III.2. Sustainable Building Policy Update and Stakeholder Engagement Plan; Howard
CITY OF HOPKINS
Memorandum
To: Honorable Mayor and Council Members
Mike Mornson, City Manager
From: Kurt Howard, Planner
Date: October 1, 2024
Subject: Sustainable Building Policy Update and Stakeholder Engagement Plan
_____________________________________________________________________
PURPOSE
The purpose of this item is to update the City Council on staff’s progress towards
developing a Hopkins Sustainable Building Policy and seek input on the proposed
Hopkins-specific standards before beginning a stakeholder engagement process.
INFORMATION
Over the past year, the City has been developing a sustainable building policy.
Sustainable building policies are tools that enable local jurisdictions to increase the
degree to which new development contributes to improvements in public health,
environmental justice, and environmental and economic sustainability. This is
accomplished by requiring, incentivizing, or encouraging development to occur in ways
that contribute to sustainability goals, such as reductions in carbon emissions, protection
of natural areas, mitigation of stormwater, and incentivizing the use of renewable energy
sources.
At its meeting on December 19, 2023, the City Council was presented with a general
policy framework based on several other Minnesota cities that have adopted formal
sustainable building policies, as well as resources and guidance provided by the Center
for Energy and Environment (CEE). The key components of this policy framework
involve:
• Establishing policy triggers that control which types of development the policy
does and does not apply to
• Leveraging existing third-party rating systems by requiring applicable
developments to receive certification from at least one of the following: LEED,
Minnesota B3 Benchmarking, MN GreenStar Home, or Enterprise Green
Communities green building program
• Developing a city-specific list of sustainability standards or “universal
requirements” that must be met by all developments to which the sustainable
building policy applies
The City Council expressed support for this general policy framework and staff has since
been partnering with subject matter experts at CEE to further develop detail on the
various components of a Hopkins Sustainable Building Policy, as outlined below.
Planning & Economic
Development
Policy Triggers
Policy triggers enable to cities to determine what scales and types of development a
sustainable building policy should apply to in order to help strike an effective balance
that both delivers on the sustainability goals of the policy but also avoids being overly
burdensome such that development becomes infeasible. The triggers for a Hopkins
Sustainable Building Policy that are currently under consideration would have the policy
apply to developments that have occupiable building space above a certain number of
square feet and meet one or more of the following conditions:
• Publicly owned
• Requesting discretionary land use approvals (e.g. Planned Unit Development
(PUD), Rezoning, Comprehensive Plan amendment)
• Requesting over $300,000 in City financial assistance (e.g. Tax Increment
Financing, grant dollars from other organizations that pass through the City)
One question that has been identified that could be informed by direction from the City
Council and stakeholder engagement is whether an exception should be carved out for
townhome or condo developments given the goal of bringing more home-ownership
opportunities to Hopkins.
Third-Party Rating Systems
Incorporating existing third-party rating systems into the policy helps establish a level of
standardization across the policies of different cities in Minnesota, reduces the
administrative costs of implementing the policy, and also covers many of the
fundamental bases of sustainable building design, including energy efficiency,
greenhouse gas reduction, use of renewable energy, stormwater mitigation, and electric
vehicle infrastructure. The third-party rating systems that are currently under
consideration include:
• U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
(LEED)
• Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines (B3)
• Enterprise Green Communities
• Green Communities - MN Overlay
Universal Requirements
The city-specific universal requirements component of a sustainable building policy
gives cities the ability customizes their policy to reflect the unique sustainability goals of
the community, helps fill any gaps not covered by the third-party rating systems, and
also ensures that certain priorities are advanced with every single project to which the
policy applies. The universal requirements currently under consideration for a Hopkins
Sustainable Building Policy include:
• Greenhouse gas emission reduction
• Renewable energy
• Cool roofs and passive cooling
• Resilience and backup energy
• Waste management
• Electric vehicle charging
• Low salt design
Based on an initial analysis of the practicality of developing and administering standards
related to each of these topics, the universal requirements under consideration to be
included in a first draft of a Hopkins Sustainable Building Policy are greenhouse gas
reduction, renewable energy, electric vehicle charging, and low salt design. These
universal requirements will be a key topic for stakeholder engagement and can be
modified with future revisions and evolutions of the policy.
Stakeholder Engagement Plan
Depending on the feedback received during this discussion, staff plans to commence a
stakeholder engagement process over the next several weeks. Stakeholder
engagement will include presentations to both the Planning and Zoning Commission and
the Park Board, in-person community engagement to collect input at the Hopkins Fire
Department Open House, one-on-one meetings as requested, and the development of
an online tool to engage the development community. The feedback gathered will be
incorporated into a draft policy that will be brought to the Planning & Zoning Commission
for a Public Hearing before subsequently going back to the City Council for proposed
adoption.
FUTURE ACTION
If there is agreement on the framework and content of the elements of a Hopkins
Sustainable Building Policy covered in this discussion, staff will begin a process of
stakeholder engagement to inform a draft policy to be proposed for adoption before the
end of 2024