Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call the February 23rd meeting of the Richfield Planning Commission to order. Um agenda is the roll call. We are all we're all present. Excellent. Um the next thing on the agenda is the open forum uh where Residents can share concerns that they have typically of items that are not on the agenda. Have we received any um emails or letters or other feedback? Chair and commissioners, no, we have not. Right. Then u we can approve uh the agenda and I understand there is a proposed change.

Yeah. Uh Commissioner Charlesson would propose moving the city planners report and presentation to after other business the agenda. Is there a second? Commissioner Canaly seconds because it sounds interesting. All right. All those in favor of amending the agenda, please say I. I. Opposed. All right. Um, you're right. We didn't hold discussion about that. I asked for unanimous consent that we just continue blind trust. Yeah. Yeah. Can I in in retrospect ask why? Oh. why we changed it.

Yeah, because it's just putting two things to do together instead of splitting it across. I think we've definitely met the efficiency by discussing this further. All right. Thank you. Um All right. And then uh the next item on the agenda then would be um the annual organization uh meeting uh or business. So, first would be uh the election for chair, chairperson, and secretary. Chair, don't we have to approve the minutes first? Pardon? Yeah, we should also approve the minutes. That's correct. Thank you. It's been a while since we've met, obviously.

Thank you for pointing that out. Um, do we have a motion to approve the minutes of the previous meeting? Commissioner Charles moves to approve. Commissioner Surma seconds. All right. moved and seconded to approve the minutes from the December 8th meeting. Any discussion on that? All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed?

The minutes have been approved. Thank you. Um, now we can uh go down to the election of chair, vice chair, and secretary. Do we have any nominations? Don't we have Well, don't we have presentations first? Public hearings, resolutions. Oh, sorry. Sorry about that. Okay. Okay. I I misunderstood what was what was right. We only do this once a year, so my apologies if I if I misunderstand the order of operations.

Planner Crosby, could you check back at the minutes? Did Surma did Commissioner Surma vote yes on that change? Quiet. Commissioner Hoie. Uh Commissioner Hoie would like to um would like to nominate u Mr. Holig Johnson for the chair if you'll accept it. Uh yeah, I I I would accept nomination. Yes. Are there any other nominations? All right. It's been Yes.

Sorry. Uh, Commissioner here. I I second the nomination. I want to just say that you deserve a pat on the back. Oh, well, thank you. Um, there being no other nominations, all those in favor uh to elect reelect me as chair, please say I. I. I. The next thing would be to elect a new uh to elect a chair, a vice chair. Um, do we have any nominations? I'll nominate Commissioner Hoy. Oh, I'd like to second that nomination.

You accept the nomination. I would love to hear other nominations. Um, the idea of running this meeting stresses me out, but Any other nominations? Commissioner Hia is stressed out by the nomination. I'd like to nominate um Commissioner Teraldson. All right. I second that nomination. All right. I'll I'll accept that.

All right. So, we do have uh two uh candidates. So, I don't that's never happened before. So, I suppose we just go one by one. Um All those in favor of electing Commissioner Hoie as uh vice chair, please say I. All those in favor of selecting Commissioner Carolson as vice chair, please say I. I. I. All right. The uh every confidence Commissioner Charlesson will do a fine job as vice chair. Agreed. All right. nominations. Now for secretary,

I would like to nominate uh Commissioner Surman. I would accept that. I'll second it. Who seconded that? Sorry, I did. Ter.

All right. Um Any other nominations? All those in favor of uh Commissioner Surma as secretary, please say I. I. The next thing on the agenda would be the liaison for um city council, um community services advisory, housing and redevelopment, school board, transportation, the chamber of commerce, and the sustainability commissions. Does anyone have any preferences for those? Chair, I'd love to stay with the sustainability commission. All right, chair. I'd like to stay as a transportation commission. You were you were school board, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So, we need somebody um interested. Would you want to do school board? Okay. All right. I'm happy to stay with city council, but I I don't have a strong feeling. Chair, would you like to switch with me with Chamber of Commerce right now? Sure. Yeah, why not? All right. Chamber of Commerce and then you do city council. Um and that leaves uh uh housing and redevelopment. That was um uh Stersas. And then what are we missing? Oh, we have sustain. We need transportation and HR.

Oh, no. I I I like to stay as transportation. Oh, okay. All right. So, I'm currently um community services. Um I would uh have the H. Okay. Oh, and we we will have a vacancy. I think we've got one more previously. I also believe the Chamber of Commerce was one that was left undone. Um, so I think we can kind of post that one. I think the ones that are remaining are relatively low impact lower urgency. Lower urgency and not discussed as often. Yeah. All right. Probably a good fit.

Do you have uh do you have everything down planner Crosby? Okay. All right. Would you will you repeat back who has what? And then we can All right. Um and then we can make a motion. Commissioner Terleston and Surma are both going to stay in their current positions. Um you are going to switch with Commissioner Kakowski uh chair and then uh Walsh was going to take school board and uh Huey was going to take the H leaving the uh one of them open community services. Okay. That was pretty. All right. Um, so do we have a motion to approve that slate?

Commissioner Canal. So moved by Commissioner and a second. All right. Moved and seconded to appoint the liaison. All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed. All right. The next thing would be the uh review of the um bylaws. Do we have um a report for that from staff? Yes, we do. Thank you, chair. Go ahead.

Um part three, section three of our bylaws requires that the planning commission review the bylaws each year at the February organizational meeting. The city selected Civic Plus as our new agenda building software platform last year and we made changes to it last year and we're making changes again. In an effort to make the agendas more consistent, uh the commissions are adjusting their order of operations to better align with city council agendas. Therefore, we're proposing um changing the order of operations to match the city council with the approval of the agenda going first, then approval of the minutes and the open forum thereafter. If any of the commissioners have any other changes they would like to consider, now is the time to bring them up for discussion.

I have no opposition, but for curiosity, we just make the back a year ago. Yeah, we've had there's been some back and forth with getting used to the the new Sure. Yeah. And there's some policies that we can't control. So, no worries. I mean, I don't have a strong opposition. I don't think that either, but just curious. Any other questions? All right. I would entertain a motion to amend the bylaws. Commissioner Charlesson moves to amend the bylaws. Commissioner Surma seconds.

All right. It has been moved and seconded to approve or to amend the bylaws as recommended by city staff. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed. All right. The bylaws have been amended. Um and then now the annual rescheduling discussion. Do you have a a report for that?

Yes, I do, chair. Thank you. Um during the 2024 bylaws review, the planning commission indicated a preference for the annual rescheduling of planning commissions planning commission meetings that fall on city observed holidays. This year, the May meeting falls on Memorial Day. staff recommends rescheduling the May meeting to Wednesday, May 27th. 27th, which would be the next date that the chambers are available. Um, and we also recommend moving the December meeting. Um, even though it doesn't necessarily fall on a holiday, um, the planning commission has traditionally voted to reschedule this meeting earlier due to end ofear travel arrangements. We recommend rescheduling the December meeting to two weeks earlier, Monday, December 14th.

All right. Any questions? I would entertain a motion to adopt the schedule as proposed by staff now that we we make this change. All right. Is there a second? Commissioner Surma seconds the motion. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the meeting schedule proposed by city staff. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed. All right. That has the motion has passed.

All right. The next thing would be uh liaison reports. Um, uh, city council, I have no, uh, I have no report. Uh, community services advisory, I have no report. All right. Um, H um, it's not here. Uh, school board report, right? Transportation.

Yes. The transportation commission uh received and discussed a presentation by Henipin County regarding the proposed Penn Avenue reconstruction which is due for 2028. Uh there's ongoing community engagement regarding that. Um Nicollet Avenue is still scheduled to be reconstructed this summer, but uh the the main focus now is on u planning and community engagement for what the future shape of Penn Avenue quarter will look like uh once that goes under construction. So get involved and uh give your feedback. Uh there's still time to engage on that matter. All right. Uh Chamber of Commerce.

Um only update I've got is that the commerce is already planning Fourth of July in Penfest and they're needing some sponsorships and they're adding a car show to Penfest. A car show. All right. Uh, sustainability. Uh, big things are that the fix it hub is continuing each second and fourth Wednesday of the month through February. Um, and there are several events coming up this year, including Earth Day, shredding and small appliances, recycling, and garden tools.

Thank you very much. Um, now we have the uh city planners report and presentations. Uh, planner Crosby.

Thank you, chair and commissioners. Um, you'll see in the packet I provided just some data on um, the things that we do on a day-to-day basis, in case you ever wondered. Um, on January 13th, the city council held a joint work session with the HR to review a revised sketch plan from the Legion and they discussed design expectations, the mix of affordability, and uh, the video is available if if you're interested. Um, on January 27th, the city council approved the MICC's, uh, which is the Minnesota Independence Community College. Um, actually, it's college and community. I always say that backwards for some reason. um they approved their request for land use entitlements. And then on February 10th, the city council held a joint work session um with two of you to review draft request for proposals to solicit consultants to assist with the comprehensive plan update. Um I have since uh posted uh the RFP for so it is out for the consultants to um bid on and the deadline is at the end of uh March uh to to submit. Um, also I wanted to um since I bothered to make it um I had uh I had been asked by the transportation commission to put together a presentation on um planning and land use for the Penn Avenue corridor and um didn't really um I had to do a little bit of a little bit of research to figure out what that presentation on the Pen Avenue corridor might look like and since I had bothered to put it together I thought I would um also show you guys there There was a brief discussion about having a joint um meeting between the planning commission and the and um the transportation commission to talk about uh but their agenda was so packed it um it made more sense for me to just give

the presentation again. So um pull it up here and then give me a second and then Okay. And you still has the old date on it. Um, so I've learned that the Penn Avenue corridor has been studied many times over the decades. The corridor has a few characteristics that make it particularly challenging. There has always been a tension between the busier commercial corridor on the north side of 68th which is shown in the aerial photo here and the quieter more residential leg south of 68th. the commercial portion. Um the parcels as you can actually see here the parcels on the east side which is um the bottom are um yeah below the um the roadway uh are uh quite small really uh and especially when compared to the parcels on the west side. Um, as a pedestrian, the street is not very crossable and it uh therefore feels disconnected, just to name a few. Um, in 2008, the Penn Avenue corridor master revitalization plan and design guidelines were developed to act as a guide to facilitate and direct future development in this area. But these documents assume assumed a significant amount of redevelopment that may not be practical given uh many things including economic conditions and the difficulty of parcel assembly. Um the current comprehensive plan describes the corridor as 60%

residential and 40% um like retail, business, recreational. Um, at first that didn't seem uh when I first came to the city that didn't quite um seem right and I thought, isn't this primarily a commercial corridor? But the reason for the greater emphasis on housing is twofold. First, a previous market study indicated that the corridor already had more commercial than the neighborhood could support. This implied that commercial intensification was unlikely. And second, the zoning allows for mixed use in this area. If properties were redeveloped, the hope is that the new buildings would be ground floor commercial with housing above, resulting in far more residential floor area than commercial. More recently, in 2021, a corridor study was conducted. However, it was interrupted by COVID and ultimately the study was only accepted and not adopted. There is one element of that plan that we are hoping will be carried forward and that is the vignettes. These were little kind of almost nano studies just two or three parcels maybe four at most at a time that explored the potential to take advantage of some amenity sharing between parcels such as vehicular access parking and circulation. Now, this was part will hopefully be more interesting to you than it was to the transportation commission, but um I told them that you don't get to invite a planner to your meeting without her talking about zoning. So, um there are two zoning districts that regulate this area, and we're specifically talking about the commercial area here. The first is the mixeduse community zoning district, which um is the what we call the underlying zoning district. It intends to provide a balanced mix of

uses between recreational, commercial, residential. Um, vertical mixing of uses is encouraged, but is only required if a parcel is more than two acres in in size, and there really isn't any I think there's one parcel that's more than two acres in size. Parking ratios are slightly lower than in other commercial districts, and setbacks are less, promoting a more compact and intense form of development. The Penn Avenue corridor overlay district impacts the underlying district by usually modifying it in some way. So, it's going to add something or remove something. Um, in this case, such modifications include prohibiting auto repair and detailing. The twotory minimum require building height requirement is waved. In other words, one story is allowed and maximum building heights are reduced from 12 stories to eight and a mix of uses is not required. So, some things that we may want to think about in relation to how these two um overlay or these two zoning districts work together. Um we could um and then you know maybe even through the comprehensive plan there would be discussion about this um tweak the overlay district um to maybe uh better reflect the design guidelines that were done back in 20 uh 2008. Um further restrict autooriented uses or maybe regulate where office is allowed. Maybe there's no office on the ground floor. It's only a certain percentage of the ground floor. Um, and the the overlay district waves the two-story minimum requirement. Is singlestory redevelopment really desired? And maybe we allow one story, but we only allow it for existing uses. Um, and then we could also take a look

at further reducing parking requirements if it's maybe in exchange for other amen pedestrian oriented amenities, things that we're we're looking for. Um, so I I gave them a brief update about the Penn Station uh project which you guys which came before you guys. Um, in short, it's a five-story 42 unit multifamily building uh that's currently under construction. Uh, the building is fully affordable but geared towards families with several larger units in an indoor play area. And then um generally in relation to this corridor, there's definitely a desire to balance keeping open the possibility for redevelopment um while encouraging reinvestment in the interim. And that's that's a tricky that's a tricky balance. The city is currently working on a new small business program called Revive. And the goal is to assist businesses or property owners with sprucing up older buildings, which Penn has a predominance of. And I think the threshold would be 30 years or more. Yeah, that's old. We're going to put that old in quotes. So, I also let them know that the 2050 comprehensive plan update um is uh getting starting to get started. Um hopefully we'll maybe have somebody on board by the end of May or the middle of June and um overall the meat of the work is done over the next two and a half years and the draft plan needs to be complete by the middle of 2028 in order for the final plan to be submitted to the C Met Council by December 31st of 2028. Um the Met Council is looking for increased density along transit corridors and Penn Avenue is a transit corridor. However, um the current comprehensive plan already calls for 25 to 100 units per acre in this area. So,

um the 20 the minimum 25 is what the Met Council was looking for and and we've already we're already um calling for that. So, I don't know that any um density changes would um necessarily be a must in this area with the next comp plan update. Um but is of course something we could consider. Um regarding um the redesign of Pen Avenue, we had some internal and when I mean internal, I mean it wasn't even with public works. It was just literally the planners in the office. We talked about some of the things that um that uh some of the aspects of redesign and we kind of um kind of came to a general came to a general consensus internally that on street parking could potentially be traded for on-site parking and there may be places along the corridor where doing so is advantageous. Uh greenery is a priority. Consolidation of access points may be acceptable in locations where it will not adversely impact functionality. And where feasible, owners are encouraged to share access and parking to the benefit of all. And this is that point where we're hopeful that a let's work together kind of mentality will arise with some of those where some of those vignettes can be brought to life. And then finally, um, once the county does land on a preferred roadway design for Penn Avenue, the city might want to revisit and refresh the Pen Avenue design guidelines. Um, I thought this was a really helpful map. Um personally um kind of giving a hierarchy to um the roadways but the land kind of the building configuration is um was that you know mass redevelopment um scenario

that I guess they they thought was going to happen. Um, and so maybe adding a little bit more maybe maybe modifying this to be a little bit more grounded in um, honoring some of our existing businesses and um, and some of the existing kind of articulation along this roadway. Um, our design guidelines appear to focus on new construction. So it would be good to reook at them through the lens of building expansions and repurposing the greenest building as an existing building. So um I believe yeah that's the end of my presentation. Do you have any questions?

What kind of feedback did you get?

Um uh I was asked about um five over one which is where the ground floor is um commercial and the upper floors the upper four floors are residential. It's very um how do you like cookie cutter form of like a lot of projects are five over one um and it does usually um it does usually lend itself to um that the ground floor commercial or larger spaces and they want um more um tried and trueue commercial tenants. They they want a Starbucks. They want somebody that knows that they can finance it, that they're going to stay there. So it doesn't really lend itself to um like mom and pop type local startups, those types of things. So that that's um although a you know we would love to see that type of redevelopment. That's great. We we get the best of both worlds. We get commercial and we get residential. Um we also have to balance that with um you know being sensitive to our existing businesses and new businesses. Um the other thing is that basically the redesign needs to ac be able to accommodate both basically. So when we're talking about yes we'd love to see redevelopment but also and we need to reinvest in in in the great in what's there now that then the roadway needs to do both.

Question um can you talk a little bit about um on street versus onsite parking kind of what the implications are for both options and maybe how we might think about that a little bit um as far as planning perspective and from transportation perspective. Um I think that the on street parking if there if the right of way can accommodate um some on street parking then maybe the onsite parking could be converted into something else that's more pedestrian friendly. There's a lot of parking in front of in front of buildings that is almost heading off of the roadway sometimes. And um that space right in front of the building is is prime, you know, could be prime real estate for something a little bit um more pedestrianoriented. And if we can then if we are able to work with the county to get the same number of stalls on the street, then that could potentially be a win designwise.

Yeah, I agree with that. I thought I remember in the presentation that almost seemed like the perspective was inverse but maybe I I misread that on the slide or remember that. What do you mean inverse? Uh in the in your the note you four points from your conversation. Yeah, I thought I I remembered uh yeah so possible that on street parking may be able to be traded for on-site parking. Oh, like I wrote it backwards. Right. Like don't we wouldn't we rather have Yeah. on street parking rather than on-site parking?

Yeah. I think um we are looking at where there may be opportunities for on street parking so that we could um utilize the spaces that the area that is now taken up by on-site parking for other things. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So it' be more of a public parking type of situation for sure. And just as a side note, I mean, I'd be curious, you know, for the city to explore with on street parking, hopefully when things become dense, the idea of paid parking and how the idea of metered parking might encourage walkability and actually would encourage turnover

turnover, which would be really great. And it has an inverse effect that you'd expect from it. More people tend to visit when they know they can readily find parking rather than kept by someone who's been there for three and a half days.

Yeah. Thank you. Um before we uh before we would adjourn, I want to thank Commissioner Cany for for his work with us on the planning commission and I think that we all wish for healing and health for you and your family and we'll miss your presence with us. sold so much. I loved it all the same.

Uh, no, seriously. Uh, thank you and just good luck going forward. It's always going to be good stuff. All right. Um, thank you again. Um, I would entertain um a motion to adjourn. Commissioner Canaly, I would like to move that we adjourn. All right. And a second. Commissioner Charles seconds. Moved and seconded to adjurnn. All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed. We stand ajourned.