The St. Paul Planning Commission held its regular meeting on January 9, 2023, at 2:30 PM. The meeting included approval of previous minutes, announcements from staff, committee reports, a presentation on updated district plan guidelines, and action on two zoning items. The commission approved a conditional use permit for additional short-term rental units and a development proposal for affordable housing on Marshall Avenue.
Spencer Miller Johnson (PED staff) presented the updated district plan guidelines, a resource document for district councils updating their small-area plans. Key points:
Conditional Use Permit – Short-Term Rental Units at 141 4th Street East
Conditional Use Permit and Variances – Marshall Avenue Flats (1619 Dayton Avenue)
We'll start with approval of a minutes of December 9th or function. So move by Commissioner Holtz, seconded by Commissioner Girl. All is there any discussion on the minutes? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. Any poll flight assigned? So those minutes are approved for December 9. Um so in terms of my thank the people who came out to the comprehensive planning committee that's past Wednesday. It was incredibly informative. And I know that Luis and I were having a lot of discussions about alternative ways of doing it. And then it happened to hit again with a storm. But I appreciate everybody coming out. And I think as we move forward, it would be helpful at least maybe to have. And he can provide sort of more insight about the expectations that we have as the commissioners and sort of the statutory regulations that we have to abide by. So I'll move on to Luis for any announcement. Thank you, Chair. Good morning, everybody. A few announcements. I just wanted to uh point out uh recently um at City Council, the uh the city's legislative agenda for this year was uh discussed. Um I just wanted to point out a few highlights from that. So um the city of St. Paul bonding priorities uh include uh several large projects. Um I'll just read through the list here. The eastbound Kellogg River Center Bridge, um, the park at River's Edge, which is uh a Ramsey County ask that we are supporting. Uh Great Urban Passage River Recreation and Environmental Education Center. Um the there's a project related to the Como Park Zoo Conservatory. Um what used to be known as Hillcrest or the Heights, the St. Paul Fort Authority uh developed project uh for infrastructure and the North End Community Center are all uh on the list as bonding priorities for the city. Um if you read through the document, it's on the on the city council website. Um I'd encourage you to do that actually as planning commissioners. Um there's uh support for reinstatement of the state historic tax credit. Um there's additional support for housing, including uh uh uh continuing the 4D program, sort of a uh um uh pay removal tax consideration for um uh projects that have affordable housing units and um housing infrastructure bonds, which again to support affordable housing both on the uh rental and homeownership side at the state. There's a sales tax increase support for metro transit to support transit funding and uh various resilience initiatives. So those are just a few highlights. There's a lot more in there that you may want to look at. Some of it has nothing to do with municipal planning and zoning, of course, uh, but could be relevant and interesting to you. Um I believe that's all I have to say. We are still preparing for a uh annual meeting on February 3rd. So it make sure you uh if you can to try to attend that day. Um, and we'll be talking about uh at that point the annual report, kind of our assessment of the last year and um kind of looking forward to um to this year. Um uh what will be on our work plan. So I appreciate appreciate that. Uh chair, that's all I have. Thank you. Should we um Commissioner Riley not be here? Should we move on to something else then come back to our mark? Uh he's on his way, so we could go to district plan guide. We can go to the CMPC first. Yeah, so move on to uh move on to item number five and six.