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MEMORANDUM To:Saint Anthony Village City Council From:Stephen Grittman, City Planner Date:July 14, 2026 Request: Review of Proposed Sustainable Building Ordinance BACKGROUND As part of the City’s Environmental Responsibility goal, the City has been working to implement the Climate Action Plan. In the Climate Plan, an identified action item under the Energy focus area is to “Consider adopting a sustainable building policy for all new and remodeled construction projects”. Last year, the City began exploring whether a sustainable building policy or ordinance is feasible for the City. In the spring of 2025, the Parks and Environmental Commission (PEC) met to consider high level parameters of a sustainable building policy. At the PEC work session, staff had shared best practices based on other agencies and requested feedback pertaining to the type of approach, priority impacts to consider for the Saint Anthony ordinance, as well as recommendation on type of applicable projects. The City Council then reviewed the PEC’s recommendations at a work session in the fall of 2025. Council, PEC and staff agreed that a mandatory approach via ordinance was the most effective approach, compared to suggestion or scoring approaches. The Council and staff reached consensus that the ordinance should be applicable to new and redevelopment projects impacting multi-family housing, commercial and industrial zones. The Council and PEC further agreed to include additional criteria to capture the City’s priorities or context sensitives. These criteria, referred to as Sustainable Standards in the draft ordinance, creates an expectation that all projects subject to the requirements of the ordinance, unless specifically exempted, are working towards consistent environmental goals. The PEC met in the spring 2026 to review the following staff research, and discuss the merits of a draft ordinance. After additional consideration by the City Council, the Planning Commission held a public hearing on the proposed ordinance on June 12, 2026. One person from the public spoke to the ordinance and other general aspects of local government. The Planning Commission unanimously recommended Council adoption of the ordinance as presented. STAFF RESEARCH As reported in prior memoranda, staff has reviewed a number of local agencies’ sustainable building efforts. The Center for Energy and Environment and Hennepin County developed a sustainable building policy guide in 2021, which the City used as a key framework to develop their approach and ordinance. Sustainable Building Policy Basics A policy can include compliance with a third-party rating system (i.e. LEED, B3, etc) to support standardization for sustainable building across the region. These rating systems are well-known in the construction industry and allow developer flexibility to meet policy requirements. 13