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03-07-05 PC Minutes e e e Regular Meeting of the Golden Valley Planning Commission March 7, 2005 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, March 7, 2005. Chair Keysser called the meeting to order at 7 pm. Those present were Commissioners Hackett, Keysser, McAleese, Rasmussen, Schmidgall and Waldhauser. Also present were Director of Planning and Development, Mark Grimes and Administrative Assistant, Lisa Wittman. Commissioner Eck was absent. Keysser stated that this was Commissioner McAleeses' last meeting and thanked him for his twenty years of service. I. Approval of Minutes February 28, 2005 Planning Commission Meeting MOVED by McAleese, seconded by Hackett and motion carried unanimously to approve the February 28,2005 minutes as submitted. II. Informal Public Hearing - PUD No. 87 Amendment #2 - Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America - Phase II Applicant: Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America Address: 5701 Golden Hills Drive Purpose: To allow for the construction of the Phase II portion of the PUD approved in 2000 - consisting of a 200,000 square foot office building and parking ramp addition. Grimes explained that the PUD ordinance was changed recently and it is now a requirement that the final plan of development for PUDs have an informal public hearing at the Planning Commission in addition to the public hearing before the City Council. Grimes referred to a site map and pointed out the Allianz campus located along 1-394 at Xenia Avenue. Grimes stated that the original Allianz PUD was approved by the City Council in 2000 which included the Phase I Building and Phase I parking ramp. He explained that the second phase was in the original plans and conceptually, it was approved by the City Council, however, it did not receive final approval and it was the understanding that Allianz would come back at a later date for final approval of the Phase II building. Grimes referred to the site plans and explained that the building on the site now is a 10- story, 600,000 square foot building and that the Phase II addition is a 6-story, 200,000 square foot, addition with a parking ramp addition that brings the total amount of parking Minutes of the Golden Valley Planning Commission March 7, 2005 Page 2 e on the site to approximately 2,500 spaces. He reminded the Planning Commission that an amendment was granted to this PUD last year which allowed Allianz to install a temporary parking lot where the Phase II building is proposed to be located to accommodate some additional employees. He said that this parking lot will be removed as a part of this Phase II addition. Grimes stated that he believes this proposal is consistent with the original PUD that was approved in April of 2000. He said there have been a couple of minor changes proposed such as the shape of the proposed building, a two-story connection link to the parking ramp with an auditorium for their own internal use during the day and potential community use at night with training facilities along the connection link as well. Grimes referred to the parking plan and explained that there will be a total of 2,500 parking spaces on the site. 2,200 of those will be in the ramp and 250 will be surface parking. He stated that there may be more than 2,400 employees, but the traffic management plan says they have to control traffic from the site, so even if there are more than 2,400 employees, staff believes the parking plan will meet their needs because analysis shows that about 85% of their employees would be on site at anyone time. He added that if for some reason there were to be congestion problems during the am and pm peak hours their traffic management plan would then have to go into effect to reduce peak hour traffic. e Grimes stated that another thing Allianz has added to this proposal is a full basement under the Phase II building. He said he doesn't have any issues with that because it will be used only for mechanicals and computers and no employees will be housed in that area. Grimes referred to City Engineer Jeff Oliver's memo and pointed out that the City will be requiring a $100,000 cash escrow to be used to do future traffic improvements along Golden Hills Drive. He added that the issue of platting the property into either one lot or three lots still needs to be addressed. Keysser asked if there is any traffic data on which direction traffic is coming from to get into the Allianz site. Grimes said the primary way people get to the site is via the 1-394, Xenia intersection. He added that traffic is going the way that it was anticipated to go and that it hasn't had the peak hour effect that staff originally thought it might because of the flexible work hours at Allianz. Rasmussen asked what the advantage is to having three lots instead of one lot. Grimes stated that buildings located over property lines could cause future problems and there could be setback issues as well. e Rasmussen referred to the traffic management plan and said that it states that there would be an initial traffic survey conducted and than another survey would be done two years after the first one. A comparison of the two surveys would show if Allianz had met their established percentage reduction goal. She asked if the City has the data from those surveys. e e e Minutes of the Golden Valley Planning Commission March 7,2005 Page 3 Grimes stated that the surveys have been done and that a significant amount of traffic analysis has been done on the 1-394 Corridor and the traffic analysis in this area has just been updated. He said that staff feels that traffic is working as per this traffic management plan or actually better. Rasmussen asked if the surveys are available. Grimes said they are available at City Hall. Rasmussen said she hasn't heard any complaints about the traffic compared to the difficulty people thought there might be. Grimes said that traffic was the biggest concern when the original Allianz PUD was approved and that this was the first traffic management plan ever implemented. He stated that staff feels that what Allianz has done, along with the improvements that have been made to the street system has worked well. However, the second building still has to be built and the Olympic Printing site still needs to be developed, but staff does feel confident that even with the additional development, traffic will still move at an acceptable level. Keysser asked where the bus stop referred to in Oliver's memo is located. Grimes referred to the site plan and pointed out the bus stop location. He stated that the Public Works department doesn't feel that it is working well where it is, so they are recommending that the bus stop location be changed. Keysser asked what isn't working right. Grimes said that buses are blocking the through lane of traffic and that it is not working as well as staff originally anticipated. Keysser asked about the parking spaces that the City Engineer recommended be removed. Grimes pointed out the spaces along Golden Hills Drive and the spaces located along the curve in the south west corner of the site. Waldhauser referred to the parking and asked if the proposed expanded training area and auditorium would be used for sales meetings which would bring in a lot of traffic on an occasional basis. Grimes said that the training and auditorium areas will be used by Allianz employees and that some people may come from off site. He said that when Allianz has done that in the past, they bus the employees to the site so there won't be an additional parking burden placed on the site or on the employees. Waldhauser asked about the percentage of property coverage for the buildings and the driveways and parking. She said that it seems that the building footprint seems to be a little bit smaller than it could be and the parking and driveways are a little larger than normally allowed. She asked if that was a trade-off when the original PUD was approved. Grimes said yes. He explained that there are no ponds on this site because the run-off is directed into the nearby pond provided as part of the redevelopment district. He said staff feels that Allianz has done a good job on their landscaping and that offsets some of the hard space they do have but it still meets the water quality requirements. Ed Fitzpatrick, Allianz Life, stated that currently they have about 400 employees that work off site and that they have a desire to move them back to their main campus. He said that it is their objective to be a continued good citizen of Golden Valley. He explained that the issue of platting the property into three lots versus one is a financial matter and it would allow Allianz to sell, subdivide or mortgage the properties separately whereas, having one lot means they have to be kept all together. Minutes of the Golden Valley Planning Commission March 7, 2005 Page 4 e He referred to the issue of peak time traffic and explained that they have broad start and ending times for their employees to help spread out some of the congestion on the site and that they also have employees that telecommute which also helps alleviate some of the traffic issues. Tom DeAngelo, Architectural Alliance, Architect for project, stated that he thinks about 40% of the site is devoted to green space and in his mind the hard surface area is considerably less as a percentage of the total site than what the normal ordinances require. He said that was part of their decision to build a ramp five years ago instead of having surface parking everywhere. He said he was not sure what Commissioner Waldhauser was referring to in her question regarding the percentage of property coverage. Waldhauser said the surface parking is 23% and the zoning limit is 20% and the building footprint was 35% but the code would allow up to 40% so the total is a couple of percent under the limit and that 40% would be the minimum green space and Allianz does exceed that. DeAngelo said he was under the impression that the minimum green space was significantly less than 40% in terms of the City's zoning and that Allianz had exceeded that in the master plan five years ago. He said overall they felt good about the amount of landscape and green space on the campus and Allianz's commitment to allow green space. e DeAngelo showed the Commission several pictures, elevations and renderings of the proposed building, the connection link, the landscaping and the ramp additions. Hackett asked DeAngelo to talk about how the community may be able to use the auditorium in the future. DeAngelo explained that Allianz intends to use the auditorium for large corporate internal meetings and for training for their on site employees. He said that the auditorium will be able to house approximately 300-400 people. Fitzpatrick added that Allianz has historically supported a lot of community events and that there are several groups that use the Allianz board rooms, conference rooms and cafeteria. He stated that they have an individual on staff that coordinates community events and activities. He added that Allianz realizes their role as a community member and if there are groups that have a need, they try to accommodate them the best they can. Keysser opened the public hearing. Seeing and hearing no one, Keysser closed the public hearing. Schmidgall said he is inclined to support this request and that everything they have seen is consistent with what was originally approved. He said he is very pleased to have a premier facility like this in Golden Valley and that they provide a real important tax base and job base in the community. e McAleese said he would support the proposal as well and that it seems to be consistent to the plans approved by the Council five years ago. He referred to condition number five in Mark Grimes' staff report regarding the use of the auditorium by Allianz employees during regular business hours. He said it seems to him that Allianz would not want to use the auditorium for outside groups during normal business hours but that it doesn't matter if they do because their traffic management plan would kick in. Grimes agreed and said Minutes of the Golden Valley Planning Commission March 7, 2005 Page 5 . that it probably isn't necessary to include that condition. McAleese said he has witnessed a number of near accidents on Golden Hills Drive where it narrows toward the railroad tracks to the west. He said that is not an Allianz problem, but rather a street problem and he hopes the City will address that issue. Grimes said that is exactly one of the things the City is looking at when improving Golden Hills Drive. Waldhauser said she agrees with what the other Commissioners have said. Keysser said he too agrees and strongly supports this proposal as well. MOVED by Waldhauser, seconded by Hackett and motion carried unanimously to recommend approval to the City Council to allow for the construction of the Phase II portion of the Allianz PUD approved in 2000 - consisting of a 200,000 square foot office building and parking ramp addition. -Short Recess- III. Reports on Meetings of the Housing and Redevelopment Authority, City Council, Board of Zoning Appeals and other Meetings Waldhauser reported on the February 22 Board of Zoning Appeals meeting where the Board approved a variance extension request at 7101 Madison Ave. W. e No other meetings were discussed. IV. Other Business A) Election of Officers MOVED by Waldhauser, seconded by Hackett and motion carried unanimously to nominate Keysser as Chair. MOVED by Keysser, seconded by Rasmussen and motion carried unanimously to nominate Waldhauser as Vice Chair. MOVED by Schmidgall, seconded by Keysser and motion carried unanimously to nominate Eck as Secretary. B) Envision Discussion Grimes suggested that the Envision discussion be a special meeting or that they have a discussion about Envision before another future Planning Commission meeting. The Commissioners agreed. . V. Adjournment The meeting adjourned at 8:10 pm.