Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Yes, I don't have to do this. Good evening everyone. I'm going to call the Eden Prairie Planning Commission meeting for Monday, May 11th to order. Please rise and join me as you're able to do the Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America to the stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. All right, we have an agenda before us. Madam Chair, may I comment on the agenda real quick? I just want to go on record that I was the architect about 20 years ago for the singlestory office building that is proposed for demolition on the project in front of us and I've also uh been uh evaluating the property as late as a few years ago for the owner of the property for alternative uses. Um I have no financial interest in the property whatsoever and I haven't done any work on it for a few years. So I'm here to uh participate in the discussion this evening and vote on it uh under its own merits. Thank you. You're welcome. under uh with that I'd like to approve the agenda. Thank you. We have an motion to approve the agenda as written. Do I have a second?

Second. Second. All those in favor of the agenda, please signify by saying I. I. Those opposed. Same sign. All right. Motion carried. We have an agenda with us tonight. All right. Moving on to the minutes from the March 23rd Planning Commission. Are there any comments or changes to the minutes as presented? Otherwise, I would look for a motion for approval. Motion to approve the minutes. Thank you, commissioner. We have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Second. All those in favor of the minutes, please signify by saying I. I.

Oppose. Same sign. Motion carried. Thank you. All right. We have one public hearing tonight with tonight. This consists of uh the Prairie Bluff Commons. We have a comprehensive plan amendment from office to medium density residential on 23.59 acres and from office to lowdensity residential on 4.82 acres. And second, we have a planned unit development concept plan review on 28.41 acres. Third, we have a planned unit development district review with waiverss on 28.41 acres. Fourth, we have a zone change from office to RM6.5 on 23.4, excuse me, 23.59 acres and from office to R1, 9.5 on 4.82 acres. Number five, preliminary plat of 28.41 acres into 166 lots for the town home units, 16 lots for the single family units, nine lots for common open space, and eight out lots. And last, we have a site plan review on 23.59 acres, all of which is the same project. Will the applicant please come forward, state your name and spell it for the record, please, and then um we'll hear from your presentation.

Good evening, Chair Duncan, members of the commission. My name is Josh Metzer. That's me Tz. I'm with LAR Minnesota. Um we're excited to be here tonight uh with what is a what seems to be a rare opportunity for residential in Eden Prairie. So um we're presenting uh Prairie Bluff Commons. The clicker. All right. And there we have it. Um,

sorry Beth. How do I click forward? It's all right. Take your time.

There we go.

Okay. Turn it on. All right, we'll give Beth the power. Um, if you could go to the next slide, Beth, please. Um, so here we are, uh, looking at the site plan. Um, Chair Duncan, you summarize the requests we're making. Thank you. Uh we're located at the northwest of Flying Cloud Drive and Charleston Road. This is the site of the existing vacant CH Robinson building uh on the southeast portion. Northeast portion is a vacant uh site owned by CH Robinson that was previously planned for an office building. Those plans did not move forward. Um so as mentioned, the site is zoned and guided for office use. We're here to uh make requests to change those. Uh what you see in the yellow are proposed town homes um in the kind of burgundy color. Those are our villa homes. Um you've got the north the airport to the north of us here and Henipin Village uh to the west. To the south is Flying Cloud Drive and beyond that the the River Valley uh also Prairie Bluff uh conservation area immediately south of us there. Um, we've got uh a bit of trails, open space, which I'll I'll get to more in a bit. Um, you can see that we've got there there are areas there. It might be

hard to see, but the the dark green trees on the very east edge and then kind of the west and south edge around the ponds. Number of trees that we're being able to preserve in open spaces, those areas will be untouched. Um, won't even be grading in those areas. We also have uh quite a bit of dense landscaping along Charleston along Leatris and on that uh where the existing uh CH Robinson building is going to remain on the west edge of that east edge of our town homes there's a dense uh landscape buffer there. Um not sure if you have it, Beth, but uh we do have some cross-sections of uh showing our site how it lays out compared to Henipin Village uh as well as the existing office building. Um maybe are you able to flip to that, Beth? Not sure that. Yeah, that may be the next slide. Well, we can get to it at some point. Um, this was the next discussion point. Anyways, this a look at our uh homes that we're proposing. This is a look at our uh Liberty Town homes. They're a front-loaded garage uh 3bedroom and uh 1,700 ft about square feet about going to be a starting price point about the mid 400s and going up depending on finishes, things like that. Uh depending on if you have an interior unit versus an end unit. Uh villa homes pictured on the lower right. These are a single story uh two to threebedroom depending on the floor plan you select. uh starting price point in the upper 500s. Uh again, there's options to uh have different finishes. Finish the basement

is an option as well. Um town homes probably targeted towards uh buyers in their 30s, 40s. It could be single people, uh young families, um even we we've seen some uh empty nesters or snowbirds uh purchasing our town homes. The villas will be age targeted uh to 50 and up. Uh again, single level living. Um it's all the entire community will be HOA maintained. So it's lowmaintenance lifestyle. Um yards will be uh maintained by the HOA, snow removal by HOA, uh garbage removal, those type of things. Uh we can go to the next slide. Here's a t look at the open space plan. Uh the areas in dark green are what I guess are more considered usable open space areas. The mint green color are common uh common HOA open spaces. So it's held in common. Not really any programming for those areas but um you know however residents will use open space around their home um they'll use for those sort of purposes. Uh landscaping as well. Uh the list on the right there is a list of amenities we're going to have for the community. Uh the dark green on the south there next to the villas. That'll be a uh overlook area with benches, a gazebo. Uh the the picture in the top left, that's a look of uh from that location looking out to the river valley. Um we will have that chain link fence removed. Uh but it's a very nice uh spot there um towards the center of the area. And the reason we chose to locate the some of the amenities there, it's it's kind of central to the both to the two quadrants of the um community. Uh that will have a tot lot and playground in that kind of

little rectangular area. Um a paved uh space next to that with some picnic tables and a grill. Uh next to that there's going to be an open field uh play area where we purposely uh avoided planting trees in the middle there. Um measuring that area, it's about 75 to 85 yards long. I kind of I plopped it on the um Eden Prairie High School football field to see what the size would look like. It's about 80 yards long. Um and it's about if you can picture a football field where the numbers are on the field, number to number. Um so it's it's a decent space there. Uh we're also going to have a dog park and where the trail comes down uh where the trails kind of converge there in the middle. We're going to have some park benches that will overlook the the viewsheds of the ravines where the the ponds are. And these are these other three pictures that you see there that were taken from that location. So as you can see a number of existing trees and quite a bit of uh undulation and contours uh that'll remain in place. And you can if you look close enough you can pick out um some of the Henipin Village town homes there peeking out over the top of the trees. So give you a sense of the existing buffer that we have there. I think uh and orange represents trails of course. Uh Beth if you could next slide. Thank you. So schedule um building demo would be our first step. Uh we're still trying to work through exactly how that's going to work. uh not not standard for us to have an office building that we have to demo. So, working through uh figuring that out. Um grading will take place if we can get started early enough, possibly in one phase. Um if if the ground freezes up before we can finish, that would carry over into next year. Um utility and street construction, we're

looking at two to three phases. um working our way from east to west. And uh what you see there is is you know a proposed phasing phase one in blue, phase two in uh the pink and phase three in yellow. Those things obviously can change with weather um market conditions with how fast things might be selling. We anticipate they'll sell quickly here in Ian Prairie, but um again uh can be a moving target. Uh home construction will hopefully begin uh late this fall. Idea would be to get a couple model homes uh at least the foundations dug and in before uh the frost hits. So we have a couple of models to be building throughout the winter while the ground is frozen. And then full buildout of the site. We're looking at probably five to six years uh based on the number of of homes that we have. Um couple of things that maybe I didn't hit. Um, we're close to the airport, so um, our windows will be glazed for noise attenuation on the inside. Um, we'll we'll be sure to meet city standard on that. Um, residents will be required to sign a disclosure which states that you are near an airport. There will be noise. Um, try to mitigate any uh, upset residents contacting us, contacting the city. Um so it's something that they have to sign so that they're fully aware. Um homes will be uh electric vehicle ready with uh outlet in the garage for electric vehicles. The villas will be um solar ready. Uh not able to do it on the town homes for a couple of reasons. Uh main reason is um the amount of square footage you need per home on a rooftop. Um, again, they're they're pretty narrow homes to begin with. There's a number of gables on these homes and the number of vents that come through the rooftop. There's not a

contiguous. I think it's 150 square ft, something like that. It might be 100. Um, we don't have that. Also, because they are they're owner maintained or they're owner they're owner occupied, but they're HOA maintained. So, if you know a six-unit building, if two of those residents had solar paneling and it came time for the HOA to replace the roof, um you have two units that you'd have to work around, um could become an issue. Uh we also believe that it would void the warranty on the roof to have uh panels installed. So, those are option or reasons why the town homes do not have um solar ready, but the the villas will. Um, was there anything else I'm getting, Beth? Well, if there are, we'll uh we'll get to that, but happy to answer any questions that you might have. And again, we're excited to be here.

Thank you for that presentation. Yeah. Oh, sorry. We also have materials uh that you can see here. Have samples of our our vinyl sighting. If anyone wants to see it, I can pass that around. Very good. Thank you. Are there any questions for the applicant? Yeah, I had a question. What is your projection for the monthly cost of the HOA?

Um, that I don't know. Um, I believe it usually it's in the 200 somewhere. Um, depending on um amenities for the site. There's no clubhouse here. There's no pool. So, that's going to help keep those down. But, uh, dog park, tot lot, uh, the the grilling area, the gazebo, uh, trails, things like that. That'll there's a some cost consideration there. Madam Chair, go ahead. You you mentioned that you were going to be removing the link fence uh, along the trail.

Are there any plans to put any other landscaping along the area or is it just you going to leave it open? Yeah, there'll be uh trees planted in the rear of those villa lots. Um but we will we're not intending to really heavily um uh landscape that area because of the view uh viewshed for those homes. Um quite a spectacular viewpoint from up there. Uh we want to try to keep that maintain that as much as possible. Thank you, Madam Chair. Go ahead, Commissioner Bar.

Yeah, I was just going to ask about those material samples that you brought. Thanks for mentioning that and showing those. Um on the renderings there's a variety of uh sighting uh patterns uh vertical, horizontal, maybe some shingle looking ones. Are those all vinyl? Vinyl, yes. And then stone, of course, on the Okay. And is that just one stone? Some of the renderings had what looked like darker and lighter shades. You're going to have different colors. Yeah, that'll depend on the the color package that's selected for the building. Okay. Um we have a some lighter stones. We have some that go all the way to a black, some kind of on a more earth tone. So they they do vary. Okay. And all these color selections will be made by the owners of the villas only. The residents of the town homes will have the colors decided by you for the entire building.

Correct. Correct. If if some of the villas are build as uh speck homes, those might be selected by LAR, but otherwise um that's usually left to the uh choice of the homeowner. But we do keep an anti- monotony policy where we're not allowing the identical color right next to each other. Good. Yeah. Thank you. Mhm. Any other questions, commissioners? Yeah. Go ahead. Um I'm really excited to see that phase one is is where the CH Robinson building is right now. Again, because there's going to be two entrances into the location. Is there any reason or would you see that there would be any reason where phase three would become phase one because of the demolition of the building? And again, I'm thinking more of the residents that are in the Henipin Village area.

Sure. Um

certainly possible. Um we don't know what we don't know yet, right? Um but the hope was to to start on that east end. Um not only um because the existing infrastructure is there with the the private drive that'll be shared with us and CH Robinson. Um but that's also the side where the villas are and we would like to get to those villas. Um if not with phase one, certainly with phase two. Um but if circumstances come with the demolition of the building that we're running into problems and uh remediation of potential contamination um which we don't believe there is there um Ron has been out and taken some samples and I don't believe they've uh found any soil issues or uh the phase one report didn't turn any um issues out but um

that would be a reason potentially to correct and we would obviously work with staff on how that works and our first edition plat would be coming to you u before we start any um street utility work. Okay. So, thank you commissioners. Any other questions? All right. Thank you very much. Staff report. Go ahead, Beth. I'll take this. Okay. Sorry, Beth. I You're in the chair.

Thank you, chair commissioners. Um Josh hit most of the high points. I just want to hit a couple things um for the planning commission's information. Um as as you read in your solar at the beginning that there's a number of actions uh requested here including um a zone change uh from office to uh uses that support the villas and support the town homes. And also there's a number of waiverss requested. Um there are um waiverss requested from the R1 9.5 zoning district for lot area and lot width and for the RM 6.5 zone for area width and density. The density uh proposes about seven units an acre where the max is uh 6.7 per zoning code. Um the lot area and lot width for both zoning districts is not uh abnormal for projects like this. In terms of town homes and villas, villas, we've done a couple villa projects, most recently I think the um the Lotus Villas project a couple couple years ago had reduced lot sizes. The R1 9.5 zoning district is our smallest single family residential zoning district or detached residential. So villas kind of start from there. And the idea with the villa is it's kind of a detached town home um where uh residents get the get the benefit of a of a detached resident, but they have usually uh HOA maintained grounds and and streets and things like that. So that's not dissimilar from this project here. um staff reviewed the waiverss and in kind of looking at our code in terms of what our goals are with the flexibility from a PD perspective and we're looking for a project that enhances um or or meets certain goals of the city in this situation. It exceeds our required open space requirements. Project also um exceeds our landscaping and buffering

requirements between uh different land uses. Um, and this project also does meet certain housing goals in terms of not just the inclusion area and affordable housing, but just a housing style because we don't do a lot of town homes as as Josh had mentioned earlier. So, um, does check quite a few boxes from a a land use uh goal perspective. Um, I mentioned the usable open space u 24 about about half an acre is required. they have a little more than an acre and a half of usable open space. And Josh did kind of go into into that. There's some question about and and staff had the same issue or same question during the the design of the project. Um why is there just one larger usable open space area, not two smaller usable open spaces in kind of each sub neighborhood. Um and the applicant um has responded that that is the design choice on their part. um they wanted one larger usable space. You can get more action out of that. Um and then it really uh knits and unifies the neighborhood together. So that was a a goal of their of their project rather than have two kind of small open spaces that may just not be used as efficiently as possible. So um that's one thing that I'd like to note in terms of um Josh mentioned the EV ready uh issue. All of the garages will be EV ready. the villas will have the rooftop solar. This is a small deviation from our uh from our code. Our sustainability coordinator does support that change in terms of solar readiness for the u for the town homes in part because of the size and uh the amount of area that you can allocate for solar. So um that deviation is is is permissible. Um, some questions were were uh were raised about airport and the airport noise. Property is obviously

just south of the airport and there will be noise. The residents will hear um planes and jets taking off and landing. Uh the airport is a 24hour operation. So there's no avoiding that. Um the applicant will uh uh part of our development agreement requirement they will sign or each new buyer will sign a disclosure acknowledging the fact that there's an airport there and also there are building uh standards that will be applied to the properties in terms of um specific standard for the the glazing the windows the the sliding glass doors. There will also be requirements for the type of sighting um and how the house is designed. So, not necessarily requiring or prohibiting vinyl, but if you have vinyl, there may be less windows you can have. So, it's all kind of part of a calculation that the building department will do as part of a of a um building permit review. And so, that is is not that's pretty standard with all of our projects within one uh within one mile of the airport. Um, in terms of kind of process, the applicant did have a neighborhood meeting on April 8th. Um, I was at in attendance for a portion of that. It was not heavily attended. There were a lot of curiosity or a lot of questions raised and curious about the project and uh, if there's any questions, I can have the developer speak to that, but nothing alarming came out of that. Uh, usually a neighborhood meeting is our first kind of um indication that there's questions from the neighborhood and we didn't get a lot of feedback yet. Knock on wood. Um, we uh we have received comments from the HOA uh representative and you've gotten those in your packet. Um, and the developer did speak to the buffering and sight line question um and spoke a bit to the the private amenities. the there

was some question about will the trail from Henipin Village be open during construction to the eastern entrance on Charleston. Uh and and that will um we'll have to kind of play that by year in terms of the construction limits and how things uh kind of work themselves through. But that's something that we acknowledge that there's a goal from the Henwood Village neighborhood that we want to keep that that option open. So, we'll work with the developer on trying to make sure that we have some pedestrian access to Charleston on the east side of the project there. Um, if uh obviously uh traffic is usually a bigger question with any redevelopment uh any residential development if there's any questions related to traffic, I can have Carter speak to those. But I think our memo did summarize our findings from the traffic study uh pretty well and uh at this stage I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you Jeremy. Any questions for staff from the commission? Madam Chair, go ahead commissioner far.

Few quick ones. Um I understand our comprehensive plan amendment requires metropolitan council review. What's the schedule of that? Has that had occurred already or will in the future? So the process for a comprehensive plan amendment is the Met Council requires the governing body, the city council to draft a resolution uh agreeing to that change before we can even send it to them. So uh at the first reading when the council reviews it assuming the council recommends approval um we will send official application to the Met Council for their review. They have 15 days to review it for completeness um and up to 60 days to make that answer. Um so no nothing has been submitted yet. We have completed the the public review portion of that I think in February. Um and so we send it to area agencies. We have gotten the comments uh from some but not all which is pretty typical. Um and we will um as part of the council's action on the comp plan amendment, they will approve a resolution for submittal to the M council.

Thank you. And I'm assuming that the city's infrastructure is one of the critical things that Metropolitan Council is going to be looking for. So staff's okay with sewer, water, and all the utilities that are going on with this development, right? Yes. It frankly, it doesn't go beyond staff if the infrastructure doesn't support the improvement.

Right. Okay. Thank you. Um, regarding the plat um I didn't understand uh why the uh property boundaries were located in the manner that they were. um pretty much all around the existing CH Robinson building that this development is being planned around. Could you comment on maybe three things there? Maybe going in uh clockwise order. Uh the the the dividing line, sorry, let's start on the south of that CH Robinson building where there's this private driveway which is going to connect through to Plumrose I think it is. And the boundary line is right in the middle of that private driveway. I would have expected between two different zoning districts that there be a city street with rightways instead of half of a street going to a residential zone and half the street going to a commercial zone. That's question number one. And then as the property makes the corner, there's an odd triangular shape that ab butts down into that play lot area. Not exactly sure why that can't be straightened out. And then third, but List is the uh west property of that CH Robinson is creating a zero lot line for parking for the CH Robinson, which is a little unorthodox, especially because we're always talking about buffers between commercial and residential. And at the very north end of that same line, it makes a zigzag towards the center line of what is a shared driveway right now for CH Robinson, but it goes nowhere to this residential site. And yet there's land allocated towards that. And so those four things, sorry, all around I just

uh like a half dozen unconventional and I wonder if you could explain that.

Sure. Beth, can you pull up the the plaid? It should be in the folder for the packet for the meeting or we can use this too. Um so the first question uh about the the property line as shown on your screen here is phase one. The northern property line of that phase one is half is half of that that private drive and the private drive serves currently two office buildings. Um the uh there's there initially we we talked about um kind of what can we do to adjust the property lines but as we further looked into it um a lot of work for no real benefit. Um so that that driveway that serves phase two and phase three and all of them all the way through I call it the spine road that goes all the way through that will be protected with uh an easement for access utilities u trails whatever it will be improved in that um adjusting the property line while yes ideally we're starting fresh and you have a very clean um kind of boundary line situation uh in this in this area where we're kind of redeveloping in that area. Um there's not a lot of benefit to involve multiple finances, multiple property owners and and in and trying to adjust from a timing perspective to try to get that goal. So our needs are met by the access and utility easements that will be in place there. Um putting a ride ofway um you know 50 feet wide minimum um would really impact the ability for the property to um to to work and would likely introduce quite a bit more waiverss from a front yard setback perspective um and from landscaping and

other kind of goals that we have. So based on our analysis of the goals of that property we we can support this configuration. I think that answers hopefully your first question. Yeah. Does I'm sorry to interrupt, but does the city help negotiate the maintenance agreement between those two property owners so that the snow doesn't get unplowed? Well, there's a maintenance agreement on there now. Um, and we would expect whoever to maintain that. Um, I don't have the language in front of me, but we don't generally get involved in those private agreements.

All right. Thank you. um your question about the and I may be jumping around again so I apologize but your question about that odd little triangle if you're looking right at the center of the of the of the plan in front of you there uh there's a parking area one-sided parking there Beth is pointing it with her mouse um there's a little triangle area that is part of the CH Robinson property that is not being developed and that's just how that lot is configured today um this area had been part of several phases in the early 2000s in terms of how the property was developed. So, this is kind of a remnant from that. Again, we don't see adjusting that as any true benefit to the development of this property or the ultimate use of the area. And so, it's just kind of hanging out there. There will be an easement over a portion of that for parking and for access. Um, and then last I think or one of them you had a question about kind of the zero foot setback for the parking along the I guess you call it the east side of the phase three. Um, and the the property, excuse me, existing parking lot butts right up to that that property line. We did not want to grant a waiver in that situation because a waiver would go with the land and a future developer of the office building could build right up there. Um so we kind of left the existing office building alone and we addressed kind of the concerns. The staff had the same concerns from a buffering perspective. So the same concerns um there and so um the developer and enhanced the screening in that area to provide as much um kind of headlight screening and separation from the existing office parking lot to the proposed buildings. at one point and you mentioned it. Um there's a a driveway on Charleston there. At one point we we chatted a little bit about having another connection on Charleston there. Ultimately we we determined that that

wasn't necessary from a traffic uh perspective. It doesn't help anything and it frankly takes away the ability to add some more buffering along Charleston. So, we were happy with removal of that and and and using the spine as the primary access to and from phases. Did I get them all? I I think you did. Just on that last point though, why can't you just straighten out that line until it gets to the Charleston rideway and have that driveway uh serve uh because it serves 100% of its uses to the CH Robinson building and now it's split 5050. We can certainly look into that. I don't have an answer yet. Um, but we can look into that before it goes to council.

All right. Just curious. Thank you for going through all those for me. I appreciate that, Jeremy. Madam Chair. Yeah. Go ahead, Commissioner. I got a question about uh some safety questions here. So, what information has Mack provided long term in reference to safety concerns with building continuing to build resident residential uh homes or units in the area as Mac provided any feedback on that?

Uh so as part of our comprehensive plan process um we do send out um the proposal to MAC DNR transportation agencies. Um so uh MAC did provide comment on on the proposed land use change. Uh and I think if you ask them their preference would be that there'd be no nothing around an airport because they get more calls than we do in terms of noise and things. Um but they recognize that that's not likely. Um so that's where we came up with in cooperation with MAC the the noise attenuation uh process that we that we described a little bit earlier. There is uh acknowledgement of the airport. There is um building code requirements or building standards involved. So that's that's how we address that. They they do have standard comments with most developments uh in near the airport uh talking about uh they don't want open water uh because that's where geese can tend to migrate and then they tend to fly away when spooked. Um they also talk about fruit bearing trees in the area again try to keep the bird population down. Um so they have those type of comments that we share with the developer and work into the plans.

Uh does that answer your question? Yes. Jeremy, is that is that um waiver or the what the resident signs is that new? No, I don't think so. Um I don't know when it started. Um but it's it's only been here for Okay. four years, so it's been it's been there for a while. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions from the commissioner for staff? All right. We have a public hearing for those of you that would like to come and speak. Please come forward. State your name and address for the record. Public hearing is open. Good evening everyone. Thank you for letting me speak. My name is John Miller. I live at 15465 Junrass Lane, part of Henipin Village. I serve on the Henipin Village Heritage Board as well as the Henipin Village Master Board in the capacity of secretary of the board. So, as I come here, I'm speaking on behalf of the 633 homeowners in Henipin Village. Uh I think some some of our questions appreciate that you you got my written comments and and I heard some of that addressed already here. Probably our biggest concern that we've noted from from the site plan is that the the road going into this new Prairie Bluff development, it it looks like it's going straight as a a cross intersection right to Plumstone Drive. So So Plumstone is uh that's a it's a city-owned street, but there's 40 single family homes along that street. It's actually a pretty narrow street there. there's a lot of cars that are parked on both sides. And so the concern from Henipin Village is that there's going to be a lot of ex traffic go going along that road from from the new development. I've been told that back when the uh CH Robinson expansion project was being considered that they they they determined they had to do some sort of a mitigation to uh prevent traffic from from the new development from going on to Plumstone. And and I know I have not had a chance yet to to

read the traffic study or or the the report there, but I'm just going to express that that is that is a concern of ours here. you know, as well as the uh you know, the stop sign at at Leatric and Charleston and Charleston and Spring Road there. So, uh you know, making sure that adequate traffic mitigation is is going to be planned for these extra 182 homes that are that are being built. Um, you know, some of our residents have uh have some uh concerns about buffering and sight lines between our homes and and the new development. You know, there is the the large area in between. There's existing vegetation there. Uh I I think there's still some concern about whe whether that's enough. The conservation area is is a concern. uh the conservation area is is protected and there's only some only some, you know, only like one designated trail that's allowed to go in and and a lot of times there's going to be, you know, we'll find like wedding photographers going out in into that area where where they're not supposed to. And so the concern on our part is, okay, now we're adding 182 extra homes here. there there's going to be more people that might go out into the conservation area in places where they're they're not supposed to hear. So, I mean, I think those are that's the the gist of my comments here. Uh but but uh I I thank you for hearing me here. And uh and and actually one one other final comment I would make here is I uh uh was Jerry from Leonard when I think there was a question about the HOA fees and I think I heard him say that they'd be in the low 2000s. as someone who's on

an HOA board and a community that now that's now a little bit older here, there's I don't think there's any possible way that the math could work out to have dues in the low 200s, you know, especially if there's if MCIO applies and if if they need to be saving up for reserve funds and insurance, I I I you know, I mean, our dues in our HOA are 525 a month and We do everything we can to keep the dues low there. So, I'm just I'm just not seeing any way that the math could work out to have low 200s dues dues there. So, again, it's it's not our issue, but if it's a sign if it's a big question for anyone here, I' I'd encourage you to ask a little bit more more closely about about the dues there. So, that concludes my comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miller. And thank you for the written comments on behalf of the HOA as well. All right. Anyone else wish to speak before we close the public hearing? All right. Do we have a motion to close the public hearing? So moved. All right. A motion. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you. All right. We have a motion to open and close the public hearing. All those in favor to close the public hearing say I. I.

Opposed. Same sign. Thank you. Our public hearing is closed. All right, commissioners. We have before us a numerous amount of actions in regards to this project. Are there any thoughts that the commissioners would like to discuss or convey? Or otherwise I'd look for a motion. Madam Chair,

go ahead. Commissioner Far. we we probably ought to um have some findings um especially as it relates to some of the conditions that staff put in the uh staff report here. Um so uh I'm I'm in favor of the project. Uh, personally, I think that the applicant um, while they're certainly maximizing the uh, density of the site opportunities and the zoning districts that they're changing it to um, with the park and open space that they have scattered around uh, at their areas and the street system, which apparently uh, serves this redevelopment concept quite well. Um, in terms of handling the additional traffic, um, I'm in support of this, even the shared driveway. I'll just add a comment. Um, I I share Commissioner Far's comments. I'm in support of the project, too. And I, you know what, when we're doing a PUD like this, we always look at the waivers and are the waivers reasonable? Are they things that we've done before? or are they precedent setting in a negative sense? And I think uh you know my opinion is that these are pretty reasonable waiverss for for what we've got here. And so I I uh I agree. I think I support the project.

Thank you, commissioners. Anyone else? Yeah, Madam Chair, I don't I don't want to overlook Mr. Miller's questions or comments he brought up. Um, but I think one of them was about the usage of Plumstone Drive and I don't know if the developer can talk about ways to reduce that traffic which I don't know how you do that but address some of the that question that Mr. Miller had about uh traffic through Plumstone. Uh, thank you commissioner for the question. And I would sir go to staff for that first.

Thank you chair, commissioners. If I may defer um to to city engineer on that question.

Thank you chair and commissioners. Um I don't believe the the developer has any mitigation, you know, options that are going to go in there. Essentially, this is a a local residential intersection, um which we always look to line those up. They're safer when they're lined up, when they're not offset as I think the last if you looked at the last development with had which had 120,000 square foot office building that did have more of a concern from a traffic flow, peak timing, those types of things. Um so of course we would we would prefer that this would be lined up with Plumstone. And I, you know, just like the develop or the, uh, the traffic study indicated, um, 30% or so are going to go out of here, go up to Charleston, which makes the obvious choice versus going through Plumstone, as the, uh, the residents comments talked about Plumstone being a narrow street. It's actually a city standard street width. But it is busy. I I used to know someone who lived there. I'd visit their house. The the driveways are close together. People park on the street. I wouldn't drive through there if I had an option to turn right and get right to the street that I wanted to go on. So, um, anecdotally, uh, that doesn't make sense to me. So, we're going from a safer route of having that intersection be an intersection that you would typically see as you're driving through a neighborhood. Um, so, uh, that's my comments on that.

Does that help answer your question, Commissioner? Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you. the conservation area that is for public use. Is that correct? Yes. Thank you. Uh chair, yeah, that is a public conservation area.

Thank you. Any other comments? I would say I'm I definitely am in favor of this development. I think it's very well done. I think it there's a lot of um things that are um good about the development that can certainly make up for some of the waivers and the the waivers in regards to the overall lot size, lot width, frontage and that so forth. I think those are complimentary to the area as well. So I am definitely in favor of this development. I think it was very well done. All right, having no other comments or questions, I would look for a motion, please. It'd be a long one.

I'll make a motion.

Move to recommend approval for comprehensive plan amendment from office to medium density residential on 23.59 acres and from office to low density residential on 4.82 acres. Plan unit development concept. Plan review on 28.41 acres. Plan unit development district review with waiverss on 28.41 acres. Zone change from office to RM 6.5 on 23.59 acres and from office to R1-9.5 on 4.82 acres. preliminary plat of 28.41 acres and site plan review on 23.59 acres as recommended by staff represented in the May 11th, 2026 staff report.

Thank you, Commissioner Piper. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Commissioner Kirk. All those in favor of the motion presented signify by saying I. I. Opposed? Same sign. All right. Motion carried. Thank you. Good luck. All right, moving on in the agenda. Planners report. Jeremy or do you have anything for us? Just to kind of get give you a heads up that I don't think we'll have another meeting in May, but I do expect one in June. June 8th, I think, is the is the meeting there. And then I'll also give you some updates on comprehensive planning process. So, look for those in June. Thank you, Commission. Do we have any um reports from anyone here on the commission? Madam Chair.

Yes, please.

Uh, while doing my due diligence on this project in the last few days, I discovered a hidden asset that I had no idea was in the city of Eden Prairie. Um, if we could recall the site plan, you don't have to show it again if you don't want to that we've been looking at at the intersection of Charleston Road and Flying Cloud Drive. Uh, thank you. Do you happen to have that aerial picture, Beth, that you started out with? Across Flying Cloud Drive on the river side of the road and only being accessed by an underground tunnel underneath of Flying Cloud Drive, there is a Minnesota River Vista overlook, which is a few hundred square feet made out of beautiful stone. Probably cost a couple million dollars by someone to put that in. And I had no idea that was there. You can't see it when you're driving down Flying Cloud Road. There's no signage. There's no public parking for it. You have to be on the sidewalk on the CH Robinson side of the street to know that there's a little turnoff of a sidewalk to want to be curious enough to go through a dark tunnel to get to the other side of the road, in which case you're then experiencing a beautiful vista out to the Minnesota River Valley. And so I wondered, gee, maybe we ought to provide some parking for the public along Charleston Road, maybe just as a little stopover for a few people, put some signs on Flying Cloud Drive. It's just my curiosity. I asked staff about it. And uh uh Mr. Barnhart was uh uh nice enough to offer the services of Matt Bourne uh here, our our parks person who's in charge of these assets in the city to uh Opine on um how that overlook is used and whether or not it deserves a look to see if we can add more parking or better signage so that other people in the community know that it's there and enjoy this beautiful asset.

Mr. Where did you say where was that? Oh, thank you. Uh down the very lower right hand corner of this slide, there's that little white dot right there. See that? Yep. Yep. There's a tunnel underneath Flying Cloud Drive heading north. And you can see that little wandering pathway that leads right back up to the sidewalk system. Pretty dramatic change of grade right there. And so you have to walk up the path and meet the sidewalk about 100 ft north of the intersection or so. It's actually labeled on the Google Maps, which is kind of cool. Oh, good. Yeah, you can see the tunnel where you can walk on the other side of CHRON building. Really neat.

Great. The tunnel was very colorful. I just I noticed it for the first time today as I was driving the area and it was like wonder where that goes. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. You have to kind of be there to notice it.

So, yeah, chair, members of the commission, that was as commissioner far mentioned, it's Minnesota River overlook. It's kind of giving um another spot when the old historic wayside overlook closed with uh the the runway. So, we built it. It was about 2015 around there. Uh it's meant to kind of be a pedestrian kind of, you know, stop that they could rest and the trail was put in as part of the 61 upgrade and we actually are going through plans to carry that trail from Charleston all the way up to Pioneer. So, hoping to get some, you know, some extra foot traffic, bicycle traffic through there. Uh, give people a little bit better access to it. Um, I guess we could probably, you know, contact CH Robinson and see if there's an option for residents to park kind of in their parking lot and walk down, you know, during non-b businessiness times or maybe slower times. But, yeah, it's meant to be kind of a a pulloff for people that are biking down 61 be able to take in. It is some amazing views of the of the river valley. Uh we had three interpretive signs there that unfortunately we had to remove because they were vandalized, but we'll we'll get those back out there that kind of show that one showed the the natural environment of the river valley, one showed the history of the river valley, and then one actually was dedicated to the the old historic wayside and kind of the history of that area. Um, so yeah, it's definitely a a hidden gem um that we wouldn't mind a lot more people getting out there and and viewing. So, uh, if you're in that area walking or biking, make sure to stop by.

Good. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Yep. Appreciate that. All right. Anything else from anyone? Otherwise, I'd look for a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second to adjurnn. All those say I in favor. I oppos. I. Thank you. We have a meeting that is adjourned. Thank you.