The Planning Commission met on September 9, 2022 (per instruction; note: agenda and transcript indicate September 16, 2022) at 8:30 a.m. to consider zoning applications, initiate a zoning study, and receive updates. Key actions included approval of a rezoning and conditional use permit, denial of variances, and the initiation of the East Grand Avenue Overlay study.
There you go. Good morning, everybody. We'll go ahead and start uh the September 16, 2022 St. Paul Planning Commission meeting. Um I don't have any announcements this morning. I'll turn it over to Luis. Good morning, uh Commissioners, members of the public. Uh just a few announcements this morning. Um this isn't really a uh planning commission matter, but uh just a perhaps of interest. Uh some of you have been been following at the city council the rent stabilization uh conversations. Uh the uh council um considered some additional amendments uh Wednesday. Um I believe a final vote could be as soon as next week, although they have been saying that for a few weeks. Um what happens is each time there's an amendment, a new amendment considered, they need to lay it over to allow for at least one week uh for that amendment to sort of be considered publicly before they can take a final vote. So looks like there'll be a proposed exemption for due construction construction 20 years, uh some partial vacancy decontrol, um, and some additional uh sort of notification provisions around um uh uh on the on the the uh tenant and the landlord side. Um so we'll we'll see if you're following that. Keep keep paying attention because it's each week is a little bit different in terms of the conversation. Um second, uh just note uh some of you may have seen this already. Uh I emailed everybody. There was a communication you may have received as a commissioner from uh some neighbors uh of a project in um Highland Park, uh multifamily residential project. Um that is actually just a site plan that's under review. Um that normally site plans are administrative actions, so they would go to the zoning committee. I'm sorry, the zoning administrator in DSI, uh, and uh it's a technical matter, technical review, um, and that would be a decision would be rendered uh when it's when it meets the standards. Um under certain circumstances, site plans do come to the planning commission. For instance, when the zoning administrator refers it or when an administrative decision by the by the zoning administrator is appealed, and then a site plan would come. So there's no guarantee that that site plan would end up here for consideration, but there is a possibility of that, and because of that, we have to ensure that we aren't jeopardizing future decision making on that on that process. So just it was a the email was more of more than anything a caution uh in in sort of your conversations, the communications about it. It's best to refrain from uh discussion of the matter or emailing or engaging with with uh communication like that. Uh please let me know if you have other questions about that. Um and then uh the last thing uh which I might uh ask Commissioner Underwood to mention a little bit more, but we do have some upcoming vacancies on the planning commission that we're going to be recruiting for. Um so I don't know if you had planned to say anything about that later, but um not to put you on the spot. But we have three three vacancies um uh that uh uh we'll be recruiting for from throughout the city. Well we can say more uh later. So thank you. Any questions for the director? All right, moving on to the next item on the agenda is zoning committee. I'll turn to Commissioner Said. Thank you, Chair. Good morning uh members and our commit zoning committee mid uh last week on on Thursday. We had uh two items, and which is um 1888, 1883 Norfolk uh rezoning and rezoning from R3 one family residential to RM2 uh medium distity and multiple families uh residential. And the other one, 1413. Um Norfolk Cup and variance, and I ask uh Mr. Johnson to uh put us in. Good morning, commissioners and members of the public. Um just give me one moment to get my PowerPoint up here and I'll walk through this presentation. All right, thank you, Commissioner Said. Um good morning, everybody. My name is Spencer Miller Johnson. I'm a planner in the planning and economic development department. Uh today I was hoping to provide just a brief overview of the of the proposed project and summarize the outcome of the zoning committee meeting last week to help inform your decision today. Um there's a few applications involved in this one, so we thought because of the complexity, it would help to just kind of get a summary.