09-19-2016 Planning Commission Packet

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r 16-3855 September 14,2016 Page 2 of 10 Background The property under review includes two tax parcels on the east side of Brown Road North, directly across from Sugar Woods, and includes lakeshore on Long Lake. The property is zoned LR-lA, One Family Lakeshore Residential, requiring a minimum lot size of 2.0 dry buildable acres and 200' lot width. The property has been zoned for 2-acre lots since 1967, and is guided in the Orono Community Management Plan (CMP) for Low Density Residential Use (0.5-2.0 units per acre). The property has been located within the Metropolitan Urban Service Area (ML7SA) since 2000, when much of the remaining non-sewered shoreland in Orono was incorporated into the MUSA to allow existing and future lakeshore properties to be connected to sewer to protect the areas lakes. The property is within Orono's defined Rural Area (see Map 3B-1) in which the minimum lot size for new development is two dry buildable acres. Review Parameters The proposed development is clearly a departure from the historic zoning of this site for 2-acre single family rural residential use. For this reason, staff recommends that the Planning Commission's review should proceed by considering the following two basic questions: 1. Is this property a location where the City should depart from the current zoning and Comprehensive Plan guiding, and allow higher density development? 2. If so, what are appropriate standards for such a development? While the applicants' submittals contain much information about the development they propose, staff would note that there are a few minor inaccuracies in the technical details as presented, and certain assumptions or assertions made in the applicants' narrative may not accurately represent the intent or letter of the Zoning Code and Comprehensive Plan. Regardless, Planning Commission's primary focus should be on whether the proposed type and density of development is appropriate for this specific property. Conformity with the Orono 2030 Community Management Plan Update The proposed 25-lot subdivision on 20.9 acres (per Met Council calculation method excluding wetlands and wetland buffers) would result in a final net development density of 1.2 units per acre. While this is within the guided Low Density Residential range of 0.5-2.0 units per acre (1/2-acre to 2-acre lots), it does not match the current and historic zoning of the site for 2-acre minimum lot sizes (0.5 units per acre). Also, the property has historically been within the Defined Rural Area of the City (CMP Map 3B-1) in which new development is expected to occur with lot sizes of 2 to 5 acres. Whether the City desires that this property be developed at the high end of the guided density range rather than the zoned density is a critical point of discussion for Planning Commission and Council to ponder. The current 2-acre zoning and guiding as Defined Rural Area is consistent within the 0.5-2.0 units per acre range that is shown on the Land Use Plan Map. There is no edict that the City has to allow development at every level within the specified density range. Except for the fact that Met Council would not accept a Land Use Plan that does not specify density ranges for sewered areas, Orono would not have defined ranges of allowed density. The City did so because Met Council insisted that they need to have continuous ranges to determine compliance with their density requirements. The irony is that Met Council calculates density capacity based on the lowest density within each range. For the Low Density Residential range,they calculate capacity