Posted on June 5, 2024
The Rochester City Council voted Monday to annex land where Rochester Sand & Gravel plans to add a set of buildings.
The council also agreed to change the land’s designation from residential to industrial to accommodate the intended use.
Since there is no land-use application yet, the council members voted on whether they wanted to annex the land as well as amend the comprehensive plan guidance on the site.
Rochester Sand & Gravel’s hope for the property lies in building a 9,500-square-foot office building, along with an additional 6,000 square feet of cold storage. To the west of the property, Sand & Gravel already owns a quarry. To the immediate south is a quarry pond.
The newly minted light industrial land is 9.5 acres at the northwest corner of East River Road NE and 44th Street NE. The city staff recommended approval of both the annexation and comprehensive plan amendment, according to Desmond McGeough, a planner for Rochester.
“Staff finds a need for industrial land within the city and believes the property might be better suited for the industrial designation considering some of the various uses along East River Road,” McGeough said in the meeting.
There is a mixed-use single-family zoned area south of the property, though land to the east, southeast and west are all zoned for industrial uses. To the southeast is the Rochester Public Works Service Center, while to the south of that is a building that houses Rochester Public Utilities.
Future development on the 10-acre property would also be better served by industrial zoning, according to the staff report, as “a low-density residential site that is surrounded primarily by industrial uses seems highly dubious as the best use of this land” as well as against the businesses already located nearby.
Rochester Sand & Gravel is a supplier of aggregates and producer of asphalt, and is a subsidiary of Mathy Construction Co., a Wisconsin-based aggregate miner that operates in the upper Midwest. Rochester Sand & Gravel declined to comment for this story.
While the City Council considered the items, a resident who runs a business in the area expressed concern that construction of the office and storage buildings could block customers from reaching his business. Issac Ramsey, an engineer with Bolton-Menk who represented Rochester Sand & Gravel during the council meeting, said there were “still some things being finalized” with the site plans, though he thinks access to the nearby business would be provided during construction.
