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Current Events
- If you or people in your area want to meet and discuss current/future topics related to the city, reach out to me to set up a time to visit. (email, phone call, or in person)
- As you're driving on the river road by Stephens' park, you'll notice construction on the south side of the road. That's the new central water system treatment facility in progress.
- Many of you are familiar with the phrase "rural look and feel" or "rural character." Dayton residents have said this is important to them and I agree. It's even in our mission statement. We've had a couple work sessions on the topic and I believe it'll result in a list of ideas we will be prioritizing for the future. If you have ideas, please let me know.
Work Session (Park Commission Update)
This was a presentation given by the Park Commission on their accomplishments over the past year and a discussion on a future Community Park.
This Community Park discussion focused on roughly 5 things:
- Definition - an athletic park with the addition of other attractions such as a splash pad / shelter
- Size - 40 to 80 acres
- If you look at the Hennepin County Property map (click here), anything above 40 is going to be hard to come by.
- Expected cost (just for the land) - from $30k to 120k an acre
- that's $1.2M to $9.6M
- Urgency - The Parks commission and council felt there wasn't much of a urgent need for this.
- While our recent city survey showed there was a significant number of residents wanting a large park like this, the question didn't indicate the cost at all and our experience is that that made this question flawed.
- Partners - While the CDAA has been actively pushing for this, there are other possible partners on our other borders.
The resulting direction to staff was to continue to keep an eye out for land that might work.
My personal thoughts are that we should be keeping an eye out, and to some level be actively looking for land. I also believe the next survey we do should be better prepared with a question that clearly indicates the level of taxation residents are ok with for this type of a park.
Item F (Oppidan Concept Plan Review)
This was for an industrial development just east of the Cubes warehouse. This was to plat the southern 15 of the 32 acres there. The building would be a 200,000 sq. ft. warehouse.
Some of the discussion was on dealing with the properties to the east of this development since it's possible they could be guided non-residential when that area is re-planned in the near future.
Another concern was how the warehouse was presented to drivers along the Parkway. As the plan is today, the truck side of the warehouse will be to the north so southbound drives will see that side. Staff and at least one member of the planning commission felt the building should be broke into 3 and rotated 90 degrees to hide the truck side. Nobody on the council felt that was warranted. It makes the buildings much more expensive and it's in an industrial area... where there are trucks...
Item G (Parkway Neighborhood Final Plat)
This was to approve the final plat for the medium-high density residential development on the south -east side of the interchange. Getting the final numbers / financing figured out involved some juggling. In the end, the city will build the road to the property. That road will benefit not only this development but also any to the west.
Item H (Public Notification Requirements)
Whenever a public hearing is required, notification letters have to go out to neighboring properties. The problem is, the notification area is defined in state statute and exceeded by a city ordinance and is a fixed amount whether it's just a use permit for a garage or a massive development. This was to adjust the ordinance so there was a difference between these types of activities. The decision was to keep it at 500 feet around requests that aren't likely to generate interest and 1200 feet around the rest.
Item I (Ag3 Zone)
This will create an Ag zone that will allow smaller than 40 acre splits that allow homes. We started this exercise a couple of years ago and realized we had opposition from developers, staff, and our own Planning Commission. That opposition resulted in an ordinance that was virtually unusable which the council unanimously rejected. This time there were a number of factors on our side which resulted in finally getting something closer to where I wanted us to be. Unfortunately a wrinkle in it will render it unusable by most property owners but it gets us towards a better place in my opinion.
There was some concern about the Met Council having a problem with it... but every time I challenge that there ends up being no substance behind it. Even when the Met Council was here in a previous meeting they weren't able to back up that assertion.
What was passed would allow larger than 1.5 acre (buildable) unsewered lots on developments that would be required to average 10 acres per lot. In other words, if you have 20 acres you could split those into 2 lots as long as the smallest was greater than 1.5 acres buildable. That could be 10 and 10, 18.5 and 1.5, etc.
What Sara and I wanted was a simpler solution and that was a minimum lot size of 3 acres without the 10 acre average.
A few things to keep in mind...
- The land will still be guided low density residential for when sewer does get to the property
- This is limited (today) to properties (roughly) west of Zanzibar and north of South Diamond.
- The properties will need to comply with 1 of a few options to show it'll be possible to develop in the future with sewered lots. One of those ways is to ghost plot it (show how homes could be positioned in the future).
In my opinion the 10 acre average significantly reduces the ability for this to work for most land owners, but as I stated, it's a step forward.
If you have any questions about how this could work for you, feel free to contact staff or myself.
Item J (Strategic Plan)
This was just to approve the plan we've been working on for the past few meetings. As always, this is a plan and could get adjustments at any time.
Feel free to tact me with questions / concerns.