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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPH 2022-07-18 - Appeal of Denial - Pet. 2022-03-02-10 CITY OF LIVONIA PUBLIC HEARING Minutes of Meeting Held on Monday, July 18, 2022 ___________________________________________________________________ A Public Hearing of the Council of the City of Livonia was held at the Livonia City Hall Auditorium on Monday, July 18, 2022. MEMBERS PRESENT: Jim Jolly, President Laura Toy, Vice President Scott Bahr Rob Donovic Kathleen McIntyre Scott Morgan MEMBERS ABSENT: Brandon McCullough OTHERS PRESENT: Paul Bernier, Assistant City Attorney Mark Taormina, Planning and Economic Development Director The Public Hearing was called to order at 8:05 p.m. with President Jim Jolly presiding. This item is regarding an appeal of the denial of the Planning Commission regarding Petition 2022-03-02-10 submitted by Excellerated Towing & Recovery requesting waiver use approval to operate a vehicle tow yard at 12780 Wayne Road, located on the east side of Wayne Road just south of Schoolcraft Road in the Northwest ¼ of Section 28. This item will move to the Regular Meeting of August 8, 2022. The Public Hearing is now open. There were 2 persons in the audience. Jolly: I will go to Mark Taormina, our Planning and Economic Development Director. Can you give us an initial presentation? Taormina: Thank you, of course. Again, a request to operate a vehicle tow yard. In this case the property is located on East side of Wayne Road south of Schoolcraft Road. You can see from the zoning map on the screen that this site is zoned M-1 and is surrounded by properties that are under the light manufacturing classification. The existing building on the property measures roughly 6,000 square feet. The property itself is a little under seven tenths of an acre. Its 100 feet wide by 295 feet in depth. The 6,000 square foot building on the site includes a shop area which is about 4,800 square feet and then 1,200 square feet of office space. You'll pick up on the site plan better than the area here, that parking is available on both the south and the east sides of the building. The proposed tow storage yard is shown in the rear yard. So, that would be on the east side of the building. There's a fenced in area that's about 13,000 square feet in size, it does contain a gravel surface, it's gated. There is a truck well on the front of the building. However, I don't believe that is needed for the proposed operation. There are eight customer and employee spaces that 2 are available on the south side of the building and then the tow yard itself would have the capacity of storing roughly 25 recovered vehicles in company tow trucks. I'll just note that the site plan does not show any trash containers according to the petitioner. All refuse, including tires and auto parts would be stored inside the building until such time that they would be taken away by a contractor. The frontage does require one full sized tree as well as one ornamental tree and 10 shrubs. The plan shows one full sized tree two existing ornamental trees and then 18 shrubs. So, landscaping would be complied with. There are no exterior lights other than what's mounted on the rear wall of the building and then a single sign would be allowed for the business totaling 25 square feet. The Planning Commission reviewed this item at their May 17 public hearing and denied the petition. Hence the reason for tonight's appeal. Thank you. Jolly: Thank you, Mr. Taormina. Is the petitioner here? Please give us your initial remarks, your name and address. Sever: Good Evening. Terry Sever, representing the petitioner, 37172 6 Mile Road, Century 21 real estate office. I just want to first thank the Councilmembers that have worked with us. You know, we were here for another project that did not go very far with us, and the owner still wants to locate in Livonia. That project was looking like it was further and further away from us to the one on Rosati. So, we looked around and found a location that was an existing building that was for lease. So, I'd like to thank the Councilmembers that have met with us in Committee of the Whole, other things. It's good to see Councilwoman Toy and meet her in in the Council Chambers. They say a picture's worth 1000 words, 1000 words. So, there's 50,000 words in there. You know, I've been involved with this, I met Mr. Fields back last fall, and started working with him. I've stayed involved because I believe in him. He's a young man, as far as I'm concerned, has talent. He's working on trying to get his business to grow. He's dedicated to the location in Livonia. He feels that such an important location for him to improve his business and grow. It's located centrally from where his service is. I just want to say that I am here tonight, and I covered the cost of this hearing, because the night that we were supposed to do a Planning Commission, I had a presentation to make, similar to what I did back the first time at Planning Commission, and I had an emergency come up just before the meeting. I wasn't able to attend. So, I needed to be able to handle it. I saw that the video gave me was very nervous and was deadly some of the points that needed to be made. So, what I like to do is, you have my package there. First, like to start with the pictures that are eight and a half by eleven like this. What we have here, is these are pictures of the business that was there prior to us looking to do something with this property. You can see from the pictures that it was an automotive use, there's a lot of vehicles in and about the building. Some that, in our mind, you would be able to regulate more in terms of those vehicles outside would not be outside. They would not be permitted that side of the where those vehicles are. That would be employee parking, as well as some customer parking. The next page shows a little bit more of that, a lot of, I would say unsightly items on the outside. Then the rear yard. This is a picture of the rear yard. I 3 don't know if you happen to notice, but when the picture was above there a photograph was shown above, there was even more vehicles or trailers in the backyard. And then the last picture depicts what we would continue to do, that was done in the past, and that is have a roll out trash reception, where it would be kept indoors and on the days it would be emptied, it would be rolled outside. Now go to the big sheet here. What I did is made, since the Planning Commission made reference to a neighborhood and made reference to small manufacturing businesses, what I've done here is, on the far left, you'll see where it says original site. That's the site that we were looking at with Rosati and the Planning Commission passed unanimously to recommend his business go. The current site is just north of that, not more than a block or two. So, we're in the same neighborhood. I think the proposal meets a lot of characteristics that we had on Rosati. It's a dead-end street. It's not really used by the public that much. You can see the number of businesses that have outside storage. Interesting enough. I'm sure when this industrial park was built back 50 years ago, like a lot of buildings that were built, Farmington Hills and other communities, there was a lot of industrial buildings. It was actually an industrial park. There's a lot of manufacturing, but you can see here the extra across the top pictures of the businesses in the area, shows that it's more of a service-oriented businesses occupying this. There's very few, might be 35-40% of the actual businesses, are small manufacturing businesses anymore. So, what I did here was took pictures of the types of businesses that were in the neighborhood, some of which are on the exact same street. The lower left larger picture is a neighbor to the south. It's a pool company. They get regular deliveries to that business. When I was there, it wasn't unusual to see a semi parked in front of our building, as well as two others waiting to get in there. So, addressing the issue of traffic, the towing company is going to offer far less traffic in terms of the day-to-day business. I think we're probably looking at 12 trips maybe 14. A lot of those would be between eight o'clock at night and seven o'clock in the morning. The picture to the right, there's a dance studio right next door. Not a small manufacturing business. The picture below that shows the trucks and a fenced area that's just around the corner. Storage and moving company is just around the corner, and the armory is there, where they have a lot of vehicles that are parked outside along Industrial Drive, and just to point out that there an electric company, there's a graphic company, there's a trade company, there's an auction company and there's service companies. So, in terms of what the ordinance allows or indicates, the ordinance first makes the statement towing companies are allowed. So, if you expanded that thought about a towing company and what kind of towing company would you say fits in this particular area? He's a small-sized towing company, less than 30 parking spots, which is similar to what we have proposed on Rosati Drive. The amount of customers that he'd have come in are minimal. Most of his tows are going to be to a repair shop or collision shop or something like that. And in the picture, you can see the number of outside storage components that are associated with every business. As you go to the east off of Glendale, Stark Road comes into play, and then Stark Road is right at the entrance to this neighborhood, which is Glendale Avenue. I think it's the GFL or GFS or whatever it is, the trash company. And just north of the trash company is the 4 City of Livonia DPW yard, and you can see that the City of Livonia, obviously DPW is going to have outside storage with their equipment and the vehicles on site. Jolly: Sir. I think we can appreciate your perspective that you're trying to share with us. I don't think we need to go through every spot on the map here. All of the visual to be developed, I appreciate that. Sever: Yeah, well, that was my point. Let me just finish by saying this. The larger picture, 8 1/2 x 14 one. The reason I put that in there, is that if you look at it closely, the site I have, okay, if you put Glendale, so you can read it, that's going north. I circled in a black magic marker our location. If you follow the road, Industrial comes down, stop, and then it comes down Wayne Road stops at Glendale. That's kind of a little curve in the road. And you can see that road travels to the west. It doesn't go anywhere. It actually stops and goes right into those two businesses there, those properties. So, this area does not attract through traffic that would be impacted by any additional. And then lastly, I'd just like to make comment that the ordinance allows quite a few different uses, all of which are pictured there. I would venture to say at least 90% of those businesses would be allowed in this location without a waiver and would offer a lot more traffic patterns than this business. And then lastly, difference between our first proposal and this one, is that first proposal was Mr. Fields was looking to build and own and operate. In this particular case, it's going to be a leased building. So, the added protection, you might say to the city, is the owner of the property, who was Ben Crabill, he's a very respected property owner, industrial as well, he has a lot of properties in the area. So, there's that added aspect of making certain that this business could go there. So, I urge you to take a look at the recommendation of the first meeting from the Planning Commission and set the tone and set the requirements and conditions from that particular recommendation, excluding all the building components, and we're not obviously building now, but the screening, those types of things would be in effect, obviously. Jolly: Thank you sir. If I can have you stay right there, I'm going to go to Council. Mr. Donovic. Donovic: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for being here this evening and actually coming before us. I'll start off by saying one, as one Councilmember, I know you went on about what other businesses are doing. I don't have any jurisdiction over what other businesses in the community are doing. That's the Building and Ordinance. All I have to do, in this moment, is the petition in front of me. I'm not happy with the dumpster situation. I just don't think that's a practical, long-term solution. I understand how busy businesses get, especially a small business, you can be short-staffed, a whole list of things can happen. So, this concept, this idea of rolling out a dumpster on a weekly basis, or bi-weekly basis, determining on when your pickup is, I just don't think that's a good solution. I think that if you're going to be coming here with this building, with this kind of business, you're going to have trash and that trash needs to be disposed of properly and that means having an adequate 5 dumpster enclosure. Looking at this site, it's looks like it was in pretty rough condition. What do you guys intend to do to clean this? I documented a ton of debris everywhere, which again, doesn't help the case of not having a dumpster enclosure. So, what do you plan on doing to clean up the all the debris? Sever: Well, when we took those pictures, that was the current tenant and we entered into an agreement with the owner, that if we got approval from the city to occupy it, we would move in after that was approved. That company there hasn't moved out. After they moved out, Mr. Fields went and did some cleanup. There was an issue with the landscaping. I think they had gotten a warning from Zoning, and he went in cleaned it up, trimmed the trees, did all that. He's in the process of cleaning the vegetation, the back there, he's cleaned up most of it, actually looks 100% better than it did before. So, he will, given the approval from the city, and he can actually occupy before he goes in, he will finish cleaning the back. He's been pulling out some of the weeds and stuff that's been meandering through the cyclone fence. So, his intention is to clean the place up entirely. Donovic: Okay and pertaining the actual tow business. Reading through the minutes of the Planning Commission meeting, apparently, this isn't the same purpose, looking through Fields’ comments. This isn't the same kind of tow company? Now you’re going to target a different type of business? Not insurance vehicles anymore? Maybe I'll search through the minutes, that's what I understand. Sever: It's the exact same. Jolly: Your name please. Fields: Mike Fields. Donovic: What kind of tow business is this? What kind of vehicles are you targeting? Is this for people on the side of the road, that are stranded, are these insurance vehicles? I think reading through the minutes, I was just kind of trying to clarify what kind of tow business this is. Fields: We're still doing roadside. I'd say, at this point, that's probably about 90% of our business, especially with the fuel costs, as high as they are right now, and we're on contract to up our rates with a lot of that stuff. Donovic: And then how many parking spots are back here. So how many vehicles will you park back there at any given time? Fields: At this point in time, I'd say less than ten, because two of our locations that we use for storage, we no longer needed those. So, within the last two months, we got rid of those. It's a much smoother operation for us just to do roadside only. 6 Donovic: Okay, and then my last question to Mr. Taormina. If we were to approve this waiver use, does this waiver use stay indefinitely with this property, or does it stay with the tenant, the petitioner and then if that petitioner were to vacate after the lease is over, that waiver use approval goes away? Taormina: Typically, it would run with the land. Unless Council adopts as part of its resolution, a limit that it would be to this petitioner only, it would have to come back for approval to transfer to a new owner or petition. Donovic: Thank you, Mr. Taormina. Thank you, Mr. President. Jolly: Mr. Bahr. Bahr: Yeah, I'm going to make this pretty simple. Actually, you know, we obviously had the property before and I'll just tell you, I was actually pretty favorable to what you were asking last time. Much to the chagrin of our residents, I thought it made a lot of sense. I believed in what you guys were telling us. Unfortunately, some things came to my attention that gave me reason to question some of my trusts there, and so I asked some questions at the public meeting, and received answers at the time, may have seemed satisfactory, but unfortunately, one of those things was some issues with some statements that we made about the business on Grand River. I was told that night that you were no longer there, and you had completely moved out. Later on that night, and the next morning, we had evidence to the contrary to that. So, just to put it bluntly, and I am purposely saying this here versus in our public meeting, because it's not my intention to embarrass anybody, and I take no delight in this, bottom line is, I don't trust you. And quite frankly, I'm surprised that you're talking about this tonight. I wanted to before and I have a lot of reason to believe I don't trust this place. So, I wouldn't recommend it now. Thanks. Jolly: Mr. Bahr, are you offering that motion? Bahr: Yeah, I'm offering a denial. Jolly: Anybody else from the Council? At this time, we will open up. If I can get both of you sit down, if you don't mind. We will open up the floor to public comments. Anybody would like to address this issue has three minutes to address the Council. Please direct your comments to me specifically. I would ask the petitioner at this time to take note and I'll give you a chance to respond. Go ahead, sir, your name and address please. Amar: Charles Amar, Vice-President of Steelcraft Tool, 12930 Wayne Road, two buildings to the north of the subject property, between that building and our building, is a building that's been divided in half. Half of it is a gymnastic studio, that has a constant flow of traffic with children, some of whom run in the street. We've been in our buildings since 1977. I'm not aware of a lot of service industries there. I'm aware of manufacturing, in almost every building, but one. That results in semis coming and going all day long, significant traffic, 7 and everyone in the area is concerned about pollution. Since that property was vacated, I believe that the petitioner is the one who's putting up screening on the cyclone fence. There's already been one car fire back there one night. That's obviously a concern for the neighboring businesses. We would ask that you deny this proposal. I don't think it's appropriate to have it in this particular area. There are areas where tow yards are appropriate, but I think that the traffic back and forth, potential for more pollution, when all of us in the manufacturing area are striving to keep Livonia a safe and clean environment for all of us. Thank you. Jolly: Thank you sir. McIntyre: Mr. Chair, I'd like to get clarification. So, the petitioner already has vehicles there and a screen up? Jolly: Petitioner, if you wouldn't mind, please come to the podium. McIntyre: Mr. Fields, so are you currently using this facility? Fields: No, we are just going to vehicles, we are not operating. The gates are closed, there is nothing for us to do. McIntyre: But you had some vehicles stored there? Fields: Yes ma’am, just in one car and we did it all the vegetation cleanup. McIntyre: There was a, there was a vehicle fire? Fields: No there was not a vehicle fire. If it was a vehicle fire, I'm sure the Livonia Fire Department would have been out there. McIntyre: Okay, thank you. Jolly: Okay, anybody else for public comments on this issue? Going once, going twice. Public comment is closed. I'll go back to the Council. We do have a denying motion offered by Councilman Bahr. Do we have any other motions from the Council? I see no additional motions from the Council, at this time. Just by way of explanation, there's no votes tonight of the Council. These matters of the public hearings were held for this evening will be voted on at a future Regular council meeting. The Public Hearing is now closed. Thank you all very much. As there were no further questions or comments, the Public Hearing was declared closed at 8:37 p.m.