By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — The Dunn County Planning, Resources and Development Committee has approved a preliminary plat for the proposed 62-acre Idella Ridge subdivision in the Town of Menomonie with 26 residential lots.
The proposed subdivision is within the one and a half mile extraterritorial jurisdiction of the City of Menomonie, and in addition to the Menomonie Town Board reviewing and approving the preliminary plat, the Menomonie Plan Commission also has approved the preliminary plat, said Tom Carlson, county surveyor, at the February 22 PR&D meeting.
The property is located west of 629th Street and about one quarter of a mile north of U.S. Highway 12. County Highway BB is located along the northern boundary, he said.
A 66-foot wide public road will serve Lots 1 to 26, and while Lot 16 is located along Highway BB, the lot does not meet the sight requirements, and the Dunn County Highway Department has determined there can be no driveway access from BB. Instead, Lot 16 will have a 20-foot-wide access easement off the town road, Carlson said.
Bob Rosendahl is the project applicant, and the application was submitted in December under the county’s old land division ordinance, so the 20-foot-wide access is acceptable, he said.
The property is zoned General Commercial, so there is no minimum lot size, Carlson said.
The Wisconsin Department of Administration also has reviewed the preliminary plat and has no objection, he said.
The original plan was to have 46 lots, but the proposal was reduced to 26 lots where the soil passes a perc test and houses can actually be built, Rosendahl said.
Cul-de-sacs
Gary Bjork, county board supervisor from Colfax and a member of the PR&D committee, asked about the cul-de-sacs in the preliminary plat and wondered whether a road might not be a better option.
The original plan had a horseshoe shaped road, Carlson said, adding that emergency responders like roads better than cul-de-sacs because of access issues.
But the site does not lend itself to a road. The site has some wetlands, and there are areas where the soil does not pass a perc test, so you cannot engineer a road through those areas, he said.
The county’s land division ordinance does not prohibit cul-de-sacs, but from a county level, a horseshoe road would be preferred, Carlson said.
The design of the cul-de-sacs meets or exceeds all town, county and state ordinances, Rosendahl said.
If there was a road instead of cul-de-sacs, the road would be going through a green space and would not serve any lots, he said.
Rezone
Mike Kneer, county board supervisor from Menomonie and a member of the PR&D committee, noted that he lives not far from the proposed Idella Ridge subdivision and that he had attended two Town of Menomonie Plan Commission meetings about the proposal.
Kneer wondered, since the property is zoned General Commercial, whether Rosendahl planned to ask for a rezone to Residential 1 or 2.
In General Commercial, there is no minimum lot size, and the lots could be very small, perhaps as small as 2,000 square feet, Carlson said.
An acre contains 43,560 square feet.
According to the preliminary plat, the lots sizes are all more than one acre with several lots being nearly three acres.
Since the property is zoned General Commercial, and if there is no rezone to Residential, then all of the units would have to be non-owner occupied rentals, Carlson said.
Since the lot sizes are all more than one acre, there is nothing preventing the developer from applying at any point for a rezone to Residential-1 or Residential-2, he said.
If the request for a rezone fails, then the houses in the subdivision would all have to be rental units, Carlson noted.
Bjork wondered if the houses would be single family homes or duplexes.
Rosendahl said he had contacted the Dunn County zoning office for packet to rezone to R-2 and that he was in the process of “costing out” twin homes and duplexes.
After he determines the cost of building twin homes and duplexes, Rosendahl said he will decide whether he wants to apply for a rezone.
Lots 27, 28 and 29 have state approval for small warehouses, and the outlot will be a 15-acre park area that will include the retention ponds for stormwater run-off, he said.
Concerns
Kneer noted that Carlson had said he initially had concerns about the proposed subdivision but that changes had already been incorporated and wondered what changes had been made.
Many of the changes were minor details, but one of the biggest changes requested was for a 75-foot buffer around the mapped wetlands. There are three mapped wetlands on the plat, Carlson said.
A buffer around mapped wetlands is a requirement in the county’s new land division ordinance but can only be a recommendation under the old ordinance, and the application for Idella Ridge came in under the old land division ordinance, he said.
Carlson had wondered about the ownership of the outlot, too, and had asked for a wetland delineation report as well.
Rosendahl did have a wetland delineation report done, he noted.
Carlson said he also had concerns about some lots flooding and suggested fill be brought in to raise the elevation of the lots.
Most of the concerns and suggestions were incorporated into the proposed subdivision, although the buffer around the wetlands, the question of ownership of the outlot and the idea of fill to address possible flooding were not incorporated, he said.
The proposed preliminary plat meets all of the county’s requirements. The Town of Menomonie has a good ordinance and a developer’s agreement, Kneer said.
The proposed subdivision “is as good as it will get,” he said.
Rosendahl said he has built 350 homes over the last 20 years and that none of them have had flooding in the basements.
As for the shared ownership of the green space, if the property is rezoned to Residential, the green space would be turned over to a homeowners’ association, he said.
Lots 27, 28 and 29 will remain commercial, Rosendahl said.
Septic
Tom Quinn, county board supervisor from Downing and chair of the PR&D committee, asked about septic system requirements.
The septic is determined by the soil analysis, and all of the perc tests indicated that the lots would have to use mound systems, Rosendahl said.
The number of bedrooms and bathrooms determines the size of the septic system, he said.
If the subdivision is rezoned to R-2, and a twin home is built, according to the county’s ordinance, each side of the twin home will need one acre, and there will have to be a well and septic system installed for each side, Rosendahl said, noting that a duplex would require only one well and one septic system.
The number of bedrooms and bathrooms determines the size of the septic system, and the soil determines the type of septic system, he noted.
Housing shortage
Diane Morehouse, county board supervisor from Menomonie and a member of the PR&D committee, said that while she had concerns about the groundwater, placement of the septic systems and high density development, she also knows that Dunn County has a serious housing shortage.
Because of the need for additional housing, Morehouse said she would support the proposed preliminary plat.
As of the morning of the PR&D committee meeting, there were six houses for sale in Dunn County — four in Menomonie and two out of the city, Rosendahl said.
Among the properties he has developed, Rosendahl said he has many rental units, and last year, when there was a vacancy for one three-bedroom unit, there were 37 applications.
Businesses are not locating in Dunn County because there is no workforce and because there is no place for the workforce to live, Rosendahl said.
A 2,300 square-foot house today with a three-car garage costs about $460,000. A few years ago, the cost was $320,000, he said, noting that he no longer talks about building “affordable” housing.
Dunn County applied for a Community Development Block Grant to conduct a housing study and recently learned that the application has been approved, Morehouse said.
Housing is a serious issue in Dunn County, she said.
Rosendahl said he had developed many housing projects in many counties in west central Wisconsin.
Doing housing developments in Dunn County is “a grueling process,” he said.
For example, the requirement for one acre per side for a twin home “pushes developers out of Dunn County,” Rosendahl said.
Dunn County’s development requirements far exceed the surrounding counties, he said.
The extra well and septic for a twin home, for example, will cost an additional $25,000 to develop the lot, Rosendahl said.
Rural character
Bjork noted that when the surveys were sent out for the comprehensive land use plans, the survey results indicated that residents in the various townships and the county as a whole wanted to maintain the rural character of Dunn County.
Putting a high-density housing development on agricultural land is helping for the housing shortage, but it is spoiling the rural aspect of the county, Bjork said.
Several other PR&D members had referred to the proposed development as high-density housing, and Rosendahl pointed out that Idella Ridge would not be considered high-density housing, and that in true high-density housing, the houses would be so close together, homeowners would be able to pass items back and forth through the windows of their homes.
The Idella Ridge subdivision will be a $10 million development, he said.
The Dunn County Planning, Resources and Development Committee unanimously approved the preliminary plat for Idella Ridge
