The City has been engaged in a process over the last 10 months to clarify its land use regulations for the four golf courses within our corporate limits. We started that clarification process in 2006 for two basic reasons. First, we were seeing examples of marginal golf courses going through redevelopment from golf courses into residential development, and the community pain that came with that transformation. Second, we did not have a uniform set of Comprehensive Guide Plan, zoning and other land use regs in place for our four golf courses, so we wanted to fix that and put them all on the same level playing field.
At our City Council meeting last night, the Council approved a new ordinance that defined what can and cannot happen at a “golf course”. The new regulations must be published in our local newspaper, and then they will become effective. The new regulations do two things: they will make the Comprehensive Guide Plan and zoning classifications of the Eden Prairie four golf courses uniform and they will make it clear to the owners and the neighbors of the golf courses what activities are permissible at a golf course.
The owners of one of the golf courses, the Bent Creek course, object to the new regulations because they would like to sell their golf course to developers. They believe, and I don’t doubt, that their golf course is worth more as a new residential development than as a golf course. The Bent Creek owners have not yet submitted a formal plan or proposal to the City regarding their development plans. They’re still just talking about it. An attorney for the owners attended our City Council meeting last night to speak about the issue. You can see a news clip from KSTP channel 5 by clicking on this link: Bent Creek news clip.
The City does not agree that the owners of the Bent Creek golf course have development rights for their golf course. We believe the development rights for the property were given up by the original owners of the golf course as part of an overall development compromise at the time when the area around the golf course was developed in the 1970’s.
While the City has not rejected a development proposal for the Bent Creek golf course (because one has not been submitted yet) we believe our previous regulations (previous to last night’s Council action) precluded development of this golf course and that our new regulations make that preclusion even more clear. We don’t believe we are taking away any development rights from the current owners of Bent Creek because we don’t believe they had any development rights to take away in the first place. Even with the new regulations in place that were adopted by our Council last night, we believe the current owners of the Bent Creek golf course have the same development rights today that they had yesterday, last week, last year or ten years ago……which is to say no development rights.
The attorney for the Bent Creek owners made it very clear to the City Council last night that if the City rejected their yet-to-be-submitted development proposal, they would sue the City. The City hasn’t received a development proposal yet from the Bent Creek owners, so I will not speculate about how the City will react to it. What I will say is that the City will enforce its land use regulations and we’ll judge any development proposal we receive from anyone accordingly.
