1440-1442 Shoreline Dr - HISTORY

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existing site plan from 1989 has 74 parking spots, although we submitted a detail to the City back in 2011 which demonstrated there are actually 81 parking spots at the site. But in any case, our parking is well in excess of the requirement of 59 larking spots. Please also note that we own or manage multiple marinas in multiple municipalities, and the City of Orono has the strictest parking requirements anywhere that we are aware of. The City of White Bear Lake, for example, requires 1 parking spot for every 4 boat slips. So if our marina was in White Bear Lake we would only be required to have 25 parking spots at this marina. Nonetheless we acknowledge that our marina, like all marinas, can be a busy place on the weekends and holidays. This is exactly why we employee two parking attendants every day to valet and assist with parking for our customers. We also place strict vehicle limitations upon our guests and direct them to park in the lots nearest to where they will be departing for boating. There are still times where marina guests need to cross the road. There is also another marina right next to us with boats slips on both sides of the road and they only have parking on one side. So many of their guests need to cross the road. This is a very busy road, and it can be very dangerous. We are well aware of this and we brought this to the attention of the City back in 2013. We asked for guidance and requested that an additional crosswalk be installed on the site. Mike Gaffron at the City referred us to the County. We then took it upon ourselves to petition the County for 18 months before they finally agreed to install the crosswalk that is now on the site. We have a vested interest in doing whatever we can to ensure public safety at our site. We acknowledge there are times when delivery drivers or boat customers at our marina or the neighboring marina park along the shoulder of the road regardless of how many times they are told not to do that. We are open to suggestions from the City about how to mitigate this. Perhaps more, or larger No Parking signs or traffic cones could be placed? But in any case, we take great offense at the mischaracterization or suggestion that we are not concerned about public safety at our site. We would also like to point out that back in 2013 the City of Orono requested that we install an underground fuel tank and dispenser for fueling rather than using a tanker truck or portable cans. The Council, and in particular the Mayor at the time, felt this was in the best interest of ensuring public safety at our site. Although not mandated to do so by our CUP, we agreed to this request and spent in excess of$150,000 of our own money to comply. We did not own the property back in 2011 when we first started operating. The property had actually been neglected by the prior owner and had went into foreclosure. Nonetheless, we spent as much time and money to clean up the property as could reasonably be expected by any tenant. We purchased the property in 2013 and began a full scale to effort to clean it up. We immediately made significant improvements to the landscaping. The City had always communicated to us that they would ultimately like to see the blighted homes at 1440 and 1442 Shoreline Drive cleaned up. We consulted with the City Staff and we all agreed that the property would probably work better overall as a marina if the two lots that were currently zoned residential were rezoned commercial so that the homes could be knocked down and more parking could be installed along with stronger privacy fence and buffer to the north abutting our residential neighbor, Mr. Matthew Johnson at 1432 Shoreline Drive. We did attempt to work with Mr.Johnson to come up with a plan that would be acceptable to him during this process, but we found Mr.Johnson extremely difficult to work with and quite frankly wholly unreasonable. The only plan he would agree to was that we demo the house at 1440 Shoreline and make the entire parcel (. tHP occt a(),evvies4,1 L 0 i) (lgcr✓rvuoi) 7(9.