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Land Use Conditional Use Permits

Published: May 10, 2021

This content conveys general information. Do not use it as a substitute for legal advice. Any attorney general opinions cited are available from the League’s Research staff.

Conditional use

A conditional use is a land use the city permits in a zoning district only when the applicant meets certain standards. The zoning ordinance typically sets out:

• General standards that apply to all conditional uses, and
• Specific standards that apply to a particular conditional use in a given zoning district.

A use is typically conditional because of:

• Hazards inherent in the use itself, or
• Special problems that its proposed location may present.

For example, cities often designate uses that generate traffic (such as family child care, service stations, convenience stores, or drive-thrus) as conditional uses.

Conditional use permit

A conditional use permit (CUP) is a document. A city issues a permit to allow a conditional use when the applicant meets the general and specific ordinance standards. The permit allows the use only if the applicant addresses the standards set forth in the zoning ordinance. State law authorizes conditional use permits ( Minn. Stat. § 462.3595 ).

General CUP standards

A zoning ordinance typically details general standards that apply to all conditional uses. For example, an ordinance might require all conditional uses to conform to the comprehensive land use plan of the community, be compatible with adjoining properties, and be served by adequate roads and public utilities.

Specific CUP standards

Many zoning ordinances will also set out specific standards for a particular conditional use, such as businesses operating a drive-thru. Specific standards often address off-street parking and loading areas, landscaping and site plan, and hours of business operation.

Granting conditional use permits

Generally, cities may only grant CUPs for uses specifically listed in the zoning ordinance as conditional uses in a particular zoning district.

If a use is not designated as a conditional use in a zoning district, then arguably the city may not issue a CUP without first amending the zoning ordinance to provide for the conditional use. This would, of course, allow other applicants to apply for a conditional use permit under the same standards.

Who grants a CUP

Planning commissions often first consider the CUP application and make recommendations to the city council. State statute allows the city council to assign its CUP approval to another authority. Some cities designate the planning commission as the approving body but typically the city council approves a CUP.

Required approval

If a proposed conditional use satisfies both the general and specific standards set out in the zoning ordinance, the applicant is entitled to the conditional use permit. If the applicant meets all the ordinance standards, the city usually has no legal basis to deny the CUP.

60-Day rule

A written request for a CUP is subject to Minnesota’s 60-day rule. It must be approved or denied within 60 days of the time it is submitted to the city. A city may extend the time period for an additional 60 days, but only if it does so in writing before expiration of the initial 60-day period. Under the 60-day rule, failure to approve or deny a request within the statutory time period is considered an approval ( Minn. Stat. § 15.99 ).

Other conditions on permits

A city may attach reasonable conditions relating to the ordinance standards to a CUP based upon factual evidence contained in public record. For example, if a zoning ordinance says a conditional use should not have adverse visual or noise impacts on any adjacent property, a city might require specific screening and landscaping conditions to address any potential impacts established in the record.

Time limits not permitted

State statute says a CUP remains in effect as long as the conditions agreed upon are observed ( Minn. Stat. § 462.3595, subd. 3 ).The attorney general says time limits, such as sunset provisions or automatic annual review, are not consistent with state law, explaining that cities may not enact or enforce provisions that allow a city to terminate CUPs without regard to whether the conditions agreed upon are observed (A.G. Op. 59-A-32 (February 27, 1990)).

If a city wishes to place time constraints on particular uses, the appropriate zoning tool is an interim use permit, not a conditional use permit. State law authorizes interim use permits for:

• A temporary use of property until a particular date;
• Until the occurrence of a particular event; or
• Until zoning regulations no longer permit it ( Stat. § 462.3597 ).

Public hearings

The city may allow a proposed conditional use only after a statutorily required public hearing ( Minn. Stat. § 462.3595, subd. 2 ). The city must provide published notice of the time, place, and purpose of the hearing on a proposed CUP at least 10 days prior to the day of the hearing. If the decision affects an area of five acres or less, the city may need to mail notice to property owners within a 350-foot radius of the land in question. The purpose of the public hearing is to help develop a factual record as to whether the applicant meets the relevant ordinance standards such that the CUP should be granted ( Minn. Stat. § 462.357, subd. 3 ).

City role in hearing

A city exercises “quasi-judicial” authority when considering a CUP application. This means the city’s role is limited to applying the standards in the ordinance to the facts presented by the application. The city acts like a judge in evaluating the facts against the standards. If the applicant meets the standards, then the CUP should be granted.

In contrast, when the city designates certain uses as conditional in the zoning ordinance the city is exercising “legislative” authority and has much broader discretion.

Learn more about conducting public hearings in the League’s Zoning Guide for Cities

Role of neighborhood opinion

Neighborhood opinion alone is not a valid basis for granting or denying a CUP. While city officials may feel their decision should reflect the overall preferences of residents, their task is limited to evaluating how the CUP application meets the ordinance standards. Residents can often provide important facts to help the city address whether the application meets the standards, but unsubstantiated opinions and reactions to an application are not a legitimate basis for a CUP decision. If neighborhood opinion serves as the sole basis of the decision, it could be overturned by a court if challenged.

Documentation of hearing

Whatever its decision, a city should create a record that will support it. If a city denies a CUP application, the 60-day rule requires the reasons for the denial be put in writing. Even if a city approves a CUP, a written statement explaining the decision is advisable. The written statement should address the general and specific ordinance standards and explain the relevant facts and conclusions.

For information on creating a record, see Taking the Mystery Out of Findings of Fact

Conditional use permit after issuance

A conditional use permit is a property right that “runs with the land.” That is, it attaches to and benefits the land and is not limited to a particular landowner ( Minn. Stat. § 462.3595, subd. 3 ). State statute requires CUPs be recorded with the county recorder’s office ( Minn. Stat. § 462.3595, subd. 4 ). When the property is sold, the new landowner will have the continued right to the CUP so long as the conditions are met.

A city can revoke a conditional use permit if there is not substantial compliance with conditions. The revocation must be based upon factual evidence, after appropriate notice and hearing. Because a CUP is a property right, a city should work closely with the city attorney if considering a CUP revocation.

Related Learning and Events

Land Use Regulation: Your Role in Land-Use Decision Making

This course is designed to introduce you to core concepts about land use decisions.

Relevant News

2024 Legislative Session: Protecting Cities’ Zoning and Land Use Authority

Your lmc resource, jed burkett, loss control/land use attorney.

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Python Conditional Assignment

When you want to assign a value to a variable based on some condition, like if the condition is true then assign a value to the variable, else assign some other value to the variable, then you can use the conditional assignment operator.

In this tutorial, we will look at different ways to assign values to a variable based on some condition.

1. Using Ternary Operator

The ternary operator is very special operator in Python, it is used to assign a value to a variable based on some condition.

It goes like this:

Here, the value of variable will be value_if_true if the condition is true, else it will be value_if_false .

Let's see a code snippet to understand it better.

You can see we have conditionally assigned a value to variable c based on the condition a > b .

2. Using if-else statement

if-else statements are the core part of any programming language, they are used to execute a block of code based on some condition.

Using an if-else statement, we can assign a value to a variable based on the condition we provide.

Here is an example of replacing the above code snippet with the if-else statement.

3. Using Logical Short Circuit Evaluation

Logical short circuit evaluation is another way using which you can assign a value to a variable conditionally.

The format of logical short circuit evaluation is:

It looks similar to ternary operator, but it is not. Here the condition and value_if_true performs logical AND operation, if both are true then the value of variable will be value_if_true , or else it will be value_if_false .

Let's see an example:

But if we make condition True but value_if_true False (or 0 or None), then the value of variable will be value_if_false .

So, you can see that the value of c is 20 even though the condition a < b is True .

So, you should be careful while using logical short circuit evaluation.

While working with lists , we often need to check if a list is empty or not, and if it is empty then we need to assign some default value to it.

Let's see how we can do it using conditional assignment.

Here, we have assigned a default value to my_list if it is empty.

Assign a value to a variable conditionally based on the presence of an element in a list.

Now you know 3 different ways to assign a value to a variable conditionally. Any of these methods can be used to assign a value when there is a condition.

The cleanest and fastest way to conditional value assignment is the ternary operator .

if-else statement is recommended to use when you have to execute a block of code based on some condition.

Happy coding! 😊

37 CFR § 3.56 - Conditional assignments.

Assignments which are made conditional on the performance of certain acts or events, such as the payment of money or other condition subsequent, if recorded in the Office , are regarded as absolute assignments for Office purposes until cancelled with the written consent of all parties or by the decree of a court of competent jurisdiction. The Office does not determine whether such conditions have been fulfilled.

• Learn Python
• Python Lists
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• Python Seaborn
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Set Pandas Conditional Column Based on Values of Another Column

• August 9, 2021 February 22, 2022

There are many times when you may need to set a Pandas column value based on the condition of another column. In this post, you’ll learn all the different ways in which you can create Pandas conditional columns.

Table of Contents

Video Tutorial

If you prefer to follow along with a video tutorial, check out my video below:

Loading a Sample Dataframe

Let’s begin by loading a sample Pandas dataframe that we can use throughout this tutorial.

We’ll begin by import pandas and loading a dataframe using the .from_dict() method:

This returns the following dataframe:

Using Pandas loc to Set Pandas Conditional Column

Pandas loc is incredibly powerful! If you need a refresher on loc (or iloc), check out my tutorial here . Pandas’ loc creates a boolean mask, based on a condition. Sometimes, that condition can just be selecting rows and columns, but it can also be used to filter dataframes. These filtered dataframes can then have values applied to them.

Let’s explore the syntax a little bit:

With the syntax above, we filter the dataframe using .loc and then assign a value to any row in the column (or columns) where the condition is met.

Let’s try this out by assigning the string ‘Under 30’ to anyone with an age less than 30, and ‘Over 30’ to anyone 30 or older.

Let's take a look at what we did here:

• We assigned the string 'Over 30' to every record in the dataframe. To learn more about this, check out my post here or creating new columns.
• We then use .loc to create a boolean mask on the Age column to filter down to rows where the age is less than 30. When this condition is met, the Age Category column is assigned the new value 'Under 30'

But what happens when you have multiple conditions? You could, of course, use .loc multiple times, but this is difficult to read and fairly unpleasant to write. Let's see how we can accomplish this using numpy's .select() method.

Using Numpy Select to Set Values using Multiple Conditions

Similar to the method above to use .loc to create a conditional column in Pandas, we can use the numpy .select() method.

Let's begin by importing numpy and we'll give it the conventional alias np :

Now, say we wanted to apply a number of different age groups, as below:

• <20 years old,
• 20-39 years old,
• 40-59 years old,
• 60+ years old

In order to do this, we'll create a list of conditions and corresponding values to fill:

Running this returns the following dataframe:

Let's break down what happens here:

• We first define a list of conditions in which the criteria are specified. Recall that lists are ordered meaning that they should be in the order in which you would like the corresponding values to appear.
• We then define a list of values to use , which corresponds to the values you'd like applied in your new column.

Something to consider here is that this can be a bit counterintuitive to write. You can similarly define a function to apply different values. We'll cover this off in the section of using the Pandas .apply() method below .

One of the key benefits is that using numpy as is very fast, especially when compared to using the .apply() method.

Using Pandas Map to Set Values in Another Column

The Pandas .map() method is very helpful when you're applying labels to another column. In order to use this method, you define a dictionary to apply to the column.

For our sample dataframe, let's imagine that we have offices in America, Canada, and France. We want to map the cities to their corresponding countries and apply and "Other" value for any other city.

When we print this out, we get the following dataframe returned:

What we can see here, is that there is a NaN value associated with any City that doesn't have a corresponding country. If we want to apply "Other" to any missing values, we can chain the .fillna() method:

Using Pandas Apply to Apply a function to a column

Finally, you can apply built-in or custom functions to a dataframe using the Pandas .apply() method.

Let's take a look at both applying built-in functions such as len() and even applying custom functions.

Applying Python Built-in Functions to a Column

We can easily apply a built-in function using the .apply() method. Let's see how we can use the len() function to count how long a string of a given column.

Take note of a few things here:

• We apply the .apply() method to a particular column,
• We omit the parentheses "()"

Using Third-Party Packages in Pandas Apply

Similarly, you can use functions from using packages. Let's use numpy to apply the .sqrt() method to find the scare root of a person's age.

Using Custom Functions with Pandas Apply

Something that makes the .apply() method extremely powerful is the ability to define and apply your own functions.

Let's revisit how we could use an if-else statement to create age categories as in our earlier example:

In this post, you learned a number of ways in which you can apply values to a dataframe column to create a Pandas conditional column, including using .loc , .np.select() , Pandas .map() and Pandas .apply() . Each of these methods has a different use case that we explored throughout this post.

Learn more about Pandas methods covered here by checking out their official documentation:

• Pandas Apply
• Numpy Select

Nik Piepenbreier

Nik is the author of datagy.io and has over a decade of experience working with data analytics, data science, and Python. He specializes in teaching developers how to use Python for data science using hands-on tutorials. View Author posts

2 thoughts on “Set Pandas Conditional Column Based on Values of Another Column”

Thank you so much! Brilliantly explained!!!

Thanks Aisha!

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What Exactly is a Conditioning Assignment, Anyway?

The Nashville Predators have gotten their mileage out of CBA section 13.8 this season, as they have now sent three players to the Milwaukee Admirals for short-term “conditioning” stints. Brian McGrattan was sent on one shortly before being traded to Calgary last month, while Matt Halischuk spent time with the Admirals a couple weeks ago. Since March 12, he’s been a steady presence in the Nashville lineup.

While traditionally thought of as something you do to get a guy back in game shape after he’s been on the shelf due to injury, this season the Predators seem to be using them as a way to get a player some developmental work during the course of the season, giving them more ice time than they would otherwise get in Nashville, in a situation where they’re more likely to find success and build confidence.

But how can they ship these regulars down to the AHL without exposing them to waivers? Here’s what the recently-expired CBA had to say about Conditioning Loans:

NHL Conditioning Assignment Rules

13.8 Conditioning Loan. Unless a Player consents, he shall not be Loaned on a Conditioning Loan to a minor league club. Such Conditioning Loan shall not extend for more than fourteen (14) consecutive days. The Commissioner may take whatever steps he deems necessary to investigate the circumstances under which a Player is Loaned on a Conditioning Loan. If the Commissioner has reason to believe or determines that the Club has used the Conditioning Loan to evade the Re-Entry Waivers, or otherwise Circumvent any provision of this Agreement, he may take such disciplinary action against the Club, as he deems appropriate. The Player shall continue, during the period of such Conditioning Loan, to receive the same Paragraph 1 NHL Salary, and be entitled to the same benefits, that he would have received had he continued to play with the Club.

The NHL has posted a Summary of Terms ( PDF ) for what the new CBA will look like (the fine print is still being hammered out), but there aren’t any changes to Conditioning Loans as they’ve been used by the Predators so far this season.

The key points here are obviously the fact that a player must consent to being sent down – it’s understood that this is a temporary measure, and that his pay will not be affected. As long as those conditions are met, it makes sense for such a loan to be available, and help the team out by not having to expose these players to waivers.

They aren’t trying to stash a guy in the minors and stockpile talent, while preventing that individual from getting his shot in the NHL (that’s why the waiver system exists in the first place, to allow such players a chance to catch on with another NHL team if they’re not wanted). It’s just a short-term exercise to get a guy’s game going, and if he doesn’t want to go along, that’s his right.

A savvy front office uses whatever means are available to get the most out of their talent, and this option is giving Nashville a way to potentially jump-start some of their younger players.

Talking Points

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Houston Astros Trade Pitch Lands Former MVP for Two Prospects From Cardinals

Jon conahan | 16 hours ago.

• Houston Astros

Are the Houston Astros back on track? After winning six straight, the Astros look like the team every fan knows. It was as rough of a start to a season as imaginable. but they've played as well as anyone recently, going 8-2 over their last 10 games.

This stretch doesn't change much of the early season struggles, but it's unfair to say that'll happen until they get healthy. Houston has dealt with many injuries, a factor in why they started the season the way they did.

If one team knows how to win when their backs are up against the wall and people doubting them, it's the Astros. Now, only four games out of first place in the American League West, it looks like Houston will be right in the mix to win the division again.

The deadline will be interesting around the league, especially for this club. Alex Bregman hits free agency at the end of the year and other players could be trade pieces, but it's possible they'll be buyers.

In a proposed trade from Zach Pressnell of FanSided, the Astros would be buyers, landing former MVP Paul Goldschmidt in a deal. The deal would send AJ Blubaugh and Colin Barber to the St. Louis Cardinals .

"Paul Goldschmidt desperately needs a fresh start. The veteran first baseman won an MVP just two seasons ago," Pressnell wrote. His skills haven't diminished to this extent in just two years. Additionally, he would be an upgrade over Abreu and Jon Singleton, who have both struggled just as badly as Goldschmidt has this year."

Goldschmidt, who's been one of the best players in baseball over his career, has had a rough start to the season. He's currently slashing .214/.295/.306 with just four home runs. However, when Goldschmidt's at his best, he's someone who can post an OPS above .850 and hit 30-plus home runs.

A seven-time All-Star, the hope would be for him to return to form, something that's definitely possible for the 36-year-old.

JON CONAHAN

Jon Conahan has been covering all major sports since 2019. He is a 2022 graduate of the Bellisario School of Journalism at Penn State University and previously played D1 baseball.

Yankees reliever Ian Hamilton lands on rarely used COVID injured list

COVID-19 is still around and still forcing players to the sidelines. 

The Yankees moved righty Ian Hamilton to the seven-day COVID IL before beginning a series with the Mariners in The Bronx on Monday.

In corresponding moves, the Yankees selected the contract of lefty Clayton Andrews from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and designated righty Colby White for assignment. 

Hamilton has not been as dominant as he was last season, but the valuable reliever still has posted a 3.18 ERA in 22 2/3 innings. 

Andrews, a 5-foot-6 southpaw who came over in a February trade with the Brewers, held a 6.60 ERA in 15 innings with SWB. 

The Key to Understanding HBO’s The Sympathizer

Think of it as a ghost story.

In a recent scene from HBO’s The Sympathizer , a communist spy whom we only know as the Captain (played by Hoa Xuande) sits outside a Los Angeles car-repair station, staking out the man he’s planning to kill. His target is a former senior military officer, Major Oanh, who fled with him from Vietnam to the U.S., and who is starting over as a mechanic. When the Captain learns that Oanh is importing expired Vietnamese candy as a side hustle, he confronts him. To his shock, the man embraces him. “It’s a new world here,” Oanh tells the Captain. “If you fully commit to this land, you become fully American. But if you don’t, you’re just a wandering ghost living between two worlds forever.”

Adapted from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel , The Sympathizer follows a protagonist who seems perennially trapped in this between. The Captain is a North Vietnamese secret-police agent embedded high up in the Southern Vietnamese military. As a biracial, half-French man, the Captain is at once strikingly visible in public and yet socially invisible; he’s been, as he says early in the first episode, “cursed to see every issue from both sides.” But what vexes him even more is the realization that he uses his identity as an excuse to avoid taking firm moral stances. By circumstance and by choice, he moves through society as a specter.

Although The Sympathizer isn’t a literal ghost story, this is a compelling prism to view the adaptation through. The series, created by Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar, introduces the Captain after he’s been captured by the North Vietnamese army (which he’s spying for), sent to a reeducation camp, and stuck in a room to write his confession. He begins by writing words we hear in a voice-over: “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces,” a nod to the opening of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel, Invisible Man , whose similarly unnamed narrator unpacks feeling adrift and anonymous “because people refuse to see me.” In The Sympathizer , the word spook takes on a dual meaning, describing a spy—a job that hinges on being imperceptible—and also a disembodied presence that’s neither dead nor alive.

The Captain narrates his imperfectly detailed memories, which span decades and move between Vietnam and the U.S. He jumps back and forth through time, revealing a man caught as much between physical and psychic worlds as between loyalties. The two people he cares most about in the world—his best friends and “blood brothers” Man and Bon—were on different sides of the war: the former was a higher-up in North Vietnamese leadership, the latter was a South Vietnamese paratrooper and assassin.

Read: Viet Thanh Nguyen on why writing is a process of “emotional osmosis”

But unlike in many traditional ghost stories, the Captain isn’t an omniscient figure narrating from the afterlife. He is wrestling with competing political and cultural ideologies and with Vietnam’s legacy of colonialism and war. He is a frequent subject of derision as a mixed-race man: In one scene in Vietnam, the Captain explains that he’s long endured acquaintances and others “spitting on me and calling me bastard,” dryly adding that “sometimes, for variety, they call me bastard before they spit.” Even those who the Captain believes respect him see his humanity as conditional. In the novel, his longtime boss—known only as the General—fires him for flirting with his daughter: “How could you ever believe we would allow [her] to be with someone of your kind?” the General asks.

This sense of alienation is exacerbated in the U.S., where the Captain embeds within the exiled South Vietnamese community. There, he and his fellow countrymen are, as he describes in the novel, “consumed by the metastasizing cancer called assimilation and susceptible to the hypochondria of exile.” At one point in the show, a fellow émigré and journalist named Sonny (Alan Trong) tells him, “Arguably, I’m more Vietnamese than you … biologically”—and yet the Captain is regarded as being too Vietnamese by many of those he meets in the U.S. In an especially atrocious scene after the Captain’s arrival in Los Angeles, a former professor he connects with (Robert Downey Jr.) gives him the dehumanizing assignment of writing down his “Oriental and Occidental qualities” side by side. Afterward, the professor pressures the Captain to read the list aloud to university donors at a cocktail party.

Read: The Vietnam War, as seen by the victors

Not even the Captain’s Marxist proclivities can anchor him after he moves to America, a bastion of capitalism that he's been taught to hate but secretly enjoys. Though he technically identifies as a Communist, in the series he doesn’t come off as an active, passionate believer. He also becomes involved in American pop culture, when he's asked to be a cultural consultant on an Apocalypse Now –esque film. Yet the Captain is frustratingly static in these Hollywood scenes. He’s unconvincing when he implores a movie director named Niko Damianos (also played by Downey Jr.) to hire Vietnamese actors in speaking roles. Even the way he pushes back against the inclusion of an unnecessarily violent scene feels tepid; when the director fires him, the Captain walks away in indifferent silence.

In interviews, Nguyen has said that hauntings are inextricable from stories about war and the trauma it leaves behind. He has also noted that Vietnamese culture is full of ghost stories, whose spirits bear both malicious and benevolent intent. The visual language of The Sympathizer takes care to point out that those hovering in the afterlife stay close to the living. Shrines to the deceased, many adorned with fruits, incense, and vases full of flowers, pervade the show’s world, including in the Captain’s home and in the General’s office. Later in the series, literal ghosts also take shape: Major Oanh and another person the Captain murders constantly reappear to taunt him and offer unsolicited opinions.

As the series progresses, the Captain becomes more and more numb, stymied by the realization that neither communism nor capitalism—nor either of the two countries, or racial identities, or best friends he’s torn between—will make him whole. The Sympathizer drives home the salient point that social invisibility has a way of hollowing someone until they’re unrecognizable, even to themselves. It gestures toward a haunting truth: To stand for everything is akin to standing for nothing.

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