The Saint Paul Planning Commission met on April 12, 2024, from 8:30 to 11:00 a.m. in City Hall Conference Center Room 40. The meeting included approval of minutes, announcements, a public hearing on the East Grand Avenue Overlay District, and a presentation on the Cannabis Adult Use Zoning Study. Key actions included approving the minutes, closing the public hearing with the record open until April 15, 2024, and releasing the cannabis study for public review with a public hearing set for June 7, 2024.
Motions:
Note: The agenda listed the meeting date as April 12, 2024; the transcript confirms this. No minutes were provided for this meeting.
Everyone. We're going to skip around on the agenda a little bit today and go straight to the chair's announcements and the planning director's announcements. I only have one short announcement. And it's exciting. So our secretary, Twitch Ochoa and his wife welcomed their daughter on Sunday morning in the city of St. Paul. And he will be taking a pause on the next few meetings while those two adjust in parenthood. So an exciting and exciting update. So congratulations to their whole family. And then I'm going to hand it over for the first time for the planning director now. Thank you, Chair Grill. Just a few items. First was that towards the end of Luis's tenure, we noted a issue where the chair is not supposed to be voting on quasi-judicial issues. We went back into any vote counts. Nothing is affected, but moving forward, Chair Grill will not be voting on any quasi-judicial issues unless there is a tie that needs to be broken. So just an FYI on that. Chair Grill will be able to vote on like legislative type decisions. So if you have any questions about that, feel free to reach out to me and I can go into the weeds on it. It's um what confusing. I have to have a chart. So sure. The so in other words, those are zoning related issues. Yep. So versus policy. Yes, Commissioner, um, examples are like conditional use permits, nonconforming use permits, variances, site plan reviews, determination of similar use, um, some of the items that don't go to the city council. But I would do property rezonings, zoning text amendments, and other items. Also it is not as clear cut as just zoning items. So and then the next item is that um uh related to a case that the planning commission heard, I believe on March 15th, which was the United Village uh site, which was a package of uh conditional use permit and uh good number of variances. Um the applicant um filed an appeal with the city council that was heard on Wednesday of this week um related to the denial of the entrance drive, um, and then two conditions that were placed on variances that were approved. Uh the condition to variance number five, that was related to including additional window openings on floors five through seven, and the uh variance related to number six, the connection between the retail space and the mural. Um so all of the appeals were granted by the city council. Um and I just had some takeaways from that. Um, you know, and I'm pretty sure that you can listen to that meeting, you know, as you as you would like to understand that. Um, but the city council seemed fine with the mural wall and referenced uh the building that used to be at Pedro Park that had that spiral mural on it. Um and they felt that that was um an act, you know, an a way that that was going to be activated. Um they were also uh fine with the entrance drive and but they did you know have a lot of questions related to pedestrian safety and keeping uh vehicles and pedestrians as separated as possible. Um and then you know, just a note is that it could be you know like a good practice when um looking at conditions to reopen the public hearing and talk to the applicant uh more, just uh just a recommendation. But um, if you have any questions about that, you know, feel free to reach out to me as you like. Um and then third item is just um that the American Planning Association National Conference starts this weekend um at the Minneapolis Convention Center. We have a pretty good contingency of uh planners from our office going and also leading tours all over, and the tours are all really interesting. And I wish I could go on all of them, but I'm leading one too in midway on Monday from one to four. So if you want to sneak on to the tour, email me and I'll let you know where to go. And that's all I've got for today. Chair. Commissioner Presley. I just wanted to note I'm part of the Ronville Tour mobile tour under uh Tony's leadership there. That's exciting. I'm so glad that folks are getting involved with the conference. So we did take a couple of items out of order. So I'm going to go back up now to approval of the updated minutes from March 15th.