06/20/2000 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 6/20/2000 :~ • Law Director Gareau answered that the city is not restricted by its own Zoning Code. If we buy a piece of property that's zoned light industry, we could build a park, we could build a city hall, we could build whatever we want. • Mr. Limpert said to the best of his trying to figure it out, it comes out hollow. Currently, the property is zoned light industry, particularly over where Mrs. Dorn is concerned. The owners can sell the property or develop it themselves into light industry today--there is more money for an individual to develop it into light industry than keeping it for green space. The city does not, as a matter of normal precedent, develop light industry property. • Law Director Gareau said, as he expressed to Council in a memo, he has no problem in seeing an overall plan developed for purchase of green space. The Hadsells have indicated that they do not want to sell their property. However, if someone eventually bought the Hadsell property and developed it light industrial and the city had the Farver property, that would really have an adverse impact on the overall 20 year plan to develop the land for recreational use. It was his suggestion, and still is, that you can have active participation with respect to green space or you can have passive. If the city is going to have active participation and did want to make soccer fields or baseball fields, the city could acquire the Hadsell property. It should be understood that if the land is purchased for green space without tying up the adjoining land, it will have no specific use available. But if the city is buying green space for the purpose of adding additional Been space to build soccer fields or baseball fields in 20 years and the adjoining property is not tied up, then there will be problems. No one „~ knows what will happen in the future. If you don't have options, or rights of first refusal, you are probably not going to be able to build recreational fields on the property in the future. He does not oppose developing that property as green space. But the city must make sure to have a plan and implement the plan, and implement it now rather than later. • Mayor Musial commented that he had spoken to the Hadsells about securing an option, and they indicated they would not enter into an option and asked that their word be taken. They said, if and when they sell the property, they would provide the city with the first opportunity to buy. He accepts that. There is no way you can force the Hadsells to give the city an option. With that avenue closed, then you come into the situation of it becoming a business rather than a legal situation. If five or ten years from now the Hadsells have an offer whereby they could secure a million dollars for their property of 4 acres (and the green space was already purchased by the city for $310,000), he assures everyone that the 9 acres would probably go for two million dollars. So, it's not a situation where the city is going to lose any money on the purchase. The other aspect is that, with regards to the Farver property, in his mind it is a green space issue--we need to have green space, open space in this city. If in fact we are required to expand our soccer fields, there is room to put a soccer field on the first part of the property with a small parking lot and have passive recreation in the other part near the woods area. • Russ Hulec, 6011 Timber Trails, has listened to all the comments, spoken to the Mayor and attended the meeting last night and really thinks it would be a good idea for the city to purchase the property as opposed to the property being sold to a 14