The Saint Paul Planning Commission met on July 22, 2022, from 8:30 to 11:00 a.m. in City Hall Conference Center Room 40. The meeting included chair and planning director announcements, a zoning committee action, a draft presentation on the basics of zoning for public education, and reports from standing committees. Key outcomes included unanimous approval of a rezoning, cancellation of a public hearing for a withdrawn development proposal, and a call for transportation committee applicants.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the July 22nd, 2022 St. Paul Planning Commission meeting. We will begin. I think we're we don't need to do anything else, but we can just move on to the agenda. All right. So I don't have any new announcements, but I'll turn it over to Director Padeda for the department. Good morning, everybody, uh staff, members of the public, um, commissioners. Um I have just a few announcements this morning. Um first, I just wanted to say thank you to um Katie Dadless and uh Anton Jervey, who's here um uh for serving as acting planning directors, uh uh Katie during the last uh the commission meeting, as well as uh Anton during my much needed vacation. So thank thanks for that. Um happy to uh report that um we have a new director of economic development in PED uh who joined this week. His name is Jimmy Lloyd. Um just a little bit about his background. Uh he um uh well Martin Schekle retired. Some of you remember Martin, who came to the commission a couple of times, I think, to talk about various different economic development initiatives. Um Jimmy comes to us from Pillsbury United Communities where he served as senior director of community development, um overseeing the justice-built communities, uh CDC focused on collaboration to co-create uh land-based solutions to the challenges facing historically underinvested communities. Um Jimmy brings a real depth depth depth of experience in real estate economic and business development and a deep commitment to racial equity. Um he also has experience at the cities of Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center, the Northside Economic Opportunity Network, and YMCA Greater Twin Cities. Um I hope to invite Jimmy um to the planning commission sometime soon to meet everybody and maybe talk a little bit about uh his thoughts coming in. Um I'm having lunch with him today, so we'll get him we'll get him uh signed up for that. Um the next thing that the chair uh informed me about, uh it slipped my mind to to mention um, and I thought it might have come up at the last meeting, but perhaps did not, is that uh there was a plan uh public hearing scheduled for uh the University of St. Thomas and Ryan related proposal at the Ford Highland Bridge uh site uh related to uh recreational facilities. That was scheduled for August 5th. Uh the uh Ryan companies as applicant has withdrawn the application for now, so that public hearing has been re-noticed that that's canceled for now. Um we do understand that Ryan will be resubmitting. Um they've at least preliminary told us, preliminarily told us that they are removing the hockey facility portion of the proposal. Um, but we expect um some related master plan amendments that are going to be needed for a future proposal. So all of that um uh is not happening. Uh in addition to that, we most likely will not have a meeting August 5th. So uh look out for that official cancellation if that's the case, but that's what it's looking like right now. Um and lastly, um just to give you a preliminary heads up because the planning commissioners can be uh y'all can be really helpful in spreading the word about opportunities to serve. Um we will have at least two upcoming vacancies on the transportation committee. Um Commissioner Said and Commissioner Underwood uh might might recognize that we have a few people that are are leaving due to moving out of the city. Um there's also something in motion at the mayor's office related to the youth on boards um positions. There's two uh in Commissioner Risberg, I apologize. Um there's two um two youth that are currently serving. They will continue to serve as in in as I understand it, but uh the idea was to um actually expand the committee to have two more spots to sort of allow for um the same level of participation uh as before. Um there may be two additional spots opening up soon. It kind of depends on whether existing commissioners want to be reappointed, and so that's still a little bit of an open question. Um a little bit more about the transportation committee, just to remind you. It advises on advises the commission and this and the city council on transportation projects and policies in St. Paul, including those of other agencies. There is no expertise needed to serve, it's just uh just interest and a willingness to serve. Um we'll be especially looking for people who can represent the following interest areas. So business representatives, accessibility and disability issues, and transit. Um appointments are made by the chair of the planning commission. So we will let you know when the official uh call for those applications is open, but I wanted you to get you to get you thinking preliminarily about uh folks you that you might know in the city that could be interested in transportation and serving on the uh committee. But I wanted you to get you to get you thinking preliminarily about folks that you might know in the city that could be interested in transportation and serving on the committee. And I'm happy to turn it over to any of the members of the transportation committee if they want to comment at all about what that is like. That's all I have though.