Council order today, 07/15/2026. I'll start with roll call for the, CAC members, Chair Jake Anderson, present, Vice Chair Colleen Wilson. Present. Emma Bali? Present. Adam Keester? Present. Marissa McQueen? Present. Jeff Kramer? Present. Julie Gray? Here. Okay. I'll, call the council, roll call. Gustafson here. Georgiana May. Here. Jim Logan. Present. Paula Melki? Here. Jim Wassenberg? Here. Staff liaison's Jack Linehan? Here.
Hannah Myron? Here. And our consultant for Bolton Mink, Andrew Dreshiter? Here. K. At this point, I'm gonna hand it over to, administrator Linnenhand to, introduce our workshop topic. Thank you, Mayor, Council, and the Community Advisory Committee. So, a little bit, I'm gonna do just a quick, quick, brief introduction. I'll kinda explain the format of tonight, the goals, background, and then turn it over to our guests. So first, I'm gonna walk through again, a lot of you know this, but I wanna kind of reiterate this. The background and timeline for this.
So real quick, I'm gonna go through this quick. November 2024, the city adopts our Snelling and Larpon recorder study. June '25, the University of Minnesota announces their intent to dispose of the Les Polstead Golf Course. And real quick, can I get a note for 9 North? Is there a way I can get the mics for the or for the dias turned up a little bit for the audience? In September 2025, the city hosted online and in person open houses. We started gathering feedback on the city's goals and visioning for the site. In October 2025, the University of Minnesota releases their RFP.
So purchase price was the primary weighted, criteria. They also had top goals of how the proposed buyer matched our city's goals and visioning and our selling Laubner Corridor study, which then they extrapolated to include additional property that wasn't in the selling Laubner Corridor study. December 2025, the University of Minnesota has RFP responses due. April 2026, the city council assembles a community advisory committee to help guide the future buyer in a collaborative manner to develop a plan that meets the city's vision and community priorities for the site. And then June 2026,
the University of Minnesota announces Rachel development and won the RFP. Once the purchase order is complete or purchase agreement is complete, the plans are released to the public. And so the purpose of tonight's meeting, first, we do wanna do introduction to the Rachael development team, kind of introduce who they are. They'll go through and walk through their bios and a little bit of their background. Tonight is also the first chance to view these preliminary plans and submissions that the university to the University of Minnesota in response to their request for proposal. It's important to note the context of this. This is not an official submission to the city. This is not us accepting the plans.
What this is is we know that Rachel submitted these. It was part of the criteria to win the the RFP. They are out there, and they will soon be public. And so we want a chance to kind of be able to share it with some of our key stakeholders here and the public as well to kind of see what their initial thoughts were on on the site. A little bit of the format of tonight's meeting. So follow following my introduction, Rachel will develop and introduce themselves and present a PowerPoint that highlights their plans. There will not be an opportunity tonight for questions or comments, whether it's from staff, members of this council, or CAC, or the public.
That's just the format of this. The reason is is this is the first chance that everybody here gets to see these plans minus staff and obviously the Rachel team. And so it's preliminary. So what we're gonna do is over the coming weeks, we're gonna have these plans available. People will be able to look at it, be able to think about it, and start to kind of develop the right questions and comments and feedback. So we just wanna give that context that if you're expecting that that aspect. Following the meeting, staff will do a recap of what we did at 06:30. We had a very productive meeting before this where we talked about, public participation, ways to get the community involved, and kinda what that looks like and kind of the timeline in the immediate future.
This presentation, a video of the meeting that's happening now, and additional information will be published to the city's website on Thursday morning. We're gonna send out an email. If you're subscribed to our newsletter, you'll also get an email blast kind of recapping the meeting, some of the details, links on where to find it, including this PowerPoint as well. So just a couple expectations, just setting kind of some ground rules and understanding. So and we we know this will be the case, but we do request attendees to be civil, respect for all. Please refrain from side comments or other stuff just so people can hear. We know, hearing will be, you know, always a challenge in this room.
I will also note the configuration is weird. We do apologize for that. It's a big group of people, and our presentation, is something that we're continuing to invest in. So mayor Gustafson and Cherry Anderson are the two chairs running this meeting. They may pause conversation or rule comments out of order. It's kind of their their direction for that. We do have assisted listening of, devices available at 9 North Room for those who have trouble hearing. I will say that the microphones that are kind of down, for the city council and the CAC, they are just for recording audio. They don't project into the room. They're too sensitive and it doesn't work that way.
So if they speak, that's kinda why so we just ask also the members, you know, when they they do roll call or whatever it is, that they do project their voice. And then the nine north staff can adjust as time needed. So if we need more volume, if you're having trouble hearing the presenters, we can kind of give that feedback and adjust. If it goes up too high, though, it gets feedback. And so that's the end of the introduction. And so for this, what I will do is I'll turn it over to, Rachel Development, and starting with, Paul Robinson. So Let me just start the slideshow. Thank you. Is this on? The mic? Okay. There we go.
What a heck of a first date here. I appreciate, you allowing us this opportunity tonight, to tell you our plans. My name is Paul Robinson. I work with the Rachael Development. I'm the Development Director. We're going to go through some introductions tonight and oop. Do I need to point it at you? Yes. There we go. We're gonna introduce us as a team so you can kinda get to know us a little bit better. Go through the background of the property a little bit, not in-depth completely. Talk about our initial site plan. We're calling it like an RFP plan, so a Request for Proposals plan.
That's the plan that we did for the University of Minnesota. Go through just briefly some thoughts on our schedule and then next steps. And the plan, yeah, I'm going to get into that in a minute. Is it going? No. We did, we were trying to figure this out ahead of time. Oh, man. Okay. Shoot. I have a lot of clicks. I know. So do you want It does have the fob in. It was working. I I don't know if it's a range issue. Alright. No. That's me. Okay. Yeah. We we did practice, and then it was working while I stand over there. Yeah. You wanna please plug in over here. Sure. Only because we have we have about a half hour presentation.
I probably have 200 clicks in here. I could just introduce myself while we're waiting for this. So just a little bit about me. I started in this kind of business on the city side. So I worked for cities for about nine years. My last position was as a city administrator, Medina. So I worked with for Medina for six years. Prior to that, I worked for the city of Lauderdale for three years while I was working on my master's degree at Hamlet. And so a little bit, this is a full circle for me being next door for a while. I helped write the comp plan. I I learned how to do city finances from Tom Kelly,
the finance director here, in City Hall. So it's kinda fun to to be back and take this, you know, at more at the later in my career. After working for cities, I I worked for a company called the Bancorp Group for about nineteen years, and I've been working for Rachel for almost five years. And, during that time, that twenty four years, I've been developing land and projects all over the Twin Cities. One example of a project that I was just and we're just maybe giving some examples of projects that we worked on that are that, may be similar or have some similar context to this.
This is a suburban project, so it's not an urban project, but we did one called Woodland Cove, in Minnetrista. It was a ten seventy one unit development on about four eighty acres. It had a suit, a very wide range of product from, high end homes on Lake Minnetonka to town homes, empty nester patio homes, all kinds of product, much like what you'll see tonight that we're looking at for this project. It also had a commercial area that now has a grocery store and some retail. It had apartments. And so it had all of the same types of products and complexities that this,
project has. And not every project has the exact same complexity. That one had a roundabout on a trunk highway. It had some cultural resource stuff. It had a 117 docks approval on Lake Minnetonka. So all of that, but it was a good example of a very complicated project where we had to have multiple agencies in a long process to try to coordinate and come up with a a plan, what we call the master PUD plan at that time, that guided that development up until it's just finishing right now and and I think might come up in some of the other introductions. And so,
I think I'll turn it over to you, David. Hi. Good evening. My name is David Stratman. I am Vice President of Development with Rachael Development. I want to back up and just provide a little background of who Rachael Development is. Rachael Development is a related company to Rachael Contracting. We're based in St. Michael. Rachael Contracting is an earthwork utilities and demolition specialty contractor, and has experience in environmental remediation of golf course properties, demolition of buildings that may have,
asbestos and things in them as well. So that's part of the background of of regional companies. Personally, I'm a lifelong Minnesota resident. I grew up in Stillwater, Minnesota, and I I went to law school at Hamlin, which is now Mitchell Hamlin. But, but I've been in the in the development business for about thirty years. I used to work for Super Value. I developed Cub Foods grocery stores and worked with independent retailers, worked in retail development for a while. And then for the last fifteen,
sixteen years, I've been in land acquisition, development, land management. I've been with Rachel here for a little over eleven years. So excited to be here. This is a very interesting property, and we're looking forward to collaborating with all of you and coming up with something that everyone ends up proud of, when it's all said and done. Thank you. Good evening, folks. My name is Paul Hoyer. I work for Pulte Homes. The first fifteen years of my career, I I was a civil engineer.
I used to be a consulting city engineer for a variety of cities such as Lauderdale. That happens to be where I first met Paul long ago, as well as Little Canada. In the last twenty four years of my career, I've been creating neighborhoods all over the Twin Cities area. Most of the available land is in the suburbs, in farm fields, but there is quite a few redevelopment projects I have worked on in St. Paul, couple in New Brighton, Eagan right along Cedar Avenue and also a golf course that was a redevelopment right off 494, it used to be called the Baja Oaks Golf Course. And I've worked for Pulte for eleven years and really excited to be here tonight.
Every neighborhood we create is different. It it just turns out that the facts, the the issues that we deal with each time are unique and our job is to really try to dig in and understand, what all those issues are and what all the the priorities are so that we can try to, make it work for all. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Steph Griffin with MI Homes. I'm the vice president of land acquisition for MI Homes. Just a little bit about myself. I have been in the real estate development industry since I think I could probably
talk. I am third generation of females actually in, this business in the Twin Cities. Really drawn by my passion for creating a sense of place and creating a place where people can live, work, recreate. I think it is quite a unique career to be able to to drive the Twin Cities Metro and see places where many of us have had our our hands on, projects and and gotten to create, communities that are thriving and, multiple generations living in them.
I grew up that way in in, Eden Prairie. I'm also a lifelong Twin Cities resident, and went to high school not too far from here. I've worked in the Twin Cities Metro for most of my career doing very similar things as as all three before me have said. I also have a a history, of working for a Minnesota based national developer doing national, development for lifetime, the fitness, clubs all over the country. So I think what's really unique about this group is that we all bring some unique experience.
We also I would be remiss to say, to not say that we have also partnered. This is not the first time this group has partnered together. We certainly, I think, align on how we our perspective of creating communities and being a part of the public process. So I think you'll you'll find that through the process here. Just a little bit about MI Homes. We are a national home builder located in 17 divisions across the mostly the Central and the East Coast Of The US. We've built over 170,000
homes, have over fifty years of experience. We are based in Columbus, Ohio. How we came to this market is unique, has very deep roots in this market. We were acquired about ten years ago, by MI Homes. Before that, for fifth over fifty years, we were Hans Hagen Homes. Many of you probably have, have heard of of Hans Hagen and and, kind of a renowned builder in this market. Just a couple of projects I don't need to go to in-depth, but I think just ones to make note of that we have, this group has experience partnering on.
Woodland Cove would be one of them. We are a home builder in that community with over 330 units that MI Homes has built. We're kind of ending, almost selling out of that community. And then lastly, a project in Meconium that Pulte and MI are partners on. That is a two forty acre, almost three forty unit subdivision, where we've collaborated and and are, you know, well underway in our home building process. So, thank you very much and looking forward to this. So you stole a little of my thunder.
I was gonna talk about it. Done. But, we actually enjoy working together, which is also very helpful when you're working on a complicated project like this. And, I mean, this group has over one hundred years of experience. Again, like like Steph was talking about, there's some, you know, we have a city engineer, we have a former city administrator, somebody who's developed club stores, a third generation, female developer. It's a very interesting, diverse group with a lot of experience, and we complement each other. So I'm going to go just through the site itself and just give a little bit of background. It's 140 acres, so I don't have the,
like, all the facts of the site, but that's what you, the box you see there. And I like to start with topography and just how the land kind of generally looks. There's a high point on this site, and I know it's kind of small, but you can see the little red dot on the driving range is the high point. The low point of the site is up on the Northwest corner right by Fulham and Roselawn. And so, you know, the elevation change on the site is about 70 feet. So you can kind of imagine that's the site, the golf course that you see today. We kind of go into those lower elevations. There's one of those lower elevations in the Southwest corner as well.
It kind of goes up into the mid elevations, and then the rest of the site, about two thirds of the site, is in that nine eighty, nine ninety kind of undulating. That's why it's so squiggly because it's undulating from the golf course itself. And then that really relates then to how drainage works. And in this case, the site the sort of north say, two thirds of the site drains to the, to the North, to the Northwest, and the southern third drains to the Southwest. Then, if you look at this from a political boundary standpoint, we have Rice Creek Watershed that's gonna be regulating kind of stormwater and wetlands in
the north portion, and we have Capital Region watershed kind of regulating the southern portion. However, the physical boundaries of the drainage are a little bit different. So Rice Creek has most of that area, but there is some of that area that's in Rice Creek that's actually draining to Capital Reef Region today. When we look at stormwater, we probably will take advantage of some of the existing open water wetlands that are there today as part of that stormwater treatment system. But a modern system has to integrate a whole series and network of ponding. And so when you see our site plan in a minute,
you'll this will make sense. But these are the ponds right now that are reflected in that plan roughly to treat the stormwater on the property. So in a modern development like this, 7% to 10% of the gross land acre we tend to set aside for stormwater treatment. We need to get into the detailed engineering. We need to do modeling. But we have done this enough that we have a pretty decent idea of what to start to allocate upfront. I wanted to just compare this because this slide is just kinda helping me to sort of talk about how things have evolved over time as as communities have developed.
This is, this is a portion of Falcon Heights, just east of, Snelling, same exact same location as the golf course, you know, Roselawn and Lavender. And, you know, at the time, really, there there wasn't when this was developed, they hadn't really probably didn't really think about what kind of wetlands were there. Didn't have, any requirements for stormwater treatment. And really, what's happened over and evolved over time is we've really needed to first start to look at the site more holistically with the with with environmental considerations and other regulations in mind prior to really laying it out.
You can't just throw it on there, create a flat grid, and just put put it on the site. You have to really look at what's there, the topography, the wetlands, the storm water. When and again, we haven't field located the wetlands. That will be part of a process we'll start here in the next couple of weeks. But we do have a pretty good idea based on aerial photos, national wetland inventory maps and other things. And so the, the largest of the wetlands, those open water wetlands I showed on the previous screen, will likely be preserved in the open spaces. And there's several smaller little wetlands along in the property that will likely have to
be removed in order to just accommodate the overall development. And so our initial estimate is there's about three acres of wetlands in 10 to 11 areas across the site. So here, those are the existing open water wetlands and then the little green spots that you see are vegetated grass. Several of those are actually right in the middle of fairways. But that's those are and so some of those may end up not being wetlands, but that's what we're indicating today. And so overall, about maybe three quarters of an acre of wetlands would be impacted. And then we would go through a process to replace that by buying credits,
for people who have created wetlands in other locations. A couple of things, I mean, we're gonna focus on just sort of where to sewer, where can we get to sanitary sewer, where can we get water. For sanitary sewer, we know there's a connection right on Roselawn about a thousand feet to the east, and that's a reasonable connection for us to get to with a lift station and a force main. There's another connection on the south side of the property, along Larpenter, which are both reasonable connections, but we haven't done enough studying at this point. This is just, you know, acknowledging we know where they exist.
And now, we have to look at how much capacity they have and if that can handle the flows from this development. We also know that there are connection points in Lauderdale and connection points in, in Rose in, Roseville. I was going to say Roseville. In Roseville. And and so, you know, those may come up at a later date depending on how what our initial, calculations come up with. For water, we know there's, a, trunk water main along Larpenter and that there's another water main along Fulham and another one in Roseville on, Roselawn. And so, we with our RFP materials,
we were provided a letter from St. Paul Regional Water Services and they indicated that they think the primary water source will be that trunk water main on Larpenter. And so, again, we'll have to do pressure studies and capacity studies and that will be part of our next steps. I also kind of wanted to just highlight the neighborhood context. I mean, we looked at the area around the site, and I'm going to start up in Roseville. Luckily, I wrote it there so I can figure out what it is. The there's, you know, the 82 unit condo up by the golf course there. But otherwise, it's fairly residential. It's fairly kind of suburban ish residential.
It's the lot sizes there is anywhere from 75 to a 100. So, and and in that little stretch there, there's four cul de sacs. So it it really has a much more kind of that suburban feel on the North. As we come into Falcon Heights to the East, primarily, it's public land. We have, you know, the park and the public land. There There's a radio tower on the, Northeast corner. But then if we look at kind of what the next level brings us, we, again, go back into a little bit more of a suburban pattern. There's 70 those lots are anywhere from 75 foot wide to 100 foot wide.
There's a little fourplex infill in there. But again, it's got that more kind of suburban feel. Going around to the south, again, we have some of the Bell Museum, the U of M sports facility. But again, now now we have a condominium right along Larpenter. And then when we look at the residential portion that's south of the property, it's it becomes a little bit more urban, although there's a lot of topography in that neighborhood to the south. So the roads do curve a little bit. And they're slightly larger than your sort of normal urban standard. They're in that 60 to 80 foot wide.
And then, again, as we come around the corner and go to Lauderdale, there's the couple parks along that edge. There's stormwater pond and then there's Breckwoods, which I kind of show like a park, but I know there's some development coming potentially in that area, so I'm not sure how much park will be there when that's done. There's a 84 unit, condo and 146 units of townhomes, so on right on that border. And then the remainder is more of kind of the beginning of that urban grid that kind of continues into Lauderdale, and a little bit of the alley starting to mix in there.
And so it's a fairly it's fairly eclectic. It's fairly there's a lot of different uses that go around there. But there is a pattern. There is kind of a lighter touch to the north, I would say less density to the north, with increasing density as you go south towards Larkendar. And so that's kind of what's reflected in the extrapolated land use plan and what's going to be what you'll see is, in our site plan. So as I go through, before I go through the initial site plan, I wanted to just tell you how we did it. We really closely follow the visioning, Committee goals and guiding principles. We read that document a number of times.
We think we're very close to, with this site plan, not that this is the only, you know, this is the site plan you have to approve tonight. We're just, but we are close to looking, you know, trying to internalize those goals and reflect it in a plan. We also, looked at and followed the extrapolated land use plan. So broadly, our goals were to fit the home sites into this existing neighborhood context that I showed you just recently. Provide a variety of housing products, this whole idea of life cycle housing, meet or exceed the city's open space, meet or exceed the Met Council's and city's density goals,
which we know is a little bit in flux, 10 to 14 units, somewhere in there. And, and really focus on the idea of just creating a sense of place. What's going to make this special? What's going to make this a nice neighborhood that people are going to want to be in? So I think Jack kind of touched on this in his introduction, but this site plan was prepared for the University of Minnesota. I mean, that was our first and foremost goal, was to do it as a part of our, our RFP. And we, used it in a large way to, to create a value for the property, because without putting some sort of units on the property and some sort of assemblance,
it was hard to kind of grasp on what kind of value there might be. It is a thoughtful plan. I mean, it is based in reality. We have real products. I mean, this is an implementable plan. It is not just a hypothetical plan. We are presenting this, I would say, a little sooner than typical. I don't think We had kind of wanted to have a first meeting just to introduce ourselves to the Council without any plan, just so you knew who we were. And, you know, I know we're jumping right into it. And, and so just understand that we, you know, just like Jack was saying, it's going to become public soon. And so we thought better to hear from it from us and understand it than
to have it be cast into the media without any context. There's a lot of details in this presentation and on this slide, you know, what I'm going to be showing you. But I really think if you focus just on the big picture and sort of the idea of the goal as your first and foremost impression, I think that would be a good place to start. And we recognize and hope you do that this is just the very beginning of our journey, together, and we're just getting started. So, what we understand is we know that this is a significant thing for the City of Falcon Heights. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity,
not not just for the City, but for us. And we're not taking that lightly. The, the City wants to make sure, and we know this, that its citizens, its neighbors are involved in this process and that this City's goals are achieved. And so, we, we understand this is a precious resource and you are all very concerned about it and we understand that. We are really excited about this. I mean, this is an incredible opportunity for us. This is, a very incredible location. There's not very many places like this in the Twin Cities. It's convenient. It's, you know, to retail, to transit.
There's a variety of adjacent parks and open spaces. There's a desire by the city and by us to create, this light, this vision for life cycle housing in here. And really, a chance to create this cohesive neighborhood, a special new neighborhood, in, in the city. So, it started, as Jack mentioned, back in 2004 with the Larpenter study. And so, this was one of the concept plans that was approved at that point with the study. And then the University of Minnesota took that study and added and made some changes. So they removed the water tower property. They added the driving range.
And they added, Holes 10 And 11 south of Larpenter. And so the vast majority of the plan, the bones of the overall plan that you approved back in 2004 basically stayed in that same plan with the additional property added. And I believe there was some consultation, some conversation, not in official approval, but with the city on this plan. And so then, I wanted to just compare kind of how we sort of looked at the extrapolated plan and how our site plan sort of they sort of align and maybe are somewhat the same and somewhat different. So, if we look at the open spaces that were indicated in that extrapolated land use
plan, and if you look at the open spaces that we are now indicating in our site plan, you you can kind of see an alignment. You can see that there is it's not exactly the same, but there is a continuity between the two. Similarly, if you look at sort of the areas that were identified for single family, in the North, We are also identifying areas of single family in the North. And again, much like we were that sort of kind of more suburban ish north part. And then as we move through the site, the middle part for townhomes, we're also showing kind of townhomes in that middle and on the eastern edge.
And then finally, as we get down to Larpenter, we show, multifamily apartments and, that's what's indicated and that's what we have as well. There was commercial indicated along Larpenter. We also have an area, for commercial. And then, finally, there was some office area, identified. And if you kind of look at my circle there, that's probably the area where we are the most divergent from the plan. And when we got to that point, we didn't have enough units to even make it to 10 units per acre. And so we needed to be able to find a space to be able to get to your minimum density.
And so that's why there's multifamily in that location. And also, there really isn't a market for office. And I was going to touch on that again later, but I'm touching on it now. Since COVID and other things you all know, I mean, office is kind of a hard use to fill. And so I would so we think we came pretty close to coming, you know, to near this idea of this plan. The next portion of this presentation, I'm just, I'm gonna talk about our site plan, but I'm gonna talk about it in the context of each of the six visioning goals, or the visioning committee goals. So one of the first things under connectivity was
connecting to the neighboring communities. And so if you look at Lauderdale, we connect, four of the five streets that are in Lauderdale. If you look north into Roseville, we connect to four or five of the streets in Roseville. All of the connections, obviously, in in Fall Good Heights are fairly easy, the Larpenter and Coffin, but we connect to all of those as well. Then, there's, I'm gonna show you a trails and sidewalk system, but that connection then extends into all of the adjacent parks, to Gibbs Farm, with the existing, sidewalks to to Bell Museum. And another one of the things in connectivity was limit the use of cul de
sacs. We have one cul de sac in this entire development. So we definitely heeded that, kind of, that ask. And, and again, trails and sidewalks, I'm going to show on another slide. One of the other pieces of this connectivity was there was an indication of carrying some of that grid that exists in Lauderdale and that grid that exists East Of Snelling into this development. And so I I would submit we're doing, I would say, a slightly more modern version of that grid because we are implementing stormwater treatment and some other things that may interrupt that perfect grid.
But if you look in this yellow area, it's fairly north south, east west, kind of more grid as you look on the exterior of the site. So as you're we're adjacent to those more gridish areas, we we show a more of a grid pattern. When you get into the interior of the site where we have existing wetlands, or we're trying to create some greenways and work within those natural features, then we start to get a bit more curvilinear to make it all kind of fit and work together. And so that's, we think kind of fits the intent of the goal, but fits also the property itself.
When we look at the green space overall, for Upland acres, we're showing about 12% or 17.2 acres, of the site. If you compare, if you look at all the wetland, you know, everything that's open space, or about 30 acres or almost 20% of the site is open space. And I know you're look, you're kind of going, doing some tours to different projects. So Hillcrest, this, this would exceed the amount of open space by a little bit from that hill, the plan that was in Hillcrest. And so, if you look at the trails and sidewalks, all of that open space would have a public trail system. There's existing sidewalks that then bring each of the sub neighborhoods kind of into that
trail system. We have existing sidewalks that aren't very easy to see on here, but up, Kaufman and Cleveland and on Larpenter. And then all of that then links to all of those amenities, and parks around this property. Trees. I know that was listed as one of the ideas that you want to save trees on the site, some of the mature trees. We haven't done a tree survey yet, and we will evaluate that. But, to be honest, the tree, tree savings is going to be limited. To be able to develop this type of a neighborhood on the golf course today,
the way that the trees are spread across the site, you know, savings are going to be limited. There are areas around the wetlands where I think we can save some trees. There's that greenway corridor that goes along the south side of the property where we can save some of those big, mature trees along the south property. And what I would submit to you is just, if you look at when Lauderdale got developed or when Falcon Heights got developed in any of these grid areas, there probably wasn't a single tree there. If you look at an aerial photo today, it looks heavily wooded. And that's the same here. We're going to be planting hundreds of trees as a part of the development,
one to two trees per lot. This will, be a look in another decade or two as a very, like, a very wooded area. Another thing I just wanted to highlight on the green space, so that Southern Greenway corridor that I was talking about that, is about 100 feet wide that goes east west on the south side. There'd be a trail within that corridor, and then that does a great job of linking the two parks that, well, the parks and then natural spaces on that south side. There's kind of an informal trail there today. I think people use that trail, but it's, it's not paved.
It's just informal. If you look kind of at the start of this, Kaufman, think about this as sort of a Greenway Parkway experience as you're driving through the site. So, the first part of that is a really wide Greenway. So if you're driving or if you're walking on the trail, you're going to be kind of experiencing this kind of open space trail as you come into the site. As you drive a little bit further through the site, you'll see the, the practice facility, which looks like a golf course. If you look to the West, you'll kind of peek into that open space. As you drive a little further to the north,
once again, you kind of reach these open spaces with open water. Go a little further. Again, you peek into two open space corridors as a part of the neighborhood. And then finally, you kind of end up at Roselawn, where we didn't take those lots in the North all the way to Roselawn. We left a gap so that there'd be a buffer along Roselawn. So when you're using that existing trail along Roselawn, there's still a kind of a greenway feel to that trail. And so when we got to this point, we kind of went through this super quick with staff so they had an idea what we were going to say tonight. They were kind of I think they were like,
Boy, you guys, you're just going to you're going to just make this sound like you're done. And, you know, this and they're not going to like that, you know, like and this isn't we're not done. This is just us telling you our best thoughts, trying to reflect back to you what we think you have for your goals and your your vision. And there's going to be changes in the future and some of them are going to come from us. So, I mean, we might find out we can't put the pond where we're showing because the soils aren't suitable or we don't know yet. We haven't done the research. So, you all, we have to have a little patience with each other on the types of changes
and things that might occur as we go through this process. So, self sustaining is, what was one of the other, goals. How how I explain this is that, you know, if you look at Falcon Heights today, the average value is between $3.85 and $4.20 for homes. If if that is sustaining the City today, if that property tax level of value is sustaining the City today, we are going to, I say average, but we're likely going to be starting in that value range and it'll be higher. And so, the, the, the value per unit is gonna generate more property taxes,
probably than the average today in Falcon Heights. We're also gonna be putting in all of the infrastructure that's where we that's at our cost. And the infrastructure is modern and oftentimes has longer lasting materials. And so, that's how what I would submit to you is how I think this will be a self sustaining neighborhood that won't put additional burden on the city. Another goal was, housing mix. It asks the the the when I when you see in green in italics, that comes right out of the Visioning Committee goal. So you asked for townhomes, duplexes, apartments,
single family, and patio homes. All those are on this plan today. The you asked for higher density along Larpenter. We put higher density along Larpenter. You ask that all the single family lots be smaller than 10,000 square feet. All of the single family lots are smaller than 10,000 square feet. And so, I'm going to turn this over for just a little section so that, both MI Homes and Pulte can talk about their product that they're bringing into this project or would be, you know, examples. And I'll just turn it over. Sure. I might have to have you click for me, though. Oh.
So, MI Homes, does serve a wide range of buyers in in most of our communities, and this is certainly going to be true here. So you can go ahead, Paul, and maybe just click the maybe hard for people to see. This first product type, we think, brings a a really nice aesthetic and streetscape, particularly to this West Side where you have a neighboring community to the West in Lauderdale. These would be a rear load alley alley load single family home. So rather than having your garage on your your front door,
it's in the rear, and it creates a nice kind of buffer to an existing community along, along the West Side there. And they're great. You know, we we have this product, right now that is, starting in one of our communities. It will be it's a fairly new to this market as a whole, so we're very excited about that. You can go ahead, Paul, and click on the next. So the next is the what we call when we say fifty, forty, 50 feet when we're using those, those are the width of the lot. So, the 50 foot wide single family that MI would be building in this community is
is really kind of where MI and it is it kinda goes back to our Hans Hagen days of these are one level, empty nester focused, we call them our villa homes. These are sing single family homes that receive, HOA maintenance of snow and lawn maintenance. So they're great. We have buyers. They tend to be focused more on that empty nester, but they we have buyers of of all ages, that really appreciate that type of maintenance. And then we have two types of of townhome products here. So the first you can see here is our two story carriage townhome.
It lives probably a little bit more like a a single family or a duplex, type home. And then if you go into the the next, Paul, that's our more urban three story townhome. All of these products are currently in existing, communities that we build in. Probably most notably or closest to here would be our community called Thompson Square East Thompson Square and Thompson Square East in West Saint Paul. And they blend very nicely together, the two products. One thing you'll notice is that, the homes that MI Homes and PulteGroup are building are slightly different.
You know, I really our our goal was strongly to have 10 different product types, and we have to make sure that we're segmented enough so that different people are gonna want different homes. So you'll notice that as we start here. Go ahead, Paul. The first one is more of a traditional, newer, single family home. New homes don't have the charm sometimes of an older home. I think we all know that. But some people, choose to, move into a newer home for a variety of reasons. Either they they they want less maintenance. They they might,
want the massive energy savings that new homes provide. And also, we just live a little differently now than we have in the past. And sometimes the floor plans are just a little bit different and and more appropriate for the way we live now. So the single family homes, of course, would really appeal to families. They may be coming from other single family homes in your city. They may be coming from apartments, those sorts of things. Next one. This one we're really excited about. This is a single level home that's targeted for the 55 and older group. And, you know,
every every city that does a survey, they come up with the same two things in the Twin Cities area. We want more trails. We want single level homes. A lot of folks, raise their kids in a home. The kids are gone. The home's too big for them, they have to take care of the yard, they have to shovel the driveway and the sidewalk, and this is their new lifestyle, which is, master bedrooms on the Main Floor, master, bathroom as well, laundry, everything's on that that Main Floor which makes it easier to navigate without stairs. It's a smaller home, they don't need all the space and they have the homeowners association to take care
of the snow and mow as we call it, the snow removal and the mowing of the lawn. These homes are also designed a little bit differently in inside as well. I know I need a little more light than I used to need when I to to read things, so there's actually more lighting in these homes. There's wider hallways and door frames to accommodate, walkers and and, wheelchairs and things like that. So the entire neighborhood or sub neighborhood of this home and the homes themselves are designed specifically the for the 55 and older. And a lot of those folks,
I'm sure you've heard, have been looking for that and this is that's why we're kind of excited about this product. Next. Two types of townhomes. This is the three story. You'd notice it's closer to the Larpenter. So again, a little bit more dense up along, the commercial along Larpenter. You will see this from a Larpenter and it's a really attractive three story townhome with rear loaded garages. You don't see the garages. Really a nice standard townhome. Townhomes typically attract folks that are either first time homebuyers, that might might be coming for an apartment. Move on to the next one,
Paul. And in a couple of other locations further away from Larpenter, we have two story townhomes. And these just live a little differently. They appeal to a wider demographic group, so they're just a little bit different. And I think the four different townhomes that we're talking about, when you look closely at the floor plans and the layouts, they are all a little bit different. Thank you. Thanks. The other thing that, Rachel Development does is we do work in the multifamily space, the senior living space. And so along Larpenter, we put some prospective buildings, looking at market rate apartments.
You can go to the next as well Paul. And also, we do memory care assisted living facilities, current regulations where it used to be you could not that long ago you could have a multi story building that had a memory care wing or floor, that's not allowed in current regulation. The memory care, dementia care, higher acuity assisted living, facilities have to be one level. And that's we've been doing these, in various parts of the Twin Cities. And and I think what we would do here is
combine assisted living memory care with, an independent living senior apartment that can be multi floors and bring a community, component together so that that all lives, together and and again, gives you some transitioning housing opportunities. As as folks age in place, they can they can, get health services and things within that facility. We also are showing, you know, your typical market rate apartments along Larpenter. Again, that urban streetscape, I think will look,
really nice, and plays well. And again, as we talked, kind of focuses some of the higher densities along Larpenter where it really belongs, for the site. You can go to the next one too. And then, we did identify about a 4.75 acre spot along Larpenter for potential for commercial. You could have service retail there. But then again, as we started to get into the conversations where there was some further feedback from that council, and and Falcon Heights to the U of M, we got we got told that,
you know, there could be some higher density requirements. So we were looking at, you know, this could be single level commercial that lives by itself or it could be, some commercial with some residential above it. Again, early in the stages, we're we're throwing out possibilities. What this all ends up looking like is is gonna be a large collaboration, between all of you and us and and be driven by what's in the market as well. I mean, I have had, folks re reaching out already saying, hey. We'd we'd love to be part of this. We'd love to look at doing some workforce housing,
something like that. And so I think there's there's a lot of opportunity to to meet a lot of different housing needs, within the higher density stuff, as well as what MI and Pulte will bring to the table here. So I think it's, it's really a great opportunity to have the full gamut of, you know, entry level apartment dwellers, townhome dwellers, and then transitioning into empty nesters and into independent living and assisted living. So, we're excited about it. Cool. Two things. We didn't practice this,
so it's taking a little longer than I was expecting, but we are in the home stretch. So, the the when you see this plan, and it's kinda to what David said, this plan was done when we initially did our our RFP, which was for 10 units per acre. And so when you see the the illustrated plan, that was the 10 units per acre. At some point during the process, we were asked by the University of Minnesota because the city had met with Met Council to to show what a plan would look like with 14 units or more. And so, that's kind of when you see the line sketched versions, that's the higher density one,
and this is a little bit lower. And we also had put some units on top of the pump house, which evidently we couldn't. And so those you'll see. And so if you just ever look at the two plans, that's kind of the difference between them. Overall, if you just look at all this, the different colors, those are all the different 10 product mix that you see. We have about 1,400 units. On the lower count. We have about around 1,800 on the higher. So that's kind of the range of density that you see in this site plan. If you look at it from the, what it means from, units per acre,
it's between thirteen and sixteen units per acre. So that's what's shown on this plan today. So there's two more goals in the Visioning Committee. There was the sustainability goal. And as Paul kind of alluded to, if you look at the strict, so the energy code standards today, it's a lot different than it used to be for how to build a house. And if you take time after this and just look at the then and now, the '83 to 21 comparison, you'll see all of the different standards that modern homes have to, to adhere to. I put insulation in the attic. So I when I see r 49,
it says something to me because I remember putting a couple of bats in the top of the attic. R 49 is quite a bit of insulation. I just put it up there because it kinda keyed it into me. But there's a whole list there to take a look at. Pulte and MI are also building, solar ready home options for their single family and townhome product. And for their single family product, they offer the option to have electric car chargers. When you're looking at how and one of the goals and the way it was read was to meet or exceed, you know, recognize energy efficiency standards. The way that most homes are rated and people can judge them is through their
HERS ratings. And the lower the score, the better. So, a 100, you know, in twenty years ago in 2006, the average HERS score was about a 100. And you can kind of see my thermometer there. So it was kind of in the orange range. Today, the average score is down in the 40s, and which kind of gets you into the green but not the deep green. And it's been it's about a 54% increase. Today's homes are quite a bit more energy efficient And it isn't that they stop. They're still looking at ways to even increase over that. When we look at our apartments and like you provided a list of things to
meet or exceed, our apartments, will will meet both the Enterprise Green Communities and the ASHRAE 700 standards. But it we may not apply for both, but we would have we would comply with both of those standards. And then we're continuing to explore additional sustainability options for the apartments. We just don't have details sustainability options for the apartments. We just don't have details for that tonight. One of the other things in the sustainability goal was to try to reduce this heat island effect of these large parking lots. And so, we will incorporate islands and, and landscaping in these And so, we will incorporate islands and landscaping in these parking lots to help sort of offset
that heat island effect. The final goal was commercial. I think we kind of touched on that several times. It's either going to be stand alone or it's going to be incorporated with multi family residential. It was asked to be on Larpenter. That's where we placed it. Connected to the neighborhood by sidewalk and trail. There's sidewalk and trail adjacent and, and, adjacent to it and, next to it. No matter what we put there, it's gonna have to have some market support. And so, you know, we'll all need we'll all want that. We won't want vacant, you know, vacant businesses there. And so I think that's something that we're gonna all need to explore together as we move through this process. We think that three and a half acres shown there can be supported.
And so that's what, that's why we have it. And so that's really the extent of our, going through the plan. When, when I, I wasn't going to go into great detail with the timeline, but we did share sort of an idea of what we were coming forward with for a timeline, over the next couple years to get to the end of this process and have a project to be able to get approved. When we looked at your time line of kind of public participation and kind of this CAC process, they're not kind of perfectly in sync. But Haven't talked to each other. And so, we're kind of at that point right now where we're I think we've pledged to
each other to sort of let's sit down, let's work it through, let's find a way that you the city can feel good about the public process that it's about to undertake. And we can feel good about kind of moving a project along, with you at the same time. And so, I think that's yet to be accomplished, but I think we've, I think that's the goal and we're ready to have a win win on this schedule. And then if I just talk about the next steps, which I've kind of interjected many times during this presentation. But the first thing we're going to do is we're going to start meeting with stakeholders and with agencies to start to learn what type of coordination.
We're going to meet with the watersheds, the county, Met Council, Saint Paul, Regional Water Authority, you know, neighboring cities and and other stakeholders like Gibbs Farm and others just to start to get the lay of the land and understand what's around and what people's stakes are in this project. In the near term, we're also going to be doing, some sanitary sewer analysis, some water analysis to understand the capacity and the pressure and what what what can be handled, by the existing infrastructure and what might need to be replaced. I call this AUAR background, but it's really much of the work of an AUAR or much of the work
of an EAW is done no matter what. Like, you do it anyway. And we would have done a traffic study no matter what. And so we will be doing some traffic analysis based on a pretty wide range of units so that we can get an understanding of what would likely are there gonna be any impacts to the intersections in and around the site. On-site work, we're gonna be doing geotechnical, you know, soil borings to figure out, what the soils are like under in a golf course, to have the wetlands delineated, do some more we have some initial contaminant testing. We know that, you know, the what's typical for an older golf course like this to have some some of
those contaminants on the tees and the greens. Those are things we're gonna try to get a better handle on and understand. And then do a tree survey, do some other survey work. So that in our near term, we're gonna be doing some of that work. And then again, just as a repeat, we're we're gonna be syncing up the timeline here between us and and you, and how we're gonna work together over the next, couple years. And I think that's that's what we had for our presentation tonight. Alright. Well, thank you. Thanks. Mayor, chair Anderson, if I may, I'll just kinda do a quick recap of this EAC meeting,
kinda next steps. We know this is a lot. We know that especially for some of you, it's difficult to see up on the screen. So we do wanna share tomorrow, we're gonna be uploading this presentation to the city website. And then we're also if you're subscribed to our newsletter, we're gonna send out kind of a news blast to our residents as well, kind of recapping this, including some links to that as well. Before this meeting, the CAC met because one of the things that we know is how can the public how can people provide feedback into this plan? And so I will say that in the forty five minute meeting,
we had a great meeting, but I don't know that there's fully fleshed out and kind of immediate opportunity. But one thing I wanna point out is, as was mentioned, this is the beginning of a process. So we set up a process for the city through the CAC, the council, and then the community has entrusted this group to kinda help guide this process. And we see it as a collaborative effort now that there is a buyer identified to work with the CAC to come up with something that mutually benefits our residents, our community goals, but that also meets the market needs and the realities that the developer is looking
for. And so what we'll be doing next, the CAC meets again on August on February 15 at, 06:30. At that meeting, we've asked all the CAC members to kinda come together with what works in their communities, to gather input, and what do they think are ways they can do that. So more to come on this. We also wanna share too, this isn't the last time Rachel will be a part of this process as well. There'll be opportunities for city council to ask questions and for the group to ask questions and to finally kind of give that reiteration of the point.
So a lot of this planning was done in response to RFP, and so they did need to submit something for that. We do know that's going public soon, and so the option here was to kinda share a little bit, kinda create some of the background, the context of it. But we know that this process is gonna evolve, and the final plans, you know, when they get to that point, will be modified a bit as they work through the CAC. So I wanted to share that kind of as our recap. Watch for additional engagement opportunities. Still, you know, again, the CAC had a good conversation. They have some identified ways to kind of include more public participation.
We're looking forward to that next steps. But just also understand too, we're kind of beginning our process. We've created a lot of legwork. We're kind of playing catch up in some ways for the city, to kind of catch ourselves up to this, get our CAC up and running, get them the framework they need. We do know, again, this is a little early, and, normally, if this were, you know, a private sale, this might not come at this point. But because it's public land, you know, there is a little bit more public information with this, and we wanna be transparent in our process too. And let the public see this,
see kinda what won the RFP and what that looks like, and then also understand that we will be working to modify in the future. So that's kind of the official recap of what we have. Watch for additional information. We'll have this PowerPoint again up on our website. The video will also be available. If you wanna watch it, you'll be able to see it hopefully a lot closer, and kinda watch on your screen, maybe re see kind of some of the stuff that maybe are hard to see on the screen. So thank you for your patience for this, and I'll turn it over to our chairs to adjourn the meeting. Go ahead and, Yeah. I think we thank you,
first of all, for coming out and sharing your your work. There's some percolation that needs to happen with the CAC. We'll be meeting right Jackson in in August to talk more about how to involve the community. But, thank you for this, initial conversation, and looking forward to meeting Mark. I think I would, you know, explain the same from, from the council. It was great to see, what you presented to the u and I can see why they, probably, yeah, went with you as their developer for how it kinda fits. But, we look forward to working with you in the in the coming,
coming months and years. Heck. Well, thank you. And with that, how's your two turn? So moved. Well, thank you.