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ARDEN HILLS CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION – OCTOBER 27, 2025 3 Councilmember Holden wanted to understand the cannabis portion of this business model. She asked if they want to use 61,000 square feet for cannabis storage. Mr. Champeau said they are requesting up to 57,000 square feet. Councilmember Holden asked what will happen in those 57,000 square feet. Mr. Champeau said it will be strictly for warehousing wholesale products. Councilmember Holden asked if it will be wrapped product stacked floor to ceiling. Mr. Champeau confirmed, with an office component for a larger company. Councilmember Holden wanted to know how many people will be employed by users of that 57,000 square feet of cannabis warehousing. Mr. Champeau said his company would act as the landlord and won’t have any employees. Councilmember Holden said if we don’t know how many total employees there are, it can’t be determined how many parking spaces will be needed or if there will be traffic issues. Mr. Champeau said it would be in line with the rest of the building’s use of about 90% warehouse and 10% office. Community Development Director Reilly said there would be a requirement for a traffic study based on the final CUP application. That will have a low estimate based on five employees per business entity operating in the warehouse. The traffic study can look at what traffic will be if there are five employees or two entities with five employees each or two entities with 15 employees each. Because there is no end user in mind yet, the specific number of employees is unknown. The proposed maximum number of employees is 30. If Council would like the applicant to consider having three or five users, the maximum would go up by that number. That is one of the items the applicant is hoping to hear from Council. Is there a maximum? Councilmember Holden understands all of that but she is trying to figure out if there is a better use for that area. We want high paying jobs. We want good jobs. If it’s a cannabis warehouse, maybe they’ll employ 30 people. Community Development Director Reilly confirmed. He said Council can let the applicant know what employment base they are hoping for in this area. Mr. Champeau said they won’t propose anything that exceeds what existing parking allows. If a company came to them and said they want to take all 57,000 feet and they have 200 employees, they couldn’t do that. The parking would not allow that. Councilmember Weber said he doesn’t think this will take up the one sales license that Arden Hills is allowing. He assumes there will be some kind of licensing but it won’t allow for the sale of product from this location. He supports this use. He asked how long this 57,000 square feet has sat empty.