HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-13-14-WS--
Dave McClung
www.cityofardenhills.org
Ed Werner
Arden Hills is a strong community that values its unique environmental setting, strong residential
neighborhoods, vital business community, wellmaintained infrastructure, fiscal soundness, and our
longstanding tradition as a desirable City in which to live, work, and play.
CALL TO ORDER
AGENDA ITEMS
1.A.MultiFamily Design Standards
Matthew Bachler, Planner I
Documents:MEMO.PDF,ATTACHMENT A.PDF
January 13, 2014
Honorable Mayor and City Councilmembers
Patrick Klaers, City Administrator
Matthew Bachler, Planner I
Multi-family Design Standards
Review the minimum unit size standards for multi-family dwelling units and direct staff to make
changes to Section 1325.045 Multi-family Dwelling Units Additional Conditional Use Permit
Criteria of the Zoning Code if necessary.
At the City Council Work Session on January 22, 2013, the Council requested that staff review
-family dwelling units. Currently, the standards
require multi-family dwelling units to be a minimum of 600 square feet, with an additional 100
square feet required for each bedroom. The Council has expressed concerns that the standards
could permit multi-bedroom apartment units that do not provide adequate floor area per resident.
For example, under the existing requirements a three-bedroom unit would only need to be 900
square feet in size and a four-bedroom unit only 1,000 square feet.
Staff has collected information from seven cities in the metro region that have adopted similar
minimum unit size standards for multi-family dwelling units. The cities included New Brighton,
Blaine, White Bear Lake, Maplewood, Fridley, Coon Rapids, and Bloomington. An analysis was
completed comparing the average square footage required per unit in these cities with Arden
Hills standards. Additionally, staff looked at ten multi-family development projects that have
been recently completed or that are under construction in outer-ring suburban communities to
evaluate the average unit sizes currently being built in the private market. These projects are
located in the communities of New Brighton, White Bear Lake, Arden Hills, Elk River, Apple
Valley, Ramsey, Eagan, Osseo, and Maple Grove.
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The following is a summary of the data collected by staff. A complete set of the data is included
in Attachment A. Arden Hills require more square footage for efficiency, one-bedroom, and two-
bedroom apartment units compared to the seven-city average. For three-bedroom units, slightly
more square footage is required by the seven-city average. Most of the other cities require a
greater amount of additional square footage for each additional bedroom than Arden Hills.
One- Two- Three-Additional
Efficiency Unit Bedroom Unit Bedroom Unit Bedroom Unit Bedroom
Minimum (SF) Minimum (SF) Minimum (SF) Minimum (SF) Minimum (SF)
Arden Hills 600 700 800 900 100
Seven-City
Average 463* 601 759 904 145^
* Six out of seven cities had minimum standards for efficiency uni
^ Five out of seven cities had minimum standards for additional
In order to determine whether the multi-family developments in other suburban communities
could be built in Arden Hills, staff averaged the size of the smallest efficiency, one-bedroom,
two-bedroom, and three-bedroom unit in each building. Using the existing standards, all
of the smallest average units could be constructed except for the efficiency unit, which is 41
square feet smaller than what is required by the City. The smallest average two-bedroom and
three-bedroom units are, respectively, 242 square feet and 520 square feet larger in size than the
minimum requirements set by the City. Please see the chart in the attachment for details on this
calculation.
Smallest Smallest Smallest Smallest
Efficiency Unit One-Bedroom Two-Bedroom Three-Bedroom
(SF) Unit (SF) Unit (SF) Unit (SF)
Arden Hills Minimum Unit
Size Standards 600 700 800 900
Smallest Average Unit Size
(Across 10 Developments) 559* 752 1,042 1,420^
* Three out of ten developments included efficiency units.
^ Six out of ten developments included three-bedroom units.
Based on the preceding analysis, staff is requesting further direction from the City Council on the
following questions:
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1.Should the City increase the minimum area required for three-bedroom units in multi-
family developments?
2.Should the City also consider increasing the minimum additional area required for each
additional bedroom?
3.Should the City consider any other changes to the minimum area required for other units?
A.Supporting Data Tables
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