Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

recording in progress that's gonna be kind of loud tonight all right welcome to the village of cottage grove plan commission on wednesday july 15 2026 place both virtually on zoom with the link at the top

on YouTube, or you can check us out later.

It is 7 o'clock, so I will call the meeting to order. We do have a quorum, and the agenda was properly posted, so we'll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I 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. All right, we're going to move on to number four, public's appearances, public's opportunity to speak. We ask that you state your name, your address, and limit your comments to no more than three minutes. We'll start with individuals in the room and then move to anyone who's on Zoom that wishes to speak. If you are here for the public hearing regarding the proposed data center moratorium, you can hold your comments until that time. So if there's anyone in the room that would like to speak. So anyone on zoom, you can hover over the react button and use the raise hand feature and we can unmute you. All right. Seeing no one for public comments, we're going to move on to number five, discuss and consider the minutes from the plan commission meeting on June 10th, 2026. Make a motion to approve the minutes as presented.

Second.

Motion by Heidi, second by Jared. Any other discussion or comments on the meeting minutes? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. Move on to number six, which is a public hearing. So it's 7.02, and I'll open the public hearing for the opportunity to provide input regarding proposed 18-month moratorium on the data center development in the village of Cottage Grove. This is something that we have discussed in a previous meeting and also got feedback from the village board. And so that moratorium is linked as a resolution and it's the PDF in the agenda. And we do have legal counsel on Zoom if there are any other questions about it as well. If there's anyone in the room that would like to give public comments. If there's anyone on Zoom that would like to give comments. Nope. just ask that you state your name, address, and then just push the microphone, the little guy speaking,

Hello, I'm Barbara Schlafer. I do not live in the village, I live in the town. My address is 2026 Uphoff Road and I am in favor of the moratorium. I think there's plenty of data out there or information about data centers being harmful to the community in the way of noise, pollution, and using resources. So I would be in support of that and I would hope that you would too. Thank you.

Is there anyone else online that would like to give public comments? Erin, do you have any comments for this during the public hearing portion?

I don't think so. I think, as Barbara said, there are a lot of potential impacts with these kinds of projects. They're all at all kinds of scales. Our zoning ordinance doesn't really anticipate this kind of project. It's a fairly new development type. So a lot of communities are doing moratoriums like this to give them time, too. can do a little more research and figure out how we would want to amend our ordinance. Dane County has done one for the rural areas in the county. Madison's done one. I think there's other communities looking at it as well.

All right, it's 7.05, so I'll close the public hearing. I'll move on to number seven, discuss and consider the proposed 18-month moratorium on data center development in the village of Cottage Grove. Open it up to comments from the commission.

Just regarding the 18 months, when I was looking at the, maybe this is a question for the attorneys, the state statute, I thought I had read that we would be limited to 12 months, but then it could be extended for six months at a later point. Do those have to happen concurrently, or can we do 18 months right out the gate?

Yeah, we do have a bill online from Axley. Does he have ability to unmute?

We can't hear you.

We have to give permission. OK. OK, did that work OK? Yep, we can hear you.

OK, good thank you. You're actually right. The statute says that it's a 12 month moratorium can be extended for 6 additional months. I believe in talking to staff. The desire was to make it 8 months. I would, for the reason stated, make it a 12 month moratorium with a potential extension.

Thank you nothing further from me.

I drove by the Beaver Dam site, and I want to go and get a closer look. I'll be going back and forth that way, but it's pretty big, and there's a lot of cooling towers. There will be a lot of fan noise, and there will be some water usage, definitely, but I'm curious to see how that whole project shakes out. you know, once it gets up and operating. But I certainly wouldn't want it near, it's kind of, it's not near any residential. It's kind of a little bit out on the edge of where they've done a business park. But yeah, I certainly wouldn't want it near, anywhere near a residential area. I know there's going to be noise for sure.

Other comments from the commission?

I did just have a basic question. I assume it came from other documents that you read in preparing this, but I was wondering where the 10,000 square feet came from. Is that just the size that has been used and referenced in other counties?

It is. There's no requirement at all that you exempt that. The thought in other communities that have considered it was given the broad definition of data center, if you look at Section 7 of the proposed ordinance, it defines data center, which is fairly broadly worded, and the concern was that you could have industries, commercial businesses that could have in-house sort of computer IT service areas that could meet the definition of a data center. And they didn't want to catch those within the moratorium. So at least in several communities, the idea was We exempt 10,000 square feet in a single building because that way we're not going to inadvertently capture sort of IT operations with the idea that it shouldn't be a concern from a true commercial data center standpoint because given the scale of these things, it's unlikely that a proposal of less than $10,000 data center would be proposed. But that but that's so solely within your discretion. You could eliminate that. You could change the 10,000 square feet to less or tomorrow.

OK, thank you.

Is there appetite from the Commission to amend that? Or remove. The square footage. OK. Just checking. I think that obviously I brought this forward and I said on the, I pointed to the Dane County Advisory Committee on data centers and we haven't even gotten all the way through kind of all of our list of topics that we want to talk about. Yesterday we talked about just water usage in general and some of those guidelines and how the technology is changing. We haven't gotten to how do data centers, how do you decommission a data center? I think there's just, this is just an evolving trend area and there's gonna be a lot of changes and we need to Obviously pause it here. Nothing's in the pipelines right now. But you know if we're one were to come Before us we want to be prepared enough and I think once we finish doing all of our research at the the county level we're gonna come up with guidelines and then we can take those guidelines and then we're gonna have a discussion here about what we would want to Change or include in our comp plan or in our zoning ordinances and that kind of thing So just being proactive on it Any other comments about the moratorium?

Considering the legal advice, I would make the motion to approve the ordinance with the modification of the 18 month to 12 month moratorium on data centers. I guess. A second and then I have a follow up question after saying that. I'll second motion by Heidi, second by done in the ordinance. Should we name that with a potential six month extension or we would just renew a six month extension?

Yeah, you're fine without. You don't need to put that anywhere else. The statute clearly allows for permissive

Okay, and so then in 12 months, we'll just revisit if we want to do an extension. Thank you.

All right, there's a motion by second. Any other comments on this? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. All right, so we're going to move on to number eight, which is the discuss and consider request from Newman Development for approval of a final plot for a 38-lot portion of Juniper Fields, a proposed 100... eight-acre, 226-unit single-family residential subdivision with the laundry list of attachments in the agenda. I know we have representation from Newman Development on Zoom tonight, and then also Aaron can brief us on this. So I think we'll bring it up and let Ryan take over.

Great. Thanks, Cindy. Thanks, everyone. Yeah, Ryan Fritch with Newman Developments. I think everyone's mostly familiar with this property now. What we're proposing here is really part of the first phase. It's 36 lots, and we've advanced construction plans to a point where we're in a position to prepare the final plats for this phase. There's been a lot of good conversations between our design engineer and the village and Strand. And we're progressing those plans to a point where we're comfortable with both the comments and conditions as outlined in the in both reports. Hoping to break around in the next 30 days and really excited to get started. So here for questions.

Aaron, do you have anything you'd like to add?

Yeah, I can just go over my staff report. So we get. To the final plot, a lot of the conditions are going to be more engineering-focused, so Josh probably has more to say about it than I will, but we do have a few recommended conditions here. First one, to facilitate wayfinding and emergency response, we'd recommend that the Molly Lane street name continues all the way through the cul-de-sac instead of changing to Glacial Crest Court. Based on the advice of our attorneys, we'd like to be a little bit more general with the way some of the outlets are labeled, just saying dedicated to the public as opposed to specifically for street purposes or storm water management purposes. Just gives us a little bit more flexibility in the future. The plot references a wetland delineation that was done in November 2025. We'd just like to have a copy of those. um there's a note on outlet three that um i think is just kind of a stray comment that doesn't belong there um the legend and all the pages seems a little wonky it's kind of misaligned we just want um to make sure that's corrected on all the sheets i'd like to get copies of the covenants and property owner association documents for village review prior to recording the plat And then we'd also like them to submit an addressing plan for review by the village and fire an EMS, again, prior to recording the plat. Josh, I know you guys had a lot of... Detailed comments?

Yeah. I mean, typically when we get to this part of the plat, right, we'll have its final drawings. You'll probably notice if you've read through some of the comments, it's a lot of just miscellaneous engineering drawings, kind of bringing the plans up to like village standards and making sure that they're building things accordingly. So I'm not going to walk through all of them. I'll maybe hit a couple high points of some things that we still you know, are talking about with the developer. Obviously, there's the preliminary plat, right? And we're still sorting through the preliminary plat, how stormwater's handled, some of the overflow routes, some of the utilities. And this is now, like Aaron said and Ryan said, they're coming with just that first phase of the final drawings. We'll be able to see final drawings for each phase as they go, and they'll plat that as they go. So that's nice that they're gonna come back each time, and we can continue to work through that with the developer. Um, some of the high level comments, um, you know, stop sign locations have been kind of a hot, hot topic, uh, in markings and things like that. And we kind of, uh, stated in the letter of as this develops and before they put up that first phase, we kind of want to look at that. Holistically with the public works, the whole development and kind of understand where those are going before they're just placed. I think a lot of time that that gets lost in development as phases are going and things are just put into place and nobody really understands why. Not saying anybody's doing anything wrong, but the discussion probably should happen earlier. Same for streetlights, understanding kind of throughout how the streetlights are laid out and working with Alliant Energy as part of that. Some of the other things that are a little different is some temporary turnarounds. So at the end of some of these streets, instead of just ending with pavement on the east side, some of those will happen in later phases. Put in a little turnaround kind of asphalt turn around for emergency vehicles, maintenance vehicles, things like that instead of just dead ending the road. There's a little bit of discussion on just kind of some of the town parcels and how that town parcel to the north will be given back to the village because some of the stormwater is part of that, but we have to allow a town parcel to the north to kind of connect all the way back to Cottage Grove Road for, there's a house there, Aaron, and there's also the car dealership mechanic that's part of the town, yeah. So notice that on the plat as well. Sidewalks, there's some sidewalks that are over 5% on new construction. We like to try to get everything under 5% for ADA compliance. So working through that with them. What are some other big things? A little bit of the cul-de-sac and how we're gonna connect to that at Meyer Road and making sure that that connection to Meyer Road is a good rural section. There won't be curb all the way down. And how does that look? So we're working through a little bit of the details with them on that as well. All the stormwater is met and is in accordance with the village, the county, the DNR standard. This is still in front of Dane County Land and Erosion Control for review, so that will take place. And they'll have some comments as well, but right now, TSS removal, infiltration, all that is taking place. As part of phase one, they're building some of the stuff so that it also takes place for other phases, but they're kind of building as they go. The big thing I think is the TIA that was part of the overall preliminary plat and it's for the whole development, right? And they submitted the TIA as part of this or a grouping with this as well. They distributed the traffic to the different intersections as we asked on N, those taking place at School Road, North Lawn Drive, County B and Meyer. And then we had, yeah, those three are the major ones and how they distributed traffic to all three of those. They studied them. We asked that they... kind of increase some of their numbers because they counted it in the summer. And whenever you count in the summer, school's not in session, right? And usually the school trips, especially on the two main thoroughfares, N and County Road BB, obviously will increase. So there's a little bit of adjustment factor that needs to happen there, but it's still the numbers don't show. And as you can see in their report, there's really no improvements that are needed at any of those three intersections. They do make a suggestion, and we kind of comment in our letter about... The County BB County Cottage Grove Road and Meyer intersection and that being at 55 miles an hour They don't hit a threshold where they need turn lanes, you know, they specify that in their report, but they're getting you know, they're getting there that's under Dane County's jurisdiction so we suggested hey and the town, right, and the village. Everything kind of comes together there. Forward it to those other entities so they could reply as well. You know, they suggest in the traffic impact analysis that as development happens and it's getting closer to build out, maybe the county wants to do a traffic study or i'm sorry speed study at that location and maybe it's reduced uh it's probably a good thing to pursue over the next handful of years and then remind me the full build out was eight years i think remind us ryan what how many phases are there i think you were trying to do a phase a year if if it if it all worked out yeah that'd be eight phases then um

probably full occupancy we'll say after 10 years.

Okay, so there's some time there. I don't think it's not something that you're gonna jump on right away and there needs to be done, but I think the county will give some input on that as well as part of their review. That's kind of a high level, but if anybody has any specific questions, we can talk about those as well.

Rick? Go ahead, Rick.

One other comment. So Outlot 1, basically a portion of that is supposed to be dedicated parkland. I think they're going to be submitting a revised plat to reflect that as parkland. So one of the conditions tonight would just be that the final plat is amended to show the dedicated parkland that's consistent with the preliminary plat.

Well, that will be part of this phase one plan then, is what you're anticipating, Rick?

So the parkland's dedicated as part of phase one. So I don't think the lots around it will be all plotted out necessarily, but the land itself is going to be dedicated as part of phase one. Thank you, Rick.

Comments or questions from the commission?

I guess my comment isn't just in this part one, but since we have the whole preliminary plaid, I wanted to give you this comment now to kind of take forward as you prepare the next. So if we look at lots eight through 13, kind of in the farthest southwestern portion. So the property right on the backyards there has a, sidewalk that connects North Lawn Drive to Willow Run Park. And it might be a nice addition as you bring that area's final plat forward to have some kind of connector from Matt Pass that we can connect into that sidewalk so we can get people also over to Willow Run Park. You know, so we have a nice little park connection made to get people kind of, they might just cut through a yard to get to the playground if it's not there. So that might be beneficial for those neighbors if we aren't building out the playground yet that they could get to the playground. So as you prepare your final plat moving forward from this preliminary, you might want to consider adding that i mean people could go around up to north lawn drive and then take the sidewalk to the south but some probably wouldn't do that so just something to consider for the next version yeah that's a great idea and we definitely have the flexibility to to accommodate that one item that i brought up with corey ridge and it never happened was um

you have an airport right at the corner, kind of over the plat, and it's not really a high usage airport, but you do have the potential of having small planes flying over in a traffic pattern there in the American heritage subdivision, which adjoins the airport in the township. There's like a real simple, uh, one or two sentence thing. I just trying to find it. I couldn't find it. Basically it's just making people aware that they live by an airport and that, uh, you know, as long as it's being operated within all the FAA rules and regulations that, um, they really can't really complain about it. Otherwise you end up with like the town of Middleton where it's just, if anyone's ever followed anything that's going on over there, it's beyond ridiculous. And it is, it is completely beyond ridiculous, the stuff that's going on in the town against Maury Airport. So I guess I would have people advised up front that they're buying, you know, and it's not a big deal, it's not a high usage, I happen to like airplane noise, but not everyone does.

And then we did get something. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Ryan.

I was just going to say, yeah, that's a good comment, too. If not with sales documents, then I think even the protective covenants could include a disclosure piece or language along those lines.

I can try to find that. I did find it for somebody actually in Florida. They were looking for language. And like I said, it's really simple. I just couldn't find where. It's recorded in the American Heritage um on their deeds they just have to access if there's not free access but it's really simple it's not you know the the couple sentences aren't controversial or anything it's just really simple so i'll see if i can find it and get it to aaron so that would be great thank you um we did get some feedback from alex going to be here tonight but um

know ryan if you want to maybe speak a little bit to my a little bit more about meyer road and i know that you were at the town meeting last monday and did a nice job kind of explaining the usage of that road the use for construction and then obviously there was the tia that was sent over and it was in our packet tonight but if you could just maybe talk a little bit about the use of that road and the repairs of that road i'm addressing some of those concerns

Yeah, so the traffic study assumes that approximately 40% of new trips generated will use Meyer Road. And what we've discussed with the town and proposed to their board is that essentially on a recurring basis, we would revisit the conditions of their portion of the road and make appropriate repairs at that time. So whether it's an annual or biannual basis, we know we're responsible for the majority of traffic on it and there's documented conditions of it at this time. So we would just be looking to kind of proactively, recurringly address anything that's construction related in terms of damage. One other comment from the TIA was just the widening of Meyer Road too in the town's portion for the shoulders at least, which we were in discussion with their DPW on.

Yeah, thank you for that. Another question was about the traffic study and accounting for homes, but obviously there's going to be, in future developments, the park is going to be developed. Does the traffic study ever consider usage of the park at this point in time? Do you think that that would be enough to warrant potential changes in And I know, like you said, adjusting the numbers slightly for accounting for summer versus during the school year, but I don't think the park is completely programmed yet either. And so that would change. But that was one of the questions I just wanted to pass along.

That's a good question. And I'd have to look back at the report. I don't know if they specifically put numbers to the park. I don't recall that. The only thing that I would say or the thought that comes to my mind when we think about the park is, the park probably isn't programmed and there probably isn't people in and out of the park at those peak periods. So if you go back, they're looking at the peak hour period in the morning and the peak hour period at night. And it probably doesn't always coincide completely with those. Maybe more in the p.m. sometimes than the a.m. There's some night stuff that people are going to practices or clubs and things like that. But a lot of times, some of that's happening off-peak more than it's happening on-peak. And, you know, I don't believe, or at least right now, and I know the park has to be planned, I don't believe that it's going to be a big space with a lot of use in the sense of just a ton of people going there programming-wise. At least it's what Sean and people are thinking right away.

And I don't even think there was going to be a parking lot associated with that.

Potentially a parking lot, but not very big.

Yeah.

Fairly small. More like community park, you know, when you think about that sort of parking lot. So it's not something like Bakken or, you know, that you're going to get major events or you're going to have a bunch of people to go to. So it doesn't seem like that would just trip the trigger and all of a sudden you'd have major problems at any intersections, no.

Any other questions from the commission?

And I would make a motion to approve the final plat for a 38 lot portion of Juniper fields, proposed 108 acre, 226 units, single family residential subdivision with staff conditions.

I'll second that.

Did you also need to have the amendment that the final park land would be consistent with the preliminary plat?

I think that's included in staff conditions. Okay.

Yeah. All right. There's a motion and a second. Any other discussion? all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries uh number nine thank you Ryan for being here I know you've been all over town you know talking to all the different boards and commissions and committees so appreciate it absolutely thank you all right number nine discuss and consider public participation plan for the village's comprehensive plan update which has been kicked off officially

Yeah, so this is per state statute or required step in the process. We have to have a written public participation plan that lets the public know when they'll have chances to have some input. So Grafe is the consultant that the Village hired. They put this together, but it basically follows the scope of services that we put in the RFP. Range of different opportunities. They're putting a survey together. We'll have a few small group sessions. We'll have a public open house. They're gonna come to a community event most likely community night out seems like it'll work in the schedule the best They'll be designed you're at for the redevelopment area around and NBB They've put together a website that will be linking on our website probably this week yet and So lots of opportunities for people to get involved. And this committee will be the group that's gonna be working with the consultants. So they'll be here a few times during the process as well.

So a million years ago, Dane County Comprehensive Planning helped us do our comprehensive plan. That was before we had a planner or anything. we actually had a Saturday meeting or like open house type thing where they had, it was right here. They had a whole bunch of different tables and they basically had it. So there was some guidance, what do you wanna see? There was some canned questions to get discussion going and people were in smaller groups, round table groups. And of all people, Lion Energy actually had people that volunteered or they sent people to help be facilitators for free. And we got a lot out of that because a lot of times, and it was a different era too. I mean, there's more technology now because this was a long time ago. People, they may not wanna get up in front of a whole big group or committee, but when you got them in a round table in a smaller group, then you got a lot more out of them. And I felt that we got a lot of good input for the people that came and gave their input in those small groups. And then everything was collaborated. It's just, I'm just throwing that out there. It worked back then and it gave some really good feedback.

Yeah, I would expect the public open house to be something along those lines. That's a big reason why we hired a consultant this time around to be a little more innovative and broader with our public participation. There's only so much I can do as one person in that regard. So yeah, I think we'll have some fun stuff planned for that.

Is there a plan to have the survey in different modes? Obviously online, but will there be options to take paper surveys? Will there be QR codes available? Is it gonna be in Spanish?

I'm meeting with the consultant tomorrow to discuss some of those details. It's usually pretty easy to have some paper copies available here and at the MSB for people to use. We hadn't talked about translating it. I know we did that for the housing chapter survey. So we could definitely look into what the cost of that would be.

I think it might be a good add. Other comments on the Comp plan, plan.

I guess I just really appreciate that we have a plan in place that lists a number of different ways that people will be able to participate and yeah, website information. I think that it's, yeah, it'll be important to make sure the public knows how they can have their voice heard and different ways. So different people that are more comfortable, you know, taking a survey versus, you know, community event where it's more informal versus open house. So I think there's a lot of different ways for different types of people to become involved. So I appreciate having this all set out up front. I can see why it's a requirement, so that makes a lot of sense. I would make a motion to approve the public participation plan for the village's comprehensive plan update as presented.

second all right motion in a second any other comments on the plan all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion carries continued discussion of a potential ordinance amendment related to the use of bird safety glazing in future buildings so if you remember we had a presentation by monona grove high school um student ellie meng and um kind of bringing back additional examples for the commission to consider.

Yeah, so the staff report has the Madison ordinance attached to it and the Middleton ordinance. They're formatted different, but the substance of both ordinances is basically identical. We also have a link here to the American Bird Conservancy's list of ordinances. There's many communities around the country that have done various versions of this. They also have a model ordinance that was also included in the staff report. That's a lot stricter than what was implemented in Madison or Middleton. It's basically all glass has to be the bird safety glass as opposed to having limits on the building sizes and percentages of the glass and things like that. But I think given that These Dane County communities have already kind of set this precedent, and I think developers and architects are kind of getting used to it with it being in place in Madison. This would be a good format to follow, whether we follow it exactly or not. We can tweak it however we would want to.

And I don't think it hasn't impeded development in these communities either. I was going to say, I reached out to Middleton.

I haven't heard back from him yet, but later in the process we'll get that input.

So I have run into this in another community. I mean, the bird safe glass does add cost to the project. and in a tiff district you would likely see that being part of their tiff request ask of saying like well we have you know an extra i remember what the actual cost was for the last building i saw it on it was like a 20 30 000 difference in the bird safe class but it was a lot of glass so you will probably see it in tiff requests for commercial buildings um The Madison ordinance, it was challenged in court. The Court of Appeals upheld it as a valid zoning ordinance. Developers basically said, well, this is a restriction that's governed by the commercial dwelling code. But the court said zoning authority is a separate authority that you can exercise this under. So they upheld it as a zoning ordinance. So this format is the right way to do it, I guess, according to the case law. But there is that added cost. It's just how you go about sort of addressing that.

I think what I'd recommend is the next step to kind of examine that a little more closely is take one or two example buildings that have been built in the village. Maybe we could use the police station. We could use one of the recent commercial buildings and kind of see, well, if this ordinance was in place, how would that have affected that building? And maybe we can even ask one of the architects we work with what they think the cost difference would have been on those.

I would agree with that.

Yeah, I would agree. And then it sounds like you're waiting to hear back from Middleton also. So I value their feedback in the next step, too.

Yeah. So I don't think we need to take any action on it. We'll just continue the conversation. Maybe next plan commission.

Yeah, sounds good.

I know Ellie was online, so thank you for bringing this forward again, Ellie. All right. Yeah, thank you. Future agenda items.

We'll continue with the bird glass. Could be some stuff with the comp plan. We'll know a little bit more about that when I talk to the consultant tomorrow. I think near and far brewery is planning to come in August. At least that's their tentative plan. Those are the ones I know about at this point.

All right. How about number 12? Motion to adjourn.

Yeah, the extension is a moratorium, yeah.

Well, yeah, stick that on a year from now. Sure. Got it. Do you want to second the motion to adjourn?

I second the motion to adjourn.

All right. It's non-debatable. All those in favor? Aye. We're adjourned. Thank you.

Bye.