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#02-2763 Clayt and Julie Tabor 960 North Brown Road Pa e 2 of 4 City Policy Relating to Combined Parcels The City of Orono has encouraged parcels held in common ownership to be combined when properties do not meet minimum requirements for lot area and/or width. Properties being combined require City approval. The City of Orono's approval assumes the property becomes one individual lot. Following a property combination it is assumed the common property line effectively disappears. A building could be constructed over the previous property line and no setbacks to the property line are required. The remaining parcel functions as one lot. A subdivision to separate combined parcels is required in all cases where lots, have been combined. Section 11.03, Subdivision 2.66 of the Subdivision Ordinance defines the separation of lots previously combined as a "Class I" Subdivision, which means that they are exempt from platting, but still require approval via the subdivision process, and are still subject to minimum lot standards. History of Creating New Building Sites Not Meeting Minimum Lot Area Requirements Staff has been able to identify only two occasions when a subdivision was approved that created lots less than the required lot area for the respective zoning district since the rezoning of the City in 1975. 1. Plat of Bayside Beach -1980 The Plat of Bayside Beach was a 3 lot plat that created three residential lots and a common outlot that is used as a shared driveway and also contained a shared septic system until the Stubbs Bay area was sewered. The total area of the property prior to subdivision was 2 acres. Three-½ acre building sites were created with one-½ acre common outlot. The owners of the property requested the City change the zoning from B-2 (Commercial -Marina Use) to residential. The property was rezoned to LR-lA which is a 2 acre residential district. Effectively the property was "down zoned" from commercial to residential. Rather than rezoning the property a ½ acre residential district, the City chose to rezone the property the 2 acre LR-I A district, and grant lot area and lot width variance as all the surrounding properties were zoned 2 acre. 1980 was the final year the marina operated, before the rezoning to residential. The 1980 approval allowed a total of 55 boats on the property and within the individual slips. 2. Plat of Blue Hill -1994 The Plat of Blue Hill resulted in a two-lot plat of a 3.24 acre property in the 2-acre residential district. The basis for the approval of the lot area variance to allow one lot less than two acres in size dated back to a 1980 Council resolution which was adopted during the process of assigning sewer units to the Minnetonka Bluffs sewer project. That resolution appears to anticipate that the City would either grant a future lot area variance as part of the future subdivision of the property, or to rezone the individual lot to a I-acre