02/01/1999 Park Board Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Clearwater Creek Subdivision Review City of Lino Lakes ► Alternating lot sizes can open up stronger connections between natural areas, greenways, and developed park land and provide more space for neighborhood park amenities — especially important with respect to expanding the space associated with the neighborhood park and giving residents the perception of larger, more linked open spaces. The space issue is a key concern with respect to the neighborhood park. As you recall, the Park Board has a major concern about park space in this area, which I concur with. The challenge remains integrating it with the development so that it is workable from both city and developer perspective. ► Some natural resource areas are restricted by layout—for example, southeast of the park, there seems to be a wetland that could be buffered and not included in platted lots. In other locations in the plan there appear to be natural resources (wetlands, and buffering opportunities) with platted lot overlap. It would be useful to exhaust options on ways to not impact these areas, and also to buffer them rather than including these important resources in platted lots that are likely to be mass graded or impacted with utility and other infrastructure development. This again brings us back to lot sizes and making prudent decisions that give the developer some latitude in exchange for protection of natural resources and opening up more open space areas. ► Trail routings need refinement— it does appear that the plan has a good sense of the trail- greenway concept from a broad perspective, which was encouraging to see. However, several of the trail routings are severely restricted and unappealing because they pass through what appears to be very narrow 15-20 foot wide corridors between lots. These do not achieve what we are seeking for greenways with trails in them. Some reexamination of layout and lot sizes could open up additional land and alter the development layout to emphasize these open space corridors/amenities, rather than hide them. They simply seem tight and "shoe-horned" in rather than a freely accessible and desirable amenity within the project in some places. In spite of this, the overall potential for greenways in this plan has moved noticeably in the right direction than past plans. ► Many natural resources are not buffered at all —especially with back lot lines abutting delineated wetland boundaries. This is an undesirable situation that always tends to result in the deterioration of the wetland resources through lack of management and land owners manipulating the land over time. Along most of the west edge of the project, buffer systems would be desirable to offer future protection to these wetland resources. ► Many of these same resource areas would benefit long-term if connected to one another— again, this is true with respect to ecology and public open space/greenways. Large back lots that are platted in many locations could be reduced in scale and the area currently included in the lots could become buffers that are restored to wetland/prairie, thus providing continuity between these now isolated areas (at least within the confines of the Clearwater property). Additional Comments In addition to the above, please consider the following points: ► One of the major points of the charette process was that there may be an opportunity for mixed housing types with variable lot sizes. It appears that the majority of the development targets a primarily larger lot product. This issue would benefit from further discussions with the developer. 2