CCP 03-13-1995 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

I :. 2:.~i:? '?,'2:!':'. l6"70 GleDT.Tle\-l C::::..::.rt. 'Zl.Y',-L:>n u-i 11 c.: MN 5511:2-23Q7 ~*-~~.. .._~---~, 612/636-4359 ;~'!:J ~: ;1 () ~1':;Jh ',', , Marc~ 3, 1995 I '.L.' Mr. Pr;;:),...., ];'''''';+--'::;1''1'''':::::'''''''' ......~..;.......~. ~..;........~..;........*.':l~..;.. I City of Arden Bills 1450 West Hight.\ray 96 Arden Hills, Minnesota 55112-5794 I , He: IT:::. 1 .::::.n+; n;:::. wi 1 1 c nC.~TO 1 r'lnm.on1- ~ ~-4__"'-""'."'-' _.................~ -'-'~ v '-.....~.t,-"."......*~ Dear Mr. Fritsinger: I First I would like to thank you for your time on the phone this morning and for assuring me that this letter will be copied and I distributed to all city council and planning commission members. I do appreciate your willingness to listen and to answer questions. I had called you Thursday morning because I wanted to clarify, from my perspective, what happened at the public hearing Wednesday night. I Further, I wanted to ask what could be done so these processes might go more smoothly in the future. Thank you for returning my call. II From the wording of the hearing notices we received on or about February 16, many of us believed that the issues to be discussed concerned Ifan application for a site plan review" and "an application to amend the land use plan of the city." Had the notices stated more clearly that the I land ltlas already "apparently owned (purchased) by the develoDer" instead of 3ethel College, we might have inferred that the issue was single and narrow in scope (concerning only details of the PUD) and that the larger question of the land use plan was moot because of the zoning and signed I purchase agreement. (One commissioner attempted, perhaps, to allude to the truth of the si~uation by noting, in the middle of the hearing, that the city could not completely dictate what owners might to do with their I land. ) By the end of the hearing, the citizens in attendance were clearly experiencing frustration on many counts. They had arrived with a concern I about possibly losing a piece of land that most thought was part of the county open space. To many peoples' understanding, this issue was the purpose of the hearing. Frustration mounted as we realized that the development plan had already gone beyond its preliminary phase and that I only a few details were at issue. Thus we came to understand that the purpose of the meeting 1,.;a3 not to discuss the Dossible loss of the land to development but rather to revie'w some limited options for its apparently I inevitable de~Ielopment . The developer's belated statements that he held a signed purchase agreement and would "hold Bethel College to it" simply put most people over the edge, so to speak. I These "misunderstandings"--that seemed to some people to be more accurately !'misrepresentations"--caused several to say they had come to a , hearing held under false pretenses. The crucial and underlying issue of open versus developed space in the city's plan was not even available for discussion, and the determining fact of the signed purchase agreement had been 1,.;i thheld from us until the end. Essentially, it seemed that this was I