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Creative Solutions for Land Planning and Design ©© Hoisington Koegler Group Inc. ©® MEMORANDUM February 13, 2009 To: Jeremy Barnhart, Planning Manager City of Elk River From: Bruce Chamberlain, 171St Avenue Focused Area Study Project Manager Re: February 17 Elk River EDA/CC/PC Work Session. As you know,we have been preparing a range of conceptual development alternatives for the roughly 700-acre 171St Avenue Focused Area centered on the Northstar Commuter Rail station. The concepts will allow us and the community to analyze potential development scenarios and development staging as a basis for a preferred plan that will likely be some combination of ideas contained in each of the concepts. We have several forms of concept critique coming up including meetings with land owners, an expert roundtable, and a community open house. The EDA/CC/PC work session next week will be an important opportunity for Elk River leadership to review background materials assembled for the project as well as review the concepts prior to the other review events. The goal for this work session is not for the group to determine what they like or not with each concept but rather to indicate that we have explored the appropriate breadth of conceptual ideas and have made the correct assumptions about the project prior to vetting by others. The March work session will be the time when the group again sees the concepts along with all of the comments received from others and determines how to refine the range of concepts down to a single, preferred plan. Enclosed are background materials for the February 17 session including project objectives, core assumptions, a regional transportation investment diagram,trend data and some national case studies. These items will be discussion topics at the work session as well. We will have a lot to cover at the meeting and want to focus as much time as we can on discussion of the concepts so it will be helpful for the panel to review this material prior to the discussion. The first project newsletter is being sent today to neighbors of the study area. The project website at www.ElkRiverFAST.com has recently been launched and contains the same and more project information as the newsletter. I encourage EDA, City Council and Planning Commission members to take a look at the website for more project information. The topics we hope to discuss at next week's work session include: 1. Project overview 123 North Third Street,Suite 100,Minneapolis,MN 55401-1659 Ph(612)338-0800 Fx(612)338-6838