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Planning Commission Meeting Minutes September 20, 2005 Page 5 1 Commissioner Jensen accepted the friendly amendment. 2 3 Motion carried unanimously 4 5 7.3 R-2 Rezoning Request for 3645 Chelmsford Road 6 7 8 Chair Stromgren opened the public hearing at 7:26 p.m. 9 10 Ms. Moore-Sykes stated that the applicant, Troy Martenson, is not present and asked the 11 Commission if they would prefer to table this discussion until the applicant arrives or would they 12 prefer to move forward with the report. 13 14 The Commission agreed to move forward with the report. 15 16 Ms. Moore-Sykes proved the Commission with a brief overview of the request stating that Staff 17 is asking the Planning Commission to consider a request by Troy Martenson, owner of 3645 18 Chelmsford Road to rezone the property from R-1 Single-Family Zoning District to R-2 Two- 19 Family Zoning District. She stated that the property is currently zoned R-1 with an existing 20 single-family structure on the lot. She noted that it is a corner lot with a 75-foot utility easement 21 given to Xcel Energy that goes across the northern portion of the lot. She stated that the property 22 adjacent to the east is zoned R-2 and the properties directly across 37ffi Avenue to the north from 23 the property are zoned R-4. She stated that there have been several attempts to split this lot but 24 because of the utility easement, the requests have either been denied by the City or upon 25 discovering the easement, the petitioners cancelled their applications. She stated that the current 26 owner also went before the City Council at its June 21, 2005 meeting with a petition for an R-3 27 Townhouse Zoning District rezoning request adding that Council denied the request due to 28 concerns about spot zoning. She stated that Mr. Martenson is now proposing to submit a 29 rezoning request that would change the current zoning of R-1 to R-2 and presented his concept to 30 the Planning Commission at a concept review at the July 19, 2005 meeting. She noted that the 31 property adjacent to the subject property is currently zoned R-2, despite its current structure 32 being used as a single-family residence. She explained that the R-2 Zoning District requires that 33 a corner lot have an area of 14,000 square feet and 100 feet in width at the building setback line 34 and based on two different sources, staff has varying information about the square footage of the 35 subject lot. She stated that the plat map that the City receives from Hennepin County shows that 36 the lot is 23,540 square feet, while the information from the Hennepin County's web site shows 37 the lot is 19,260 square feet. She stated that an enclosed copy of a survey of the lot shows an 18- 38 foot by 220-foot roadway easement that accounts for the discrepancy in the square footages 39 adding that this lot conforms with the area and width as required by the City's Zoning Ordinance 40 for an R-2 designation. She noted that a letter from Xcel Energy is included with the application 41 that states that they are comfortable with a driveway over the easement as long as it does not 42 disrupt the easement too much. 43 44 Chair Stromgren suggested closely the public hearing since the applicant is not present to address 45 this request.