Again No Serious Study or Common Sense - Commercial/Industrial Zoning

 

The Eureka Town Board’s proposed Comprehensive Plan Amendment includes ill-considered, sweeping rezoning for Commercial and Industrial uses. Is any of it next to you or may potentially increase traffic on a road you use daily?

This is the other half of the Comp Plan Amendment along with the devastating proposal to eliminate 369 of 374 existing Housing Rights (explained in my previous blog post).

Again, serious consideration needs to be given to finding more conscientious and common sense candidates to run for Town Board to better reflect the values and property rights of you, your friends, and your neighbors. The filing deadline to run for election is rapidly approaching – January 13, 5 pm.

12/17/2024 – Open House (at 5:30pm) regarding possible Commercial /Industrial zoning. This was the only opportunity for public Q&A dialog on the subject.

Commercial/Industrial Open House also had an interesting chart showing a 10-year “drought” of flat tax levy not increasing 2011-2020. This may be part of the dream that C/I zoning would bail us out. What might be the upfront costs for serious study, recruiting beneficial businesses, and the time frame before wishful tax benefits start flowing?

Lakeville has the largest C/I park in Minnesota, a 4-person full time staff to recruit business nationally, and a 4-person full time staff of engineers to design infrastructure needs and placement for large sites, like, gee, Federal Express and Amazon. Can you think of any other city in Minnesota that wouldn’t have liked to land one of those?  Lakeville won both, plus other major facilities.

The Board's goal supposedly was to build a “wall” of C/I facilities to block further annexation into Lakeville.  Even our Town Attorney pointed out that such zoning would more likely be an invitation on the Lakeville border.

The Board produced what resembled a crayon-drawn map showing proposed rezoning. It was not backed by any actual analysis of benefits or impact on infrastructure including roads, sewer, water, or added support for fire and safety. It indicated by color zoning for High Density Housing (undefined), General Commercial, Industrial & Heavy Commercial, and Light Commercial areas. Again, no detail of what the terms represented or estimated tax benefits.

 WSB planner Nate Sparks provided two computer-drawn maps of Eureka in advance of the public hearing. The “Existing” map only identified Commercial-Industrial zoning, no other category except Exempt (non-taxed airport, church, school, and cemetery properties), and “Residential Housing” that I mentioned in my prior blog that showed less than half of the existing housing in Eureka.  No totals, just colored properties.

But this “Existing” map had major differences with the actual tax classifications assigned by the Dakota County Assessor. I will describe this in detail below because it clearly demonstrates the superficial approach and lack of study by the Planning Commission, Board, and WSB consultant.

This map and then the “Proposed 2049” map (should have been year 2040 Met Council planning horizon, map was without housing representation) showed almost no correlation with the crude Board sketch. No data, no evidence of serious analysis, no infrastructure impact that the Metropolitan Council would require to support approval of such significant changes. 

I am aware of Met Council consideration because I filled out the application form for a Comp Plan Amendment in 2013 to expand the Cluster feature to the expanded flexibility of the Housing Right Transfer mechanism. It was about a 10-page form, but Transfers did not (and could not because of 1982 cap) increase housing totals or significant traffic, thus only needed 2 pages to be filled out, and it was approved within 2 weeks.

5/27/2025 – This was the public hearing on the Comp Plan Amendment covering both C/I zoning and the Housing Right fiasco. Five minutes to say something, no opportunity for questions seeking answers. I was the only one submitting actual data that was completely ignored without Planning Commission discussion. 

The consultant actually said Housing Rights not needed in the east could be moved to the northwest (where the crude Board drawing had shown “High Density Housing”). Gee, that sounds fair.  He also didn’t know the grand new “1 per 40” formula “with no exception” would set a new cap of only 5 more houses allowable in the entire Township.  Of course, Board and PC didn’t know any better, either, because they didn’t look at actual data I provided for free….

OK, now let’s look at proposed rezoning of the largest property in the Township, 12 parcels totaling 676 acres owned by Bachman’s and their Falco LLC subsidiary. I’ll summarize the data shown below at the end of this posting. It is public data from the Dakota County website supplemented by two columns representing the two WSB classification maps.

The table identifies the 12 properties by Property ID with relevant data on each one from Dakota County’s published property records. Four of the properties totaling 207 acres are assessed as Commercial or Commercial-Preferred, generating $276 per acre in 2024.

The other 8 properties totaling 469 acres are classified as Ag-Green Acres generating $70 per acre. All tax amounts are the full property tax.  The Eureka levee portion is typically 18-20% of these amounts, with approximately 20% for Dakota County and 60% for the appropriate school district.

By the way, the average home on fewer than 10 acres (419 of the 544 houses in Eureka) pays $1121 per acre. But the Board makes no effort to help families desiring to move to Eureka to help find a seller of one of those 374 unused Housing Rights.  We are seeing families move elsewhere instead. In round numbers, a typical house on a typical Eureka residential (non-farm) property pays about $5000 in property tax.  Eureka gets $1000 of that, with more than $500 going to road maintenance.

WSB showed 11 of the Bachman parcels as Commercial-Industrial currently, with only one 37.35 acre Green Acres parcel unchanged.

Then the Proposed "2049" map removed C-I from 2 of the Green Acres parcels totaling 79.61 acres.

The Bachman’s enterprise just celebrated their 100th anniversary this summer and have had a major presence in Eureka since 1971, supporting retail operations in more highly developed (expensive) locations in the Twin Cities area. Does it make sense that they would turn over their major growing fields to Commercial-Industrial development in Eureka?

By the way, Cross Nursery was similarly proposed for rezoning.  ¼ of their land is the retail center parcel, but the other ¾ of the  acreage is dedicated growing fields.

For this effort and insight we are paying $218 per hour consulting, now totaling in the thousands. And the Board seems happy in blissful ignorance.

October thru 12/9/2025 – no update from Board except 12/9/2025 Board comment “We continue to work with the Met Council.”  Treasurer’s Report detail includes several WSB line items related to conversations with both Met Council and an unnamed Board member. Nothing specific mentioned relative to any topic within the amendment. Also, one of the WSB billing items was for 1.25 hours and $132.50 to calculate Eureka acreage, a number I had freely provided 5/27 and 6/4 in my reports, clearly identified based on County property data in my data reports.  

I pray the Met Council rejects this Amendment travesty.

                                                    by Jeff Otto