Minutes - Council - 10/09/1990 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

activity be allowed to occur in. Upon reading the Ramsey ordinance, it appears that the City has two commercial districts and there is a degree of control not afforded in terms of land use and planning. It is being recommended that two new zoning districts be established in the City. The first district is B-2 (Highway Business). It is intended for the Highway #10 corridor. The ordinance amendment has been drafted so that uses in that corridor today will be conforming in the new zoning ordinance plus adult uses principal and accessory. Conditional use permits will also be allowed in that district. The second new district is a Business Warehouse District. One of the difficulties we encountered in the current ordinance is that there is a lack of transitional zones from residential to business or business to industrial. All of the needs with respect to the adult uses would not have been met with the B-2 district so the planners saw an opportunity to meet the constitutional test and create a business warehouse zone. This is a business district that allows warehousing, truck terminals and light manufacturing. Within this zone, it is proposed to identify adult uses principal and accessory as automatically allowed. The next step was to determine whether or not the proposed zoning amendments could meet the constitutional test regarding opportunity area. In order to meet the test, the consultant analyzed what opportunity area would exist if the distance separation was established. A distance regulation of 750' was determined to be reasonable when it was applied to the geographic map of the community. Within the City on a 750' radius, 2.2% of the entire City would be available for adult uses or 8.5% of the urban area or 28% of the MSUA area. The consultants feel confident that this should meet the test if it goes to court. There are adult uses currently in existence today that will become nonconforming with this ordinance. The consultants are working on continuing to attempt to refine an approach to terminate existing adult uses which will be nonconforming under the ordinance. The approach so far has been that we have to first substantiate that the adult use is a threat to the community. If that is determined and upon notification of such a use by a city that they are threatening nonconforming uses, the city will define a time table for that use to be eliminated from operation. Presently we are working on language to establish a year to one and one half years to have such use terminate. There would be a flexibility clause if they need more time to amortize their investment out that would be available. Therefore, it is proposed that they have one and one half to five years to eliminate any non-conforming use today in the City. The pursuit of nonconforming has been expanded greatly and the City has to be careful not to pursue only one activity for policing. The City will have to get into a code enforcement program that is general and addresses all nonconforming activities that exist. The next tool proposed as a requirement to address adult uses is licensing and it is proposed to license adult uses principal and accessory. The licensing section is fairly standard and similar to that which applies to on-sale liquor licensing. It is proposed that licensing will become the responsibility of the City Administrator pursuant to established guidelines. If for some reason a license was denied, the applicant would have the right of appeal to City Council. Persons ineligible for licenses would be those who are under 21 and those convicted of sex-related felonies. The next issue to be discussed is code enforcement which becomes somewhat discretionary. The ordinance amendment proposes to address property maintenance, refuse, storage, nonconforming uses, nonconforming buildings, nonconforming lots and hazardous or threatening activities. CITIZEN INPUT: Colleen Volksted - 15011 Willemite Street N.W. - requested and received further clarification on the new zoning districts with respect to the area they include and their location. Jim Gilbertson - inquired as to how the zoning district boundaries were arrived at and if those boundaries were determined after the strippers arrived on Highway #10. Mr. Hartley replied that the zoning boundaries were established after all of this type of activity started occurring on Highway #10. Public Hearing/October 9, 1990 Page 8 of 14