6016 Vernon Ave. S., GreenDrop Charitable Donations

My name is Susan Zechmann. I’m sharing my comments as a new resident as of June 1st on Olinger Rd with clear visibility to the proposed Green Drop donation site.

There are many options that would enhance the site notably a green space with beautiful trees, plantings that would be a neighborhood gathering space. The idea of a café or wine bar would offer a walkable neighborhood gathering place.

In our opinion, the Green Drop proposal is not appropriate for the residential neighborhood. There are many more suitable empty existing commercial spaces that would be more convenient for people to drop off donations. If located on Vernon Ave, it may cause a traffic back-up on weekends for drop-offs. Of the 61 Green Drop locations across the country, most are located near a Walmart, Costco or other commercial businesses and this is where it belongs.

Approval of this site by the City Council will have a negative impact on property values surrounding the site. I urge the City Council to vote against this petition for a Green Drop donation center. Thank you for offering a format to share our views.

Jim & Susan Zechmann

I live in Parkwood knolls and wish we could use this space as a walkable space community can gather such as a coffee shop, deli or even small green space. I do support putting a for profit commercial space there. It’s inappropriate use of that space.

My name is Susan Zechmann. I’m sharing my comments as a new residents as of June 1st on Olinger Rd with clear visibility to the proposed Green Drop donation site.

There are many options that would enhance the site notably a green space with beautiful trees, plantings that would be a neighborhood gathering space. The idea of a cafe or wine bar would offer a walkable neighborhood gathering place.

In our opinion, the Green Drop proposal is not appropriate for the residential neighborhood. There are many more suitable empty existing commercial spaces that would be more convenient for people to drop off donations. If located on Vernon Ave, it may cause a traffic back-up on weekends for drop-offs. Of the 61 Green Drop locations across the country, most are located near a Walmart, Costco or other commercial businesses and this is where it belongs.

Approval of this site by the City Council will have a negative impact on property values surrounding the site. I urge the City Council to vote against this petition for a Green Drop donation center. Thank you for offering a format to share our views.

Jim & Susan Zechmann

My husband and I live two doors down from the Kee’s Auto Repair site and, once again, are responding to a proposal for the site. We were opposed to the previous restaurant proposal and are now opposed to the latest Green Drop proposal. As with the last proposal, placing a donation center on this site is not appropriate. This is a very small parcel of land in an established residential area with limited parking and storage. The donation center is better suited to a commercial area with no housing surrounding it. Vernon Avenue is already a very busy residential street. Adding cars and trucks dropping off and picking up donations only adds to the noise and congestion—363 days of the year (according to their work schedule). Also, this area barely has enough space for employees to park their cars and still allow for donation trucks and cars to enter and leave. The site is also surrounded by residential properties and neighbors who do not want to contend with unsightly piles of appropriate and inappropriate donations dropped off after business hours—which generally happens. This lot is better suited to single or double town house dwellings—or better yet—creating a small green space with park benches for walkers in the area to enjoy. We do not support changing the zoning ordinance to accommodate the donation center. The Comprehensive Plan calls for medium density residential dwellings which would be much more appropriate. Please stay with what’s outlined in the Comprehensive Plan. We are not opposed to having a donation site in Edina, but this is just not the appropriate site for it.

Thank you for the opportunity to share our views.

My wife and I watched the televised November 15 Planning Commission hearing on the Green Drop proposal for the Kees property on Vernon Avenue. Interesting ordeal—the hearing raised more questions than it answered, and failed miserably to provide actionable guidance to the City Council. The Commission, in the end, merely cowered indecisively in the face of a unique but solvable challenge.

We live across Vernon from the Kees site, in the Blake Ridge Townhomes, and opposed the restaurant idea for the parcel, which would have replaced a quiet eyesore with a permanent disruption. We like the Green Drop proposal. It would dress up an ugly presence on a major roadway, provide a convenient place to dispose of household goods, support a worthy charity, and (if drop-off projections are accurate) coexist comfortably with busy Vernon Avenue.

The Kees site is weird and difficult and not conducive to much of anything commercial, except for the auto service it used to provide—which seems wholly inappropriate now that the neighborhood has matured from the old days, when it was just bucolic countryside. Development Director Teague seemed to think the city could walk and chew gum on charting the future for this narrow triangular parcel—approve a benign, improved, public-spirited use for five years (the gum), while taking a systematic look at both the long-term use of the property and its implications for the city’s Comprehensive Plan (the walk).

A standard public authority tactic for disposing of petitioners is to patronize them with kudos for their ideas but, alas, rejecting them on process technicalities or for fear of creating precedents. We had plenty of this at the hearing, along with hints of discomfort with placing a Goodwill-like service alongside Edina residential real estate. Wake up, Commissioners—a restaurant will never work there. The new owner of the site bought it thinking the city would roll over for him—it didn’t, so he must adjust, and the Green Drop proposal would give him breathing space to plan for the future.

We urge the City Council to reverse the Planning Commission decision and approve Green Drop, but require that the city approve any extension of the five-year lease. A close study of the Neighborhood Service zoning category could yield useful new opportunities for bringing a variety of services closer to residents. Of course if Green Drop fails, or succeeds disruptively, the city needs to have the ability to boot them out.

But what if the service succeeds exactly as conceived, and the people embrace it? And what if, over the coming five years, the owner finds a developer with a bright idea that the neighborhood and city agree to? Wouldn’t either one be a victory? How about an indeterminant number of years of weed-strewn status quo on the site? I’d call that a failure.

Hi, my name is Heidi Moon and I live at 6009 Leslee Lane, Edina MN 55436. I am just a few blocks from the former Kevin Kees site. I was a huge supporter of using the site for a neighborhood cafe (community building, pro-sustainable community planning increasing walkability, understanding the future of wellness real estate and benefits to home values, etc etc). It is beyond my understanding why hyper development exists all over Edina in a seemingly irresponsible way (not seeing school resources increase for example), but the property owner’s plan for a cafe was turned down.

Although the planned business is a for-profit business, they are providing a pro-sustainability service of recycling unwanted items. I support this option.

I do also, however, hope very much that at some point the city can understand why the majority of long-term housing owners in the neighborhood support a cafe… and allow the property owners, beloved long-term Edina family and successful restaurant owners, to pursue the cafe and improve our neighborhood for generations to come.

I believe the planned green drop is a good interim solution, relative to the other options of more housing or automotive use.

I was born in Edina and lived in Edina Highlands until age 12. I moved back to Edina in 2013 and have three kids age 7, 15 and 18 and plan to stay a while in the neighborhood and care about it deeply.

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I live in Highwood Dr W, a couple of blocks from the site. I'm totally OPPOSED to the idea of a GreenDrop donation center. This would add ZERO value to our community and all it would bring is traffic and mess. Also, GreenDrop's claim of being a "charitable donations" company is false and misleading! They're a FOR-PROFIT company that makes millions of dollars out of people's good will and spend zero dollars on their locations. They're actually owned by Savors, a company that was sued by the Minnesota Attorney for its misleading model and practices. WHY WOULD WE WANT THIS KIND OF BUSINESS IN OUR COMMUNITY?

I live within several hundred feet of the site, and while I would prefer the cafe/restaurant option, this seems like a reasonable use for this property. The hours are normal business hours and the development would be an aesthetic improvement from the current building.

My family lives on Kaymar Drive, which is a block away from this site. We were originally excited about the prospect of adding the Westside Café to the neighborhood to increase its walkability, have a gathering place for the community and create jobs for local youth. Unfortunately, that was denied and options for the site remain open. I like the idea of a business on this site to provide benefits to the community and was originally open to the idea of GreenDrop, but am firmly against this proposal after looking into what the implications would be for our family and the surrounding homes. Notably, it does not benefit the community (especially those in the area) to have GreenDrop in this location as there is already a Goodwill in Hopkins that is less than 10 minutes away, Green Drop will only employee a small number of people and it will bring very unpredictable traffic into this area. As an example of the likely traffic issues (which was one of the main reasons for Westside Café being denied), my wife recently dropped off donation items at Goodwill and had to wait in a long line for over 30 minutes, which would be an extremely dangerous situation at this location on Vernon Ave. Furthermore, GreenDrop is a for-profit enterprise (only a portion of donation value goes to charity) that is a subsidiary of Savers Value Village, a publicly traded company. This significantly reduces the implied community benefit of a donation site and does not provide alignment with the community like a locally-owned business would.

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This is a great option for this location. It’s a unique property that requires a unique solution and a donation center accomplishes that. There will be minimal impact to the neighborhood and the tenant is a charitable organization that supports Disabled American Veterans. That’s something everyone should support!

I very much support this. It’s time we put this land to good use. There’s no better use than helping to give back.

I am looking forward to this solution and can't wait for it to be up and running. While I would have preferred a restaurant to be able to go to, I think this is a perfect tenant for this location and a much better fit than an auto repair shop that I believe its currently zoned for. I fully support this plan and hope that you would approve.

My name is Alan Ziskin. I live at 5804 Vernon Lane for the last several years. It's totally unconscionable that someone is thinking of taking that old piece of property that's been there and grandfathered in as a retail outlet and turning it into a donation center. I know a lot of you smart people on the planning board can come up with something better, like housing or other types of things but this building is an eyesore. It needs to be torn down and if nothing else, put a bench in there and make it about stop. Seriously folks, this is not something appropriate for our neighborhood. Thank you. (Transcribed by City Staff. Voicemail received 11/9/23 at 3:08 PM)

I am Helen Woelfel. I own a condo at 5725 Blake Road South, Edina, 55436. I am wanting to give some feedback to the problem about it being dealt with at the public hearing at 6016 Vernon Avenue. I live at a different address than the Blake Road. I live at 7500 York Avenue South Apartment # 117, Edina, Minnesota 55435. I wanted to have some input about the 6016 Vernon Avenue public hearing. I certainly think the GreenDrop Charitable Donations is a great idea and is so wonderful help for so many, but currently that the area that we're talking about is surrounded by nice homes and I think the current zoning fits the area well. A drop donation center does not. I am wanting to get my input into this issue. Thank you. (Transcribed by City Staff. Voicemail received 11/12/23 at 9:44 AM)

Hello - My name is Laurie Swiler and I live on Vernon Lane, almost across the street from this project idea. I left voice feedback the other day voicing my absolute NO on this Green Drop ( cute name) but having had a first hand experience this weekend with dropping off items I needed to add to what I said before.
My daughter gave me various gently used baby clothes to drop off somewhere. She has an infant so I thought it would be a simple drop and helpful for her. I decided to head out on Sat to drop at the Linden Hills Coop epilepsy drop box. Full to the brim and falling out. Next stop to Assistance League in Richfield. They don’t take any baby or children’s clothes. Green Drop does not either! Next stop to ARC Value village down the street. They have a back area drop off (way off) of Penn Ave. The line was 12 cars deep. All the car motors on and waiting for help. I did not stay. But it got me thinking about Green Drop and a Saturday afternoon traffic jam on Vernon Ave with only 2 people working there. If there were more than 5 cars they would pile up on Vernon and block the bike paths as well. In addition the inconsiderate people might wait until they were closed to just dump the bags in their parking area. I am really so surprised there is even a discussion about this. That we even need to tell the city it’s a bad idea. When items get dumped on someone’s property near Green Drop who is responsible to have the item removed? I am on the board of my HOA across the street on Vernon Lane and we don’t want to pay for a possible mattresses dumped on our street. I hope you will not allow this to move forward.
I would love to revisit the restaurant idea again. It’s way better than a Green Drop. There is plenty of empty perfect option in a nice commercial area of Edina with plenty of room for waiting cars.

My name is Tom Tessman. I live at 5017 Yvonne Terrace.

This is a terrible idea and use for this space.

The City Council rejected a restaurant idea for this site because it did not fit with the neighborhood, despite having a lot of support.

The proposed concept is even worse. Nothing against the cause, but it not right for a residential neighborhood. Introducing drop-off trucks and vehicles in the area is a bad idea from a public safety perspective. Furthermore, I don't get how this concept enhances the neighborhood and adds value for the residents. And, finally, like the proposed restaurant concept, this idea doesn't fit the Comprehensive Plan either.

Why can't the City just buy the property, get it rezoned residential and build something to add value to the neighborhood that fits the Comprehensive Plan?

This is a terrible idea. The Council rejected a retail, restaurant proposal that had a lot of community support because of traffic and potential impact to a residential neighborhood.

The cause is fine, but it makes no sense to introduce trucks into a residential neighborhood.

The Council stated this commercial space was an outlier when when they rejected the previous commercial concept (restaurant). It was not consistent with the neighborhood and Comprehensive Plan.

Why can't the City just buy the property, get it rezoned residential and get something built that fits the neighborhood?