The Saint Paul Planning Commission met to consider and act on recommended zoning code amendments from the Comprehensive and Neighborhood Planning Committee for the 1-4 Unit Housing Study Phase 2. The commission heard staff presentations, discussed fence height standards, cluster development clarifications, and building height limits for low-density residential districts, and ultimately approved forwarding the amendments to the City Council.
Staff presented recommended amendments, including:
Commissioner Positions:
Amendments and Votes:
Note: The agenda listed the meeting date as August 18, 2023; however, the provided date for this summary is August 11, 2023, as specified.
Everyone, good morning. We did get the deal. We'll go ahead and start today's meeting. With regards to announcements, I'm always uh send out an email to the whole commission or just to steering just staring and he'll provide more information about another really cool conference that's coming up. So I'll turn it over to him. Uh yes, and uh chair, just to point to out that um I'm apologies. I don't have the we don't have the minutes yet um for folks to look at, but next time. Um so the one thing I was gonna mention because announcements, uh, good morning, everybody is uh the you probably know or heard that the national APA American Planning Association conference is happening in Minneapolis uh in April of next year. And so there's a big uh conversation of planners going on right now in the Metro to um prepare for that uh because it's a planning conference. We I guess they start planning early. Um we have deadlines. Um looks like it's been extended. It was going to be end of August uh to submit uh mobile workshops and uh session proposals, but now I think it's September 22nd is the new date I'm seeing, which is good because it gives us a little more time. So um what we've been doing is trying to uh apparently the the national conference needs 40 mobile workshops um for the twin cities, really, and um something like 200 different sessions uh since that's a lot. Um and again, some of those are um gonna be sort of um well, a lot of that is going to be like nationally interesting topics uh for plan or citizens have to be all twin cities focused. Um but you know, the more we propose, the more we'll be represented, I guess. Um so really what I wanted to do was share that uh with you and um see if there is any anybody interested in uh maybe getting a little more involved. We have um a few different um mobile workshops uh on our list of things that we might propose. Um, and I can run through that list quickly. Um so something kind of focused on Rondo. So um could be reconnect rondo, the work of the Rondeau community land crust, um, the city we could talk about the inheritance fund. Um there's a whole whole lot to talk about there in that geography. Um, something uh some uh downtown related uh mobile workshop. Um so thinking about everything from you know lower town to river balcony to um Capital City Bikeway, um Palace Theater, some of the more recent investments in the last uh five or ten years. Um Kegan Case, Schmidt Brewery as a historic reuse and the challenges related, um Highland Bridge, um something uh that's midway focused, um, which would have a variety of different stops. Um the green the grand round in St. Paul uh given the recent investments in that. Um probably uh the creative enterprise zone and tower side innovation district. This might be one that we work with Minneapolis on. Um and by the way, we are um meeting with the Minneapolis planners next week to uh talk about how we can collaborate on this this effort. Um and then um probably a session on missing middle housing. Um, and then the gold line. There's a um uh I think it's a group of it's either the Gold Line Project Office or Washington County planners that have asked Bill Dermitty, who's our staff on Gold Line to uh participate on that one. Um then there's some others that are kind of maybes that are less fleshed out in terms of thinking. Um so that's that's essentially the um the general ask is could you be interested and what does that mean? So we have a lot of staff that are gonna be working on putting in the proposal. Um we don't have to have speaker names yet, but we have to have sort of what is the the purpose of the workshop, um, what are the learning objectives um and kind of what what are the logistics you're gonna meet for an afternoon and you're gonna go here, hear and here um and then sort of you know sort of the purpose of it. So if you could be interested in either helping with putting up together a session or even speaking on it as one of the speakers, that would be something we would uh wanted to extend to you. But just wanted to put that out there for consideration. Uh let us know. Chris Hong and I and uh Spencer Miller Johnson were kind of working on it on my team. Um so feel free to reach out to us. That's a great opportunity to talk about all the great work that we've been doing to advocate for same poll, I guess. So reach out to staff. Yep, Commissioner Warren. Um just uh to actor Pernara about the um Schmidt Brewery. It might be interesting. I think that that's an important if anybody comes who is at the 2009 national planning conference. We did a mobile workshop that looked at adaptive reuse of breweries. Yeah, but at the time Schmidt was not at their anything.