Franciscan Sisters Want To Be Fully Annexed Into Little Falls

LITTLE FALLS (WJON News) -- A longtime Little Falls establishment is looking to become a full member of the city. The campus for the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls sits on 80 acres of land and currently it lies in both the Little Falls Township and the City of Little Falls.

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The organization has requested to be annexed fully into the City of Little Falls since they already use city water, sewer, and other services. Chief Operating Officer Tim Houle says the Franciscan Sisters were there a long time before city zoning, so it is just a matter of some housekeeping to help them:

"We have two different sets of zoning laws that apply to the same campus. We ran into that when we wanted to build a solar array. We had to get a permit from the county even though our, the mother house and all of our buildings are in the city limits and so that really got down to we just think there should be one set of zoning rules for one campus."

Houle says they need to get their zoning updated from R3 to B2 as well before the annexation can go through. He says it is something that will only help the sisters in the long term:

"Long term picture is we certainly are going to do things with the campus. The sisters have dreams for what the future of the campus should hold. We don't have any immediate building plans, so none of this is because we have some project or development that we want to do. We really view this as housekeeping to put us in compliance with the right rules."

The Little Falls Planning Commission approved the zoning change at last Monday's meeting and the city will vote at their next meeting on April 7th. Houle expects the annexation portion to get worked on this summer, providing the zoning change is approved.

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