staff to come back with a with with direction from council for an op a third option, right? and the applicant would have to agree that that is an option that they would allow to go forward, right? And and you know, not run out the clock and all that. I know there's all those considerations. So, with that clarification, please respond. Mr. City Attorney, uh, mayor and council, yeah, a couple of thoughts. Uh, first of all, we are up against a deadline tonight. Uh, we don't have another council meeting scheduled uh before the deadline under which we need to act uh under state law. So, we have to take action of some sort tonight unless the applicant voluntarily gives us an extension of that clock, which is a possibility. They they might do that if uh they're on board for wherever the council's going. Um, and I think, mayor, what I hear you saying, uh, sounds to me a good summary from from, um, Council Member Sorenson, maybe not tying it to either option A or B is presented, but a more expansive um, I guess option that council could approve as long as it's compliant. I would think we we can't like I said earlier we can't change the state fire code norm or any other so so so maybe you know making that the baseline sure um but I there we start to have a whole host of other considerations that staff may have engineering may have on on uh that approach staff want to weigh in or do do we want to maybe before you do that so we don't waste your Let's see if there's anyone else other than Mr. Sorenson. Mr. Parkill, you have not you want to think about it. Do you have any interest in pursuing this? Mr. Parkill, um I get I would like to explore something that uses what's there. Okay. Can we use the roads that's that that are there already and just add one more home because this seems so overkill to go in there with this giant road. Um, you know, I it I guess that's my thought. That's fine. I mean, that's that's not before us, so we can't we can't act on that suggestion because it's not what's being proposed. But I but I understand your consideration, Mr. Park Hill and I appreciate you you being clear about a direction that you would support. So that that's helpful. Yeah, Mr. Sorenson. Yeah. So, Mr. Mayor, your initial comments on this, you mentioned 20 foot road, 10 to 11% slope on the grade and the hammerhead. I mean, right now, exhibit A is a 20% road nominal 10% and hammerhead. So, it's not that much different. I think if we if we can get comfortable going here under a premise that gives us as much le I don't know how you you word this as much le we as we can to come back with um all the uh flexibility that we would need to um go up to the point of complying with you know fire codes etc. you know, so we're painting a picture of where applicant could come back and with staff with another proposal that would allow even more flexibility. Um, I mean, that's the concept you're talking about, right? Yep. And I I guess I'd refer a little bit to staff and city attorney. If you think that's a feasible uh option, you know, maybe it makes sense. Okay. Okay. So, now we've asked twice. So, I guess let's have you weigh in. Mr. City Manager. Uh, Mr. Mayor, council members, I would what I'm hearing is that you prefer the the the proposal would be for staff to come back and work with the applicant to come up with a third option that would really just basically meet the minimum standards of the fire code. Correct. And that's something we can explore. I think the 10% is the max. I think it's really just going to come down to the width and reducing that a little bit more. So, let's pause there for a second and let's see if the applicant and their attorney would be willing to to go down that road. You don't have to. You certainly know your rights. So, if you could come to the dis and just just give us an indication and then I promise we'll go right to Mr. Mayor. I feel like there's three of us who said that we wouldn't entertain that. Does that feel Oh, you did. Okay. I wasn't sure if you missed Yeah. No, no. I I I I see the nose count, but I feel compelled to explore all options and then if it we absolutely will move to a process to approve. Understood. My apologies. No, no, you're fine. I just want to explore all options and then Mr. Mayor, uh members of the council, Patrick B. Steinhoff, attorney for the applicant. So, exhibit A is already at the fire code minimum. That is as low as the city can go for a public street. So, if the council wants to adopt my proposed condition with exhibit A instead of exhibit B, I think that's as good as a public road can get given our state fire code. And so, we'd like I guess we'd like a vote tonight on this. Um, exhibit A is fine with us. Minimum fire code fine with us. Um, I I don't think that uh sending us back for another meeting with staff to to collaborate some more would benefit anybody because we already have exhibit A, which is uh what you're describing, I think. Yeah, fair enough. And I'm just trying to, you know, Absolutely. I just um want to clarify something um Mr. Mayor that you were talking about. So if this project is denied and we end up going to a different venue to get remedy, the project that will be on the table is what Jeff said is the original proposal. So these lower impact proposals, we're hoping to have a win-win situ situation. As we said, if we end up having to go towards a different venue, I don't think the neighbors are going to be winning at that. And I just my concern is I felt like this really addressed their concerns as much as we could within the fire code. Um a 20 foot road, a hammerhead, a 10% grade. Yep. That's as good as it's going to get. When we walk out of here and the clarification I needed. So, thank you for that. So, now I'll bring it back to council and certainly um if we're counting noses, I'm I'm it's looking like it's headed to denial. So, I need a member to make a motion um for approval or denial. And um if you'd like to make a comment, you'll get a chance before I go. Um I would encourage us to be very clear and very specific of our finding of facts of the denial. So, it's very clear and and David, I'll give you a chance. Um did you have a did you have a comment before we go down that road? No. Okay. Uh Mr. City Attorney. Yes, Mr. Mayor. just procedurally. Um I know you've been counting noses there, but no one's actually voted 100%. Um my recommendation would to be to first entertain a motion for the uh resolution that's on the table now or that's been brought back by staff. If that fails, then we can talk about how best to approve an alternative motion. That's fair. Thank you for that question. Okay. So, who would like to make a motion in that regard? Um Mr. Mayor, I I would be willing to make that motion. Okay. So, should we just fill in the details of what that motion would be? I'll try David and if I get it. Well, Mr. Mayor, I think we have it's would be motion two. Motion two with exhibit. Well, that Well, actually, there it is. With which exhibit, Mr. Okay. So, the Yeah. And if you want to I apologize for the motion as I understand would be to adopt resolution 06-205 as stated um with the um exception of uh substituting exhibit A for exhibit B in this motion. Okay. So I'll second that motion. Uh further discussion. One quick thing under further discussion please. Um, I just want to reiterate that I believe that this proposal is not compliant and I think it was quite clear of my findings of that. And I also want to make a point that if we lead and make choices based on some fear of another venue or what I think that means is litigation or something. Um, you know, Mr. Mayor, you mentioned, you know, who loses in that situation if that happens, but I think if we if we lead with that fear or using that fear, I think the real losers in that situation are is the public. Just wanted to say that. Sure. No, thank you. So, we have a mo motion and a second. We have further uh discussion. Is there any further discussion on this motion? Hearing none, I'll I'll call a Oh, did you have something, Mr. May? Let's say roll call vote. Let's call a roll call vote, please. Council member Parkhill, no. Council member Pleish, nay. Council member McDonald, nay. Council member Sorenson, I. Mayor Mullen, I. So that that fails. So the the next option would be I would look for someone to make a motion to Oh, go ahead. Yeah, Mr. Mayor. Um because of the statutory deadline, we have to act tonight. Um, we've tried to capture what I I think are the findings that would support denial that have been articulated by by the council members that have expressed those and wanted to have that at the ready for this contingency. So, if you would attempt could you attempt to summarize those, Mr. Sure. Yeah, we'll we'll bring up that um alternative resolution findings. We can read through those and um someone could modify those findings or or Yeah. All I'm trying to drive is clarity. Sure. Me too. Me too. So, we'll just just be a Jeopardy clock can go on and I know there's people uh here tonight waiting for the other application that will probably take us late into the night. So I am going to take uh a break as we've been up here since 5:30. Um and we will take a break uh once we conclude this proceeding uh so we can uh take a breath before we move on to the next application. Good idea. We have a different way. Good. Does anybody know any good jokes? No. I got a few jokes. I'm not making light of this situation. I'm just trying to [Applause] Okay. Um uh Alex, if you just scroll to the the top of that. Thank you. Okay. So, this alternative resolution just captures um some of the previous discussion uh and the findings articulated by by those that are opposed. So, uh the first part would just be uh the same uh background information. You can scroll down to the to the findings. So these findings uh I've I've heard from all of you. First one, there would be significant adverse effects from the proposed preliminary plat in the public street it requires. The second finding is the proposed subdivision is not consistent with the Wisea comprehensive plan goals for redevelopment that protects significant natural resources such as steep natural topography and healthy tree coverage which are distinctive features of the property that would be adversely impacted by the public street. Third, the public street of the proposed subdivision would not minimize filling or grading, but rather require significant grading, filling and tree loss. for the public street of the proposed subdivision would adversely impact the scale, pattern, character of the surrounding neighborhood by significantly altering the grade, impervious surface, site layout, and tree coverage of the property. Then fifth, the public street of the proposed subdivision does not respond well to nor is reflective of the surrounding lots neighborhood character, which are generally served by smaller streets and driveways. And based on those uh the preliminary plat requested in the application is denied. Okay. So that is a draft subject to any edits. You may want those. That's what we've heard. Very helpful. So now I would turn to one of my council members to make a motion and reference this or adjust it as they see fit uh in their motion. I will make that motion. Is there a reference number in the front? Can we scroll back down? Council member I Oh. Yeah. Just I could think you can resolution denying preliminary plat to subdivide. Yeah. Like to make a motion for the resolution denying preliminary plat to subdivide the property at 565 Ferndale Road West. And I'll second that motion. Okay. Any further discussion? Um the only comment I will make is just thank everyone uh for their time, their energy, their their care for our community. Um I know we all care. We listen to everybody. Um, and so I appreciate it. It's just it's, you know, it's tough, but it's but it's also a symptom of of how everyone cares. And I think council member Pleer did an excellent job of of referencing that. So that's my further discussion. And now I will call a roll call vote. Council member Senson, nay. Council member McDonald. I. Council member Pish. I. Council member Parkhill. I. Mayor Mullen. Uh, no. So that uh prevails to deny in a three to two. And I am going to um just uh call a recess for five minutes. Um encourage us. We're not going to engage on this topic in any way um with the public or with the applicant. And you have your options to go forward. Thank you very much. I I'll call a fiveminute recess. All good. Turn my microphone. Okay. So, we're back in session and we're now on to new business. And uh next on uh the order of business is to consider adoption of resolution 1025 approving approving a planned unit development PUD concept and general plan zoning district amendment of shoreline res residential PUD conditional use permit a shoreline impact plan CUP and design deviation for street tree spacing and denial of design deviation for massing break with views of Lake Minnetonka at 200 East Lake Street. I know that that's been slightly revised and we'll catch up to that um as we get through the process. So, we're going to follow the same order as before. We'll have a presentation from staff. We'll have a presentation from the applicant. We'll take public comments. We'll bring it back for a discernment and discussion process. So, thank you and over to city staff. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Our consultant planner, Mr. Eric Zber, is going to walk us through this application. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Uh yeah. So we have uh two uh two things to act on tonight. One a resolution, one an ordinance as described in the the text. The um resolution carries forward the planning commission report and recommendation which was approving the PUD concept plan, PUD general plan, PUD zoning district amendment and then a couple of other shoreland items which we'll get into more detail and then two design deviations, one that they recommended approval and one that they recommended denial and we'll go into great detail on those. Secondly, due to the zoning district amendment, we have the ordinance that would in effect uh if it was approved, revoke the 1989 uh PUD approval and replace it with the approval should this get approved today. So, with that, the property is located on Lake Street essentially between Ferndale Road and Barry Avenue. It's on the south side of uh Lake Street. Um the highlighted area in yellow is actually uh the railroad tracks uh that are um south of that property and then you could see south of that is Grove Lane and then eventually Lake Minnetonka. uh it is currently zone PUD but as I I summarized we are approving a new PUD as a part of this application. So the color on the map wouldn't change but it would be a different proposal. Uh so the comprehensive plan for this area is that this is a central business district which when we're looking at the residential component of the development uh the development must be between 20 and 30 units an acre but it does allow a mixeduse uh development which is what they are proposing. So for existing conditions this is kind of looking the opposite direction of the maps. Uh, south is to the top, north is to the bottom, uh, Ferndale to the west is to the right, and Berry Avenue is to to the east or um is to the left. So, there's a number of developments that were approved in the last decade on the north side of Lake Street, including Weisetta Blue, Ventana, Melvin's 235, and Myers Place. As I stated previously, the uh BNSF Railroad is on the south side of the property. Uh and then the Weisetta Beach and Marina, the Boat Works development, and then the historic depot uh farther to the east uh south of the railroad tracks. So, this is uh what we all refer to as the former TCF building. That's the existing building that they're today. They are proposing to remove that building and the associated parking lots and construct a new mixeduse development. So to go into the detail of the the seven requests that affect six different parts of the code and I'll get into that with the sixth one has two different requests. Our PUD process uh has three steps to it. Concept plan, general plan, and final plan. Um, we do allow by code doing the concept and general plan together, which is what they requested. Since that is an existing PUD for that office building and bank drive-thru, they are asking for uh the PUD zoning text or zoning district amendment to convert it from the 1989 TCF uh PUD to this new proposed 2025 uh landmark Yisetta PUD. There are two shoreland uh related requests. Uh if you are developing more than 75% impervious surface, you need to get a shoreland impact plan conditional use permit. So they're requesting that because they are requesting up to 80 a little more than 85% improve surface. The state uh regulations on shoreland require that any development larger than four lots uh get a PUD CUP. So it's just a standard practice that a 50 unit subdivision like this or 50U development like this requires that additional step of a shoreland residential PUB CUP. The sixth section of the code is our design review and there are two deviations that were requested. First, the significant massing break that the planning commission recommended denial of and the street tree spacing uh deviation which they recommended approval. As I move through the slides, we'll go through each one of these and and some of the reasons why the planning commission made those findings. So to begin with um the we have four uh site plans here uh just because the first one is the landscape or first floor plan. So more illustrative of what the outside of the development is going to look where the street trees are are located. You will see as you go west, not only does the curb come south, but the street trees disappear. So, you know, on the east side, you see in gray, it's the Three Rivers Park uh regional trail, then some tree spacing, and then a city sidewalk. To the west, those trees disappear um partially because there's a left turn lane on Lake Street to Ferndale, and that made the Lake Street wider in that location. The next uh floor plan down that is the the inside of that first floor and basically the colors are that mauve color is residential units and the blue color is uh various could be various commercial uses. So the way we're looking at this there, you know, if you look at that first floor plan on the top, you see six different uh sections, and we basically call them core. Core one or core A1 is the farthest to the east, and then they progress to core A6, which is the farthest to the west. So the two things I want to point out on that first floor is you'll see the amount of blue in that first core is pretty small. And the reason why that is is that's where the entrance to the underground parking is as well as that's where the truck loading would occur. And so that garage has to be a little taller in that location. And so they didn't get the full first floor. And then you will see on the sixth core because you see the four in between they've actually removed uses from the first floor and have uh proposed a surface parking lot. Now that is inside the walls of the building. So as we move on to the elevations, that core will look like every other core. So there are walls separating the parking lot from the street, but it's parking on that first floor. And that was in response to both planning commission and city council comments at the last um their last proposal. So then looking at the second third floors, you see they're all mob, they're all residential, but what you will notice is in between each one of those cores, the the white space is removed. So now on the third and second and third floors, basically all the cores touch and it's one facade on the second and third floors. And we'll get into that when we look at the elevations. So here's a couple of renderings. Uh to start at the top uh left, that is cors A1 and corors A2. So that is the the dome at the far east side that would be closest to Barry Avenue. Uh upper right, that's one of the masking brakes. That actually appears to be the masking brick uh for core between core A1 and core A2 because you do see that stairwell uh there. Uh the lower left or sorry lower right that's just uh kind of highlighting their mix of materials where uh they have some of these um uh gable ends their brick. And then finally, the lower left, that is the view from the lake itself. So if you were looking to the north from the lake like you're on a boat, that's what that uh rendering would be. So here are the actual elevations themselves. Um so you you see them labeled core A1 and then core A2. And you could see between the two there is an opening on the first floor and then it's attached at the second and third floor. And you see that continues. I'm just going to go down to highlight core A6. As I stated looking at the floor plan, if you looked at the elevation of that building, it looks like the elevation of all the other buildings. So even though there's parking on that first floor, it's behind a wall that has the same uh architectural elevation characters as the rest of the cores. So you don't have that space where it's just parking visible from Lake Street. So here's from the rear. Um so it's kind of the opposite of um you know Corey one is the top top right. uh you will see and it was commented in the planning commission that there's not as much of those gables or that architectural interest on cores A2, A3 and A4. Uh you will see cores A5 and A6 do have some of those gable features. Those would actually face the neighbors uh to the south on off of Grove Lane. One of the big characteristics of a PUD is open space and uh and the requirement of stating who controls the open space. I think the big things to highlight uh you know these are all colorcoded because they're essentially intended for use by different people. Um some to the public, some to the uh residents of the building, some to the uh commercial uses. So in yellow on both ends are uh publicly available open space. Uh there's essentially parks. They're not uh part of the six cores. I will state that the the yellow on the far right which is the farthest east that is going to look like a mini park. the one on the far west um that is part of a storm water feature. So it will be green. It will be able to be walked on but it's not the same intensity as an active park. There's limitations because of the storm water that needs to happen. So the lightest color blue that would be the massing brakes within the building itself and the public sidewalk that is located in a three-foot easement. Those would be available to the the general public. And then you see um behind cores A1, A2, and A3 kind of a purplish color. That would be open space that would only be available to the commercial uh tenants. They wouldn't be available to the open public unless there was a commercial tenant that thought, you know, having residents there would be to their benefit. the areas in Mauv which include cores A5 and A6 or sorry A4 and A5 as well as the uh terraces and patios on the second and third level. Those are all public open space that are u you sorry that is private open space that would be used only by the individual residents of the condominiums. So they're showing uh that they meet the objective uh of the PUD for the amount of open space that they have and also explain how it's going to be owned and maintained uh long term. So this is that area in yellow that was farthest to the east. This is the refurbished east mini park. So they're showing different renderings of what those those improvements could be. I know the applicants are going to go to talk that they're uh talking with the city's public art committee about possibly uh doing some public art in that area as well. This is that west green space that I'm talking about. The when you're looking at that plan, that kind of uh green with black speckled area in the center. That's that stor underground storm water uh treatment. So there's limitations on hard cover or other things that could happen there, but you do see trees and other seating areas uh within that. Uh we're going to have two slides about the building height because our code is pretty specific how to build uh how to measure building height, but this property slopes um pretty good from the west to the east. It's highest to the west and it's lowest to the east. If you think about the railroad tracks, which are relatively flat at Ferndale, you cross the railroad tracks at grade, but if you were at uh where you'd go to the city marina or boat works, it's a pretty big burm that you drive over. So, the road or the lot drops in elevation as you head east. But where we measure height is that golden color on the bottom. That is their yellow. That's the average grade plane. So looking at the entire property, what's the average grade plane? What happens with that is there's a good portion of core A1 that is exposed below that average grade plane. But then looking at core A6, there's quite a bit of the road that's that's above that. So, these are both the same height buildings, but the way it's going to look as you look east to west, it's going to look like a taller building on the east and a shorter building on the west, but they comply with the city code that they are within the three stories and 35 ft uh of the PUD ordinance. This is a cut through of the same well the the same cores but looking at the cross-section I so the that yellow line again is the average grade plane. What we're showing here is that the garage is shortest there. You can see the underground garage is quite tall on core A6. So what happens is the individual floors get shorter as you go to the west. So they're showing 11 foot uh clear span from floor to ceiling on core A1 where you know you're looking at probably closer to 8 ft on core A6. So um just making sure everybody would understand what it looked like but they both comply with the city code for building height. They would both uh be measured as three stories andor 35 feet in height. So to talk about the density again we had stated earlier that the allowed residential density in the central business district is between 20 and 30 units an acre. They are proposing 40 units and then the the commercial space would be almost 19,000 square ft. Their density is almost 26 units an acre. So um in the mid-range of the density allowed in this zoning district. Regarding parking, this is pretty significantly different than uh the previous proposal. One of the biggest things would be in their last two proposals, they were doing shared parking, meaning uses that don't have that don't have a peak during the day like residences. Some of that parking would be used by the offices. In this proposal, it's just a straight parking count. There's no joint parking. So every condominium has two dedicated parking spots. They are not shared with anybody else. The commercial space shows the amount of of parking available for that about 19,000 square ft of commercial space. There is no sharing of parking stalls. And part of how they did that was by having that core E6 where that's now a surface parking that lost some space and then also um you know provided more parking. So they're just meeting the parking they're actually exceeding it by six stalls by everybody having their own dedicating space. No sharing of parking spaces. So, we did have quite a bit of discussion on loading and deliveries the last time. The the loading and deliveries happen in about the same location as the last proposal. The biggest difference is this um horseshoe one-way uh direction. And then you can kind of see on the bottom in that cross-hatch pattern. They've been able to show that a semitr can pull into this site, pull into kind of that uh almost hammerhead and then back into the building and then when they leave they would be able to pull out forward. The last proposals we were talking about that uh semi-truck would have to back up onto Lake Street one direction or the other. So they've come up with this solution to be able to maneuver a semi-truck on site so that way there is no requirement to back up onto Lakeream. And then we talked about this a little bit already. Uh core A6 has that surface parking level and then the entirety of the underground is parking. Uh with I guess one exception on the very far east side you see a little bit of blue and mauve. That's just the entrance for that core A1 in that location. So tree preservation um they they are removing uh trees and they are planting some new trees but there still would be fee in lie of tree replacement proposed to a um inch of 25 in is what they're proposing for fee and loo and that's showing uh where the the new trees would be located. So to go into the individual requests, the PUD concept and general plan and the PUD zoning district amendment essentially are uh determining if these uses make sense in this area. Do they comply with the comp plan? Do they comply with the code? Etc. So, when we're looking at the PUD, we're looking at 50 condominiums, almost 19,000 square feet of commercial in a mixeduse development. Uh, that's the PUD they're proposing. So, we talked about one of the shoreland um one of the shoreland ordinances uh is this shoreland impact plan conditional use permit for over 75%. So, they're showing um what the existing perus surfaces required proposed. Um I'm sure the applicant's going to talk about the developments on the north side of Lake Street. The majority of them got uh this same uh CI CUP and the city engineer has reviewed this for the way this they are proposing uh impervious or innovative storm water treatment to address uh the increased impervious surface. Um the second shoreland related request is this PUD cup for uh 50 units. The way this is this works and you can kind of see it with the purple line and then the orange line and then there's kind of a blue black line. You divide the shoreland into tiers and then they set the maximum density in each of those tiers. So it's the least density, the closest to the lake, the most density. uh farther for the lake as a part of a PUD. Uh they they do allow a density bonus, but we list there as MAC density. The first tier is 45 units an acre. Second is 60, third is 90. Their proposed density within each of those tiers is less than that max density allowed by the shoreland ordinance. So they comply. So I switched these two uh design deviations kind of from the beginning to talk about first the one that the planning commission recommended approval of and that is the maximum street tree spacing. Um so there should be street trees every 26 feet uh should be landscaped in a boulevard uh or tree wells six feet in width um and then planted between the building and the setback. I talked previously about the way Lake Street is uh laid out in that area. We have a turn lane which makes Lake Street a little wider. We did get comments for um from the Three Rivers Park District and they are supportive of this proposal because they are opposed to the use of tree wells within their regional trail. So they would rather not have the trees causing a potential impact in that location. They are they provide a couple minor uh comments about the other trees, but they're supportive of the other trees farther to the east where there's sufficient space. So, the planning commission did recommend approval of this deviation. The deviation that the planning commission did not recommend approval of is the massing brake deviation. So to begin with there's there's two parts to massing brakes. The first one listed there about massing brakes of 25 ft in width every 100 ft in facade length. That would apply anywhere. And there is a provision anywhere in the community. And there is a provision that there's two choices essentially have an open pedestrian walkway on the f uh which they're proposing in the first floor or the other option would be um the first floor would be occupied and then it would be open above that. If you recall 201 they did that second option where the two buildings were connected at the first floor. they had a common entry and um you know u vestibule I guess I'd call it but and then they were open above it. So that first paragraph is about where it would apply everywhere. Then there is this unique provision uh which is the code section 90907A6. This is where the development is between Lake Street and the shoreline of Weisetta Bay. So essentially the south side of of uh Lake Street. But I highlighted in blue there how this would apply of these midblock connections are to provide pedestrian views of Lake Minnotonka. So staff has determined that the two areas in red have the potential of a pedestrian view from the center line of Lake Street. So the one to the east which is in black that the railroad tracks behind that building are more than six feet above Lake Street. So even if there was no building there, you're not going to see the lake from Lake Street because the railroad tracks is in between the two. The two in red, they the railroad tracks are shorter than six feet. And they've shown that there if there was no building, there's the potential to view Lake Minnotonka. And then the two in black to the farthest to the west, we have the the existing development on Grove Lane. And then we even have some of the uh shoreland uh or some of the R1A lots that come down from there. Those two lots, if the building wasn't there, wouldn't have views of Lake Minnetonka because Grove Lane, the trees, and the other things that there's just not a view. So staff uh stated that the two areas in red which are between cores A2 and A3 and then cores A3 and A4 they have the potential for a view and they need to have uh provide those views. And so this is what we talked about before. There's the 25 foot opening on the first level but there is no opening on the second and third level. So, uh, I'll go through this. What you have is almost like you'd have a pair of binoculars on. You're looking at a very condensed area that may have a peak to the Lake Minnetonka. The bottom slide is what they show of if you're in those passing bricks. just to show the information they provided. On the lower uh left, that is the the human eye view showing that you could see over uh the railroad tracks and onto Lake Mitaka. You see that the human eye looks both up and down. It doesn't look through binoculars. It it has a view. And then on the far uh bottom right, that's an image from our design guidelines that is associated with this section of code of views to Lake Minnotonka. And that shows all three floors being open. So that's the design deviation and ultimately the design deviation that the planning commission did not recommended denial. This is the next set of cores. same images just to kind of bring it home. We're talking about these two uh massing brakes. They're showing a rendering of what that would look like. This is the code section again that between Lake Street and the shoreland uh shoreline of Weisetta Bay. They need to provide those pedestrian views of Lake Minnetonka where possible. And again, the exhibit from the design guidelines of what that massing brick should look like. So, the public review process, um, we did actually go a little larger out than our typical. We would, uh, the, uh, public, uh, neighborhood notification process allows up to a,000 ft um, notification. So, we notified up to 750 ft from the proposal. It was in a public hearing published in Sun Sailor and uh the applicant conducted a a neighborhood meeting on March 13th. Um we've received 11 public comments which uh were uh either provided in your packet or a couple provided at your dis today. Uh eight are in support of the project. Three are opposed to the project. Um this is a summary of their neighborhood meeting. They had about 15 people attend. Uh discussion includes uh you know access to Lake Street and vehicle parking. The types of commercial uses they're proposing, construction activity impact, delivery vehicles, open space, potential public art and railroad impacts. The applicant could address uh questions about their neighborhood meeting uh if you have any further. So ultimately the planning commission recommendation um I is to approve the PUD concept plan, the PUD general plan, the PUD uh zoning district amendment, both of the shoreland requests and the street tree spacing design deviation. And then they were recommending denial of the massing brake deviations for those two locations uh between cores A2 and A3 and between A3 and A4 with these six conditions. You know that they need to obtain all permits and follow all laws. Um that the C4A uses would be uh what uses could happen here as long as they don't exceed the parking provided. uh city engineer must approve the plans. Uh the they need to enter into a PUD agreement that stipulates or sorry supersedes that existing 1989 PUD uh agreement provide the easements necessary for that public open space that we talked about and then provide all payments to the city of Visetta as expenses. So ultimately there are two actions we're requesting from you tonight. First would be adopt that resolution. uh mirroring the PUD uh report and recommendation where it approves the first six requests, denies the massing break, and then secondly, approve the first reading of ordinance 849, which would change that designation from that 1989 PUD district to the proposed 2025 PUD district. With that, I would take any questions you may have. Questions of staff? Go ahead, Council Member Mcome. Thank you. Um I'm curious how the how how it was determined that um so a core A1 is the east. Okay. So one, two, three, the fourth massing break. Mhm. Um it you made it what I as I understood it when you were presenting to us that um that core was the view of the lake was obscured by trees and I wonder why trees would be I mean trees don't have not only trees but houses as well residences. Okay. Okay. Um, and then also if you could, so it feels like every other um application I've seen so far that has these uh mandatory massing brakes every 150 ft um has them going further up, you know, um like the like you referenced the one across the street. Um, that made a lot of sense to me because, you know, it was a vestibule, but there was still was so much of the break for the eye to see. How do we determine what constitutes that break? Um, and if if if we will entertain, which I'm not quite sure I can, um, the the break being only 10 feet tall, is there like a height requirement for that? You know, 10 feet's not that tall. I think there's like a lot of living rooms and residential homes that are just 10 feet tall. So in our design standards, did we ever talk about though that we we talk about it as uh a grade level uh pedestrian connection. We don't talk about its height, but I can give you some history of um discussions around that when we talked about the design guidelines was I definitely want that history, but what you're saying in my head is counter to what happened across the street where it wasn't was the vest to be there's there's two choices. Thank you. Anywhere in Weisetta, there's two choices. There's you can have a building on the first floor the whole length of the facade. Does talk about some recesses and they do recess where they are, but 2011 Lake um they have an east and west building and then in between the two they have a first floor which is the main entrance of the building and then they're occupying with some common uh areas like uh mail service and uh elevator vestibules and the like. Yeah. So, if you were walking down the north side of Lake Street past that development once it's built, you're going to have a first floor the whole length, but above that, it's open. So, looking from a distance, it looks like two different buildings. That's one choice. But the code does give a second choice of a ground level pedestrian connection. So, an opening to get from one side of the building to the other side of the building. It does not state how tall that has to be. The belts building has one of those. The belts building has one of those. That was exactly what we talked about when we were doing the design standards, but we wanted it wider than what the belts had because it's a pedestrian access, but what is it? 10 feet wide maybe at those. It is narrow. Yeah. We wanted it wide to make it more for a couple of reasons, make it easier, but also if it was commercial spaces, they could activate that person uh that uh pedestrian core. You know, they could have doors opening on to to that area. But roughly how long is the belts building? Just give me a ballpark. 100 foot. A 100 foot building. So it wouldn't have even required a massing break. Oh. Oh, sorry. How long? Yeah. Uh oh, go I it would be longer than 150 ft. I might even be longer than 300. Okay. And can you bring up the rendering of that of this project? Yes. Thank you. Yeah, just make sure. I love that you were willing, but these Yeah. Yeah. So, but this one I'm seeing here on the upper right is core two, right? No, between core two and core three. Uh the upper right would be between core one and core two because of that stairwell, that length of the stairwell. Every other uh massing break, there's a ramp. There isn't stairs. The one location where there's stairs is between core A1 and core A2. So that's that rendering there. So So you don't have a rendering of that one, that core that I'm asking about specifically? I have an elevation. And I don't uh No, I do. Hang on. Let me go to those individual ones. Now I have the elevation. So these are the elevations in those two locations. And this is a good example. I actually screenshotted this. This is This one has the lake view though. So I don't think this is the right one either. But I I do not have the rendering uh here. I could try to pull up from the city website uh the the full plan set. I guess what I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around is just 10 little feet feeling like it's a is a is a it's a break. And I know the what we're really supposed to be discussing is the two with the lake views, but I'm having a hard time getting past the 10 foot on the other one three. So, I'm trying to determine if there's anywhere in our code that says what it should be if it should be more than 10, you know. Um, we we do not have a dimensional a dimensional height standard there. Let me let me just um so keep going. I'm gonna try to pull a section of code. Do you have other questions question? That's my main one I is about. Can I ask an additional question on this exact topic because I think it'll might be a common theme. So if what they're proposing, you know, the planning commission didn't support, right? What would be the alternative to that? I mean, is that up to us to craft or does staff have a point of view of like if they were to follow the design standard, right? What would that requirement be? How many and where and of what size? So the diagram to the lower right is the diagram in the design guidelines that talks about massing brakes where there's a view to the lake. Right. That is the diagram that shows no building. Yep. Through the whole thing. I get the standard. But let now apply it. Apply it would be the second and third stories in that location goes away. Do we have a di Oh, that's right. How many? Two. Two. Thank you. Go ahead. Do we have a diagram for what an example is of a of a what did you call it? A min block. Basically, the massing breaks at four. We we have a diagram of the one that has um that has uh the 2011 example where it shows that the first floor is connected and the second and third floors are open. We do not have a diagram of the midblock pedestrian walkway. We have some images of some low height developments that have an opening, but they're images from other developments. We do not have a diagram like this of that midblock connection. Other developments in Weisetta or just ones nationwide and what do those look like? Do you have do you have those? Well, um, while you're looking for that, I think it's a very valid question and and we'll come back to that. Do you have other questions that you just want to put into the record? Those are that was my Okay. So, I'm going to give him time to to research that. Um would anyone else like to weigh in with some questions with staff? And we'll just kind of keep queuing them up here. I have Oh, go ahead. I have one. Um that'll be fairly easy, Eric, as you're looking for that. Yep. um for the 19,000 uh square feet that is designated commercial, what are the eligible uses within within that? So they have proposed uh retail and office. What the recommendation that was in the planning commission report recommendation is it could be any uses that are listed in the C4A which would be you know the predominant zoning district of that area. Just list them off for the public. Um, I mean they could be medical office, they could be restaurant, they they could be um, uh, what we call service commercial. So, you know, could be salons, could be those kinds of things, provided that when you add up all that area, you don't exceed the parking that they're providing. Okay. So, it could be any of those use. Thank you. Any other questions of staff? And then um Eric, if it's okay with you, what I would get the applicant started uh on their part of the presentation if it's okay with you back to this to Okay, I I can I can read the the language about that midblock connection what it reads in the code. A pedestrian accessible midblock pedestrian connection or street through the building with a minimum clear width of 25 ft. So there's no statement about a height in that. Okay. And then um I think if if you're okay, Eric, we we'll let the applicant go and then you guys continue to research to give a visual that will help all of us understand what what that might represent. And so now I'm going to turn it over to whoever uh the applicant will speak. And if just you state your name, address, and then uh take us through your presentation. Please. Welcome. All right. Thank you and good evening, mayor, council, staff, and community. Um, just your name and address. My name is Kelsey Thompson with Lake West Development. We're located at 14525 Highway 7 in Minnetonka at the Lake West building. Um, I know this is been a long night for you, so we're going to keep this presentation as succinct as possible. Um, so we all know this site and most of you have followed our plans to develop this quarter mile long stretch of a property overlooking Lake Minnetonka. Uh, we fell in love with this site. We know the area well as community members ourselves and have worked hard over the past five years with the city listening to feedback from planning commission, from council and the community um and feel that the time is now to finally develop this site. We were excited to share these plans with planning commission a few weeks ago. um they shared that excitement with us and uh recommended approval with one condition being related to the view of the lake at street level. So what are some of the benefits of our plans to develop this site? Now one of the benefits of these plans is improving the safety of the community and the site. this building which was once a former bank um over 30 years ago. It's been in the hands of multiple owners uh with years of deferred maintenance. On top of the deferred maintenance, the building has been been sitting vacant for over half a decade, which has been broken into uh multiple times and vandalized beyond repair. The intruders left a roof hatch open, which caused the pipes to freeze and flooded the building. This has left the building again in a state far beyond reasonable repair. Um you can see it's full of mold. Uh the electrical systems, the mechanical systems, the elevators, the heating, everything has been destroyed. The building and the property are blighted. The police have been helpful um in taking extra security measures. And on top of that, we've boarded up the back of the building where um doors continue to be left open by the intruders. However, break-ins continue to happen. Just since the planning commission meeting within the last couple of weeks, we have two new breakins that we know of. Um you can see in the photos how they're getting in. They're breaking through windows. They're um ripping off boards. And while the boards are band-aids and not a long-term solution, we'd prefer to keeping uh the front from being boarded up for aesthetics purposes or having to have like a security fence around the property. Um, and by getting this project started now, we can we don't have to take those extra security measures. Another safety benefit to redevelop this site is the environmental cleanup, which is a really big deal. As seen in this historic photograph, uh this site was used as a lumber yard and um for oil tank storage. This site the soils have contaminants in them that are polluting the ground waters, which means that untreated storm water is running off this site directly into the lake where our kids swim and play. As stewards and users of the lake ourselves, um a long-term benefit to this project is that the soils will be remedied, the contaminants will be removed, and we'll be putting in a robust storm water system um that will treat the storm water and furthering the safety of this community. Without the development of this site, uh the water will continue to go untreated. So, what's the solution? to revitalize a neglected vacant building with a charming, beautiful, and welcoming mixeduse development, creating a landmark for Weisetta that will be celebrated. Landmark Weisetta is designed to be an extension of Weisetta's lifestyle that thoughtfully complements and enhances the experiences that residents and the community cherish. You can see the thoughtful and intentional architecture that we created, which brings me to another benefit of this project, which is the charming architecture and design. What makes Weisetta so special is the charming lakeside community that it is. The reality of what's there now is an abandoned, deteriorating building and site that is beyond repair. It really provides no benefit to the community, no public space, um no connection to the lake. This project transforms that blight of property into a place where people can gather and connect and enjoy Weisetta's charm and enjoy Weisetta's greatest asset, which is the lake. This same architectural style, which you're likely familiar with, and the charm was created um that we created was presented in our previous application. It was wellreceived by the council, was wellreceived by uh planning commission and by the community. Um so we kept that the same. Um much more in keeping with Weisetta's charm than the cold, dark, up to 54 ft building that's there now. The charm isn't just in the colors and in the materials that we're using, but in the way that the building really interacts with the street frontage and the sidewalk. Um, you can see that the divi that the design invites pedestrians to engage with these significant building recesses. Um, if I had a laser pointer, I'd be pointing to this screen right now. Um, maybe this is a laser pointer. Oh, yep. And I have one and it does work. Um, you can just see how far back that is recessed. That's a 23 foot recess um in this building. So, it's just offering providing relief um for the the mass and the facade. It's also providing areas for people to connect uh for people to interact for seating areas etc. And the fully ADA this uh fully ADA compliant building is designed with upper story stepbacks as well as those recesses so that twotory elements really define Lake Street. The upper story stepbacks um are so the upper stories are step back between 10 and 15 feet. Another benefit of these plans is the rotunda. The rotunda is an iconic feature. It gives the landmark its identity and invites connection to the west end of Lake Street. a characteristic of the design that was again well received by planning commission and council in our previous uh application and will be something really special to Weisetta. I could go into more detail about the architecture, but I think that the renderings really speak for themselves. The condo units will sell with for a wide wide range in price. Um and I think the reality of this being lived in gives it even more charm. um just with the balconies interacting with the facade and giving it more security, especially in juxiposition to the vacant boarded up building that's there. Now, another benefit and maybe a broader sense of charm is the connectivity and walkability. Um as a community member myself, I love to walk around Weisetta. In fact, I was just on a walk doing the same route with my kids right before this meeting today. Uh we often start on the east end of Lake Street and we usually walk down the panway or the new boardwalk and turn around as soon as we get to the boat works building or the Berry Avenue curbcut which I'm sure many are familiar with and can relate to. Um I'm not really sure why we turn around. There's just really not that energy on that west end of Lake Street. And what Wisetta is really missing is a loop, something that connects the west end of Lake Street to the other side of Barry. And the landmark is that missing lake. It'll be a bookend um to Lake Street that extends the panway's improvements to to the west end, creating the energy and the incentive to want to walk past the boat works building um through Shaver Park and around Lake Street with two brand new beautiful parks and the covered viewing plazas. Another benefit of our plans and to further the connectivity are the covered viewing plazas that offer year-round use. So along the property, there are five of these covered viewing plazas. They're also all ADA accessible. Uh they're essentially breaks in the building every 150 ft. As Eric mentioned, um these will provide brand new views of the lake. This is an image from street level that shows a view of the lake as you drive by. If you drive by today, these views aren't available or accessible. It's important to note that the mass positioned over the plazas is step back as mentioned before over 20 ft from the front facade. So Molly, I think you brought up that question. Um they're 10 ft high the ceilings, but the not the entire portion of the plaza is covered. Um, so while you look down the street because of those recesses and stepbacks, the we intentionally designed it so that it would break up the building mass. It's going to appear at like multiple buildings. The entrance to the plaza, as you can see, I'll use my pointer again. Um, right here, this is over 40 feet wide, which exceeds the uh 20 foot wide minimum at the narrowest point. So again, the design was thoughtful and exceeds code. Um, this is to invite interaction and engagement with the plazas, giving people an incentive to want to walk this stretch of property that's quite underutilized today and want to draw you into these covered plazas. I think this architectural detail of the actual width and how far back that was stepped back, those are points that we really didn't explain in the planning commission meeting that I think are really important to note tonight. Another benefit of the covered viewing plazas is that they offer a meeting space where you'll be able to skate the elements, which as we know are unpredictable in Minnesota. You can take um an outdoor Zoom meeting for work. You can meet a friend for coffee, rain or shine, um or simply hang out by the lake. And just like imagine if you're on a walk uh and it begins to rain unexpectedly, you can run to the landmark and take shelter until it passes. This is something that'll be really unique to Weisetta. It'll be a win for the community. Um we have the panway and many other open to the sky spaces in Weisetta, but we don't have a publicly accessible covered area especially that interacts and overlooks the lake. Another benefit of these covered spaces is that they're more desirable than having an open cut all the way up the building. Um, actually just at the planning commission meeting, we had a member of the community come to us um in the lobby here. He approached us and and expressed his excitement for these covered plazas. uh they have a group that meet for coffee every morning in the Panaway area and he mentioned that you know they're often having to dodge um the weather and this is a space that would allow them to have that meeting without uh worrying about the changing climate and we know that others are excited about that opportunity as well. Um there's an opportunity for heaters along the ceilings. We can dress up the ceilings a little bit with some art which I'll get into in a little bit. Um we could have a fireplace. There's opportunity for a fireplace and seating sheltered from the snow. uh again creating this publicly accessible space for year-round use. Another benefit um of the cover viewing plazas is the binoculars, which I know somebody maybe mentioned binoculars. Um but we are uh that's um a public benefit where that could be really fun for just like an incentive on one of the breaks to be able to catch regotta or watch, you know, people fall down on the ice during the Chile Open. Um, another benefit of these plans and to further the connectivity are the new parks and open green space. So, starting on the east end of the site just west of Barry adjacent to the depot, we've got this thoughtfully designed park that integrates characteristics of the panway with a winding path, um, some gardens and some more seating areas. Just an aerial image of what that design may look like. One of the requirements of these plans is to preserve 30% as open space and our plans exceed that with 50 over 50% open space. If you calculate the sheet that Eric had up earlier again, here's just some more renderings. Um, we've already spoken to some groups about utilizing the space for community events, which we're excited about. And here's just a third level view of the space and just showing how um this will integrate within the greater Weisetta. Another park on the west end of the site. This is next to the trail off of Ferndale. Again, offering more areas um for seating and areas to connect and relax. Being that it's just off of the the trail, um we talked about implementing a public bike repair station here. And just a few more renderings of that park. And another benefit that we're super excited about is the opportunity for public art. Uh we met with the Weisetta's new public arts steering committee um and shared some of these highle ideas that we have on the screen. One of the ideas that we discussed is uh starting on the left is this humansized frame that could be a really fun photo opportunity um perhaps at like the end of one of those massing brakes um so that people could take a picture with the lake in the background. The yellow arrow is pointing to a unique space that we created near the ratunda that could offer a really great um expression of art and something special to Weisetta. We love this idea of the mosaic wall. Uh it was mentioned at the um committee meeting with the public art meeting um that the community may be looking for some sort of gateway sign like maybe it's a sculpture or um a mural of some sort but something that creates a welcome sign to Weisetta. And so being that our west park is the entrance to Lake Street off of Ferndale could be a really great opportunity for something like this. Um the sidewalk carp on the lower left is maybe you're familiar with. It's just outside of Target Field. When you run your hand under it, it makes noise. Uh it's just inspiration for something interactive, maybe musical for kids and and their adults alike. Um in our eastern park, uh the poetry benches and we also had some poetry pieces. Uh we actually discussed this with a a group, the American Revolution groups to do maybe some sort of historic quotes or something to incorporate in our project which we're excited about. Um furthering exploring that. And then as I mentioned earlier, those covered viewing plazas, they do have a ceiling on them. Um this could be a really great expression of art. It's kind of a blank canvas at the moment. Um it could be something progressive that tells a story as you go on throughout those breaks. These are all ideas that will continue to develop with the art committee and uh local artists. Another benefit of this project are the parking features that allow for flexibility in future uses by exceeding the parking requirements. As Eric mentioned, we also have assigned stalls for the residents. Um we have the on-site semi-truck turnaround. We have the short-term surface level parking for Ubers and Amazons. um and a surface level parking lot. And here's a rendering um on that west side with the parking lot. Those are some of the benefits of our project. Um you can read more about these for the community and and council alike uh at our website at landmarkweisetta.com. Um there's also a contact us button if you want to get in touch with us, the applicant, or if you want to get in touch with our sales team. um we're happy to get you some information on that. And this project is really more about more than just development. It's really about creating a space that works for the community. Um I'm going to be handing this off now to Cody Dietrich. He's with Lake West Development and he's going to go into a little bit more detail. Okay. Thank you, Miss Thompson. Hello, mayor and council members. My name is Cody Dietrich with Lake West. Kelsey did a great job to talk about the benefits and with that we also heard many positives the planning commission and throughout the overall process. I'm going to touch on the noted design deviation by staff and then some of the past requests we've heard and how we've addressed those. The first one staff noted the design deviation uh related to the massing brakes specifically the lake views through the massing brakes. We appreciate the interpretations by everyone including staff and acknowledge that we probably could have done a better job with uh our initial exhibits for the initial analysis. However, we disagree that a design deviation is required. Everyone agrees that we have midblock connections, but the design deviation triggering question is do we have street level lake views that have at the massing brakes that have potential views of the lake? Street level views was specifically put in the code to look at from the street and it doesn't account for the second and third level views. Staff confirmed the views from these other levels should not be incorporated at the planning commission. Here's the view through course two and three. In this core, you can see down to the lake between um through the massing break. Again, here is the other C course three and four. The massing break between you can see through the massing brake down to the lake. Conversation at the planning commission started to circle around the sky and the horizon, but that isn't part of the lake. The lake is the body of water. From these renderings, we can see this take the lake from the street level showing that a de deviation is not required. Now, I'd like to talk about the previous application requests related to parking. It was requested that we provide parking meeting the parking requirement without the joint facilities parking agreement. That we provide an intuitive surface level parking lot. That we provide assigned parking stalls for all the residents. that we provide short-term parking for pickups and deliveries like Amazon and Uber and we provide sufficient parking for future flexibility of uses. It was also requested that we provide a semi-truck turnaround on site. While we expect most of the deliveries to be made with smaller box trucks, we listened and did provide that semi-truck turnaround on site to be the first of its kind on Lake Street. The other primary request was we not reszone the property. We listened and we amended the 1989 PUB rather than request a new zoning classification. Those are the primary open items that we've staff has confirmed we've addressed. The other ancillary requests that we were made were shorten the building, provide more open space, provide additional views to private property owners across the street on Lake Street, modify our product type and use to reduce parking demand in the overall facility intensity and collaborate with the railroad on the development plans. We accommodated those requests, too. Landmark Weisetta is the result of years of careful planning, community input, and a commitment to ensuring the enhancement of Weisetta in a way that the city, residents, staff leaders, and the community can all be proud of with new public viewing plazas, improved walkability, expansive parks and open spaces, enhanced parking solutions, and on-site truck semi-truck turnaround. This project has thoughtfully designed to fully integrate into the west end of Lake Street, excuse me, and complement the greater Panaway vision in a way that removes a blighted property in an uh deteriorating unsafe building. This development will truly create that landmark that helps connect all of downtown Weisetta and the time is now to move forward. We request your approval of landmark Wisetta at night. Thank you for your time and we welcome any questions. Thank you, Mr. Dietrich. Uh any questions of the applicant from council? Uh, go ahead, Mr. Swornson. Um, yeah, this question might be for whoever knows thinks they know the answer, but um, where you have the massing brakes, the buildings are set back from Lake Street, but what's the depth of the of the area that's covered about? So, okay. Yeah, I think Yeah. So, it's it's about 50 feet is what she's saying. So, about 50 feet. Yep. So from the front facade, we step back 23 feet and then where that covered massing break takes place is about 50 feet. So about 50 feet is about how long this room is just just for reference. Okay. Um and then uh on the semi turnaround outside the building, what's what's the surface material there? Concrete. It's concrete. Okay. Thanks. Other questions of the applicant? Oh, go ahead, please. Mr. Pleish. So, um the uh surface lot spaces, are are those dedicated to condo owners? You said it was an intuitive parking lot. What is intuitive about it? There will be signage showing where there's parking and that's meant for commercial users. So, open to the public. So, all the condo owners will have underground parking. Correct. And by open to the public, I mean for the property uses of the commercial, the office, the retail, and the renderings make it look like the second and third floors above the massing brakes are skyways or walkways or something. Maybe it's Yeah, like that there kind of looks like a walkway. Is that Is that actually just a room for one of the condo owners or what? It would be part of the residential condos. It's not a walkway by any means. It's just uh a room, a bedroom, whatever that end up being. For what it's worth, I was on the design standards task force and uh was part of the dialogue of massing brakes. And massing brakes are not just a pass through to the lake. They're meant to actually break the building apart. And so if you can pull up the um there I think there was a rendering of the back of the building from the lake view. Could somebody pull that up for me? Yep. It's in the staff presentation. really illustrates it. Yeah, that one. Well, you had it there for a moment. You had a lower left picture there. That really kind of indicates the reason why we have massing brakes, which are top to bottom tire brakes in the building because well, you just pull it pull it back up again if you would. I'm sorry I bumped it. I You have too many people working the program. You don't want me to make my point, right? You did that on purpose. If you take a look if you take a look at that, that to me looks like one of those massive resorts down in Florida. And that isn't really the look that we're looking for here in Weisetta. So, no matter how you all may have interpreted it or what you heard, but I was part of the task force that created that and that massing break was meant to be from bottom to top. So, the buildings are actually split apart for what it's worth. Yeah. Okay. Um, do you have any further questions, Mr. Plugish? Uh, any question? Well, just a quick comment to Councilman um um to to to what Alex said. There's another rendering in the packet that um doesn't have the tree. You see the entire building and it's your point is even more. Yeah. Um I just have one quick question or did you have one? No, that's okay. I think everybody's answered my question. Mine's actually pretty simple. Like what what what's in the dome? It looks like it's a garage. Is there any purpose to it other than an exterior uh feature? Yeah. So, the rotunda is a unit itself. So, it's uh will be the best unit wise. Uh but then the back side of that, it's hard to see kind of from this angle is where you enter the garage. Um, so that front facing is a a narrow depth commercial space just be the way of Lake Street bending to come into Barry. Um, but but the back side is really that entrance in the garage and then the loading but the rotunda above will have a unit in it. Okay. Very narrow commercial condo. Great. Oh, go ahead, M. Another question is uh in one of your renderings you had I don't know what you call it pergolas or whatever in the eastern park. It looked like you had solar panels on each one of them. I'm just curious, what were they going to be powering conceptually? Want to grab that one? Yeah. Um, we did think that that could be a space for people to, I don't know, plug in their computers or, you know, take a Zoom meeting or something for work. Um, not sure. We haven't fully dived into that fully. Okay. Go ahead. Another question. Council McDonald, thank you. Um, this this image that's up is a really nice image and the and the design is really lovely and and thoughtful. Um, I like love these light fixtures. Is that just super for this purpose or like are you guys really going to put in these like Parisian looking 10 foot pole light posts or is that just more of like finishes and you haven't selected those yet? Cuz they've they seem to make a big impact to your rendering. So I'm curious if you're beholden to them. So we have a photometric that was included in the original submitt um with everything and so they will they might change slightly but they'll be generally that concept. Yeah, they're pretty. Okay, so if there's no further questions, thank you um for your presentation. Um we will uh take some public input at this point. Um so I would like to call to the dis Kevin Sullivan please. Uh if you could come to the podium please and state your name and address. Um and and you have uh in general three minutes please. Sounds good. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Welcome and council members. My name is Kevin Sullivan and my address is 1741529th Avenue North and that's in Plymouth. And I am here this evening to advocate for this project. Uh and the part that I'm looking to advocate for is um the open space or park area. Uh, I am the, uh, state president of the Sons of the American Revolution. And the Sons of the American Revolution is a lineage society that honors our revolutionary war ancestors by promoting patriotism, serving our communities, and educating and inspiring future generations about the founding principles of our country. I was here previously to speak before you about the public spaces in in Weisetta and at this meeting um it became um known to me that the Lake West development currently has property underway that could be used for history exhibits in their landmark Weisetta trails parks or open spaces. The SAR, D, and C have recently met with uh Kelsey and Kurt of Lake West Development, and they are agreeable to working with us. During our discussions, we learned more about their project, and we have come to realize that this project will also be good for the city of Weisetta and its citizens. Therefore, we the S, D, and C have concluded that the proposed landmark Weisetta property development project represents a unique opportunity to transform a key area of Weisetta. It will foster economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. We also believe that this development will not only enhance the qualities of life for current and future residents, but also serve as a beacon for promoting patriotism, serving our community, educating and inspiring future uh generations about the founding principles of our country. Therefore, we as a group respectfully seek the city council's approval to proceed with this transformative project. Thank you, U, Mr. Sullivan. Thank you. Um, next I have Jeff Zitzoff. And I'm not sure, Jeff, I I'm acknowledging that you're representing Elanar Properties, but is is it your attorney that's going to speak or Okay, so Darren Knight, the attorney for Elanar Prop Properties will speak. Good evening. Oh, I know it's been a long night, so I'll try to abbreviate my comments here. Your your name and your address, please. Darren Knight. I'm a lawyer and commercial real estate broker. 319 Barry Avenue Weisetta Jeff Sisloff family owner of the Sitloff properties also he offices at the same building. Yes. 3 315 Barry Avenue South. 3 319 319. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. What my quick comment before he does the the family thing is that we're in favor of this project with whatever qualifications Darren has because they've done a great job. They've done a lot of work and there's a lot of positives as we've all seen. So, thank you Mr. Zaf. Mr. Knight. Yes. Uh, so Lul Zitzoff and his family and his sons have been responsible developers and owners of operators of commercial property in Weisetta for a long time and they built across they're going to build across the street the Weisetta um Westway condos and they uh they had a massing break. They did a massing break when we went through the the process with the city and we're seeking consistency with the application of the code basically what we're looking for tonight. We provided the LNR properties letter which I believe you guys Yes, we have it in our packet. Yes. So again, I'll try to go quickly here. We have a lot of respect for Kurt. He's a very accomplished developer, very successful, and his group. And so we we we gave you a couple renditions in our packet. One of them shows what it would look like with massing brakes to the sky. That's what we're advocating for here tonight. Um we think that applies and the and we believe at all five spots. And if and if we don't the massing brakes will will create more sunlight and and take away some of the shadow of on the because if if this thing is built straight across as it is now proposed, it's going to really make both sides of the street in shadow or shade for significant parts of the year. So the massing brakes are going to provide sunlight, not just lake views, but sunlight to the public driving by, walking by, etc. So that's why we think it's important. Um, and we think these changes can be made without undue hardship. There's going to be give or take 50 condos here, 18,000 square feet of commercial space. We believe the massing brakes can take place and still be economically feasible to the developer. Uh and again if you look at the the city uh Eric from city staff mentioned and he he read the code and if you look at that that rendering that shows the uh that we put in our packet too that shows the uh massing break per the city drawing as as uh council member Plekish mentioned it shows it to the sky. So if the code is silent we would argue and the depiction shows it to the sky the intention is to the sky. So the question was last asked about the ceiling. I I don't think there should be a ceiling. Uh and so and we again we presented that in our packet. At the end of the day again, you know, we want them to have a successful development, but we want people to be able to see the sun and the sky and not have to create too much shade and shadow across the street. And I think that's a reasonable approach to take. So this kind of confirms the position of the planning commission. Okay. But again, all five. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. Zitzoff. I just want to make sure uh Michelle White is not here. I think she left, but I just wanted to make sure. Okay. Thank you. Uh last public comment is from Mr. Pat Hughes. Uh thanks, Mr. Mayor and the council and staff. Uh my name is Pat Hughes. I own uh the property at 235 Lake Street East. Um I uh I uh developed that property in a joint PUD with Brad Hoy. And uh to just kind of put it in perspective, well, first of all, we miss Brad and sorry they passed away over the weekend. And I I I would laugh if he was here tonight because we could hear his voice. You know, it'd be it'd be kind of fun. Um, you know, it took us 10 years to from the first time that project came before the city. It has a lot of similarities to this project. Um, it took over 10 years. There was a lawsuit involved. Brad lost and eventually we got to a project across the street that made a lot of sense for everybody involved. Um, we donated property that created a public benefit at the west end of Weisetta and I've benefited significantly from the from the project as well. Um, I think the results speak for themselves. Uh, the building's full. The parking structure is used extensively. I can remember standing up and everybody said, "We don't need parking. You know, it's a city benefit that we don't need." And it just wasn't true. um where there's projects that are jointly truly jointly worked on between citizens in the city and there's real public benefit the power it's it's immensely powerful and our pro our project at that end of the city um is a great example uh I'm here tonight because I'm firmly opposed to this project um uh as a baseline um using blight as of this building for a reason for for passing it is maddening to me. Um I agree it's really ugly and it's really broken down but I don't think it has anything to do with redevelopment. I think it's a choice by the developer. They chose to abandon the building eight or seven or eight years ago and yeah it is bad and I think they should be held accountable to get it cleaned up. Um, but using that as a reason to approve it tonight, I just as a baseline I I don't agree with. Um, I don't think there's a clear benefit of public benefit. Um, I think we can do way better. Um, I think the project is just the latest attempt to overbuild and crowd out the current stakeholders at the west end of the of Lake Street. Um, it's my it's my feeling that that this is a clearly a wear them down strategy and uh with a goal of getting something based on weariness rather than a true private a partnership and benefit to the city of Weisetta. Um, the reality of it is for for Pat and for Weisetta 235 and the people that office here and have for years is our views are all but eliminated. And I'm all for considering something that isn't in front of us tonight at a different time, but what we have in front of us locks me out and it locks out a a series of successful developments on our side of the street. And and I think it's it would just be completely unfair. And more importantly, I think it's unnecessary. I think that's the key word. I mean, I'm prodevelopment, responsible development. I want something there that makes sense for everybody, but um this doesn't do it. Um I think that the building that's there creates sighteline limitations that are okay because it's there. It was there when we made when we developed our project. And I think taking the if you take the envelope of that building as an idea, even bump it out a little bit and build it as high as it currently is, that creates a 100,000 square feet of developable of developable uh real estate and it doesn't take anything away from anybody down at our end of the street. And so I would suggest that we continue to work on this and that we strive for a partnership that's real and and and stress to the people to stay engaged and to stay with it and not get weary and to continue working towards something. It's just not going to be tonight. So, thanks for your time and appreciate the things that we've done in the past and will in the future. Uh, thank you, Mr. Hughes. Um, so now I'll bring it back to council for discussion and discernment. Um, are there any open questions that that anyone wants to ask before someone uh I guess Oh, yes. We have an update for Mr. Weber. Thank you for reminding me. So, to address your question, fantastic. Here we go. So, what was it again? Yeah, you you know what it is. So, is your mic on, Mr. Zer? He's going to get me a new mic. Oh, did we? Wow, that's a new thing. Six hours in and we broke the microphones. Maybe that's a good thing. All right. Uh, thank you. You can have this back. Go ahead, Mrs. Weaver. Thank you, councel. Um, so there's no image or figure that matches what they propose. So, I'm just going to start with that. There's there's nothing in this book. Uh, I'm sorry. Could we actually go to 16? Yeah. So, there's there's two sections of the code and the design guideline. This first one is what to do when you have a medium-sized site, which is by definition 1 to three acres. Their sites a little over two, so it fits in this medium-siz site. And so, you know, the first one, it's a two-story development with parking in the back. They show a significant break in the front, but then they show the two-story building narrowing to the parking doesn't match what they have. This is just the images in the handbook. Second one on the bottom shows more like what uh 2011 Lake did except for they're showing parking where there's there's a recess in the beginning. You have the first floor uh serves as that parking and then it's open above. So these are the images from the medium. If we go to the next page, a couple of these images, like particularly the one on the top talks about the pedestrian walkway, but it's just a one-story image. So, it doesn't talk about what to do for second or third story. So, those are the ones there. If we go to page 33, which is specifically about the massing brakes. So, we have three sections of code and two figures. So, we have figure number uh 101 or 301, sorry, 3.1 that has to do with what 2011 Lake did. It's a three-story building. The first story is the full facade, the full length, and then it shows the opening on the second and third story. uh figure 32 in the uh the caption there it talks about the midblock connection to provide views to the lake but if you look if you can scroll down just a little bit where it says standards S1 and then S2 it matches the code of the first one's about what what do you do for a significant massing break first one talks about uh figure 31 one. Second one does talk about figure 32 and then the third one about the views talks about figure 32 as well. So that's the images in the design handbook. Okay. Council member McDonald, does that address your question? Yeah, it does. I can you scroll back down to the intent or back up? Yep. To intent. I think that's really right there. Right here. that I think to me is really important is the traditional town there you go form is what he says is based on multiple buildings fitting within an average block length of 350 ft. These standards ensure that no building mass will be perceived to be longer than a half block in length. This is a whole block. So, I I'm I'm really struggling with the two with the lake views, but truthfully, I'm struggling with all five. Um, when I hear masking breaks, I'm sorry that I'm using a public comment thing, but it's handier than trying to this, you know. Could you put that on the This is what I imagine on the board over there. Yeah. Give Give one second because then then they everyone in the public can see it, Molly. help you illustrate your point cuz we can put it on the and you can use mine. I'll get you. I need here you open it up and they'll put on the screen. There you go. So, and and and maybe Council Member Pleish could tell me what you guys intended, what you wanted in those in those uh in all that really hard work that felt so crucial because we were lacking these design standards. And um to me it was so that we didn't have 700 foot long buildings that just look like a 700 foot long building. So um manager doll will get that up there. Lectern. Yep. Oh technology pesky sometimes but getting to Would you like to comment council member Plexers to address Molly's question? Well, I could just reiterate what I said before was, you know, being on the task force. I know what exactly we meant and what we meant was the picture that you've got there and not having just passroughs. I will say this that it's an interesting feature. It it does have some benefits like if you do want to duck in uh when it's raining or something like that. Uh so it's kind of cool, but you know in the intent is to break buildings up so they don't look like that. Uh, but I'm also a little bit skeptical that they're going to be used that much in those sections that are condo owners. Um, condo owners are going to stay in their own patios and in their building. They're not going to go out there and do that. And and as far as I know, there's no coffee shop right there. So, I kind of skeptical they'd be used that much. Maybe in the commercial areas, but not so much in the condo areas. But that's besides the point. I think this here exactly talks about why we did what we did on task force. And I would like to concur. I was also on this task force. You were. And uh I I just reiterate that was not the intent. The intent was to have them split so it didn't look like one big long building. Okay. So, um I'll give you a chance to address it in a minute. Um so, um I'd like to stick to our process of deliberations first, but I will give you a chance to address address what was just brought up if that's if that's okay. Um, so I'll bring it back to to council for questions and and discernment and then I will give the applicant a chance to address uh the dialogue that we just had in fairness to to your position. So go ahead uh council member Parker. Yeah. First of all, I want to thank the planning commission for I listened to your entire presentation and Chris Commissioner Plant is here. Um, we have three planning commissioners here. Oh, there you there you guys. don't know you guys as well. Um, but I listened to the the um and you guys did a thorough job of going through and analyzing this and uh there are so many benefits to this project that is beautiful. Um I think it meets or exceeds the guidelines for open spaces, public spaces. Um um it meets or is less than the guidelines for density and lot coverage. we seem um I guess I feel like the same as um some of the other comments that the intent of that design review standard was that it would be all the way through. And maybe there's some way to compromise on that, but having when you look at the building from the lake, it is pretty darn um solid across there. And you know, and adding on to that, there is also um very little architectural interest on the back. Um, I know that's not necessarily a requirement, but when you see something that prominent up on a hill, it should be required. So, um, those are my thoughts that those two things stick out at me as being the biggest issue. I think the building's beautiful. I think we can find some we can probably work with this, but I think some modifications will have to be made. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Park. Who would like to weigh in next? Sure. Go ahead, Council Member Sen. Um, well, I think we need to keep in mind how critically important this project is. Probably the most important project downtown since Presbyterian Homes development, which was what about 10 plus years ago. Yep. Um so a project like this deserves um great scrutiny because whatever we do here is going to have a significant impact to our downtown. I think it's also fair to say that our community is a bit uh fatigued with this site and um you know I think a lot of people are anxiously awaiting to see what what happens here which can also be a bit of a dangerous thing because we don't want to react too much of that. We want to make sure we're making thoughtful decisions. So, you know, I would give the applicant um a lot of credit that they um listened, especially I think since the last time around. Um parking was a significant issue. I think he did a nice job dealing with with that. I like the fact that um we have a little less commercial space now. I like the parks on the on the end. Overall, I think it's a very attractive and thoughtful architectural solution and very fitting to our downtown. Um, you know, so I generally uh like Councilman Parkill like almost everything about this um the issue I was wrestling with before we even sat here tonight and talked about it was this long continuous building. even though it's architecturally very appropriate. Um, this building is 9 I mean to my estimation and my adding up the numbers about 945 ft long from one end to the other. And um 945 ft. If you took if you looked at the Presbyterian Homes project from Superior East down to the financial 360 building, it's about 475 ft. So this is building is twice as long. The carish block which we all think of from Caribou down to McCormix is about 475 ft. So this building is twice as long. It's it's two full blocks long. The other frame of reference, you know, village shops seems like it's a a long building, right? It's about 560 ft. So the point being the magnitude and size of this project, I think it's good to really um think think hard about that. Um, we looked at the rendering from from the backside and I think the planning commission did a good job uh addressing some of this and it was also interesting even in the consent agenda discussion for the planning commission. There was um opinions expressed uh more than their first meeting about the um the long nature of this project and the and the lack of uh breaks. So, I think you have to ask ask yourself, you know, does a building that looks this long without the brakes going all the way up add to the character of our downtown? You know, how would you feel driving, walking, biking by this building on Lake Street? And how does it appear from the lake? I think there's a natural tendency of anyone who comes here, especially, you know, I don't care if you live here or if you come here as a visitor, you you tend to kind of want to see the lake. And um I would agree um I would agree with uh the comments made from the development across the street. I mean, um, you know, I was on a planning commission a couple times when this when this project came and one, it seemed like one of the one of the, um, key issues was what we're talking about here. So, I was very surprised to see at this go around where we've kind of filled up those those um, massing break areas. I mean, there's potential for five massing brakes. I think other applications had the brakes going all the way up. Um and I think I think just deviation is something that is a very serious issue. So, um I've got some reservations um and misgivings about where we are here because I like I like so many things about this project and you know I could support it if we um if we found a way to deal with some with some of these um massing break issues. Um you know there's a comment made in one of the letters we got. It was a very thoughtful letter, but his point a bit was, well, on the west end of Lake Street, there's kind of not that much happening. There's not a lot of people hanging out. There's some traffic. I think the point is I think what our job is to think ahead. And if you if you envision what we think will happen and pretty certain to happen with this project and the development across the street, there will be people. There will be people that live in there. the PE people more activity there. So, um I think we need to think of things um that way. Um so, I think as we stand here today, I I'd like to support the project, but um I think it needs to be broken up. I think it's just it's just too long a building. It's just too long a building. and these tunnels through the building, you know, as deep as this room don't don't really um I think we're wrapped around the axle on the ma massing brake issue. I think we all are. So, um you know, I don't know. I I think it I think we need to deny this or we find a way to um to acknowledge that we need to have more breaks in this bill. And to me, it's more than the two that that are defined by our staff. It's it's at least three if not four or five. So, um that's those are my thoughts about it. Yeah. Thank you. Um who would like to go next? Uh Mr. Pleish. Mel, could I bring up the other design deviation real quick that they're asking for with the trees about the trees? The trees. Um I think that one's kind of a Well, when you do that, then will you offer your comments after that? Yeah. Okay, great. 100%. Um yes, thank you for that reminder. Um, so clarifi clarification question. The bike path and the foot path will still be there. Correct. Yeah. Um, I think that's crucially important. Um, I think there are a lot of people that don't stop at Barry Avenue and walk behind the boat works and go up through Shaver Park and walk around already. Um, so that loop exists and it's a great loop and I want to see that loop preserved and I'm curious if um the so with the design deviation of the tree spacing, it sounds like we're it's it's a matter of three feet. So if if the building were pushed back three feet, could we still have our trees, our foot path, and our and our bike path? I mean, who would like to address that? I can. Okay, short answer, yes. Uh but when you look at this lot uh particularly with where the curb line is, you have um it being pinched on the east because not only does the curb line go south and make that tree spacing not available, the railroad goes north. So the width of this section of the lot is shorter. not advocating one way or another, just pointing that out. I just think treeline streets are really important. Um, it's kind of the epitome of charm and, uh, tree canopies do a lot for our community. So, um, I'm not real happy with that design deviation either. Um, a previous public comment brought up um the partnership and a public good and I feel like that's what this and now greater comments. That's sort of what this application is lacking. We were um kind of kind of so close at the last one and I I mean I remember turning on the planning commission meeting and being like they got the parks, they got the surface parking. Um this is going so well and then it was just like massing breaks. So that's how I feel like we're just out of sync, out of step with um with the values and and the intent of of our of our design standards. Um to to wrap things up and not drawn on and on and on, um I think a PUD is a perfectly appropriate um guidance. I I support that. Um, so I'm glad that's where we we ended up instead of in the zoning world. And so I know that there's a few things that were asking to to be evaluated right now. Um, so I think that PUD is great when it comes to concept plan and general plan. I don't know if maybe staff can tell me how that the or city attorney on what how conceptual it can be if if you don't think it has proper design um or you don't want to allow those deviations. Can you kind of give me a little before I do that? David, could we get everyone to weigh in and just hear me out for one second? um the city attorney has to guide us on there's a slight adjustment um to the packet and then how it's venued and then I think that would be an appropriate time David for you to recast you know the the change from the packet to what was submitted late and read that into the record and then answer uh Miss McDonald's question about um process right and and so but before we do that I just want to get everyone a chance to weigh in so we we keep with that line of thought your question will get answered with that. Those are most that's that's the general vibe of my of how I'm thinking and how I'm thinking about this. So, yeah. Um, happy to pass them. Great. Uh, Council Member Fleckish, were you waiting for an answer? Oh, no. I'm I'm going to hold that. I wanted everyone to weigh in and then we'll address the question and then also read into the record the adjustment. Okay. Yes. So, my my colleagues here have said a lot of what's on my mind that they're all eloquent as as always. Um there's been a lot of history here. This is what the fourth plan I think that's come before us. Um and um each iteration I think kept us closer and closer to a great solution and um and we are I think at a very good solution here. Uh well I think we're universally commenting about the massing brakes. Uh and that was addressed by the planning commission which by the way did an outstanding job on on evaluating this. Uh, I like what the planning commission put before us in terms of what we should adopt and the one thing we should deny. Um, I wasn't going to really comment about the tree things. I thought that was kind of trivial, but the reason the fact that you brought it up, I will comment on it. U, I have a great faith in the Three Rivers Park District and their view on things and they were fully on board with this for reasons that they think are important and it's important for the city. And if you might remember when Three Rivers extended the bike path into the city which made that connection, this was kind of the thing that had to happen because of the the road and all that. So I think if we tried to complicate things by moving the building back, we're we're opening up a can of worms that we probably don't need to do. Not to mention that I think aesthetically if we got, you know, five, four or five buildings at a certain uh distance from the sidewalk and then suddenly we have to step a couple back just to put some trees in, I'm not sure we want to go there. Um, so the bottom line is I think uh this is a plan that's worth adopting with the changes that we're going to recommend, I believe. Um, and to Mr. Hugh's comment about it being blighted, it is very much a blighted property. Maybe that was by design. I don't think so. Maybe it was by neglect. Probably. But that really didn't weigh into my decision about supporting this. It is It is a blighted building. There's no doubt about that. But it kind of doesn't play into my decision. Uh what I will say too is early on there was a lot of discussion about keeping the building. A lot of people in the community considered it iconic and historic. It's really neither. It's just a building and it doesn't have any history. Uh it's maybe sad that it's going to come down, but it needs to come down. The internal layout of that building was just unworkable. I was in it many times. Uh also as a firefighter to help clean up some of this stuff. So u I think this is a very good plan with the tweaks we're going to probably approve tonight and um I'd love to see this thing move forward with with a vote tonight. Uh thank you, council member. I'll just weigh in quickly, then we'll turn to David, and then I promise the applicant the opportunity to respond to some comments I've been made about massing. Um, trying to be uh concise and and not repeating. Um, I I am supportive. I'm coming at this new. I I didn't have all the sweat equity time that all of you put into this. Um, I think the design is appropriate. I think the use is appropriate, but I too am stuck on the massing brakes for all the reasons that have been articulated. So, I'm not going to be duplicative in that. So, but I am supportive. We need to find a path on these massing breaks. And with that, um, I'll turn it over to David. And David, what I'm going to ask you to do is is there was the city clerk emailed us an adjustment to the language. I want to get that properly read into the record about what we're venuing on this agenda item. And then if you could offer some guidance uh, based on council member McDonald's question about process, right? You know, uh, con concept plan and and how how that moves along. So, Mr. city attorney. Yes, mayor and council. So, the question about the amendment that came in to the packet was really just to add this second uh u motion that you see on your screen to adopt the first reading of ordinance 849 to amend the zoning map for this new uh PUD to replace the 1989 PUD. So, in some ways it would just affectuate the zoning uh district uh amendment. Um the one thing I would point out on the massing breaks um so the way this has been brought to you on the planning commission's recommendation is for approval of all their requests except for the um massing break design deviation at those two points that Eric highlighted um not the others that you've been discussing. The other nuance I want to highlight as well for the record, it's also conditioned on the PUB concept plan, the PUD general plan being modified to conform to that massing break standard that staff highlighted. So as it sits here now, if you just adopt these two actions, the applicant would be required to modify those PUD plans to incorporate full ground to sky masking brake deviations at those two points where they need the deviations for. So that those two masking brakes would need to conform. If you wanted to um go further than that, as has been discussed, and say no, we we think it needs to be broken up even more. or the intent of the design standards was that or we just think that's what's needed to conform to the PUD standards. I think staff's recommendation would be to direct us to prepare that alternative resolution for you at the next meeting, but we can we can talk about uh the particulars of that. So, did I answer all the questions? Answer your question. Okay, great. Um I would like to give the applicant a chance to respond um to whatever was brought up. I I know you raised your hand and I want to give you proper venue to respond. Hi Kurt Fth from Lake West Development. Thank you all. Um welcome. I I uh appreciate the uh responses of of what what you understood the design intentions for the design or the massing brakes. When I look at what the staff report says as an example, the reason why we're asking for or reason why the city is saying we need a a a deviation. It says here on page three of the staff report and it says it over and over. Significant massing break does not provide views of the Lake Minnetonka from street level. That's it. And the massing brakes provide that and and the I we believe the word level added at the end of the sentence means something. It was put there in for an intentional purpose. I don't know what it was exactly, but it doesn't say second level. It doesn't say third level. It doesn't say the sky. It's talking about the lake. And that's the plain language of the code. And whatever interpretations everybody would like to make about uh about the images that have been put up and and examples of how a massing break could be created, they're all well and good. and staff had explained to the planning commission that uh that uh that the normal human view I don't know what that really is supposed to mean involves looking up and looking down. Um the normal human mind would not look up for the lake. It would look down. Um, so the rationale that the planning commission was asked to to disregard or not to try to figure out or interpret code based on city attorney's advice uh that that that they should rely on staff's interpretation and staff is is looking to the sky for the lake that doesn't seem to have a lot of rationale. And then take it a step further. We've gone the distance here. We uh in in uh in fairness, it doesn't seem like the city maybe cares about the developer at all when especially when we you ask us to put in a semi-truck turnaround on site. Nobody in the city's ever done that before. In order to do that, we had to take a big chunk of the building out, which was a huge piece of revenue and and and a lake section of the property. And we did that to accommodate neighbors. I know we can't please them perfectly, but to help them with their views of the lake from their second and third levels. And then you asked for a street level parking lot, which was a really expensive street level parking lot we provided. And then and now we're looking at interpretations of about how the human eye sees and how that relates to we should take some more away. So I I'm struggling with what seems like unfairness and I ask you to reconsider your position on the massing brakes. Thank thank you Mr. Fratham. Um I just want to add one thing to that too on the massing Alex or Eric I forget if you had the design standard handbook up. Could you pull that back up for a second? really need that Jeopardy music. There we go. If you could just scroll down a little bit to the standard section. So, I think understand the intent may have been different, but I think one of the hard parts to look at this is when you look at the two options. The first one says a massing void provided above the ground floor level. I I don't know why it doesn't say that below hand too and say a massing void with a publicly accessible midblock connection. So, I think that that's a big disclaimer there. And the the figure doesn't mean there's one way to do it. There's also obviously multiple ways to do that and staff concurred in their staff report by saying that the three of them qualifies as midblock connection and narrowing it in down to the street level lake views. So I think that's the biggest thing is if if you really wanted that to be a massive void all the way up, why weren't you consistent in the the design standard handbook? Okay. So thank you for that input. Um so now I'm going to bring it back to council. Um I think we've got both sides of this. Oh, sorry. Did you want to Excuse me. Yes, mayor. I just had one comment. I just wanted to address a couple of the council members had brought up in your deliberation which thank you all for your deliberation. It was um really great to hear your feedback on this project um and all the positives that you had mentioned. But I just wanted to touch on the design of the back of the building. Um it it was not held to the same design standards as the street level, but it does meet the design standards and I think we need to give our architects a little bit more credit for the thoughtfulness that was put in the back of the design the design in the back of the building. Um they are carrying through many elements from the front like they're using columns. Um they're using balconies and recesses to break up the the facade and the mass. Um and it really is quite beautiful. And if I think if you zoomed into that, we could really appreciate the design and the intention and the thoughtfulness that was put into the back of the building as well. Um, and just, you know, to quickly mention, it's it we didn't go for like, you know, a modular, you know, not to knock that type of archite architecture down, but it wasn't like a very modular flat roof type of architecture. It's still it's very quite beautiful. Um, and I think to the point of just breaking up that facade, the mass from the back, I mean, there definitely things if you if we go the route of, you know, keeping the massing brakes in, there is opportunity to use different materials or different colors for parts of the building like where the the the mass is over the break just to help break up that length of the building, um, the appearance of it from the lake. Okay. Uh, thank you, Miss Thompson, for that clarification. Uh, did you have a comment? Yeah, I want to I want to weigh in on this. I'm glad you brought this up because it proves my point. It says amassing void. A void is there's nothing there. Okay. So, second and third story is not a void. And if we can go back up to intent and read the intent, which proves the point that I'm trying to make and I will tell you, I was on that committee as was Mr. Parkhill. I was there. I know exactly what the intent is and it is not what you're saying. It is to break the building up. So when we pass this tonight, I'm going to ask that all five of those locations go all the way to the sky. That is and that's what I will vote for tonight. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. I I I don't want to get into a debate of opinions. I think the record's very clear and I'll give you a chance to weigh in. I think the record's very clear on your position, right? And we're formulating ours. And so the record will reflect uh what what you view as the definition and and it will on our side as well. And within a PUD it's our purview as Mr. Plec said to to take it any direction we choose within the rules of the PUD. So with within that Mr. Sornson go ahead. Yeah. So um a lot of discussion about um the massing breaks pertaining to the ordinance. Um but I think the real issue and I think there should be more than two massing. I I'd like five and like as close as we can to get to five. I think the real issue is the P PUD compliance issue as relates to the comprehensive plan. And it goes back to small town character, this tunnel effect, the walkability, what we all like about downtown. And if you look at the standards and the PUB concept and general plan, it in it's intended to encourage things like higher standards of site and building design through the use of training experienced land planners, architects, landscape architects, and engineers, the preservation, enhancement of desirable site characteristics, a development pattern in harmony with the objectives of the Wisetta comprehensive plan, and a more desirable and creative environment that might be possible through the strict application on zoning and subdivision regulation. So having this massive building I don't think complies with the PUD uh concept and general plan nor the PUD zoning district amendment standards which also include um the uh proposed action in relation to the specific policies provisions of the city comprehensive plan. So that that deviation there to me um creates uh a situation that what we're looking at here with this continuous building with a few holes in it is not consistent with with the PUD. Okay. Thank thank you for the additional comments. So what I'd like to do is is try to reset here a little bit so that we can move forward with a path right of of wherever we're going to go. So, I'm going to try to restate what I think David said and correct me if I have it right or wrong. So, so we have a motion based on the planning commission report and recommendation to approve all the requests except for again this is what what the planning commission recommendation is two design standard deviations for building massing brakes and these are deviations from uh the staff and affirmed by council interpretation of the city's design standards which require a full break from surface to sky through the entire building where there's a view of the lake and thus the condition of approval that the PU PUD plans be modified to comply with the standard in the final PUD plan. Failure to meet that condition that is removing the second and third floors as two required massing brakes is therefore a denial of the PUD. So, so if we want to go a different direction and and I heard some some uh desire to do that, um as the city attorney stated, um if we're going to do something with additional conditions, I think what I heard the city attorney say is direct staff to come back with um a new um framework uh recommendation inclusive of what the consensus the council uh decides and then that would be brought back for consideration. Did Did I get that right, David? In essence, I think yes. I think if you know, you summarized what's before you based on the planning commission report and recommendation. If you wanted to go beyond that and require massing breaks um in those what is it two more? Yeah, three more. Three more, I'm sorry. Um, we'd we'd probably want to be tying those into the PUD standards as well because I think it it it goes more to the the criteria that uh Council Member Sorenson was mentioning and and beyond the staff's interpretation. So, if there's consensus for that, then you would work with staff to bring back uh an alternative resolution those additional conditions. Yes. So, Mr. Reaper. Uh just to pose this uh could I ask you to pull up page 345 of the packet? So there's there's one section of the PUD report and recommendation that talks about the massing brakes. And I know we're not going to modify the PC the PC report recommendation because that's the plan. That is what it is. But there seems like a uh a modification that could happen uh if we're all in agreement. That sounds like what we're discussing today. So we have 3.6A and it talks about the massing brake deviation and the lack of the uh massing brakes and then it talks about the two specific ones with the views. But then it goes on to would also contribute to significantly overwhelming scale unriped front and rear facades. Uh I'm just posing and I would like to see David's response to that. We struck uh the part of between cores A2 and three through um Lake M the views of Lake Minnetonka. Wouldn't that achieve what I think I'm hearing the council advocating for? So before you answer that, David, I think the appropriate process step would be to determine what the majority of the council's direction is. Then you can react to Mr. Weber's suggestion on how to address whatever the majority of the council decides. Is that a fair Yes, mayor. And the hypothetical is there, but we have not voted on anything. We haven't. Exactly. Sort of like the last application you took up. You know, you have something before you that you might want to start by voting on and see if that passes and if it doesn't move on to an alternative. So that that's I how I would like to address your uh recommendation, Mr. Zeber. So, uh, bring it back to council. Uh, just like the previous application, I think we'd be well served to venue the recommendation and vote it up or down. Um, and based on that, then we would go to a step two if it is denied to direct staff to do something else. Uh, everybody on board with that? Quick question. So, are we would we be voting on the PUT, the CIP, the shoreland, all all of that? just well we we'd be as presented. Yeah, we'd be uh if you go back to the uh slide please that uh offers the specifics. So we'd be voting first uh on this exactly. So this this resolution that that uh is venuing the planning commission recommendation. Um it would not unless it's motioned differently wouldn't change the recommendation of allowing the deviation of trees but it would support the uh recommendation of two massing brakes. And so we give that an up or down and then see where it goes after that. So I guess I would entertain a motion to to approve this or deny this and then let's uh see where this goes. And mayor, just to help you out, uh I think your motion would be to adopt resolution 1025. Yes. I'm asking for that motion. So would you like to make that motion, please? I'll make that motion. And again with one point of clarification, this one approves two massing breaks where we want something different. So we do not want to approve this. Well, I think it's up to us to decide, right? So the motion is to approve it with two. If it goes thumbs down, then we go to another step. If it goes thumbs up, it goes through. Ex. Yeah. So I just want to make sure we're all on the same page at this hour. Um the way this motion is teed up would deny their request for deviation for those two required massing breaks correct from floor to sky. Correct. And and then what we would come back with is an alter. If that's not enough, you would vote to uh against that motion because you want more. Right. So So just so I'm clear on this now, this is getting more confusing. is if we were to adopt this resolution which includes denying a massing break, would we still have to get another motion come before us to approve a new plan that Yes. Okay. I would want that new plan to have five massing breaks, right? And that would be your second. I'm asking the question. So the uh if we were to approve this, does that option come off the table then or do we have to deny this? You should vote against this motion because this motion is only requiring two full massing brakes. Okay. Because they would you would not be approving their requested design which includes two deviations. Is that clear, Mr. Pes? Yeah. Okay. So we've got one motion, Mr. Mayor. Yep. So we have a motion on the table. We need a second before further discussion. Would anyone like to second the motion on the table? I'll second the motion on the table. Do we have any further discussion? Yeah, please. Um, so just to be clear, um, if this is approved, we're denying the massing break deviation issue, but we're approving the PUD concept plan, general plan, and zoning district amendment. Now those PUD approvals, general and concept plan, if you look at the resolution on page uh 322, that approval of the PUD is conditioned on conforming with the massing brake deviation required or I'm sorry, the massing break standard. So those two deviations because they're denied, they have to modify their PUD plan to comply. So that's just in two places. Yeah. And if council is like that's not enough, then this motion should fail. Okay. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah. Okay. So, it's motion and seconded. Any further discussion? Otherwise, I would call a roll call vote to approve or deny. Council member Pleish? Nay. Council member Sorenson, nay. Council member McDonald, nay. Council member Parkhill, nay. Mayor, nay. So now um we're resetting again and the guidance from from city attorney is now to make a motion to direct staff to prepare something to come back in front of us and to try to drive concessions of a majority vote of two passing breaks, three massing breaks, what whatever it might be. So someone needs to craft a motion. I might lean on you, Mr. pluggish because I think you have clarity on this in terms of of how you'd like to see it venued next is is perhaps if you're willing or or Jeff whoever would like to make it a motion to direct staff to prepare something to come back to us with guidance on what that would be so they can do it. Okay, Mr. Parkill, let me know if this doesn't agree with what you want. I'd like to direct staff to Hold on one second, David. Um just I want to make sure we have attention on the on the motion. It's very important. Um indeed, Mayor apologize. Oh, sorry. No, it's it's okay. Uh it's late. Everyone's it's all good. Go ahead, Mr. Park. I'd like to direct staff to uh draft a resolution um approving the PUB concept plan, the PUG general plan, the PUD zoning district amendment, the Shorland PUD CUP, the SIP CUP, and the street tree spacing design deviation, and denying the massing brake design deviation at 200 Lake Street. And um then there's we need to add that we would like the massing brakes to be in full force. I guess could could we further clarify it and quantify it? So so what does full force means? It means that the massing brakes would be completely open from the ground floor up. Okay. And and how many there would be five. Okay. So, David, could you try to just restate what you heard and then then allow that to be second if someone would like to second it? Sure. Uh, mayor and and council member um Park Hill, um, I think the motion that you made, as I interpreted, is to adopt resolution 1025 as presented with the additional condition that um, the PUD plans be modified for five full masking breaks from ground to sky. Okay, thank you for that clarification. and I'll second that motion. Uh, thank you, Mr. Pleish, is there further discussion now that it's been moved and seconded. Mayor, it sounds like the city manager has a question. Uh, uh, Mr. Mayor, if I may, uh, there is some concern about timing and if we come back ultimately with some other type of first reading of an ordinance, then a second reading could be uh, an issue because it might be after the 120day timeline or the deadline. So maybe if city attorney Shelza could uh provide some insight with how this specific motion might impact that requirement and if we need a a little bit more time we I might suggest a little recess to make sure that we're um in order. Okay. Can I make sure I understood what you're asking for? Your concern is uh if this process step which is on the table moved seconded in further discussion has impact on the clock. Yes. Okay. So I don't feel comfortable interrupting a motion and a second at this time. Uh I think what what I would ask is that council member Park withdraw his motion um and allow a brief recess for staff to confer on timing and then bring it back. now that that you'd have the information on timing, Mr. Park Hill, and then you can affirm what what it is and go through that process again and then I think it'll be crystal clear that we're not stepping out of process. Right. So, what I would request council member Parkill is to to rescend his motion and have a second. So, rescended. Okay. Do we have a second? You don't have to. Do you don't have to second it? No. Okay. So, it's off the table. I'm going to ask for a three minute recess. It is 11:45. I want to be back on the clock by 11:47 to take action. We'll take a short recess. Uh, our AV person was not on. So, that was not recorded. So, if you could fall over fall asleep or No, he's up now. We're good. Okay, we're on. He's awake. All right. So, please restart. So, we're back in session. Can you provide us guidance on the 120day clock, Mr. Fzel? Sure. Uh, well, Mr. Mr. Mayor and Council. Um, so we wanted to have that sidebar to just talk through as staff the implications of uh complying we which we want to do with the statutory requirement for acting on this application within the time frame set by statute. Um, looked at the calendar a little bit. Um, and I I think I'm going to stand by my recommendation that you you proceed with the motion that you had considered a moment ago. I think we'll you'll be done with uh you'll be able to act within the time that that we need. um need to act. Okay, great. So, thank you for that guidance. Is there any questions of Mr. City Attorney based on that guidance? Okay, hearing none, I would now bring it back to the council to make a motion uh you know to consistent with what we did before. I'll try and do that. Um, [Music] so to adopt resolution 10-25 would uh, council member I I'm sorry to interrupt. May Mayor, would you like me to restate where we were a moment ago? That would absolutely be fine. I was because you got it. Yeah. Yeah. At this hour, I just want to help you guys. Fine. Um, so I think the motion that was made and withdrawn was to direct staff to prepare a new resolution um based on 1025 um with the additional condition that the PUB uh plan be modified to incorporate five full massing breaks from street level to the top of the building. Okay. So, Mr. Parkler, are you prepared to make that motion as stated? I make that motion. Do we have a second for that motion? And I'll second it again. Do we have any further discussion on that motion? Okay. Um, I would uh just comment that I'm I'm going to vote against this. I don't think we need to go to five, but I'm very supportive of the consensus of the council and and I think that motion will prevail and we'll direct staff and then we'll review this at a future date. So, with that comment, I would uh request the city manager offer a roll call vote. Council member Parkill I. Council member Sorenson. Hi. Council member McDonald. I. Council member Pleish. I. Mayor Mullen. Uh, no. For the reasons I stated. And so that, uh, moves ahead. Um, then, uh, next on our agenda is, I believe, the city manager report. Mr. City Manager. Got a long one for you guys. No, I'm kidding. Yeah. Don't Don't make it another 20 minutes. Uh just real quick, I'll keep it short. Uh reminder, our local board of appeal and equalization hearing is on Thursday of this week at 5:30. So if there's any residents still listening or watching out there, uh feel free to come. And if you haven't talked to your um county, our county appraiser, our city appraiser that uh is represented by the county, uh you do have the ability to just attend the meeting and get your appeal on the record. So, call city hall if you have any questions. Thank you. Any questions of uh the city manager? Okay. Um I would accept a motion to adjourn our meeting, please. So moved. Do we have a second? Second. Any further discussion? All in favor say I. I. Thank you. And thank you uh public, thank you staff, thank you council for long meeting and and everyone's contributions. And with that, we'll re, you know, we'll close the meeting.