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City Council – Arden Hills August 17, 2017 Page 7 K:\03455-150\Admin\Meeting\08212017\WSB HE Study Memo 08162017.docx 1. Add “or entirely online” to the attendance type for the additional students that Bethel is trying to attract. 2. Provided updated Fall 2016 student types data. 3. Clarify that Bethel expects that 50% of 4,000 additional students will take their classes entirely online. 4. Request that information be added about how Bethel is a good neighbor including providing recreational opportunities to Arden Hills residents without any cost to the City of Arden Hills. 5. Request that the amount of capital construction costs, employment, and total expenditures provided by Bethel be added to the report. 6. Request that the number and economic impact of visitors of Bethel be added to the report. 7. Supports the creation of the INST – Institutional zoning district. 8. Proposes that the City rezone the Anderson Center property (2 Pine Tree Dr) to the new INST – Institutional zoning district. 9. Prefer no limitation on how much of the B-2 district can be occupied by higher education uses, but that if there is a cap, that the cap is based on the total land area of B-2, not total building area. 10. Expressed a concern about the limitation on HVAC equipment for in the B-2 CUP criteria. Bethel has proposed language that this limitation is not intended to limit biology or medical lab classrooms. Adding the information from comments 1 to 3 regarding the type of students that they are recruiting, as well as comment 4 about their status as a good neighbor, and that information would not change the recommendations within the report. The comments regarding 50% of the new students taking class online may even strengthen the question of why Bethel would need additional building space when their campus master plan shows additional buildings and that half of the new students wouldn’t use that new space. The economic information from comments 5 and 6 can be added for Bethel, but that same information for all of the commercial and industrial businesses within Arden Hills is not readily available and beyond the scope of this study. The information provided by Bethel are positive economic factors for the community, but it should be noted that the capital construction costs do not result in any additional property taxes paid due to their tax-exempt status. Comment 7 supports the proposed INST zoning district and comment 8 requests that the Anderson Center be added to the INST district. A difference between the Anderson Center and the traditional campuses of both Bethel and Northwestern is their Comprehensive Plan designations. The Anderson Center is guided CMU – Community Mixed Use while the traditional campuses are guided for P/I – Public & Institutional. If the City Council choose to rezone the Anderson Center to INST, then a Comprehensive Plan amendment to the P/I guiding would be required as well. The preference to eliminate the limitation within comment 9 would be counter to previous City Council direction, but the City Council did not state a specific number or percentage of that limitation. Changing the limitation to a percentage of the total land area would be easier to implement, but may actually be detrimental to the amount of higher education uses in the B-2 zoning district. It is likely that new buildings will be built and existing buildings will be expanded creating additional room for higher education uses, but it is less likely that additional land within Arden Hills will be added to the B-2 zoning district.