Stacy Commons 'red tagged' for illegal
construction practices
By Barbara Brown
For the third time in just a few weeks, plans for the Stacy Commons commercial building near the intersection of CR 19 and CR 30 have caused problems.
The city council agreed at its Monday meeting to ãred tagä the site for illegal procedures.
Red tagging is equivalent to an emergency stop-work order issued by the city.
The council gave city inspector Jack Kramer power to call the Chisago County Sheriff's Office for other violations on the site, including violating the red tag order.
City Engineer Chuck Schwartz of Bonestroo and Assoc. said one contractor on the job Monday installed the wrong water service line for the building's sprinkler system.
Schwartz told the Stacy City Council that plans that were eventually approved and filed by the city included a six-inch line.
According to Schwartz, city maintenance manager Tom Archibald called him Monday from the building site to inquire about the one-inch line the contractor was installing.
Schwartz explained that the newest plans the city approved indicated a six-inch line and he talked to the contractor.
The contractor told Schwartz that the plans he has show a one-inch line and that was what he was going to install, Schwartz told the council.
The six-inch line was approved by the city's planning commission and council to allow for future expansion of the buildingâs fire suppression system, if that would ever be necessary.
According to the State Fire Marshal, city's are allowed to make local rules that are more strict than the state's, but the state does not require oversizing a sprinkler line.
Stacy does not have an official ordinance about the sizes of fire suppression lines, according to city attorney Pete Grundhoefer.
Alan Kretman, with ProTerra Design Associates, the designer of the project, sent an electronic mail letter to the city, Schwartz and others involved with the project indicating that the city had no specific fire protection ordinance and therefore could not require the contractors to stop working.
"To the best of our knowledge, we do not see any legal or procedural reason that the construction activities for Stacy Commons should be held up any longer," Kretman's letter said.
Kretman asked for council response if there was a reason it believed the construction should not commence Tuesday morning.
The e-mail letter was sent at 1:19 p.m. and Kretman was not present at the meeting at the time the council discussed Stacy Commons.
This is the second time a contractor on the Stacy Commons job has done incorrect work on the site, according to the city, because the plans they possess are not the revised plans approved by the city.
Recently, a tree removal service was asked to stop work because it was in the process of removing oak trees from the construction site that were to remain according to the cityâs plan requirements.
(Note: Mayor Michael Carlson sent an e-mail to the Post Review on Nov. 11, after the print edition of the paper had already gone to the presses. The e-mail summarized a meeting with Dan Birdsall, the property's developer, city zoning inspector Jack Kramer and the mayor. Carlson said Kretman of ProTerra Design will no longer be working on the project, according to Birdsall.)
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