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10-25-04 PC Minutes Regular Meeting of the Golden Valley Planning Commission October 25, 2004 A regular meeting of the Planning Commission was held at the Golden Valley City Hall, Council Chambers, 7800 Golden Valley Road, Golden Valley, Minnesota, on Monday, October 25, 2004. Chair Keysser called the meeting to order at 7 pm. Those present were Chair Keysser, Commissioners Eck, McAleese, Rasmussen, Schmidgall and Waldhauser. Also present were Director of Planning and Development, Mark Grimes and Administrative Assistant, Lisa Wittman. Commissioner Hackett was absent. I. Informal Public Hearing - Revised Planned Unit Development (PUD) Section 11.55 of the Zoning Code Applicant: City of Golden Valley e Purpose: To approve the updated PUD Ordinance Grimes stated that the Planning Commission has gone over this revised PUD ordinance a number of times and said they can approve this version or make corrections and get it back again. Bill Thibault, Thibault Associates, reminded the Commissioners of their joint meeting with the Council back in July and discussed the changes that were made to the PUD ordinance as a result of that meeting. Waldhauser asked if they should talk about substantial changes or if they should discuss the ordinance page by page. Grimes said they should send it to the Council how they want it to look and if there are major format errors they should be discussed now. e Schmidgall said he is inclined to approve the ordinance as is and he feels that they went over it in depth at their joint meeting. McAleese said the last revision he saw was in March so he doesn't have an opinion on this most recent revision. He said if the Planning Commission is happy with the basic form then they should go ahead with their recommendation, but he is not prepared to get too involved at this meeting. Keysser asked if a PUD goes with the project or with the land. Thibault said that in his view it goes with the property because it is an ordinance and an ordinance would have to be repealed. Grimes added that a PUD could be revoked if they don't meet the standards. Keysser referred to the section regarding private streets and asked why the City would permit someone to do a private street if we don't want private streets. Grimes explained that the City typically does not like to allow private streets, but there are some situations that are so severe that allowing them puts the burden of maintenance on them, instead of the City. Thibault stated that there may be a situation where there are some 100 year old oak trees and if the City were to build a public street they would have to follow certain Minutes of the Planning Commission October 25, 2004 Page 2 standards, whereas if it was a private street maybe the City would allow the street to be built narrower in order to save the trees. McAleese said the whole issue of the streets is a contentious one. He said he believes in the concept that streets should be public unless they just can't. He said it seems like this ordinance doesn't emphasize that enough. Thibault referred to the section in the ordinance that states private streets shall not be approved unless a waiver is granted by the City. Keysser referred to the design standards for private streets and asked if they could be tied into the homes covenants or association. McAleese said he thinks it should be stated that the City "prefers" public streets. e Waldhauser referred to page 318 and said that section is not formatted correctly. Keysser opened the public hearing. Hearing and seeing no one, Keysser closed the public hearing. MOVED by Rasmussen, seconded by Waldhauser and motion carried 6 to 1 to recommend approval of the revised PUD section of the zoning code. Commissioner McAleese abstained from voting. -- Short Recess -- II. Reports on Meetings of the Housing and Redevelopment Authority, City Council, Board of Zoning Appeals and other Meetings No other meetings were discussed. e III. Other Business A. Discuss Off-Street Parking Study prepared by Bill Thibault Grimes stated that the City hired Bill Thibault of Thibault Associates to prepare a study regarding the City's off-street parking requirements. He said he also asked him to create some design standards as well. Bill Thibault, Thibault Associates stated that he inventoried other city's ordinances and almost all of them put their parking requirements in one place in their code. He explained that he did a comparative analysis with Minnetonka, Roseville, St. Louis Park and Plymouth. He referred to a chart in his analysis and discussed how Golden Valley's requirements compare to those other cities. Thibault referred to a table in his analysis and said that in most cases the number of spaces the City had approved didn't exactly match what was being used on the site. He explained that he did his study for the months of May and October because they aren't high vacation months. Minutes of the Planning Commission October 25, 2004 Page 3 Rasmussen asked why Thibault's report recommends against stacking. Thibault said it is to encourage people to park in the parking spaces and not to stack out into the street at drive-thru windows. Schmidgall said it is very rare that 100% of the on-site parking is used and he thinks the City consistently requires more parking than what is needed. Eck referred to the manufacturing sites that were discussed and questioned the validity of them. He said the numbers don't compute and asked Thibault why he chose those particular sites. Grimes explained that coming up with strictly manufacturing sites is difficult because a lot of times there is a mixed use at sites. Thibault discussed how it would be better to base restaurant parking on square footage rather than the number of seats, but that churches and auditoriums should be based on _ the number of seats. Grimes said it is important to him to have the parking ordinance in one section of the code. Thibault agreed that it is to the City's advantage to have one list of all the requirements because it makes amendments easier. Thibault discussed the list of design standards that Grimes distributed and discussed aisle width, landscaping, lighting, space dimensions, snow plowing and snow storage. Waldhauser asked Thibault if he has seen any cities starting to do something regarding larger vehicles. Thibault said he thinks it is good to have one set of standards and to not have separate standards for larger vehicles because it is to hard to enforce and there is no guarantee that the people with the large vehicles would use those spots. e Schmidgall asked how this proposed parking ordinance would be enforced. Grimes said it would probably be enforced most times through a PUD or CUP permit MOVED by Eck, seconded by Rasmussen and motion carried unanimously to allow Thibault and Associates to write a draft ordinance regarding off street parking requirements which will be brought back to the Planning Commission at a future date. B. Discuss rescheduling the November 22, 2004 Planning Commission Meeting Keysser said he would not be able to attend a Planning Commission meeting on November 22 but the other Commissioners said they could. Grimes said the meeting would be cancelled only if there were no agenda items. IV. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 8:35.