Developer, Scott County tussle over rejected plan

Scott County's crackdown on haphazard development has claimed a real-life victim.

And the dispute that's broken out is illustrating just how messy that crackdown could become.

After warning for months that the county would make sure that what happens today still makes sense 30 or 40 years from now, officials have slapped down a proposed development that they fear could get in the way of a major east-west highway envisioned for the future.

But the developer is responding by bringing in a trial lawyer from a major law firm, a sign that he is serious about claiming his own rights.

"Your staff not liking it is not sufficient grounds for denial," Christopher Grote, of Lindquist & Vennum, told County Board members during a prickly three-hour hearing last week.

A new east-west crossing is envisioned for the future in the corridor that now contains County Road 8 -- a sleepy rural passageway, but one whose traffic counts are predicted to more than double in the next 20 years. That roadway could someday be on par with Hwy. 169 in its look and importance.

With more development coming to the area, said the county's planning manager, Brad Davis, there's a need for "more limited direct access" to County Road 8 -- meaning fewer driveways and streets allowed to intersect directly with the road. A faster thoroughfare that is meant to carry people long distances gets slowed and becomes dangerous if there are people trying to get on and off at too many points.

As distant as major new work on County Road 8 looks today, the county brought in a phalanx of senior managers to testify that developer Mark Zweber's proposed Estates of Liberty Creek ought to be configured differently -- and, Zweber argues, in a way that makes no sense for him financially.

At stake, the county says, is its vow to never let a fiasco like County Road 42 happen again. That east-west road, which crosses Dakota and much of Scott County, has become a traffic-clogged mess of stoplights during rush hours, and the area along it was developed in such a way that improvements are slow and costly.

County officials fear that future generations could end up having to do on 8 the kinds of costly retrofits that it is now having to do to 42, west of Burnsville Center, as the result of poor planning.

Details of development plan

Zweber seeks to create a nine-home cul-de-sac as the first phase of work on a 100-acre plot he owns in Credit River Township. His land nestles into the much bigger Credit River Territory development, a 700-acre project with one of the highest profiles in the county.

For financial reasons, he wants to start off with a landlocked parcel that would need to get access to County Road 8 via Credit River Territory's streets -- not a prospect that residents there are keen on, especially during construction, when heavy trucks would pound their streets.

An alternative would be to start at another corner of his property, and create a road that feeds out onto County Road 27. But Zweber says that would require a much longer road and would be so much more expensive that he couldn't get financing.

"We can understand the county's not wanting developments to connect to 8," Grote said after the meeting. "If you had a housing development every two blocks connected to 42, it would be impossible and we understand that. But the notion of 'interconnectivity' the county talks about is too vague for any developer to understand. The county staff ends up having power over how a development will look. They become the designers."

County Board members say it's the developer who is being vague. In addition to what he's proposing, the developer is suggesting that perhaps he could in fact connect to 27, but he is not furnishing a detailed plan. Instead, the later phases are being labeled on maps as "outlots," a term normally used for a stray scrap of land.

"I see lot of land being labeled 'outlots,'" Commissioner Barb Marschall said. "It's kind of hanging out there ... it's hard to dismiss that much property without having an idea" as to what might happen.

Grote won't say if he plans to sue, but he agreed that the whole discussion had a pre-lawsuit flavor to it.

"It was plain," he said, "that both sides were creating a record upon which further legal proceedings would be based."

David Peterson • 952-882-9023