HomeMy WebLinkAbout1975 10-30 Council: Zoning, streets are biggest headaches DISPATCH 2 • (E)
' Sf.Paul bis;
I Council: z
fling, streets
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accomplish most of the neces- struction," Miller said. The lack
bly can be summed-up in two sary planning and improve- of county participation, he said,
words:streets and zoning. ments for the mall area on its "resulted in Maplewood feeding
The mall, and particularly the own• in more state aid money(for the
expected development around "We were the first city that road)' that should have been
the m a 11, have necessitated had not already made a commit- spread more equally around the
roughly $11 million in street and ment to a regional center when city."
utility improvements to date. it was designated for a regional Another problem for the city,
The proximity of residential center," he said. "We had one that was not foreseeable at
areas has generated controversy hoped for more support and in-
the
over the streets themselves. And put f r o m the Metropolitanthe the mals was spaoved,
the high assessments for the irn- Council than we got." state Fiscal Disparities
provements, particularly on the Law.
south side of the mall, have' 'M A P L E W O O D also had UNDER. THAT law, 40 per
been the center of a continuing counted on the widening of I- cent of the increase in a city's
694 and Hwy. 36 to six lanes and commercial-industrial property
debate over the most suitable
use for surrounding lands. upgrading of•H
g wy. 61, he said, Valuation goes into a "pot" to
THE DESIRES of residents sateutnHighway thev erDepartmentdict romthe on munit esberlintethemmet metropolitan
who want to sell their land have those projects is "probably nev- area.
not always coincided with the ' er."
val-
wishes of city officials, who sayerHence, part of the mall's for tax
they want to avoid the problemalso Cityoted hat the Michdo tely had Purposes,iller uation is landost , Bruton o the city
d, the
of areas such as South Robert hoped for county participation cost of providing services to the
Street and Southdale shopping on Beam Avenue, south of the mall area is "much higher" than
center,/including traffic conges- mall, one of the most expensive fora residential area.
tion and conflicting land uses., streets in Maplewood. The Hazelwood fire station,
"If we could just say, 'Make a A stretch of Beam less than he noted, "wouldn't be there
nice shopping center' and cut it one mile long cost about $3.3 now if we hadn't built Homart."
off from there . . . " Bruton million to build, including utili- And, city officials said, there
said wistfully. ties.
Part ofst idly. ood's problem, have been many fire calls at the
he said, was that the cithad to ty money should
in its had coccon- heun- lalam system.due to "bugs" in
The city hired three additional
policemen partly in anticipation
of the mall, which Police Chief
•Richard Schaller estimated ac-
counts for 10 per cent of all the
city's police calls.
Schaller counted 500 calls
from the mall from this January
througgh most of September.
That does not include calls from
the restaurants and movie thea-
ters surrounding the mall, nor
accidents on public streets in the
area,he said. NJ
On the plus side for the mall
are the taxes that go to North St.1'
Paul-Maplewood School District
622, city officials pointed out.
Though the district also does not
receive the full benefit of the
valuation increase because of
fiscal disparities, they said, at
least it does not have to pay for
services.
The mall contributed $265,573
in school taxes for 1975, or 2.7
per cent of the district's tax
collections, according to district
business manager Owen Engen.
The fact that the mall opened
during bad economic times is
"p r o b a b I y unfortunate for
them," Reed said, "but for us
it's been real good because we
could prepare some of the con- '
trols that are necessary without a
rush of day to day development
requests."
In Bruton's opinion, however,
the city council "blew" its op-
portunity to get ahead in its 1
planning.
_ Thurs., Oct.30, '75
pre biggestheadaches „:„ri
-"WE'VE made zero progress Bruton estimated that since he He noted that another devel-
in the last year in zoning," he took office, the council has opment company proposed a
said, blaming the situation on spent an average of four hours a shopping mall in 1964, prior to
the city's inability to provide month discussing zoning,streets the Homart proposal for Maple-
adequate staff support to the and peripheral development. wood Mall.
planning commission. Greavu said the time spent - At least, Miller said, this mall
The mall, North St. Paul City d i s c u s s i n g such problems is called Maplewood Mall.
Manager Jerry Splinter pointed doesn't bother him. "That has had a tendency to
out, was the c a t a 1 y s t that "That's what we're there for," make us more seen by the pub-
brought several suburban corn- he said. lic," he said, referring to Maple-
munities together to form the He added, "Something was wood's woes over its low pro-
Northeast Area Task Force. going to go in there. There still file. ,
"The traffic that was expected would have had to be streets. "Whether you like it or not,
created a need for the communi- You never know what the im- Maplewood Mall provides a ma-
ties to get together and do some pact of something else would jor regional shopping facility for
planning," he said. have been." people in this area."