Agenda - Council - 12/10/1979 - Laserfiche WebLink

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A discussion was held regarding whether there is a need for more neighborhood shopping centers outside of the urban service area. Mr. Marston said that cities like Anoka could have them as close together as they like, but that Ramsey is not in a situation where they wou~d want to provide shopping areas where people can walk to a Seven-ll for instance. Most people are going to be driving to these areas, but not that far. Ron West said that it would be something like a shopping center area within a three mile radius. ~nd Mr. Marston said yes, that would be reasonable. Chairman Peterson asked about the City fathers trying to follow through on forcing everything into the Urban Area. He said that the Planning Commission has disagreed with this concept and said that certain types of services could be established outside the Urban Area, and that it is not developing as it was planned to. Mr. Marston said he feels that in order to encourage development in the Urban Area, in his opinion, is to tighten up development controls for the rest of the community outside of this area. Further, that people will go where the land is cheaper and where it is eas~er for them to bu~.ld. This also applies in developing of Industrial land, because the land is zoned ~ndustrial, the property owners think it should be priced a little higher and so interested persons are going to go beyond this land and start looking ot zoning other land that is less expensive to suit their needs. Regarding residential development, Ron West feels it will self-clean and balance itself out eventually because the trend now is that people are turning to smaller lots. Chairman Peterson said he feels that those persons with the larger lots will want to stay on them. Ron West replied that the larger lots now are so much more expensive, with blacktop streets, septic system costs, etc., that people are faced with looking at smaller lots with utilities in. Mr. Deemer stated that~he would not touch a 2½ acre plat now if he was developing and it would be for economic reasons. Mr~ Marston commented that people are moving and living in condominiums and townhouses more and more because of rising costs of land, construc- tion, energy etc. With the current situation in Ramsey, with so much land already developed that he 'had decided to just use the current zoning map and drop the land use idea. He said there have been a lot of changes in development since he started this project and it has been obvious that people in this community are really not receptive to a comprehensive plan and are not interested in staging development. It is questionable whether i~ is worth the effort to try and stage something that is half deVeloped. WORKSHOP ~ & Z 11/20/79 -~-