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4.0 BACKGROUND Twin City Chinese Christian Church (T4C) is considering the purchase of the property at 2755 Long Lake Road, which has a Comprehensive Land Use Plan designation of Regional Business (RB) and a zoning classification of General Business (B-3) District. This request for a ZONING TEXT AMENDMENT has been prompted by the applicant's desire to relocate to a new facility that they would construct on the subject property that better meets of the congregation. S.O OPEN HOUSE MEETING T4C held the required open house meeting pertaining to the application on February 3, 2010, but only members of the applicant congregation were in attendance. G.O STAFF COMMENTS 6.1 As Planning Division staff discussed the proposed zoN�NG TExT ANtEtvDNtENT, we quickly concluded that the fundamental question to be answered was not whether a church was appropriate on the identified property, or even whether a church was appropriate in the B-3 District since all zoning districts will be replaced in the months ahead at the conclusion of the ongoing zoning code update process. Instead, the question that required the most thought was whether a church is an appropriate use in areas guided by the Comprehensive Land Use Plan for RB uses. 6.2 The Regional Business land use category is described in the Land Use chapter of the Comprehensive Plan as follows: Regional Business uses [sic] are commercial areas with a collection of businesses that provide goods and services to a regional market area. Uses found in Regional Business areas include regional-scale malls, shopping centers of various sizes, freestanding large-format stores, freestanding smaller businesses, multistory office buildings, and groupings of automobile dealerships. Regional Business areas are located in places with visibility and access from the regional highway system (Interstate 35W and State Highway 36). 6.3 While the sort of traffic impact anticipated with the various aspects of the proposed use as described in the applicant's narrative (included with this staff report as Attachment C) is not inconsistent with other uses that are appropriate in RB areas, churches tend to be tax-exempt entities and Planning Division staff has determined that the Comprehensive Plan means to reserve the valuable land in RB areas (as well as Office and Industrial areas) for revenue-generating, commercial uses. There are, of course, situations in which a revenue-producing property could be made tax-exempt through a change in property ownership — even though the use of the property is essentially unchanged — and the City would have no control over such situations, but the City has the opportunity to deny a proposed change in the zoning rules that would allow additional tax-exempt uses. 6.4 Clarity about the following point is important: the determination that a church is not appropriate in RB areas has nothing whatsoever to do with the religious aspect of a church. Instead, churches, schools, theater companies, museums, and a broad range of other typically not-for-profit uses fit into the "Institutional" land use category of the Comprehensive Plan, which directs such institutional uses to places outside of what have become the primary revenue-generating areas of Roseville. Moreover, in the process of reviewing T4C's ZONING TEXT AMENDMENT application, Planning Division staff has discovered that the current B-3 zoning allows many uses that are very similar to the PF 10-006 RCA 032210 (2).doc Page 2 of 5 � �