04-24-1991 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

3/29/91 Mayor Raymond Hanson City of Little Canada 515 E Little Canada ltd. Little Canada, Mn. 55117 Earl Silbaugh 47 LaBore Rd. Little Canada, Mn. Subject: Proposed Yorkton Ridge West development Mayor Hanson I am concerned about the buffer between the residential and industrial areas of the proposed development. Experience has indicated that this industrial area has been a point of contention with the adjacent residents by being the source of such annoyances as noisy industrial blowers and compressors, chemical fumes, and glaring flood lights. Incidentally, the noises mentioned are not limited to day time hours but generally continue throughout most of the night and weekends. There is an existing berm along part of this property line of about fifteen feet in height as measured from the residential side. This berm does a fair job of shielding some of the homes from ground level activities such as truck and auto traffic, pedestrian activity, and the staging of industrial supplies and debris in the parking lot. It provides no shielding, however, from annoyances, such as roof top mechanical system and flood lights, generated from sources located high enough so as not to be buffeted by it. My concern is that the developers proposal involves reducing, or eliminating, what buffer does exist when in fact he should be considering improving this separation. His proposal is to address the buffer issue separately with the individual owners of each residential lot which abuts the industrial area. I find this disturbing as this buffer, while protecting individual homes, is also there to protect an entire neighborhood with a potential of approximately fifty homes. It seems irrational to allow just one home owner to destroy the effectiveness of a buffer established to protect an entire development. In order to shield our homes from these annoyances a physical barrier, high enough to provide visual privacy and massive enough to act as a noise barrier, must exist for the entire length of this development. This issue cannot be left solely to the discretion of the future residents of this development since it also effects the existing homes to the south. While the newer homes will be located between the existing residential area and the industrial park they will not provide a continuous buffer to this area, nor will they act as a visual separation since many of the existing homes will look over the new dwellings. I would also like to state that when this industrial area was developed we were left with the impression that the proposed be would be composed of clean fill taken from the adjacent sand pits and then landscaped. What the berm was actually built of was debris excavated from Page 33