welcome and uh we'll start the monthly meeting of the Cook County Housing Redevelopment Authority uh first of all I note the presence of a quorum with commissioners Olsson Hansen and O'Brien and Lamore and
Gabler also appreciate the presence of the county board commissioners Commissioner Gamble and Commissioner Sullivan we appreciate you being here and your support and uh with that we'll go to approval of the agenda is there a
motion to approve the agenda i'll move to approve the agenda second that and there now seconded all in favor of approving the agenda say I i i opposed it's approved approval of the March 19th 2025 uh minutes
uh need a motion on that as well please i'll move to approve the minutes i'll second moved and seconded all in favor of approving the minutes say I i opposed at this stage it's the time we
offer an opportunity for public comment and uh if there's any comments to be had it doesn't appear that there are so but we do have to uh at this stage open a public hearing that uh we
need to con hold for the purposes of conveying Cook County owned land to Hamilton Habitat LLC for the purposes of workforce housing construction so we'll call the public hearing to order at
3:03 p.m and uh first Jeff will describe uh what we're involved in here and then we'll invite the public to comment jeff please so this was on the agenda last month but we had to have public notice in the local newspaper which we do have and and that's all part of your packet
as well uh so what we're doing right now is we're conveying uh some land parcel that the Cook County Commissioners took uh action on back in January and um this will be the conveyance of some land to Hamilton Habitat um so they can build a
couple of additional homes workforce homes specifically in the community of Grammar and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them for you you you'll also find some uh information in your packet resolution 25-
um 25-3 yep and 20 5-4 any comments from the public it doesn't appear that there are any so we'll close the public hearing at 3:04 p.m and go to new business and the
first new business issue is is resolution approving the acceptance of real property from Cook County for the purpose of supporting the construction of single family homes in Grand Marray uh there's an exhibit one attached uh
can we hear a motion uh or is there any discussion on it first hearing no discussion is there a motion to approve the acceptance of the real estate i'll move acceptance of resolution number 25-03
second it's been moved and seconded any further comments all those in favor say I i opposed motion carried uh second is resolution authorizing the executive director to enter into a land sale agreement with
Hamilton Habitat for the purpose of conveying a real property for the uh supporting the construction of two single family homes and there's a couple of exhibits that are attached to that so is there any discussion or thoughts on
it uh Chair Gabler I do have one thing to mention um Mike Roth was here just a few minutes before the meeting started and he wanted to point out that the um when the survey was made either it had been or had not been included in this parcel ID that you'll find on page 11
through13 but we want to make sure that that drainage ditch at the south end of the property is not conveyed with the property uh to Hamilton Habitat folks that's cityowned property and they do the maintenance of the drainage ditch and we want to make sure those owners are continuing to do that so we just
want to make sure that you know what we're selling uh through the county is doesn't include the drainage ditch that's called the town ditch town ditch Jeff for your information good to know it sounds like a t-shirt
it has quite a reputation it's pretty cool for keeping Grand Ray from washing into the lake it's done its job for many years uh well any further discussion there's a motion on the at this stage to approve
move to approve okay move to approve a second for that a second there is a second any further discussion hearing none all those in favor say I i i opposed motion carries chair if I could
just ask a question relative to that motion that what Mike Roth brought to our attention on that that in the conveyance that that survey then in fact has clarifies that so that there's no question because it's in the language of
the survey right yeah yeah thank you yeah thanks on page 11 of your packet you'll notice that there was a picture and it looks like it was south of that and sometimes with those types of maps things wander but they're not meant to
so the survey itself on page um 15 is very adequate for these are yep mhm all right uh let's move to other business let's start with the director's report yeah uh in fact I'm going to try to do a little bit of stalling because we do have a guest coming in to talk a
little bit about um one of the things that we're talking about on item D the residential open space overlay district if uh Neva Maxwell isn't here quite yet we'll just kind of move on past D and then come back to it if you're okay with that sure um or somebody wants to sing a
song maybe at any rate um the first thing I wanted to talk about was Gunflint View as you know May 1st is their opening date and they had a previous open house on March 2nd i wasn't able to attend unfortunately some of the commissioners
weren't able to as well but we had a good group of people including Linda Durick from the from the C uh from the uh visit Cook County they came as well and we toured the facility and I was really impressed it looked like the commissioners were really impressed with
seeing it um also Cali Hawkins from WTIP was in attendance with us she actually did a story about it today in the on the in the NewsHour um and um it was a I think a well put together story about what we had seen and heard and um what's
happening at the Gunfl View right now 26 units as of the 9th of April are filled uh with eight moving in on May 1st and so um it's exciting that we're starting to see people move in uh there was some
question uh in the story about where they're coming from and who they are what their age are and demographics i will be interested to see maybe if we can get some of that information as things fill up um so I'm excited to know more about that as well um but you know
right now it sounds like all the studio apartments are spoken for and um there's a couple of one-bedroom and two-bedroom options available in the um 80% AMI category and the rest of them are market rate so there's opportunity for a lot of people still in the community and um
yeah Gunflint view uh I will say that I I'm glad I don't have to be the one painting all those walls but it looked like there was a small army of people that are really um into the painting and the final finishings putting up the ceiling fans and things of that nature to really make it sparkle and shine for
the new guests that arrive here soon so uh that's what I wanted to mention about Gunflint View any questions about the tour anything like that uh anything yes i'd just like to make a couple comments um WTIP in addition to putting it on
their new newsshour also put an article and there are links in there that people can easily access floor plans how many two bedrooms are left how many onebedrooms so that's important for the public to know and for all of us to share with everyone that we interact
with sounds like a virtual visit might be in order just to go review all that yeah and see where they are thank you yeah um there's uh item B office rent and so um Director Krampitz just uh it's
a perfect timing we had we had a conversation between uh Chair um Gabler and myself and um EDA director Krampitz and uh Peter Kleshel from the EDA as well uh about um some of the rent that we have in that building that we rent
out of downtown and uh chair Gabler wanted to kind of take uh take this uh subject and and talk about a little bit more and I I'll speak for the finance committee as well uh on this subject uh first of all neither the executive
director nor the chair of either board uh are still in their office that put the original deal together and the original deal was having us pay $150 a month for office space and uh uh and
it's on the second floor of uh the Jeremy Riddlebower's business uh across from Fisherman's Daughter and and uh and to be honest Jason was really hardly ever in the office even when he was in
town he was either operating out of his car or out of his house if he wasn't in town and and uh and he had a a desk in the little common area that exists in that office and uh just wasn't at it very often and so perhaps that rent uh
you know reflected all of that however it was arrived at but uh at $150 the the total rent for the unit the whole space that is the EDA's space that's there they're the le on it and uh
is $1,300 a month and so they asked if we would look at uh re re reconfiguring and they they were willing to reconfigure to actually let our executive director sit in one of the palatial suites that overlooks the
harbor and the uh fisherman's daughter but uh so there's an actual office now that Jeff occupies and and uh and the EDA has been very good to us in terms of partner cooperating and in providing
printers and some of the hardware that's in there and all that but um at this stage they asked if we could look at reconsidering it and we did look at reconsidering it and and understand their cons their concern and and so
we've come we believe we've come to a a conclusion that would uh help uh I think make it a fair uh situation uh they do have uh Heidi is the director is is
there one one week a month uh otherwise she's operating virtually so she has moved to where the space Jason was in and and the Jason desk I think and and and uh the other office is still occupied by
the SBDC small business development or uh consultant who's there halftime and and needs a place to interview uh prospective business owners and that kind of thing so all in all we've worked out a deal that um we think is fair and
we've heard from EDA they think it's fair and it it's certainly going to be has have a budget impact for us because our rent will go from basically 150 to 575 bucks the rest is the the EDA's uh
load to carry but um it it really is a fair uh division of the space and uh Commissioner O'Brien and I the finance committee are convinced that this is fair and it'll result in you know additional expense out of our budget and
will be beyond our office budget for sure but probably $4 to $5,000 it might be something more or less than that but uh we do have a contingency and frankly we do have a couple other line items that are I can see are unlikely to reach
the full budget allowed for him so I'm not uh personally concerned and and as a finance committee so with that we'd recommend uh that uh we authorize uh the executive director to continue and u we
will be paying the rent uh either directly to Jeremy Rbower the landlord or uh to the EDA either way but our rent's going to go up as the final analysis but so is our space and so is
our uh the time that we'll be using it because Jeff intends to use it quite differently than Jason did and um so that's where we are that's the report of the finance committee I guess but uh could we have a motion authorizing uh
Jeff to enter into an agreement with the ADA for uh in in the ballpark of that negotiation so moved is there a second to that motion i'll I'll second that any discussion
how are you configuring the space is it different then mhm it It's the same space but instead of being a solo desk out in a common area there's actually a office that with a door that
can be closed and and uh and and executive director Krampus was already good enough to have done the heavy lifting of moving the stuff in there that Jeff needed and so uh we appreciate the partnership we've had with the ADA
and uh the lease at this stage the lease rent isn't going up the lease goes till J uh June of next year and so then there's a question of what to do after that uh do we want to stay there is there some other options and I know
there's a couple of other people who have ideas about where we could be or should be and so uh that's yet to be determined but we'll do that in partnership with the EDA again because uh the two agencies work together so much and have so much interconnections
uh with the applications and and administration of grants and those kind of things uh and we just appreciate uh their cooperation that they've and the support they've shown any other questions comments if not I'll call the motion uh motion to
approve i I did it get moved and seconded yes good then the motion is the motion's approved and uh we'll continue on might as well grab the next one too uh strategic plan
update yes uh we I think the consensus of the board was to have Mary Stus act as our uh coordinator or convenor of of perhaps a half day session to update our strategic plan current strategic plan
was done at late in 2023 and things have certainly changed since then and uh there's a lot of we've got things under construction and and I think we can get a better feel for what is really not just the need which is
what a study showed in 2018 but what's the market uh for things and and then also some of the uh some of the positive things we've done and some of the times we we haven't been successful in looking at those and
thinking gee is there something in our plan that we really should look at and so uh the goal is to find something that would work for everybody and Mary will be certainly available in June and I
talking to her the thought came up what if we did try to do this on the day of our June uh monthly meeting here so in other words start maybe around 11:00 have some box lunches and work until the the board meeting at 3 uh that' be at
least convenient it sounds like it but uh I'm interested in the commissioner's thoughts and u is that make sense and are you able at this stage this far in advance to be able to think you might attend i think it sounds good and if
you're looking at your calendars it's June 18th yeah well I think we'll tentatively set that date up and and uh encourage Mary to be thinking about it and I certainly I'll be thinking about it but please look at
that strategic plan and give it some thought in context of what we now know after three years of three plus years of operation and uh it'd be interesting so appreciate your support
on that chair Gabler would you like me to reserve this room for the strategic that'd be terrific we'll do that right now perfect you continue to be a great American in my view so your offer to do that thank
you Commissioner Sullivan either that or Jeff's new office so well well it's not that palatial i was perhaps exaggerating but can all sit on the floor in a circle you're going to have to move well there
there is a a round table out in the common area that's a conference table but uh I think we'd be better off here we have the room all right great all right great uh I think let's try to go commissioner
O'Brien well I was going to suggest as well that maybe uh in the weeks leading up to that strategic plan that we um maybe some some of us put our heads together as to what would be good useful premeating information to have in hand um you know that might include the lease
up rates or the experience of of the two or of the um the Gunland View project any updates on the um the heights uh might include background information on some other categories of housing that we really haven't focused on and and um I'm spitballing but I you know I
think that they would be useful to have some to all collectively come in into the meeting with some common you know potential issues with some background information on some potential issues that we might specifically discuss
perfect great suggestion thank you and I'll I'll put together um maybe an email and then you can email me directly if you think something's not on that list but I took a couple of things down and we can start putting that together for you all um maybe uh in the interest
of time waiting for Neva to show up here she's got a meeting right now that's why she's booked up and she's not ignoring us and that's for sure she's working um but maybe we'll go to the financials next if Chris uh Yeah I don't have a pres I I don't have a presentation prepared for the uh financials i I did
review the financial report um and you know we just everything looked in order there were a couple question marks that got cleared up right away um but everything appeared in order one of the things that I do want to work with um um direct director on is you for my
edification as much as anything else is to have a what what I would term a dashboard of of existing projects just so you know it's it's more transparent to me you know what what projects are in the hopper what commitments have what fun what funding commitments have been made to each of the projects from where
and where are the gaps and you know ju just to um you know so I don't have to go scratching through my notes every time just I think on finances one of the things that I'm interested in is that we have I know we have a
$250,000 loan out uh to one roof up on the Birch Grove Bir Birch Cliff Birwood Apartments birchwood Apartments yeah and uh at this stage they're certainly in the process of redoing unit by unit and
and getting the places up to snuff but um I I can't recall myself just the terms of that loan i know it's to be repaid it's a loan it's not was not set up as a grant and uh but it enabled them to be able to get comfortable with
submitting an application to do the uh take it over and do renovation but uh if you could that might be one of the things to put example of what Commissioner O'Brien's talking about yeah put on that uh into that discussion and I don't know if we've got any of
those others that are repayable but that one is large enough $250,000 is a a chunk of change as they say and uh it would give us some abilities to participate in other things too yeah that's a good example of a what I'd like
to have on a on a reference sheet to say the other thing possibly continuing on in the same vein of financials uh and what Commissioner O'Brien mentioned is other types of housing and you know looking at what we might be involved in
uh the EDA at least has one of their commissioners has uh been actively engaged in the idea of promoting assisted living housing in Cook County and to that on someone i I assume it was
driven by either the EDA or or their commissioner and uh the EDA as a whole pardon me not the EDA as a whole okay it was Commissioner Hans Howard Hstrom uh who's been interested in this before
this isn't anything new but he got a proposal from uh Whipley who did the market or the market study uh for in 2018 for Cook County and and this uh proposal's in front of you um for
$14,000 to do a market update that in terms of the market for assisted living and u I think so the question is this something I think that would be in our baywick uh and if that's the case we
should be driving it not the ADA unless we'd certainly be h happy to ask the EDA to participate financially uh in it but uh always if you don't ask you don't get that's one thing I know but uh so Heidi be ready but uh nonetheless uh I do
think you know it's it's certainly worth some effort and usually to nothing will happen until a developer gets engaged or enough to say I'm going to put some money into this and you know and put put
together a front end and and I can understand the risk and I'm pretty I I understand the need for assisted living and I need and I know there's none in Cook county but most of the assisted living I'm familiar with from Twin
Cities and other areas to St clouds or Duth it's usually in connection with apartments or nursing facilities also so you've got kind of a continuum of care uh to to go to it doesn't have to be uh there are certainly freestanding
assisted living things but uh I'm also cautious only just watching the rent up of the two apartment buildings we've got going in the sense that those units are at rents that Cook County really hasn't seen before in any numbers and and the
there's a difference between need and and demand or market and that's kind of what I'm thinking we need to be very careful with uh in this uh endeavor as well uh I'm not believe me I'm not
speaking against it but I just at this stage I'm cautious and uh it does sound like uh uh Howard Hedstrom has somebody already at least in involved in the potent in discussions
of of potentially doing this and and I know there's a site that they've got in mind to to do it as well and so uh those are are positive aspects but I I'm also concerned to be honest with what the federal government is doing at this
stage because a lot of the assisted living and then nursing home patients and clients are uh paid for by Medicaid and if that starts getting cut uh or Medicare and Medicaid um that's a
measure of risk for a developer that you know they're all uh people who do this know the market and know you know and they're probably looking at the impact of those cuts uh really intensely uh because they've
got existing developments that could be affected by it but it's just reason to be another reason for me to just be cautious about it and so I think uh what I'd like to do is have our director keep in touch with the discussions on it and
uh possibly at some point the board needs to get involved in it as well but uh at least uh I do want to continue the momentum but I'm I'm certainly not at this stage ready to recommend 14,000 bucks for a a demand
study but I' I'd suggest uh that this is an excellent topic of conversation for our strategic planning it really is it's because we really can discuss this in depth delve into the history one thing that might be interesting uh for
um our director Brand to get in touch with uh Carefree Living i can't remember where they're based but they own a bunch of They have one in Silver Bay yeah they're not based there though grand Rapids does anybody remember it seems anyway they did they were very
interested in coming here back in 2020 2019 and went they put a lot of work into it i know and then just sort of off the record I was walking through my campground one day and fell into conversation with a woman and I said "Where are you from?" And she told me and I said "What do you do?" She said "I
work for Carefree Assisted Living." And I was like "Oh you're going to build a place in Grand Marray." And she said "That's all our executive director talks about is the Grand Marray facility." Gung-ho for it and then ultimately it failed because of economy of scale and
they they really need to build if I recall correctly and this is just from my memory they need to build 50-55 rooms in order to make it pay especially with memory care involved and the study the previous study from 2018 indicated 20 to
30 was the demand here now I take some exception with that and I also take some exception with the methodology outlined in here um it's a hard when you get down to small numbers like that it's it's hard to you know the methodology is sort
of aimed at uh municipalities or counties that have hundreds of thousands of people and then the demographics are you know if they're off by a bit it doesn't matter but here you know 10 people is a huge difference right and I would argue that some people
that that would be patrons of assisted living well basically everyone who wants to be a patron of assisted living leaves the county now so we're not counting them they would they would be here in assisted living so to count just the people who are here like like me and
maybe some of the rest of us in here who are thinking "Oh I might be one of those people you know in 30 40 years." Uh um I might move that's not that's not really fair just to see what's the potential you know cuz and I also think
uh that people would move here Gram is different because or Cook County I should say is different because people would move here more willingly to be near their kids and grandkids I think because of the the amenities that we have because it's a beautiful place to
live so that would give us an advantage as opposed to something that's off in the sticks somewhere so so all those things I think are just things that went through my mind but I think we could have a lot but if you could reach out to assist and see if they are willing to share what their thoughts were back then
if there's anybody there with that institutional memory uh that would be resource that'd be good to know what they cuz they were really they put a lot into it i know and uh uh my mom actually went I have personal stake in this not only for myself but when my mom required
assisted living she went to Silver Bay to a carefree facility okay and so I was in there you know at least twice a week for two and a half years and got to see how it how it operated actually several of the people that work there now work at Northshore
Health but um they commute up but uh um that was you know that was an impressive facility but again about I think that was about 60 60 rooms half memory care or I don't know if it's half but one side was memory care one side was
assisted living so yeah I'd really put this on the agenda for the strategic planning and we should talk about it okay good suggestion other thoughts here i I was just going to agree with the point that um uh Cook County is definitely an edge case we're out on the uh far tail of the bell curve so to
speak and so uh any of the the methodology I think needs to reflect um the the uniqueness of this community and I agree that strategic planning is probably the venue to talk about it in greater detail um if I may a couple of thoughts that I've had about this you know I brought
this up last at last month's meeting just so I could get in contact with with Whipley um the person that is mentioned in here his name is Patrick um Carol um he was part of the study in 2018 and so
this is a a a newer it's a refreshment of the 2018 study which I'm sure is information that's good information from from a few years back at least i think an update to the study would probably show you know a little bit more information about what it looks like now
we were very close in 2018 to getting this project and actually uh Howard Hadstrom was able to give this information to me and I believe I emailed it to you last night but I should email it to everybody now that I think of it but the community assessment development group um was behind and they
had a they had basically a footprint for um the lodge at Howard Lake assisted living they were basically copying what they did in Howard Lake for Grand Marray if you might remember that 20 units 24 to 30 is what the strong market study was um and honestly you know I mean
that's one one aspect of of what we might be able to accomplish with a building like this but maybe there's some opportunity for us to start looking at some homes for people that don't need that level of treatment but also want to step down from what they have currently
in town there might be some option to do a mix of elder housing and assisted living and that might give a little bit more diversity to the to the support and the um financial wherewithal for that organization to to facilitate um a
couple of other things I I was thinking of you know I think is if if we were to decide to do something like this I think it would be worth us having a joint meeting with the EDA and the H together in the same room to have that conversation before we pull a trigger
like that um of course a study would be information that we could all use there's an argument to be made that the information uh a refreshment to the information would be beneficial to anybody who might might want to participate in RFP which I think is what
the EDA or at least a member of the EDA mentioned last month and maybe even last night as well as an RFP for let's see who even wants to do this and of course housing in this area like a lot of places in Minnesota is a math problem
you know myself we'll have to start looking at how do we fund this thing properly so that way it can have the best advantage of the community for the long term so a couple of things to consider there um the the Patrick Carol was very interested in possibly doing
like a a Zoom meeting with EDA and HRA to talk a little bit more about the proposal and answer any questions that might have come out of that i suggested not having that today but maybe into the near future if we decided we wanted to go that far too
yeah I'm I'm I it feels like we're jumping fast on this on the study i guess I it's an open question to my mind whether we need this the study i I think you know as we said I think we should do nothing until we have a chance to discuss it at the strategic meeting
where you know we can decide if this is an avenue we want to pursue what are the pros and cons i think as a precursor to that we can all make sure that we all review the 2018 study i think that'll give us some background information yes a refresh might be helpful but I'm not sure it's critical path for us right now um and it's a lot of money it's a big
chunk we don't have it in our budget sorry M mr chair sure yeah i know we we touched on this in our previous meeting and my recommendation is with the projects in place that we we should learn from that experience and you mentioned earlier about the demographic
yeah who's in the building and my wife and I have managed the housing for 15 years and the number of studies that I participated in and knowing the demographic and the issues that I deal with which I talk about in
other boards that I sit on that are relevant uh the other thing in a smaller community that our partnerships are critical to our effectiveness and so when we look at the clinic or we look at the hospital we look at any other entity be it the EDA whatever we need to know
the provisions that are in place because we can't independently handle a lot of these things but if we do them in partnership we can do that this is in my experience with people that come in and we're evaluating people right now that
have memory care issues that have they they're looking for assisted care because of the partnerships that we have provisions we can do something like that although we are not assisted care we used to have those pull things you know that if you had a problem you call it but we really aren't assisted living so
we couldn't do what we wanted to do my recommendation would be because we are Cook County is that we should have public meeting and each area of the county and ask the people that live in this county
what do you want and what does it look like it these studies like this I can do a study for you like this if you want a study done like this I can get because there's a lot of secondary information the information is done that had been by entities that had been here before
exploring it and it was part of my first term that that they were just right on the cusp of wanting to do something but the market analysis from the financial standpoint in their experience elsewhere said it's not feasible we've got to find a way to make it feasible in partnership
and we need to match identified need with the people that are within our county which we can do if we take the initiative to do it and just say this is a listening session we identify what it is we want and that information that is
real information relative to us here is what you use in your strategic planning because it's solid information and not projectable information based upon somebody outside of our unique circumstances and I'd be happy to provide information for your strategic
meeting relative to some some things because there's a lot of information out there we know that next to Aken County we have the largest aging population mhm and um so what are the needs with our housing as they exist right now nea's
presentation is going to address the fact that we're trying to response respond to real need relative to who we are as a community so that would be my two cents worth well thanks for the thoughts and I I spe I especially like the mention of the hospital as a partner
uh for us and there probably other entities as well that deal with the seniors here down at the hub or wherever and care partners yeah care partners especially so uh and and I do think our role it's appropriate for us to be a
catalyst i mean that's why they gave us this charge and uh so that's uh you know it's That's that's very appropriate as opposed to the EDA for example which you know and I I just think they've done it because they had to do it up until the
fact we had H&R and and we still have some issues with people who only take applications from for assistance from the EDA but uh I I think that's those are good suggestions to be thinking about might I ask a clarified question
real quick oh I'm sorry no no I say Commissioner Sullivan well I was just saying that we do have all these partners and I think we really should um reach out um that the H as a board should reach out not only to the hub but to care partners we're an age friendly
community through public health and human services there's information but to find out what do we have here and how can we collaborate um any kind of grants that we eventually get if we do decide to move in this direction are much more powerful if we have all our partners um
and I also like the idea of doing it this discussion at strategic planning so that you can perhaps have more of a handle on uh federal grants Medicaid and what we're looking at in the future because it's really hard to make any
decisions right now with so much uncertainty that's fair um so a clarifying question but before I end I just wanted to mention that um I have reached out to care partners and I have reached out to executive director Kimberad at the hospital we're going to have coffee with
you know together and meet and see what's going on already in the community i kind of want to make this as as as a partnership big a partnership as possible so I've already kind of identified some of those folks the hub was a new one for me so we're going to put them in the hopper for coffee as well um but if I just wanted to clarify
a question to uh Commissioner Gable i think what Commissioner Gable had said was before the strategic planning which we're talking about in June we should possibly have a community conversation about what do you want to see is that what I heard or did I misunderstand from
my comment yeah I I'm saying at some point I mean it would be nice obviously because good information informs strategic planning mhm uh it's just the timing of it based upon if we're saying we're looking at this in a June meeting or whatever it's it's certainly feasible
to do it just my recommendation is talk to the community and and don't take information and project it that's generic in nature and and I think it the the biggest challenge there is just finding the appropriate time that makes
it convenient and going to the locations in given the nature of our county and and just asking people and if you identify upfront what it is we're asking we're saying what are you looking for because I know what I feel in questions you know every other day from people
that are calling and looking what can I do my parents where do I move them what do I do and so I'm just saying I think people would be willing to give their input that would be solid input based upon our demographic our population
so does that sound like something maybe I should spend some time putting together in the next month is this a community conversation i think all right well and and I think that that you know as you as you do that and get a sense of the timing of that then
we my my recommendation would be that we consider pushing the strategic planning meeting yeah I think that would be important information to have going in there may be other information we want to have in place and and circulate before the meeting so maybe we push that back to July i don't think that's
critical yeah um we could check with junior chairs omnis but you know if it's we can see how quickly you can think you can get meetings like that scheduled and gather some of this information that we want i think I'd be more comfortable with keeping our strategic planning because that's our overall
organizational planning right not just this issue and this is a big big issue that's going to take a while you know I mean if it's done right um so a little bit of trying to get all the community input before June or even July is probably not realistic and that we can
just make a note of that as part of the process as we talk about it strategic planning we'll you know and try to and start to talk to our partners then we can lay out a timeline of that would be included in there somewhere but I don't want I don't want to rush it because I want it to be done well you understand that
uh recommendation would be that uh when you look at your existing strategic plan and all of the elements that come to the forefront that those would be forwarded to Jeff so that the strategic planning
is inclusive of the things that you want to discuss and have there to address and if you do that identify what's our goal what's our ambition as opposed to following the template that existed back then and the feasibility of of input
that would be local relative to how you want to set this on the timing because it's one component of your overall that can that can be looked at and and I would I would be happy to try to provide what I could for you if the timing issue
is an issue because it is an element that's predicated on where do we do and what are we doing but diva is going to address some of that too with what she'll present I think it would make more sense to to reach out like you're doing to the hospital and the county and the public health and talk to them for
Gary and talk to them first and before we do a communitywide thing because if we rush it we won't ask the right questions sure and it's a little bit you know so a little bit of an odd situation I put on my businessman hat you know if I ask you you going to need assisted living in
the next couple years you're going to say no not me you know and that's true you don't need it until you need it right right so there's a little bit of you know I mean that's not doesn't mean we shouldn't do it we should do it but um but yeah it has to be done carefully
so I found a certain level of irony with the conversation that uh Howard Hstrom and I had last month because you'll recall I mentioned that at the meeting last month somebody walked up to Howard and said we're moving to assisted living in Crosby yeah and and that that does happen and if we can retain some of the
folks in their community I think our community is uh better off for it i think maybe what we'll do and another organization that I've already reached out to is the Arrowhead Agency on Aging and they had some great data and it's all on my my computer 35% of the people
that live in Cook County are 65 plus so I know that information at least it's going to go up for a little while yeah it might go up a little before it goes down yeah and I think um as we start having this conversation I think it's really important that we do a great job of being inclusive and that means you know talking to people on the east end
on the Grand Portage Drive as well because they have aging issues and we need to address those issues as well um and then on the west end there's been some conversation about what can we do on the west end i I do think that um we we we should I I believe we should have
a a good conversation out of it but we need to set some parameters for what that can be and we've got some time to do it i don't know if we'll be able to do it before the strategic planning but um you know it's up to it's up to you all to tell me before or after um if you
want me to do it beforehand I could sure work i know I've got plenty of work to do but this is also important to our community and I know some people in our community are really like can I stay or do I have to leave um and that'll be the consideration for a while until we do something or or continue to not do
something for that matter the other thing I think is is maybe worth considering as well is that um what I don't know what the state budget's going to look like still they're still trying to figure that out federal budget question mark i don't know what that's
going to look like um but at the end of the day you know we already had talked a little bit about how we can be creative with financing and things of that nature so we'll continue to scratch our head and think of some ways that maybe we can creatively come up with some financing for uh something like this perhaps as
well um if you don't mind I've got two things to really quickly touch on and then I think I'll turn it over to Neva if that's all right in the director report it's part of the director all right uh the other thing I I quickly wanted to mention about the Heights project I had a um pre-development
meeting with the contractors and subcontractors and the folks representing the um the organization um on the 3rd of April and um we're ready we're ready um they're very ready to go
and so I would see some action on that site in the next week or two at the most so um and that's going to finish when September October somewhere in there so they're really excited they've got a very aggressive timeline it sounds like they're going to start producing the
units and um being shipped out here five semis a day until they get all the units up here large pieces there's some conversation about staging um and so we'll see how that goes and then I also wanted to quickly mention one other
development um on the Duval property um the developer wants to enter an agreement with land sale with the city for a land sale so we're working on that um it was uh suggested that the city would like to visit with the developer about
what what they're asking the city for and that meeting will be coming up soon i'll let you know when that meeting does happen it might be on the 30th of April but Mike uh Roth was mentioning maybe the 14th of May instead so it'll be exciting for for Alex to talk about what
his vision still is for that site and hopefully we can get to a sales agreement here quickly on that as well so last thing I just want 14th meeting the city council or the planning commission that's the city council yep the uh administrator Roth
mentioned that we wanted to get in front of the city council to talk about what the ask is articulate what's the property look like and then from there of course going into some surveying and and um location of some of the utilities that are on site there as well so and
then also there was discussion about using that location for staging and so that's between the city and Deval Properties and uh the folks that are putting together the heights and so I'm just kind of helping to facilitate what we need to to get things moving along the last thing I just want to quickly
mention and I'm going to blame Commissioner Hansen for this um in a previous meeting there was some dialogue about the community not really knowing what we do at the HA and so I thought about this for a while it's not something that was knee-jerk it's been something I thought about since I
started here and so I created an Instagram account to kind of get people to understand a little bit more about what we do instagram is usually a story and pictures with a little bit of text to kind of explain what the picture is and so I've taken the um um liberty to
post five stories we've got 20 followers it's pretty small right now but you know snowball starts little and ends big um what we're really trying to do is educate inform people what we do here at in the county in the in the community um
and so five posts one was um just quickly on Friday I went over to Grand Portage i was invited by um um Superintendent Boyd to talk a little bit about housing needs at the monument national monument and they got a copy of
our study uh housing study to help them determine what the needs are on the east end and that sort of thing and we had a great conversation about that i just took a picture of the building and the and the Palestadians outside and and posted it there and got a couple of likes so I mean it's it's something I
think it's informative it's educational um that's all I really wanted it to be but clue people in about what we're doing and you know so that's that's all I had for this month any questions for me otherwise I'll turn it over to Neva to talk about the open space overlay
district is the Duval project the same as the the former Yorkberg project or is that the uh No this would be the Tom Tabota site right right got it okay that was 1842 yes exact several names we
should settle on a name we should settle on a name but first we got to get a sales agreement before we can settle on a name okay but I um and not to not to add more to the discussion but the Yorkberg project is something that I believe the planning uh commission at
the city will actually be looking at in the next month or so and I'll let you guys know when that meeting is happening too okay good well the importance of that that project on 61 Deval or whatever the name is is that it's already had a commitment from Minnesota Housing Finance Agency that's the first
time they paid any attention to Cook County and and or even to a lot of the communities up in northeastern Minnesota particularly and so that is really a project we want to stay in touch with and focus on and and and devote our
resources to by all means yep absolutely so we have we'll have that conversation um you know as we get closer to the land sale and the next parts of that process i'm excited about that i've talked to Alex I think every week for the last month and a half so we're we're we're
really having good communication about the needs and what we need to do great i'd like to meet this person sometime and he is interested in coming up yeah and so Yep when he does we'll make sure you can connect with him
thanks you bet so Neva I think uh Neva Maxwell is here to talk a little bit about an idea that she had she asked me for some advice and I was really happy to to think about this and digest a newer idea for housing in Cook County um not a new idea it's
been around for a little while at least conceptually right and now we're getting closer to maybe making this a reality so I'll turn over the microphone to you so you can explain it to us and get our feedback of course sure thank you so much for having me uh for those of you that don't know me my name is Neva
Maxwell i'm the planning and zoning administrator in Cook County Land Services Office i've been in Cook County since 2021 where my realtor pointed out to me as we were walking through our house at the final sale of "I think this might be the last affordable house in Cook
County." And it was twice the price of any house I ever thought I'd buy so uh uh the affordable housing thing has been on my radar for quite a while and so since I've been here I've been pondering what zoning can do to try to be a part of the solution and not further aggregate already complicated factors
before us and so um Jana if you want to get the PowerPoint going there um the ideas I have before you is um using two zoning tools that I'll explain in further detail but the primary objective is to address affordable housing at its
key part every every part of these different restrictions limitations I've put into these ideas is specifically to think of a way to create housing that's not going to get out competed by the second home market i once asked one of the land use attorneys that we work with
is there any way I could like prohibit second homes or just like make it so you could only be homesteaded on a property in an area he said "No that's a taking you can't do that." Okay fine won't do that uh so no no takings of constitutional rights or anything like that is going to be done in this effort
um so what is before you is the proposed residential open space overlay district is is what I'm calling it and you guys just talked about name nomenclature i'm open for suggestions if there's a more exciting name but this is what we've set on it's Roso it's It's you know not the best acronym but you know it's still up
for modifications at this point this is all just ideas um Janna it's not it's not doing anything there's something about this press the button i got to fix the title slide or something it's happened yesterday too
um yeah see maybe let me try on this next yeah it's just that title slide that's all we got to fix funny i don't know it's wonky so that might look weird on your your little screens up there but uh just for background for anyone watching and for yourselves Cook
County is has countywide zoning so the colorful Cook County map there is a picture of the Cook County zoning map and uh the white is largely public property but it's actually the F1 zone district and then the orange is the F2
zone district where you can only have as small as a 10 acre lot size and then the yellow is the five acre minimum lot size zone district and everywhere that we're talking in today is going to be in the orange and the yellow locations that has immediate access off of off of a state
township or county road those are kind of the geographic areas to focus in on um so we're not going to be looking at something way far out in the sticks the idea is have something close to a road that road infrastructure is already nearby um Cook County 9% privately owned
i'm sure you're you're aware of some of these statistics in my conversations with different contractors you know the beginning estimates for just getting infrastructure on your lot is about $60,000 so septics are starting at $30,000 quite often more than that for a single family home private well drilling
about 20,000 obviously depends on how deep they have to go and then you put in the well the driveway and the electric another 10,000 you get to 60,000 pretty quickly and that's not even the cost of the land so um we're trying to kind of queue in on some of those numbers contractors are obviously in high demand
uh they frankly they can make a lot of money building second homes and it's a private industry so that's what these regulations are trying to do is find a way to be make the numbers work for the contractors so to say um we already talked about the zoning patterns and then one thing that's working in our
favor our current zoning already is rather favorable for your dwelling development so in Cook County on every residential parcel you get one primary dwelling and then you also get one guest cabin regardless of your lot size in some counties you would need double the
minimum lot size standards for your zone district so if you're in a 5acre minimum area you need to have 10 acres in order to have that second dwelling we don't implement any kind of provisions like that in Cook County so we already are rather generous on on that side of things compared to other counties um and
I want you to kind of keep that in mind as we think through these numbers because it could kind of seem alarming to someone to think what I'm proposing but I think if you keep in mind that every residential lot already gets two dwellings you'll see that we're actually kind of staying even with the total number of dwelling units that could be
developed in a certain area and also I'm totally okay if you want to interrupt me so if there's something that I said that you think totally doesn't click please let me know because um I'm working on my messaging on some of these ideas so I'd like to know what I say that doesn't make sense
to someone uh what are the restrictions on the size of the second dwelling you mentioned it was you can put a cabin over is the restrictions on how how big a house that is that's a great point we don't have size restrictions on the second dwelling either so in in other counties too they would restrict the
size of that guest cabin or the location with like double the setbacks or something like that uh so in Cook County it it just has to meet the other setbacks that already apply to any other structure yep all right so the purposes again everything that's written here is really trying to queue into these purposes so we're encouraging workforce
housing i'm not trying to create more second homes specifically no offense to second homes um where there's infrastructure we're trying to preserve large tracks of lands to maintain the Cook County character so the I mentioned that we're using to two tools that are in in our ordinances so the first is from the subdivision ordinance is the
open space overlay or sorry open space subdivision so that was the type of subdivision that Temperance Trails has over in Tafty where 50% of the lot needs to be kept in undeveloped state essentially open space um and then you cluster all your development in one
location so everything is based off of that principle and applying that in these rural areas uh is intended to keep the Cook County characteristics so if you have a 40 acre parcel 20 acres is still going to be not developable from this tool it's going to be maintained as
open space and hopefully not um give the feeling of a giant subdivision coming in to neighbors um also there's a prohibition against short-term rentals within the overlay district that's the second tool that's being used here is the usage of an overlay zoning district so we already have one zoning overlay
district over in toy the Wildwood Acres and so it's it's essentially you just you already keep the underlying F2 or three zoning so nothing changes for that you know all of all of the existing setbacks that had been applied are still legal um it's just that now we are
laying another zone district on top of it that has extra prohibitions on different uses but is more flexible on different setbacks so um it's a little bit of a zoning nerdy thing um we're also going I have some other provisions in these
proposed amendments that are just going to streamline some development things if you recall with temperance trails we had some back and forth with the developer about wanting more septic information and watching wanting an HOA document before you know at the conditional use level and then also at the preliminary
plat both of those stages the developer was saying I'm just not ready to give you those details we really wanted those details and and we'll find out in the future if we really needed those details at that point in time but I'm I'm proposing that we punt and require those at final plat maybe to give developers a
little bit more room to really be efficient with their money because they don't want to put investment in earlier than they have to just to pay to have modifications done again could I ask what's the current status of that uh the final plat approval for temperance i
guess you'll have to ask the developer i haven't heard from him in a while okay y we will all right and why these changes matter obviously affordable housing is our crisis i don't need to tell you that we want to preserve our natural landscapes we don't want to be changing wholesale zoning you know one thing we could do is
is change it so we don't have a 5acre minimum we could do 2 and a half acre minimum but people who bought in the 5acre area would probably be upset if we already did a whole blanket subdivision to giant zone districts so we're trying to be very tailored and specific about where these uh higher densities are
allowed um we want to simplify the devel development process for land owners and developers and you know really at the heart of all this is really trying to maintain our Cook County character you know I I really don't want people to feel like this is going to create a big problem um there's a lot of writing on
this again this is just talking about the process for these proposals and where we're at with it and this really began in 2023 when I met with Jason Hail the former H director uh Tim Nelson our land services director and myself sat down with Jason and I I wanted an open
field day on all of our ordinances say Jason you tell me what what are we missing to be more flexible for housing and we had a lot of different discussions uh that ran the full gamut and um that's kind of what what started some of this discussion and we we clued
in on the open space or on the overlay district concept as being the most flexible tool to allow these types of um initiatives to move forward then about January time um I put put pencil to paper to put these ideas down and sent
them out to different interest groups and different stakeholders to give me some tentative feedback made a few modifications along the way and pretty much have landed on this proposal more or less um I presented to the planning commission last week to get their initial feedback the Cook County Board of Commissioners at the committee of the
whole meeting yesterday and yourselves i also presented at the Cook County Coalition of Lakes Associations uh to give those uh stakeholder group a little bit of introduction to this as well um and I've also had some side conversations with different contractors and builders uh who have probably about
three three or four of them now uh to get their initial thumbs up or thumbs down and and initial feedback is that potentially these changes could kind of put their thumb on the scale so to say to make these types of projects a little bit more doable for their industry up
here um my plan going forward depending on how feedback this week goes is put together the formal legal notice and have that published in the paper next week for next Friday's Cook County News Herald paper um and have it before the Cook County Planning Commission at the
May 14th meeting for the public hearing so the public can come in person and speak about any of these thoughts that they think uh as we move forward with it so the open space subdivision that I mentioned earlier that's the the kind of
heart of the structure of all of this so a conventional subdivision that's on the left is very rectangular anyone can create lots with administrative subdivisions in Cook County they come into our office I review it I make sure they're meeting the lot size requirements and they provide some
additional documentation and they can create up to four lots every two years so that's a very highly used tool in our county it's the main way parcels get created um the downside is it's rather inefficient um and it's not really good planning frankly if every two years
you're creating four new parcels you're just kind of working your way down it's there's there's a little bit more efficient ways to do it and the open space subdivision can be one of them um this is you essentially look at the parcel you say "Where are the wetlands where are the steep slopes where's the ledge rock where's the undesirable area
to build there's a dog kennel next door we don't want to put all the houses right next to the dog kennel um let's try to site all of the residential houses away from all of those poor building design features that has to do with a property and let's create open space so that's what all the green areas
and the open space subdivision uh picture there and then all of the yellow is is the proposed new lots and you'll notice that they're a lot smaller than they are in the conventional subdivision so although it's the same you know parent parcel the beginning parcel size
you're making much smaller residential lots but still maintaining that open space um and keeping that characteristic of the area so as we all know wetlands are a big difficulty when we deal with uh development up here and u I feel like
the tagline of Cook County Land Services should be Cook County Land Services all of the easy parcels have already been developed because everything that's remaining was intentionally kind of avoided right so um unfortunately we're trying to develop the the difficult
parts so could I just ask in those configurations i assume there's a homeowners association or some district like that that is formed do the smaller
lots result in perhaps a smaller assessed value for the lot uh and then essentially um if the rest of it is open space I assume it's not
assessed and it might be a break in a price i mean it might be a price point if you're looking for affordable housing i mean it looks like that's the case but is it that's a really good question Commissioner Gabler nice to meet you um I haven't delved into the valuation
component of all this yet i've been it's I've got a long to-do list of the extracurricular things I want to think through and I'll speak with assessor uh Bob Thompson about um how does he do the valuation an HOA homeowners association would be required if there's shared
septic or shared well um you know road infrastructure could be done just through a a road association maybe um but I I do have in these provisions that a common interest community framework would be required and that's compliance with the Minnesota statute 515 for CIC
plots if it is shared well in septic for sure and then there's kind of room for modification if there's different designs I do foresee maybe some ways that like instead of everybody being clustered in one spot like half of the parcels are on one half of the 40 and half the parcels on the other 40 so it wouldn't make sense maybe for everyone
to be in the same association if they're geographically in different spots but um we're going to see how it goes along the way but I'll try to have more of those answers by the May meeting and I'm sure the commissioners will want to know if there's um you know the the tax implications for property taxes with
this type of design um one example if people want to get an idea of of what these lot sizes look like is we do have a development the Woodland Foothills Plat in Luton this is going up Mink Ranch Road and they share
a septic here and these lots range from I think one of them is like.19 but they're about 2 about a quarter acre in size uh to like 3 acres they're all pretty darn small and so I first used this subdivision as my template when I
thought through the lot sizes and just try to mimic what what this could look like so I have some of the smallest lot sizes in this proposal to be as small as these and then they could go larger from there um so I have a little box up in the top right corner that says wetlands
so this is just kind of showing you that they have all the wetlands in that big open space and they cluster all the homes in that little circle and they share septic Um so the residential open space is just kind of the selling points again of of why I'm liking this idea um maintains
Cook County character with 50% open space i mentioned it allows the creation of a higher lot density and we haven't really delved into that quite yet but um my initial proposals were saying you get one and a half more lots and I'll show you that in the math in just a moment
i'm bumping that up to two I think in the formal proposal next week to the community to really try to like put our best foot forward on housing density and just just see what kind of uh thumbs up or a lot of push back we'll just kind of see and and I the phrasing is always up
to two times density uh it could certainly be scaled down if the site's not well fit for it only in the F2 and three zone districts so that's the 10 and the 5 acre minimum lot size zone districts uh within a close distance to public roads i'm saying non-shorland area because if anybody's ever worked
with the DNR on plats it's not a ton of fun and it's very slow so uh if we avoid shoreland areas it's going to be a lot more logistically simpler and uh strictly regulates the land uses primarily to residential uses so I looked at like our single family
residential zone district and I kind of adopted those uses for these types of ideas and then went a little further and then that's just a visual to some of the points I just made so again that yellow and the orange um this is if anything much more generous and what it
will look like i'm going to work with our GIS analysts now to get a much more specified map um going forward for more public communications um so this is just a basic zoning map on here this is where the the math is and you'll see this is still my old 1.5
calculations on this slide um but what you have here is two two different zone districts examples so row A through C are using the FAR 2 which is a 10acre minimum lot size we have a lot of very large tracks of land in this zone district in the county um so those are
three different examples of different parcel sizes just to kind of see how the numbers could work out um so now you know I was just making my revisions to this today so that first first row of FAR two on an 80 acre um with a two times multiplier you know you could get
up to 16 single parcels so it does seem like a lot it's 80 acres though um and if they're all clustered together pretty small that woodland foothills example I think has um Oh I shouldn't have started that sentence because I don't remember how to finish it i think it's like 12
i'll I'll Yeah I'll get a better number on that one actually I think I might have Wait for it ah 15 15 single family homes on 40 acres i gave myself the answer so kind of use that as your template that's already 15 single lots on 40 acres that's what that could look
like so now if you bump ahead to this chart you know we just said 15 on 40 didn't really look all that alarming hasn't generated complaints at all because it is just residential housing i'm saying with this two times multiplier that we're kind of staying similar to what that looks like um you
can play around with that i just wanted to give people some idea of what these numbers could look like so I did have one person a little bit confused on this proposal so this is creating individual lots this isn't like extra residential structures particularly the lot is an important component because that's how
people get the lending obviously you can't get a mortgage to buy your neighbor's guest cabin if they still own it so um it's important that there actually be a home a postal ownership component to this the way that this would all play out logistically is that
first someone would apply to be reszoned their property would be reszoned through the normal reszone process in Cook County to be in the new overlay district it would be a process that is a public hearing everybody within a half a mile for a reasonzone would be notified and eligible to come in and talk about it um
I think with that we'd want to see some kind of like concept plan just to kind of see how someone envisions this happening the uh this would give developers an early thumbs up in the process that's one of the big big plus signs they would see what kind of um opposition they're going to get from neighbors really early in the process
too very helpful information to to be taken into consideration okay and then I have some language about this overlay district and what that can look like um you know the the primary purpose of all this is for residential uses so I
have some of the eligibility requirements that I just spoke about earlier outlines this is this would be housed under the zoning ordinance where we talked about other zone districts um and I have an applicability statement in there because you know what if someone does this reszone to be in the overlay
district and then they don't follow through with platting plotting is a very important component to this and it's really important that that be done to actually complete the project so um this isn't a tool that's eligible to be used for administrative subdivisions it is intended to be um zoned with the overlay
district and then subdivided through the open space subdivision plat process and then here's the I think kind of the bread and butter of all of the proposals so the overlay district and the zoning ordinance is where we regulate the land uses and so this slide
is showing you kind of how we categorize land uses we talk about our permitted uses our conditional uses and our prohibited uses so under permitted uses those are uses that somebody has a right to do it doesn't require any kind of special hearing and you'll see it's very limited it is primarily the one single
family dwelling it is a duplex where each unit is on a separate lot so I envision um once these lots got created someone could buy two abudding lots and combine them into one parcel but then put on a duplex that's right on that parcel line so that you've got um you
know one parcel with a duplex but it's technically two of these lots per our um our density calculations and I I wanted that in there because duplexes seem to be a pretty affordable way to get things in uh but I've had neighbors have
opposition to duplexes just kind of off of the stigma of having like a duplex next door um so it's kind of heartbreaking for someone to try to get an affordable housing thing up here and rent one side out just for neighbors have opposition to that feeling so if you're going to be in here duplexes might be there that's kind of where
we're going with that so far home occupations that's a use where someone is working out of their house similar to like an accountant it doesn't really have a very public facing use um one accessory structure up to a thousand square feet with or without the existence of a primary dwelling so you
put up you you buy the lot it's undeveloped you want to put a garage up just to store all of your stuff while you're up here your tools and whatnot while you're building the house we see that a lot in the sequencing of people development doing development up here and then one recreational vehicle the reason that's in there is because
recreational vehicles are often used as a tool during that transition of building houses and that is a license through our office that we we issue those conditional uses or activities um and you you know I'm sorry I'm probably going too into too much detail conditional uses public hearing may or
may not be applicable you know conditional and then prohibited use is just not allowed so vacation rental homes and guest or bunk houses i'd just like to make the comment real quick i don't believe you're going into too much detail for this audience i I certainly don't feel that way i'm really excited
that everything you're saying uh resonates with somebody who's in the process of of building on raw land uh and all of that so it's it's quite clear that that the language is is uh laser focused on exactly your objectives so great well and you could also think of
the contributions of former commissioner Skildum who's doing the development of a mink ranch road and uh has been working on that for quite some time and it sounded I mean just talking to them has been the answer to prayers essentially
that's great great and so the size requirements uh for this overlay district it is a minimum lot area of about a quarter acre at small and I have a little bubble there the reason that is so small again is to cluster in that development near each other for uh
shared utilities maximum lot area I'm throwing out there of 2 acres the reason I put a maximum lot size is because again my purpose affordable housing and I just kind of figure if you're starting to allow 5 acre lots in these developments this could start being more
attractive for that second home market i don't know if it's going to make a difference or not but I threw it in there uh 75 foot minimum lot width um that that dimension was set off of Woodland Foothills too as kind of a template setback distances um and I have
that highlighted because I'm still kind of thinking about it but I think those are the road setbacks we're going to settle on and then the maximum lot coverage of 30% is kind of a a self-cleansing sort of thing uh it it it kind of checks to be sure that we're not getting too much development on these
lots um if if we just had like a 100% lot coverage uh we would start seeing a lot larger structures on these smaller lots so it's kind of a way to self-regulate uh the sizes of the development within these areas i have one question so you said the county road
setback 65 ft do you know what it is currently on the gun trail i think that's taken from the F3 setbacks for county roads okay i can double check though okay mhm all right yeah uh so you'll see the county road is a little bit uh further away other
public or private roads uh so that would apply if you had platted road go into one of these developments if somebody just had a driveway um that was accessing you can have up to four lots create um four lots that isn't a road uh that's just a driveway and so we might
see more of that sort of design come out of this because people want to avoid the road design part of it um so the you're there's no setbacks for a driveway obviously so um we'll see how this this is something that might get implemented and then needs amendments pretty quickly
as we start seeing what it actually looks like but also between the reszone and the platting process there is a lot of control in the in the development of these developments with the regulators to to be sure um that they're not going to be problematic and then step two and three
is platting and that's that's very straightforward for us um we we have a lot of platting provisions in our subdivision ordinance they're just not utilized because people haven't chosen to utilize them plotting is expensive right you need a lot of technical assistance to get it done so there needs
to be a way to make this um still make sense and so this is where I mentioned earlier I've got those final septic designs and the HOA agreement moved over to final plot in these provisions um yeah additional considerations i'm almost done here um this is where I'm
the kind of the final thoughts before I put the final proposal together so I think I'm going to be bumping that up to two times density maximum um I'm thinking about you know wildfires and you know if we're putting 15 parcels way up the Gunflint Trail and
say they're all going off of one road it's one way in and out um our subdivision ordinance does have stuff about fire but I want to take a fresh look at it and see if we need to be more thoughtful about those provisions um review road set well check already reviewed road setbacks we're
good with those um let's see i want to add some language just saying that these developments might be in more rural areas there's going to be logging activities and dog kennels the further away from the city you go and that's just a part of life in the Roso district
um I think one thing about like zoning and land use stuff is it's it's been demonstrated in other areas that people are generally okay with things that they wouldn't have been okay with if they know about it in advance if you buy the property knowing you're next to Headstrom's lumber as I am then you're
kind of used to hearing a sawmill running and so um it's good to have that stated and nice and clear and expectations for people and then the overlay district itself uh it what the tool you know connecting the zoning ordinance with the subdivision ordinance here is kind of unique i I don't know
anywhere else that that's been done yet uh the land use attorney tells me it's it's okay we can do that uh just unique and so the reason we're doing that is because the overlay district communicates to our staff as well as land owners what those uses are and that it's different some plats tend to put in
all these little restrictions in the platting process but if you're trying to regulate that land use in our office you're not going into declarations and covenants of a plat just to issue a permit so it's really easy for those things to get overlooked frankly um so
the overlay district is going to be a very clear communication tool about setbacks and what activities are allowable in these areas and then there's going to be very sightspecific vetting of these proposals again for anyone who hears about this and might have concerns I couldn't emphasize
enough that you know it's going to require at least two public hearings for the reszone and then the preliminary plot and there's going to be a lot of consideration as to whether or not the site's even eligible to go up to two times density you know the planning commission county board might decide you
know like that's a little bit much you you know maybe you're only going to get six lots where you could have had eight lots or something like that so there's a lot of local control using it this way no no part of this is just an administrative process to create these developments and then yeah I like giving
developers a little bit of a green light earlier in that reszone process so that they can start um putting pencil to paper sooner and then just final thoughts you know Cook County you were talking about this just before I came on we have an aging population what was that 35% 65
plus in Cook County right now and uh the demographers call it the silver tsunami that's coming at us with our aging baby boomers so we need to find ways to be getting more of these smaller homes in our community in my opinion uh the only way I could afford to move up to Cook
County was that I I lived in a Silver Bay house and I owned that and I sold it and that gave me the equity to be able to buy into this market um but that that housing demographic doesn't seem to exist in large numbers here so I foresee these being the kind of houses that again they're kind of self-regulated
they're purposely going to be smaller parcels and smaller structures um there's not going to be uh you know we're we're going to be kind of hard-nosed about that in some ways because we're being very lenient on the total number of houses that can get built um and then you know we're having
more remote workers and also these are really nice tools for community we need that transitional housing for people that are moving you know they had the family kids move out they're stuck in a big house you know there's not a lot of options for those folks to move in this county so I see this as potential
transitional housing say if my mom wants to move up to Cook County as she ages so um those those are kind of the the bread and butter of where all this is intending to go and trying to make the numbers and the rules work out so developers have the the means to actually put this out there for us so at
this point I am like totally open to I am not offended at any recommendations so I would love to hear your thoughts is that just a really a basic question um I just want to make sure that I understand so if I own a 80acre lot in a far two
far three districts so um is this now available as an option for me or do I still have the option of developing that under the current FAR two far three you know 5 acre 5acre 10 acre lot just you conventional development or or I can go
through the process of getting it reszoned as part of the overlay district and then it'll be developed differently and with with the more dense you know I have the opportunity to develop more housing units on the same 80 acres yep that's the nice part with the overlay district is nothing would change for
anyone right now like or ever really if you don't want to be in this you're not in it you're just normal far too far three i have landed far three it's not going to make any changes to me whatsoever but if you wanted to explore this that's where you would go through the reszone first to be in the overlay
district so no one is in the overlay district until they've had their property reszoned to be in the overlay district and then once it's reszoned to be in the overlay district it's kind of like you're the you're the original FAR two plus you're the overlay district it's just now the overlay district is
more restrictive so you can't do the activities that you used to be able to do in the FAR two or FAR three um now you're being regulated by the overlay district instead and one other question before um so after if if you do go through the resoning and redevelopment
um who has title to the open land that's outside of the parcels is that the homeowner association or is that the original owner who We've seen that in different forms in Cook County uh for better or worse i don't know if it's supposed to be in different forms some developments some plat uh just have a
single person own that open space and then other plats will have the HOA own that open space okay i It depends on if people want to be a CIC or not that might be a part of it too thanks outside of the city there are no
um no height restrictions is that my understanding oh there's there's a 35 foot height max that's international building code yeah 35 ft drives from uh IBC so there is there any wiggle room on that on a case- by case basis you'd need a variance for sure um height
variances are tough the only time I've seen height variances be approved is when they're associated with an industry where there's not a lot of flexibility so like recently the Northshore Transfer Station and Grand Marray got a height variance but that was because they needed doors of such a height for safety
and state regulations it's just her you know we struggled with this with Gunflint View for threetory building um you know offers the developer some significant savings but you have to have really
really short spaces to get to get under the 35 ft i'm not sure if you're going to regularly see a 35 ft structure on a quarter to 2acre parcel the aspect ratio just starts to be rather tall relative to how wide it is
yeah there was some talk in here about multi-unit so I was thinking in the context of those and I I skipped over some of the conditional uses because I I was afraid you guys were getting a little falling asleep on me no offense people get kind of bored when I talk about zoning stuff
so I was trying to be thoughtful uh but some of the conditional uses listed are like the three to four dwellings or multi- units as a conditional use and that's where some of those things can be considered i a friend of mine was staying in a forplex up in Luden off the Caribou Trail and it's just like tucked
in there and it's incredible just like apartments it's like why is why isn't this everywhere nobody notices this thing and like it just doesn't make sense economically like the numbers just don't make sense so I do have them as conditional uses in these developments but that's where you know that that's
where the lot is going to need to be created intentionally like the 2acre lot maximum to then get that forplex in there or something like that to make sense and brought it up because of that it came up as an issue you know before and maybe it's not possible yeah and I think
if we had a more allowable height I think we'd get a lot more push back from the community well that's again case by case you know if it's nothing but public land be around it and nobody will ever see it maybe that's um maybe it's desirable in
that case obviously if you're blocking somebody's view of course you're going to get pushed back and that's not fair but I I uh sorry I'm done okay yep um I I like I said before I think this is this is absolutely fantastic it's clear that
you've uh talked to a lot of people about uh the needs uh the logistics um very very I personally found it a fascinating presentation on falling asleep i was very interested um I I mean I I uh I've been through this process
which is part of why this resonates so uh strongly with me of you know uh driveway septic electrical well this all adds up and you know and I was self-building so I wasn't paying a developer to do a lot of this taking on you know paying with my own labor and
it's still um there's there's barriers to entry and I think this is fantastic it uh also um so I've read about this concept uh in a different iteration and a couple years back there was a um episode of um or issue of fine homebuilding magazine that
featured uh six or eight uh units built in kind of a community like this and um one aspect that I feel like is also present or more likely to be present with this kind of a community is is the sense of community that you get uh we have some friends that are living in
town they love how tight-knit um Grand Murray is in town they'd love to move out to have a little bit more space um but one of the uh things that's keeping them from jumping enthusiastically in that direction is that that loss of community the fact that you can't just
walk out your door and be you know at a neighbor's house for dinner you can do that in this kind of a community so so I think that keeping the character of the community doesn't just mean you can walk out your door and there's pine trees it also means you can walk out the door and there's people that you want to have a conversation with so
there's a lot Yeah there's a lot of really positive i I love the the I'm Heidi by the way reminder I work for the EDA um and you use the word resonate that's exactly what I wanted to say is
this this presentation resonates with me personally especially you know the type of product of of not not needing a huge house that's close to a million dollars um for two people uh personally my
husband and I were we're empty nesters um this product would be exactly what we we would need and what we'd be looking for um I I don't have a home here yet um and it we you all know as HA it's it's
not the easiest thing to find to find for uh certain um types of families uh that you know don't need a humongous house you know so I would personally be very interested in in something like
this for me personally so uh I it it was it's exciting that this could be happening and I would personally be interested yeah great thank you and um one question unless somebody else had something so um uh you mentioned short-term rental is uh restricted uh
with with this uh zoning um would a uh long-term rental be uh included in that restriction i Okay excellent yeah so yeah short-term rental prohibited not even restricted just prohibited yep and uh long-term rental we don't regulate so
that would be totally allowable um some of my discussion with the planning commission did have uh one of the planning commission members explored the idea of whether or not we should be more flexible about the short-term rental concept just because it is a way that people can generate income um I I want
to steer clear of that thought and you know we'll hear what the community thinks through the public hearing i'm again totally open to being a sounding board to all the different ideas as we look at this from different lenses at this point um but just starting to be open to that really kind of erodess away
at the whole purpose of all this and because long-term rental is eligible that is also a high need here um we've got guest cabin listed as a conditional use in here so the thought that you know I build the house and then I have the living quarters over the garage for the
mother-in-law apartment or the ADU um you can still get a conditional use and you know do long-term rental there would be no problem with that and part of the conditional use is to look through the septic if these are on shared systems we want to be sure that it's building out appropriately for the communal system
and that the HOA has you know the the capacity to add on that extra demand yeah great question no I I think that's that's a a good uh context to have as well i would agree emphatically that uh that uh prohibiting uh short-term rentals is
is key and that yeah long-term rentals could be uh an income source i was thinking of it more along the lines of uh there are people who uh enthusiastically want to live in Cook County and don't have um the money to put down a down payment uh on a purchase so you know renting and working in the
community while you're able to you know save up for eventual home ownership I think is is an attractive option for a number of people that that I'm aware of anyway the to expand a little bit about the short-term rentals this isn't going to be for everybody for every reason and
every purpose and so there will still be opportunity for people if they did want to create something like that in the county correct right yeah again this is an optin thing everybody is staying exactly as they are i am not changing the far two and far three zone districts
for a reason uh so this is something that someone would be very intentional about it's it's not a a cheap process to go through uh to do a whole replat so someone would need to ask to be in this reszoned area so Neva once you've uh by the way thank
you i've already told you this is brilliant um uh say I'm looking to buy a FAR3 property um and it's not gotten the overlay but
my intent would be towards getting acceptance for that how do you suppose that's going to go until it goes so people would apply to have their property reszoned in the overlay district mhm um are you thinking more on like the property transaction
side of things well uh uh you know I would assume that the property may have more value if it does have the overlay as a possibility as a developer might look at it um and if it was already approved it would be worth more or you'd want to act
on it maybe faster right man I don't know i'm going to have to think on that some more my whole goal is not to make property values go up more no you got me scared a little i am Yeah I am presenting uh to the
realators association at the end of this month so maybe they'll give me some insight to how they how they see some of that play out um yeah good question for them yeah yeah i can't speak much to valuation and land property transaction that's not my specialty yeah but the but
the number of weeks in process is not as difficult as I can see it as other subdivision types yeah the reason itself is pretty quick um you know it's like a two maybe three month process depending on how applications come in and
deadlines it is the preliminary plat process that is very lengthy you know that may require a full wetland delineation so if it's the winter time you're kind of out of luck until until the leaves start popping out so we do see the wetlands lineation be the component that slows down a lot of
projects if people aren't familiar with those regulations any other questions for Neva from Thanks for an excellent presentation thank you very much thanks guys we appreciate your forward motion and direction on this and and want to
support you thank you thanks thank you and I think this is important too as we talk about housing is a math problem this is an opportunity for that math problem just to be part of the formula in the future so I'm excited for this and I am too i'm
looking forward to the next part of the discussion and I think it's also a good topic for the update of the strategic plan because this is the single family aspects of of what we're involved in here are really important and this is a total new
direction in a sense i mean there there are certainly HOAs around the county i mean I live in one but uh it's just uh to the extent that it's meant it's trying to drive costs to be more affordable that's
really important because that isn't necessarily the key to where we live well and I think that equally important to that is that the you know the HR has been very successful in the early years and but in a concentrated geographic
area of of in and around grammar for the most part and this is really a opportunity to potentially develop you uh or meet the needs of a lot of other parts of the county yeah I think it's a chair i make a comment this as NA
mentioned it was presented to the board yesterday when I initially looked at this it it looked like the impetus which is one of my questions where's the impetus and it looked like it's coming from developers that are trying to find economies of scale and so the the end of
this will be if the economies of scale uh translate to affordable housing mhm and I think that's something we've talked about is the affordable component how do we demonstrate that this would be a response to a study that would say where's our need where are we missing
need and this is something that uh older folks can move into younger families can move into and the community aspect when you look at the psychographics where people want to be and why they want to be and then the demographics which is the affordability i think this is the
creative response to that and it's just that addressing the concerns that exist with short-term housing and something else is is also being mindful of the community's attitude towards housing so I think it's I think it is very positive
well I think it's the project is pretty good illustration of this honestly i mean it took it's taken a while because the wetland delineation that easements that ran through there and in fact it's behind a school and they've got some rights it
was complicated but the idea of putting up some smaller single family homes and then some side byside you know one-story duplexes for seniors that would be attractive i just think that's you know so it's a good model and uh and but
outside of Grand Marray it's almost essential um there's no affordable housing that's going to be done on a 5 acre lot with having to put in its own septic its own drill well it just isn't possible
and and so I I really credit Neva or whoever was behind this and Jason likely and Jason yeah so I know Jason was hot on it and uh and we know you'll carry through for Jason here from here on sure well it's a good
idea too i mean I'm thinking about people who want to to live up here they want to live in the woods but they don't want to have a lawn right they don't want to come to Cook County to mow lawn they want to live in the woods right and so this allows the developer to take a big chunk of this and leave it intact for for habitat for that natural beauty
and I I think that that that's the way to preserve this as well um just to share I had an opportunity to go through and actually look at one of the homes at Woodland Hills um one of the corner um lots the one that sits on
the northwest corner and it was amazing that you could look out to the front you could see the road you could she see the center area which is shared and that's where the septic is but I could look in three directions and all I could see were woods sure and it was really a
wonderful onelevel two-bedroom opportunity that was affordable and I think this has really great potential to solve um some of our workforce housing needs as well as needs for seniors mhm one thing that when you mentioned that I
just thought of as well is that there will still be a need for defensible space and eventable wildfire something like that but I think that'll be continued to be contemplated as well did you Oh uh I just going to say that um yeah that that uh point that was made
about you know not having all of the demands of property maintenance of of living on like a larger parcel of land i I had that written down cuz um you know not everybody wants those responsibilities but enjoys that aspect of rural living if you drive on Highway 7 down to 61 you
can see people who don't quite share that they like being on a tractor mower and keeping a it's acres of lawn which I it doesn't compute to me but uh obviously that's just a market question and some people there I think a lot of
that is but this is gives access to views of the lake I think is one of the reasons that's helpful mhm any other thoughts comments on this otherwise we'll move along to other topics uh if there are other topics I think we've covered a bunch of other topics how
about uh committee reports well we had the finance committee report and I don't think the personnel committee has anything further to report so good uh any any commissioner that any commissioner items that you'd like
to bring up i have one of Sure so I was uh interviewed by Cali Hawkins from WTIP Reporter along with Claire Stoddard who's an owner of Cascade Vacation Rental i haven't heard it i don't know if it's run yet has anybody heard it okay probably hasn't run yet just
happened a couple days ago uh pursuant to the uh voluntary um service fee% well it's doesn't 1%'s not a part of it that happens to be what Cascade Vacation Rentals does not even on all their properties so could be a quarter
of a percent could be 30% whatever they want to do um and could even take a whole different form but basically it's a it's an effort to encourage private businesses to do a pass through uh fee service fee on their service whatever it
might be uh to the U h and it's uh and I was very clear on the radio that I can't ask for donations to the H so just I just talk about it from the terms of how useful it is to have that unc unencumbered money for the H obviously
just isn't not to pick on on Odyssey and Goofin their names come up a lot they're large enough that if they did for instance a 1% service fee it'd be a lot of money and um very very useful and and also you know was sure to thank Cascade
Vacation Rentals for what they've been doing since 2021 I think they said yeah it's must be around $50,000 by now it's been 90,000 since it started over 90,000 since it started last year and um so anyway she interviewed us on that and
then she did at the end of the interview just ask me how I liked being on the H board so I just want to give you a heads up i shot my mouth off on that no names i was I tried to be as complimentary and as positive as I could be because that's how I feel so just giving a heads up
that that's happening and then what kind of triggered that is that Cali had gotten from our last meeting gotten the idea that we're that we are going out claire and I and I've talked to you about that before with your approval uh to go out and talk individually to businesses that we thought might be
interested in this and we have a plan to do that so but we're going Well thanks for your efforts in carrying that on because it is important yeah it's just um especially in today's environment where we don't really know what's going on with government money except we know
the state's looking at a big deficit and the feds kind of in chaos right now i think it's fair to say um the um um as as I said at the end of the interview uh the best solutions are homegrown solutions so that's what this would be
okay so any other director commissioner items hearing none is there a motion to adjurnn i move moved seconded
second moved and seconded any further discussion about adjourning no if not it was a Amen thank you Bill thanks thank you all we're at County where County
Road six goes north paper recycle