Lino Lakes' Land Use, System Plans Will Guide Growth
Infrastructure Needs Likely To Limit Rate Of Housing Starts
LINO LAKES - Citizens and planners involved with Lino Lakes' Comprehensive Plan update have some pretty lofty goals.
And if one of them was to have frank discussions about the future of environmentallyfriendly development in Lino Lakes, that certainly happened two weeks ago at the Comprehensive Plan Update meeting held in SMW Federal Credit Union's conference room in Lino Lakes.
Members of the city's commissions, the 30-member Citizen's Advisory Panel and the city council met on Feb. 20 to review the progress made since March 2007 when the third stage of "Spotlight on 2030" - assembling a 20-year development plan - began.
The first and second stages of the process involved a random survey of Lino Lakes residents and the preparation by the Citizens' Visioning Committee of the city's 2030 Vision Plan.
Hand-In-Hand: Land Use & Resource Management In summing up discussions held by members of the panel over the past year, Ciara Schlichting, representing the city's consultants DSU/Bonestroo, concluded that although "the process itself is a really great product," more effort is required.
"More work needs to be done so that all development is environmentally-friendly," she said, referring to concerns expressed by members of the advisory panel that refi nements to the city's growth strategy need to be made.
That strategy, according to Schlichting, is housed within the newlyminted draft Land Use Plan, which has been developed in harmony with natural resource objectives developed by the Visioning Committee, and with the Rice Creek Watershed District's Resource Management Plan (RMP).
"You are the only city in Minnesota that is integrating an RMP into [its] Comp[rehensive] Plan," John Shardlow, also of DSU/Bonestroo, told the audience.
The Land Use Plan is an integral part of the city's Comprehensive Plan. It does not promote development, Shardlow said, as much as it keeps development from occurring in inefficient ways.
The opposite of planned growth is not 'no growth,' but "haphazard, unplanned growth," he said.
With the constraints posed by Lino Lakes' rich natural resources - 50 percent of the city is not developable due to wetlands, freeways, natural open spaces - the key to efficient growth is transportation and sewers, and the only way to identify what is needed is to look at a full-build scenario.
"We want to look at our ultimate infrastructure needs to serve the city as a whole," Community Development Director Mike Grochala said in a later interview, "to help us identify where we will have potential problems."
Needed transportation improvements include a northerly bypass with new interchanges on both I-35W and I-35E at 80th St. [Hugo's C.R. 4]. "And that's not in anybody's Capital Improvement Plan," he added.
Additional sewage interceptors are also needed. By developing infrastructure system plans and a consistent land use plan, "We're essentially 'putting in an order' for the next 20 years," Shardlow said. "Large portions [of the city] will not be developed until that infrastructure is available."
A "Green Infrastructure Plan" has also been generated, which shows high-priority wetlands and the city's trunk drainage system.
"Overlaid on the city's [2004] open space and trails plan, it basically mimics the high-priority greenway corridors we already identified. It's the 'plumbing system' for the city," Grochala said.