The word that stalled the council gets sent back with an answer: make it conditional
Three weeks after the City Council sent Ordinance 2026-04 back over the word “customary,” the Grand Marais Planning Commission gave its answer on October 28: stop trying to define the word in advance, and make the school property’s accessory uses conditional instead.
The ordinance would let Great Expectations School lease parts of its building to outside groups. As first written, renters had to be “customary and incidental” to the school, and the council could not settle what “customary” covers. The commission’s discussion landed on the same problem from the other side. “Accessory is a question that’s open to interpretation,” the city’s planner told the commission, “and so is customary.” A conditional use permit solves it case by case: each new kind of renter comes back before the commission and the council, and the public gets a say each time, instead of the ordinance deciding in advance for uses nobody has imagined yet.
A member moved to make it a conditional use, saying he did not think it would be “too much of a burden overall.” The motion passed, and the recommendation went to the City Council for the following week.
The commission’s second item was a conditional use request of its own: the Mueller family wants to build a two-story, two-bedroom cabin in the backyard of their lot in the mixed-use zone, where setbacks are zero. Neighbors said they were generally fine with the use, with one hard condition first: a survey. The property pin marking the line between the Mueller lot and the neighbor’s lot has been lost, they said, and with zero setbacks they want the line proven before anything is built. The commission worked through parking and the cabin’s height, about 24 feet as a story and a half, and approved the request with additions. It also goes to the council.
Votes (from the meeting video; formal minutes are published with the council packet)
- Consent agenda: approved
- Recommendation that accessory uses under Ordinance 2026-04 be a conditional use in the R1 zone: passed (5-0 per the commission’s report in the November 4 council packet)
- Mueller conditional use request (backyard cabin): approved with additions
Spending
None.
