Tag: Walser Lamborghini

Council approves development agreement 4-1; rezoning and easement vacation pass unanimously

The Wayzata City Council approved key agreements for the proposed Walser Lamborghini dealership on April 21, but not without a split over how tightly the city should define and control the use.

The council voted 4-1 to approve the Planned Unit Development agreement for the project at 1022 and 1042 Wayzata Boulevard East, with Council Member Molly MacDonald opposed. The council then voted 5-0 to approve the first reading of Ordinance 860, rezoning the property from C-3 Service District to PUD Planned Unit Development District, and 5-0 to approve the vacation of drainage and utility easements tied to the redevelopment.

The proposal would allow Walser Real Estate, LLC to redevelop the former Mulberrys Dry Cleaning site into a Lamborghini dealership with a showroom, service bays, customer lounges, office space, surface and underground parking, and related site improvements. The property includes two parcels totaling approximately 0.88 acres at the southeast corner of Wayzata Boulevard East and Central Avenue South.

The debate centered on a late-stage request from Walser to remove language related to the volume of vehicles shown, sold and serviced at the site — language city officials had included after earlier Planning Commission and City Council discussions about intensity of use.

According to the city’s agenda report, Resolution 12-2026 included a condition requiring the development agreement to address “the volume of cars shown, sold, and serviced.” Staff noted that both the Planning Commission and City Council had emphasized the importance of regulating intensity of use on the parcel during earlier review.

Walser pushed back on that condition in an April 7 letter to the city, arguing that a monthly vehicle sales or service cap is not an appropriate land-use regulation.

“Sales volume is an economic and operational metric, not a land-use characteristic,” Walser stated in the letter.

Walser argued that the project already includes enforceable controls tied to the site and operation, including limited building size, no more than six service bays, indoor vehicle inventory, restricted hours, predetermined test-drive routes, noise and lighting requirements, landscaping, fencing, buffering and a neighborhood liaison.

Community Development Director Alex Sharpe presented the council with several options: approve the development agreement with Walser’s requested removal of the volume condition, approve it without the requested changes, or direct the applicant, staff and city attorney to draft alternative language addressing vehicles shown, serviced and sold without numerical limits. Staff noted that regulating intensity of use could be more difficult without numerical thresholds or other objectively verifiable data.

MacDonald said her concern was not about limiting Walser’s success, but about understanding the actual impact of the use on a small city with nearby residential areas.

“As some of you may know, I am in retail, so I also can’t imagine someone telling me that I couldn’t sell the amount that I set a goal to sell,” MacDonald said. “So I just want to explain why that information feels relevant to me to understand what the impact of a car dealership is.”

MacDonald also said she viewed the proposed use as a car dealership, regardless of how narrowly the applicant described it.

“You guys all don’t kind of think of it as a car dealership,” MacDonald said. “Some place where you buy a car, service a car, and trade it your used car, that’s a car dealership.”

She said one of the most frequent complaints she hears from constituents involves loud vehicles.

“The other thing looming in my head is the feedback I get the most often complaint from my constituents is noisy, loud vehicles,” MacDonald said.

MacDonald said Wayzata already has a “car kind of culture” near Lake Street, which she said is a concern for some residents. She said that was part of why she wanted more information about expected volume.

“That’s why I’ve been trying to get a handle on this volume because of the disruption this kind of car brings to a small town of one and half square miles, 4,500 people,” MacDonald said.

She also questioned whether the use belonged in that location.

“So it’s not about trying to keep you from doing good, positive business,” MacDonald said. “It’s trying to decide if that good, positive business deserves, or should be — not deserves, pardon me — belongs in a central core lot next to a very difficult road that’s hard to navigate.”

MacDonald raised a separate concern about language that appeared to broaden the agreement beyond Lamborghini by referring more generally to “exotic” vehicles. She questioned who would define that term if the property or operation changed in the future.

“There was a definition on the screen of what exotic meant, but I wonder whose definition is of that?” MacDonald said. “Is that a universal definition of exotic?”

She said the proposed change from Lamborghini-specific language gave her pause.

“The whole time it’s been Lamborghini, Lamborghini, Lamborghini,” MacDonald said. “And now today, or this packet, it’s well maybe exotic. So that to me, all this has felt a little bit of a withholding situation. That’s why I really struggled with it.”

Mayor Andrew Mullin supported the agreement as presented and said he was comfortable with the rezoning and easement vacation.

“I’m fine with the rezoning. I’m fine with the vacation. Take that off the table,” Mullin said.

On the PUD agreement, Mullin pointed to language allowing used vehicle sales only when ancillary to a new vehicle sales franchise. He said that provision helped address concerns that the site could become a mass-market dealership or used car lot.

“That takes off the table, mass market, Toyota, Kia, all of those,” Mullin said.

Mullin also said the site’s size and land cost make a high-dollar-volume use more likely than a high-unit-volume dealership.

“Really, you have to have a lot of high volume dollar, dollar volume, not unit volume, right, to make it work under any scenario,” Mullin said. “I don’t see it.”

If the site were to shift to a different future use, Mullin said, it would likely become something other than a used car lot.

“If it does move into a different future use, it’s likely to be a different use, not a used car lot,” Mullin said. “And this language gives me comfort.”

Mullin also pointed to drainage and regrading improvements as a benefit to the neighborhood, saying the area has had long-standing runoff issues affecting nearby properties.

“That is a huge benefit to the neighborhood,” Mullin said. “And without having private dollars in investment to remedy that, that’s been a longstanding 25 or probably longer than that issue with that embankment and the drainage and the runoff that’s been really problematic for the neighborhood.”

Neighboring property owner Greg Hoglund also spoke in support of the development. Hoglund said he owns property next to the site and has attended previous meetings on the proposal.

“It’s my understanding, I’ve heard several times that this is a boutique dealership and they sell less than 50 cars a year,” Hoglund said. “That may be accurate or not, but I am not concerned about the volume.”

Hoglund said he found it unusual that the council was reviewing redlines to a development agreement during the meeting and questioned whether similar requirements would be placed on other retailers.

“I just went to, I’m trying to think of Walgreens across the street,” Hoglund said. “Is there language in Walgreens that says how many customers will be coming through this on a daily basis?”

He said he did not understand the basis for requiring sales information in the agreement.

“I cannot fathom, I’m not a lawyer, that there’s precedent where you’re asking a company to list out their sales data in a legal agreement,” Hoglund said.

In its letter to the city, Walser also said the site has been “rough, underutilized, and visibly dilapidated” for nearly two decades and argued that the project would bring significant private reinvestment, new jobs, tax base and a quiet, appointment-driven use to the corridor.

The votes allow the project to continue through the city’s approval process, with the rezoning ordinance still requiring a second reading before taking effect.

The split on the PUD agreement reflected the council’s remaining tension over the site: whether the conditions already in the agreement are enough to protect the surrounding neighborhood, or whether the city should have held more tightly to limits tied to vehicle volume and future use.