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~~,,_~-C _~;~-ate. <br />September 11 Ste~~rin; Com,nittee Meeting <br />Sepcen,b~-r 4, 2008 <br />Poke 6 <br />because the various corners now designated for Neighborhood Business areas throughout the city are <br />populated with differing sized buildings. Because no generalized standard could be identified, we dropped <br />any size limitation from that defined ~onc,/area. <br />Nevertheless, we have continued to include a square footage limitation, specifically a limitation of no <br />buildings massed at more than 100,000 square feet, in a Community Business area. The Both stated (I know <br />I have ar Icast stated it out loud) and unstated rationale for this limitation is to keep "Big Box" developments <br />out of Roseville. No other rationale has even been hinted at in the discussions of the Steering Committee <br />that I've attended. <br />In the past, the "keep out the Big Box" argument has generally been made b}~ some, and nor all, voices in the <br />community only with reference to the Twin Lakes area of Roseville. Nevertheless, the new ]and use <br />designations in the Comp Plan Update include this 100,000 square foot limitation on all properties <br />designated as a Community Business area. This designation is applied not only to Twin Lakes, but also to <br />the Target site located on Sncaling and County Road B and to the HarMar site as well. <br />By including the 100,000 square foot designation on all Comnnmiry Business areas, the Steering Committee <br />is recommending, in effect, that the city ban any economically viable redevelopment of the HarMar site into <br />the future. Why is this statement true.' Because by designating the HarMar site as "Community Business" <br />and continuing to apply the definitional limitation of a 100,000 square footage limitation, HarMar in the <br />future will be required to be a sea of asphalt with one ]00,000 squam foot building sitting on it. That will <br />leave an awful lot of asphalt, as is shown in the attached illustration in which the red box approximates a <br />100,000 square foot structure. This result makes no sense to me. <br />Some will point out that the definition of Community Business would allow more than one 100,000 square <br />foot building, and will suggest that a c{eveloper will. be pleased to put up several 100,000 square foot <br />buildings on the HarMar site. In response, I ask you to em~ision 4 of the red boxes on the attached <br />document, all linked either by sidewalks (for summer use) anti,/or skytivays (f~,r winter use), and challenge you <br />to explain why that configuration makes sense on this site and%or represents More the type of redevelopment <br />anal redesign that the community will prefer in the future. Much like the new portion of Rosedale where <br />many customers actually drive from one store to another rather than access the businesses through a <br />a~mmon area, this plan will come to fruition with the accompanying traffic snarls, overly lit signage and <br />competing hours of operation that each business will need to attract customers to a specific corner of the <br />large area. Again, this makes no sense to me. <br />For these reasons, I support the reu~uval of this square footage re;tricti<~n from the definition .;f Community <br />Business. <br />Dan Roe <br />It will probably not be a mystery that I would suggest that the 2 key items 1 sec <n~tsr,nding are the Master <br />Plans question and the Couimuniry Business definition (and the Har Mar and perhaps Twin Lake; ~CMU <br />IinkedJ ramifications). <br />I had asked Pat Trudgeon ti> talk a hit with Har Mar and Target abut their ruction to the proposed CB <br />designation, and would be curious to knew their response. <br />Also, I think we may have to "generalize" the CB definition language to offer a range of square footages (like <br />the original 1-35W Coalition language on which the definitions were based, qualified with more words like <br />"generally" and "approximately," and even "of the order of magnitude," or the like. <br />